The Indispensable Wife

by Philippa Lodge

  He leaned across her, and she flattened herself away from his hot, heavy body. He blew out the candle, but before he could move to his own side again, she grabbed the front of his nightshirt. She would seduce him. She tried not to shiver. He froze, his arms still supporting his weight on either side of her, his neck just at her eye level.

  She lifted her head and kissed his neck at its base, just above where the dark hair swirled at the top of his chest. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

  “Aurore,” he whispered.

  “Embrasse-moi, Dominique,” she whispered.

  He leaned down, his arms shaking slightly, and kissed her so very gently that she nearly swooned.

  He collapsed heavily to one side. His left arm pulled her tightly against him as he kissed her again and again. She returned his kisses eagerly, even greedily, as he ran his hand over her back and onto her buttocks. She shivered slightly with fear, but also with longing. Then he kissed her neck and it was all longing.

  He ran his hand down her legs and then up under her borrowed nightshirt. As his hand drifted up her thigh, he touched the branded spot, which gave her a sharp jab of hot panic. She shoved him away and kicked out.

  “Aurore.” His voice was gruff.

  “It’s where… Stop. Don’t…don’t touch me. Please.” She pulled her knees up, curling herself into a tight ball, gripping the nightshirt around her legs, and squeezed her eyes shut, breathing in sharp rasps.

  He yanked the bed curtains open and rolled out of the bed, but instead of storming away, she heard him coming around the bed. He appeared on her side with a burning paper spill from the chimney and relit the candle.

  He tossed the spill into the fireplace and opened the curtains further on her side. “Let me see.”

  “Please, Dominique, just leave.”

  “Let me see, Aurore. Please. I need to see what they did to you. I need to see what I should have protected you from.” He bent over and pulled the covers back.

  She started to weep softly as he pulled her nightshirt up again, this time without touching her leg. He leaned in close and brought the candle over.

  She put her hand over her eyes and sniffled, and he didn’t say anything at all. She felt him trace around the horrid circle of scarred skin.

  “I was hoping the engravings from the ring would be visible. Does it still hurt?” His voice shook a little. Maybe he wasn’t as clinical as a doctor.

  She sniffled. “Not much. Only if it gets brushed lightly. Then it burns.”

  He set the candle on the night table and stared at it for a moment before blowing it out. He pulled her nightshirt down and the covers up. His face loomed suddenly out of the shadows to kiss her gently. He clambered over her and yanked the bed curtains shut before getting under the covers.

  Aurore trembled, her mind racing through the terrible things that had been done to her.

  “Tell me about your travels, Aurore. How did you find a troupe that would let you join? And why?”

  He was going to talk about the troupe? It took her a moment to catch her breath and think of where she was. “I didn’t feel safe at the convent.”

  “Yes, but why a musical troupe? Why not…another convent? Or go with Michel’s wife to my grandfather’s? I’m sure Michel would have preferred that.” Dominique spoke so softly and gently in the darkness.

  Aurore sighed. “It was very selfish of me. I was so afraid of everything in those first days. Michel sent his mother and wife away. I felt terrible about that within a week of separating. Though Michel never complained, he mailed letters to Mathilde almost every day. We watched some musicians in a small village, and I remembered that I used to love to sing. Michel and Le Petit started to talk about hiding where no one would even think to look, and about how I would need a mask, and the next thing I knew we were offering the troupe a few livres d’or up front.”

  It had been so much more than that. But the plain facts were there. Dom was quiet, and Aurore figured she had bored him to sleep.

  “It was a good strategy,” said Dom suddenly, and the mattress shifted and the blankets rustled as she felt his hand settle on her ribs and slide down to her waist. Her skin prickled. “Though I would have much preferred that you let your father know where you would be at all times.”

  “I was afraid my letters would be intercepted. And I was sure my father would come and drag me home but not be able to protect me.”

  Dom sighed, and there was silence. Aurore shifted to get comfortable in the strange bed. She almost preferred a hard mattress. Almost.

  “It is my greatest failing, ma chérie,” said Dom suddenly, making Aurore jump.

  His failing? “What is?” she answered.

  “That I have failed to protect you. That I have failed you, hurt you.”

  He sounded so sad that Aurore’s heart went out to him. “Really, Dom. I’m all right.”

  “Are you, mon âme?” he whispered.

  She swallowed tears. She was so ashamed of the rape, so afraid of anyone touching her. Hadn’t she just proven that when Dom wanted to see her hip? “I am dirty from what they did to me. I know you would never hurt me, but just a touch on my scar made me afraid.”

  “I will have revenge,” he said grimly.

  “You’ll have the château back and all your lands. The king will surely cede it back to you. And in all this, no one has even mentioned the Dumouton estate in the south.”

  “I want revenge for what they did to you even more than for the lands. All the people they mistreated—I will help them. But you…you are my heart.”

  “Oh…” She didn’t know what to say. Did he love her?

  Dom pulled her close to him. “Let us sleep, Aurore.”

  Chapter Eight

  1661

  She started to smile but saw that he was serious. “Of course not.” She sighed and decided to tell him the truth. “I was so very angry, Dominique. For two weeks, the only thing keeping me here was my duty.”

  “And the next two weeks?” he asked softly.

  “Memories of the lake,” she said. “I came here almost every day to think.”

  “To think about picnics?” he asked after a short pause.

  “About picnics and how much I missed you,” she said.

  “So there’s some affection.”

  She drew herself up straight and glared. “Only if you came home out of affection and not duty.”

  He walked toward her and took her hands in his. She gasped as he fell to his knees on the soft, damp grass and held her hands to his lips. “Please forgive me, Aurore. Please. I am sorry. I was insane with jealousy, but that is not an excuse—not for your embarrassment, not for betraying you, not for adultery. I have sinned—and even worse, I have sinned against you.”

  She was stunned to silence. Was this some overblown poetry that he had learned to turn her head?

  “Please, Aurore.” He looked up at her, his face as solemn as ever.

  “Oh, Dominique. Will you be faithful?”

  “Of course. Of course. For as long as you want me to be. In three years or five, when we’ve had two or three children, when you are tired of me…”

  She frowned. “You are planning to leave me as soon as I say so? What if I don’t tire of you? Will you always want to be free of me?”

  “No!” he said, taken aback. “No. But if you wish to be free of me and I am alone…. No. I can’t even imagine it. Please forgive me, Aurore.”

  Of course she forgave him.

  A month later, only days after she had thought she was pregnant, she suffered her first miscarriage.

  ****

  1666

  Dominique slipped from his wife’s bed early in the morning. He had awoken beside Aurore, arms and legs intertwined with hers, sweating from the force of his desire. It took just one accidental brush against the soft linen covering her breast for her to shout and shove him away, arms flailing. She curled into a tight ball and shuddered twice before relaxing again. She hadn’t even woken. />
  As he clumped down the stairs in the baron’s house shoes and clothing borrowed from his brother-in-law, he wondered if it was a good sign or a bad one. She had been enthusiastic the night before until he touched her scar, so perhaps when she was fully awake he could coax her along. Or he should regain her trust and give her only what she wanted.

  He paused on the stairs and breathed deeply to calm his rampant arousal. The door to the baron’s study opened and Cédric stuck his head out. “Oh, good. Is Aurore awake? Never mind. Come and break bread, and we can talk strategy.”

  Dom’s last shred of desire dropped away at the thought of facing the king, and he shivered.

  ****

  Aurore’s feet hurt from her sister-in-law Sandrine’s dainty bejeweled slippers.

  Her legs wobbled from the weight of three petticoats, a tight whalebone corset, a bustle, a brocaded silk overskirt, a tightly-laced bodice that her small breasts almost spilled over the top of, and a thousand curtsies.

  She had traded her embroidered scarf—after much persuasion from Marie-France, who was acting as her lady’s maid—for a complex hairstyle with false ringlets dangling over the scars on her forehead and temple. Her arms ached from not shoving the hair off her face.

  Her ribs ached from the tightly-laced stays. How in the world Sandrine had remained thinner than Aurore after bearing four sons, she did not understand. Sandrine was one of the few people in the world shorter than Aurore. Perhaps Cédric’s sweet, shy wife had offered this gown because it was too small? It was at least two years out of date, and she’d had two babies in that time.

  Or perhaps Aurore was so used to the loose peasant disguise that she had forgotten how uncomfortable life was at court.

  They idled for hours in the hall outside the king’s meeting with his closest councilors. Dom, resplendent in the same copper coat as the night before, asked a footman for a stool for her, but she spent almost as much time rising to greet acquaintances as she did sitting. Besides, she could hardly sit still; it was only a lifetime of training that kept her from pacing.

  If it weren’t for her aching feet, she would have envied Cédric his easy meandering: greeting friends with joy, kissing cheeks, bowing, shaking hands, and calling out to acquaintances to speak with them of their crops and families. If it hadn’t been for her gut-clenching fear for the future and her careful reading of the suspicion on many courtiers’ faces, she would have stood with Cédric, trying to charm them. Even a year before, she would have wanted them all to like her. Now, she was only worried about securing the king’s regard. Dom stood as still as a tree beside her, nodding and bowing politely, but not speaking more than a few syllables to anyone, even when Cédric pulled a potential ally over to speak with them.

  Finally, at about midday, they were called into the council chamber and bowed deeply to the king and his ministers. She glanced around the table, her knees knocking. She envied the gentlemen who were permitted to sit in His Highness’s presence. The stuffy chamber reeked of sweat and perfume and fear. Aurore’s heart accelerated and her vision faded at the edges.

  Breathe.

  A moment later, the councilors rose again to bow as Louise de la Baume le Blanc, resplendent in white, rose pink, and gold, entered from the door that led into the complex warren of the king’s apartments. The king nodded to her, and she stood at his elbow, hands folded modestly at her waist, gaze on the floor. Some councilors exchanged grimaces, displeased by the presence of a mistress.

  A tense silence fell until Louis waved his hand lazily. A gentleman in a sober black costume stood at the bottom of the table, cleared his throat, and read, “Whereas Monsieur le Comte de Bures, Vicomte Dumouton, has absented himself from His Highness’s Royal Court for two months following a rumor of treason against the king himself. And whereas there has been no correspondence of any sort from Monsieur de Bures or from any of his family as to the whereabouts of the comte and his wife…”

  Cédric drew in a sharp breath, but they all knew better than to interrupt. He had written to the king several times on their behalf. Aurore’s gut churned as Dom glanced at Cédric and then at her.

  The man in black droned on a little longer about rumors and not explaining themselves, then trailed off.

  Another man approached the table and something in the narrowing of his eyes made her heart stutter in fear. He glanced at Dominique, face full of venom, then spoke of Dom’s character. Dom’s desire to succeed became a will to subjugate, with a reminder that Dom had found it difficult as a boy to allow Louis himself to beat him in sword play. His taciturn nature became secretive. His love of the country and of his lands showed that he was unwilling to bow to the king’s desire to keep his nobles near him. What he said was true on the surface, but Aurore felt the man was turning everything awry, twisting events and words to show Dom in the worst possible light.

  Each breath expanded Aurore a little further until she was sure she was physically swelling with outrage.

  Once the man had finished his recitation of Dom’s real and imagined flaws, he turned his face toward Aurore. “It is hardly surprising, given Monsieur de Bures’ inability to father a child, his lack of care for his wife, and his known infidelities, that he is incapable of discretion or loyalty at all. Though I have heard that his comtesse has not been faithful, either.”

  Aurore staggered back a step, deflating, only to be steadied by her husband. It took a moment over the trembling of her body to realize that his arm shook as much as hers.

  Some of the gentlemen who stood along the wall whispered to each other.

  Cédric laid a hand on Aurore’s arm, squeezing gently. “May I speak, Your Highness?”

  With a little nod from the king, Cédric launched into a point-by-point refutation of everything the man—Monsieur de Lucenay—had insinuated about Dominique. He watched the king through most of it, but cast his gaze around the room, smiling and spreading his arms and dragging the council over to their side. Aurore lost herself slightly in the rhythms of his love for his best friend. She had never been prouder of her brother. After drawing a chuckle from many of the gentlemen, a shy smile from Louise, and even a nod of approval from the king who appeared to be listening to every word, he paused for a moment, a frown appearing.

  “As for rumors of infidelity… Many of you know my love for my sister and brothers. I will never condone anything that hurts them. Never. My sister and her husband know well my stance on this issue, and though I know more of the circumstances than most… No, I am wandering from my subject.”

  He smiled with self-deprecation at the chuckle from the room, but held up his hand as his face turned hard and angry. “That Monsieur de Lucenay would have the effrontery to spread a rumor that my sister has been unfaithful is…”

  He took a breath, and Dominique stepped forward, his chin thrust out in challenge. “My wife was branded.”

  All motion stopped in the room. Aurore’s ears rang, and she couldn’t breathe. Don’t tell them I was raped. Don’t allow that shame to taint their view of me.

  “My wife was attacked and disfigured by two bastards of noble birth. They held her hostage in our home. They used a signet ring to brand her. While she burned away the brand on her face—blisters on top of blisters—the one on her leg remains. The scar still pains her. It is a constant reminder of her captivity and the brutality that she suffered at the hands of her captors. I seek revenge.”

  Aurore felt someone holding her up and realized it was Cédric when he whispered in her ear to pull back her ringlets. She shook her head weakly.

  Dom spoke on, and Cédric reached for her face.

  “Stop.” Louise’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, but silence fell.

  Louise stared at Aurore, tears trickling down her pale cheeks, leaving tracks in the fine layer of powder. “I have seen the scars on Madame de Bures’ face.”

  The king nodded. “As have I.”

  More silence as Aurore’s knees began to recover their solidity. Dom came to
her and slid his arm around her waist. She instantly felt much better.

  Cédric squeezed Aurore closer to him. “A further point, Votre Altesse, is that my father, the Baron de la Brosse, and I wrote many letters to you, to this council, and to friends among the courtiers during my brother-in-law’s long absence from your court. When we did not receive any replies, we redoubled our efforts, visiting Fontainebleau several times in an effort to gain an audience with you. Surely there are some among our friends who attempted to speak to you in support of the comte and comtesse.”

  More silence. Two of the council flipped idly through a stack of papers, apparently seeking the letters.

  “Nevertheless, Monsieur de Bures,” drawled the king, “I heard nothing from you directly.”

  Dom bowed stiffly. “I am sorry, Your Highness. In the face of many concerns, the greatest was that you would have me arrested while I recovered from my injury. A contingent of guards remained in Versailles watching my rooms. My wife’s family was correct in requiring me to remain in the shadows while they, who are more eloquent, worked on my behalf.”

  Aurore clenched her hands to stop their shaking, stepped forward, and curtsied deeply. “He was looking for me, Votre Altesse. As I said yesterday, I went into hiding, and my family did not know precisely where I was.”

  “With your lover,” someone muttered loudly enough to make everyone’s head snap around, searching for whoever had spoken.

  Her stomach roiled. “With my half-brother, Michel, who got his wife and mother to safety and then saw to my protection. My younger brother who has been my friend since we were small children, even when we didn’t know we were related.”

  Cédric’s chuckle sounded forced. “That’s surprised them. It’s no secret that my father was not faithful to my mother and that there is no love between them. None of us knew that he had sired a son, much less that the bastard boy under the late Comte de Bures’ protection was our half-brother.”

  The king looked bored. He waved a hand and a servant approached with a glass of wine. He sipped from it and set it on the table.