Dom’s head snapped back, and he glowered more fiercely.
Aurore knew she wasn’t being fair, but she couldn’t stop herself. Her old grievances kept boiling up. “It’s like when we were children and I had to embroider and sing and look pretty while you boys learned to fight and learned Greek and mathematics. Who is it that oversees the accounts for all of your properties? Alors, it is me. Without any mathematics other than simple arithmetic. How much do you use your Greek? Or your fighting? If anyone had bothered to teach me—if you had bothered to teach me after we married—perhaps I could have defended myself when the château was invaded.”
Dom went pale and looked down. He looked sad, and Aurore wanted to take everything back and cheer him up.
She had just opened her mouth to apologize when he lifted his head to stare into her eyes, his nostrils flared and his jaw set harder than she had ever seen.
“I am sorry if you feel that I or any of your brothers or your father has wronged you in not teaching you to fight. You are a lady and are to be cared for and protected. There should never have been a time that you needed to protect yourself. As for what your father chose to have you taught, I had nothing to do with it.”
She looked away, ashamed.
“I know that I am useless at court. I would not be there if the king did not require it. I had hoped that with your father and brother as my family and you as my wife, it would be easier.” He clenched his jaw even tighter and narrowed his eyes as he looked out the window. “I wished for you to be there many times. But even the court doctors recommend that ladies remain at home when pregnant, lying down as much as possible so as to not hurt themselves or the baby.”
Aurore shivered and felt her hands grow cold. She had never been able to lie about as recommended, instead getting up for gentle walks and even forgetting herself and walking quickly when she was excited. Was it her fault? Or did Dom think it was her fault?
“You will do as I tell you and stay away from the château until the fighting is over. It is my château, and you are my wife. I have you back, and I will soon have the château.”
Her anger flared again. “You’ll have your horses, your servants, your land, your wife. And I’ll have what? More time to sit alone in your château, bored and lonely? What do I get out of this? If it all belongs to you, even me, then what do I get? Perhaps I should have hidden better. Perhaps I should have fled to the Low Countries. Perhaps you should have sought an annulment. Perhaps I should have found a nunnery somewhere where you would never find me. It doesn’t matter to you at all what I think and what I want and where I want to be. I am just another thing. One that is faulty, since I cannot seem to give you an heir. I want a husband and a baby for love, but you, all you want is another thing. The château itself is old, drafty, musty, and full of young men who only care about guns and swords. I don’t care about the château.”
Dom looked hurt, but Aurore rushed on. “I care about the people inside the château. The maids who have been raped as I was, the peasants who have been beaten, the servants who have been mistreated, the men and women who were loyal to us who were betrayed just as we were. What I want is revenge. That is all I want. All. And you want me to sit and embroider in my father’s house like a good little girl. I won’t. I won’t be fighting with sword and musket like you and the other men. I know I cannot do that. But I will be nearby so that as soon as the château is taken, I can come in and see Poudrain and Saint-Ange arrested and at my mercy.”
Dom stared out the window for a long time, and Aurore stared at his face, frozen in anger and thought. She forced herself to remain quiet. She didn’t know if she had made her arguments well; she was not trained in rhetoric but had only learned how to be nice to get what she wanted. I should have mentioned the affairs. No, I’m glad I didn’t. I should have mentioned my mother and her bitterness. No, I would never be like my mother, never undermine Dom.
Finally he turned back to her, his face no less angry but his lips pursed. “You may come to the village. But you will stay out of sight and under guard.”
He knocked on the ceiling and demanded a halt, then was out of the carriage and up on a horse almost before the carriage had stopped. He rode up next to the carriage window and bent down to say, “If any of your brothers can talk you out of this, I will support them. I am against it but will not stop you.”
He clicked his tongue for his horse to move on and was gone, leaving her alone in the carriage, before the rest of their cavalcade had come to a complete halt.
Aurore had a pit of fear and darkness in her heart.
****
They arrived in la Brosse not long before sundown. Cédric’s little, shy wife greeted them just inside the door, and Cédric swept her into his arms even as he asked her why she hadn’t stayed safe at the smaller estate. She blushed and stammered to be looked at by so many people, especially strangers, but murmured that the baronesse had insisted on it when the baron left for Vincennes. Aurore’s father pursed his lips but didn’t contradict his wife’s order.
Aurore’s mother did not put in an appearance until the end of supper, and then only to nod coldly around and skim a disdainful look over her children, raising one eyebrow at the embroidered cap Aurore had put back on to cover her scars. Aurore felt as if she were seven and dirty and in trouble. Then Dom stepped next to her and took her hand and looked into her eyes, still angry, but offering her support against her mother. She swallowed her guilt and smiled at him as best she could.
They held hands in bed again that night, but she was sure Dom never slept, since she barely did, either, and she kept rolling over to find him awake.
The next morning, Dominique rode out with her brothers and father to visit their people who had sought shelter on the la Brosse lands. He returned with his jaw set even tighter and refused to talk to her about revenge. He didn’t speak to her, except the bare necessities, but both Cédric and Jean-Louis tried to talk her out of going to the château. When Henri then broached the subject, she snapped at him, which made him scowl for the rest of the day.
The day after, Michel arrived from Paris at the head of twenty men in a train of wagons, carriages, and horses. She waved at her half-brother, who smiled and bowed.
Aurore watched them roll up her father’s drive, her heart swelling with gratitude and hope. She exclaimed at the sight of a familiar face on a large, muscular frame and moved forward into a group of men and horses, calling out, “Paul-Bénédicte!” as the other men gaped.
Paul-Bénédicte bowed deeply, his face a mask. She took his arm, leading him out of the crowd and toward the house, exclaiming over seeing him again.
He stopped once they were out of earshot of the others and pulled his arm gently from her grasp. “Is Henri…” He gulped.
“He’s here, of course,” said Aurore, only then remembering how Paul-Bénédicte had only just broken her brother’s heart. How sad and awkward. “He’s…”
Paul-Bénédicte looked away from her and cleared his throat a few times. “My… I didn’t marry. She left me for a captain in the musketeers before I even had a chance to become one myself.”
“Oh! So quickly? To marry him?”
Aurore winced when Paul-Bénédicte closed his eyes.
“As a mistress.” He gritted his teeth. “I tried to save her from that life.”
Aurore flattened her lips together to keep from accusing him of being more interested in saving himself from rumors that he was homosexual than in saving his would-be bride. She looked around, trying to find a distraction, and saw Henri come out of the side door.
Paul-Bénédicte turned to look when she waved at Henri to go away. He froze, as did Henri.
After a long, breathless moment, Henri turned his back, his unrelieved black clothing a somber cloud, and walked to Michel, whom he greeted stiffly. Michel glanced over and whispered something to Henri, who nodded sharply.
“It was a dreadful mistake,” said Paul-Bénédicte.
“Leaving him?”
said Aurore, perceptive.
“Oui.” The word left his mouth as more of a silent inhalation than a fully-formed word.
Aurore fought back the desire to chastise her brother’s ex-lover, as he seemed tortured enough. They watched Henri move through the crowd and join up with Cédric and Dom. She couldn’t think of another topic or of some way to tease him lightheartedly. All those years of being told not to chatter or babble were finally bearing fruit.
“Will he…will he take me back?” whispered Paul-Bénédicte, more to himself than to Aurore.
She couldn’t be quiet any longer. “He’s never been forgiving.” She meant it as a joking comment, but Henri’s propensity to hold a grudge was so heavy she might have dropped stones on Paul-Bénédicte’s head; he wilted.
He nodded miserably. “I’ll have to try.”
Aurore looked back over to Henri, who had his back firmly turned to them still, his feet planted and his arms crossed on his chest. “Will you help with the assault, no matter the reply?”
Paul-Bénédicte closed his eyes. “I will help no matter what. I owe everything to the late comte. I would have been just another peasant in a field if there hadn’t been the guard school. Just another illiterate peon if he hadn’t encouraged me to learn alongside Henri.”
They stood in the drive for a while longer, Aurore fidgeting awkwardly with her skirts, tears in her eyes.
“I will speak to him after the assault,” said Paul-Bénédicte with finality. “I will distinguish myself or die trying.”
“Oh, don’t die!” said Aurore. “No matter what Henri says, I still think of you as a bit of a brother-in-law.”
Paul-Bénédicte’s eyes filled with tears as he bowed to her, his jaw clenching repeatedly as he seemed to be trying to wipe away all expression. He strode away from the group of men who were being directed to lodgings in the house, the outbuildings, and the village.
Aurore glanced around; she was alone and surrounded by armed men. What if the de Lucenays had someone inside this group? Someone who would give away all their plans? Or kidnap her again? She lifted her skirt and dodged through the dispersing group of men and in through the side door.
She paused to steady her breath. Her smirking thirteen-year-old brother Emmanuel pushed past her and her mother frowned haughtily.
Inside her father’s house had never been completely safe, either.
“Good day, Maman,” said Aurore, nodding to the baronesse.
Her mother hmphed once and said, “I’m amazed he went looking for you. And you had the nerve to show your face again—at court, no less.”
Aurore stood up straighter, even as she was squashed by her mother’s words. She had to clear her throat to keep her tears from flowing as they had so many times in her childhood. “I was held hostage, beaten, raped, and disfigured. Dom knows I would never willingly leave him.”
But her mother knew Aurore’s weak points; hadn’t she created them herself? “Well, he has had an odd way of showing his love. How many mistresses has he taken? And why would anyone who needs an heir love a wife who cannot—or will not—give him one?”
Two mistresses. For whom he has apologized. And I told him to go to one of them. He said he wants to keep me. With thoughts of Dom, Aurore held herself steady under the weight of the blow. Mostly steady, anyway. She held her skirt tightly in shaking fists. “Because we know we are very lucky to have been promised from birth to the person who is best for us. Because we are still young enough to try again to have children. Because in spite of everything that has gone wrong—the problems caused by the two of us and the problems caused by others—we know we can be content together, even happy. Maybe it took a treasonous plot, the loss of everything, and an attempt on his life to open our eyes, but we see clearly now.”
Her mother waved her hand airily, though Aurore could see the lines of stress around her mouth and between her eyebrows—the ones she filled with makeup—deepening. Aurore preferred her scars to her mother’s wrinkles brought on by ill temper.
“All that matters, really, is a son. And the prosperity of the lands. Since you are a threat to de Bures ever having either, it would be best if you agreed to an annulment. Or died. That would be acceptable.”
Aurore’s heart and lungs seemed to stop short, and the blood drained from her head. Finally, she inhaled deeply, her chest expanding finally with welcome air. Her mother smirked, figuring the battle won, and started to turn away.
“Did you just tell me to die?” Aurore squeaked out.
Her mother, still half turned away, raised both eyebrows as she looked back at Aurore. “Bearing a son is a wife’s only function. It was the only use your father had for me.”
“Only function?” Aurore’s voice, which she prided herself on as melodic and light, was harsh. “I have been telling Henri that I supervise three households, including keeping and reviewing accounts, that I correspond with so many people hardly a day goes by in which I do not write a letter that will impact my husband, my family, or my country’s well-being. I learned how to be a comtesse by doing the opposite of everything you ever did. You treated the children you had with disdain. You never took care of the houses or the properties. You undermined us all.”
Her mother only looked haughtier as she shook her head slightly.
“Through my friendship with a well-placed lady,” Aurore paused, knowing her mother disapproved of the king’s mistress, “I had the first interview with the king of France last week. Even scarred and in homespun, I convinced him that my husband deserved a hearing as to how he is not guilty of treason. How am I only useful as the bearer of children?”
Her mother’s wrinkles deepened as she frowned. She opened her mouth to speak, but Aurore cut her off.
“Furthermore, if le bon Dieu ever does give me children, I will love them and care for them. I will help the boys find their calling and raise the girls to be kind, compassionate, and concerned about the welfare of their family. And I will never, even once, wish they were dead. As you see, I will follow my father’s path, except that I will be happy with my husband, since he agrees with me and is not a selfish, angry, bitter, spiteful…”
Aurore felt the tears coming and spun away, only to find Dominique and her father standing at the other end of the back hallway. Dom stepped forward and held out his hand to her, looking past her at her mother, his eyes narrowed and chin thrust up in defiance. When Aurore touched his warm hand, his focus shifted to her and he raised her cold, clammy fingers to his lips.
Her father cleared his throat. “You know, de Bures, I’ve been thinking lately that my youngest son would profit from a change of company. He has grown up weak and cross instead of becoming a man. I am afraid that I am so rarely here, while other influences”—he glared at Aurore’s mother, whose rapid footsteps faded down the hall—“are injurious. Would you take him into your château? Train him as your father trained you and your brothers?”
Dom bowed to his father-in-law. “First, we must retake the fort. Then, we must be sure we have the right to run the training school. Then, we will take him.”
“You misunderstand, de Bures,” said the baron. “I am hoping that, no matter what happens, you will take my son and raise him. I have more faith in Aurore and you than I have in my wife. She has so poisoned him against all of us, against me, that…”
He cleared his throat and turned away.
They watched him stalk away before Dom raised Aurore’s hand to his lips again, then held it between his large, warm ones. “Well, my comtesse. We have our first new student.”
“Our first child,” said Aurore, trying to smile. “And we will have to start over again from the beginning, I fear, if we want him to turn out half as well as my brothers and you.”
He smiled at her, but the smile faded. He gripped her hand. “Please, Aurore. Please stay here in safety. I will send a rider as soon as we have succeeded. I will hold the bastards until you arrive. I…I cannot think of you in danger.”
Instead of
his usual stoic demeanor, he was pleading. He wasn’t demanding anymore, but truly begging.
Aurore almost gave in. How could she cause him such worry? She opened her mouth to say she would do what he wanted and stay behind, but the words wouldn’t come out.
As they stared at each other without speaking, Dom clenched his jaw and stood up straighter, dropping her hand.
He turned away.
“I have to go, Dom.”
He shook his head.
“I’ll stay safe. But I have to be there when the château falls to you.”
He turned to look at her, the pain in his expression cutting into her.
“Please don’t ask me to stay away.”
He grimaced and walked away.
She went to her room and cried.
Chapter Eleven
Dom clutched Henri’s woolen sleeve. The local priest, more than pleased to find the dispossessed comte on his doorstep in the middle of the night, had loaned them monk’s robes and escorted them into the church to the unremarkable door that hid the passageway. He assured them that no one had told the invaders of the secret tunnel, not even the tarty kitchen maid, Marie, who had taken up with the bastards’ captain of the guard. Dom shook off the image of a nameless jackal taking over the place of Petit le Grand, his own guard master and the father of Petit le Petit, the young man who had served Aurore all summer.
In the dark hours before dawn, Henri led Dom and Paul-Bénédicte inside, all three heavily armed, Dom with a bow, a sword, and several daggers. They stumbled over the hems of the robes as they crouched through the low tunnel. Henri, in the lead, lifted his skirts and scuttled along with no trouble, due, Dom supposed, to his youthful stint in a monastery. He couldn’t imagine profane, angry Henri as a monk.
In the tiny stone room in the back of a stable where the tunnel ended, Dom found Petit le Grand, alerted to their arrival by a message from his son, who bowed and nodded with gruff efficiency. The guard master sent another loyal man to lock the rest of the guards in their sleeping quarters and led the three fake monks to the gate just as the sun rose. They overwhelmed the two standing watch, then bound and gagged and tucked them away in a shelter. The sky was pink and the forest to the east glowing when Paul-Bénédicte pulled the large gate open.
The Indispensable Wife Page 16