“What do they want with me, I wonder.” Jean-Louis nearly laughed at the thought of anyone from his late wife’s family wishing to see him, especially at any risk to themselves. “Did she say it was about my daughter?”
“That was the whole message, Monsieur le Colonel. Jouvet said she seemed to be blind.” The courier didn’t appear to believe it.
Jean-Louis dismissed the boy with a flick of his hand and a scowl. From his wife’s family? He couldn’t make it out—barely had space for it in his thoughts—but figured he would see in a minute.
He hastily rolled up two maps and stacked some papers, then stood behind his chair, trying to look nonchalant as he heard a carriage pull up. He took a look at his leather jerkin, the old one he had put on after the last time the king and queen and a bevy of mistresses and courtiers had surveyed the troops, two days and nights before. He had worn it constantly since. He had removed his cravat hours ago. He hastily took off his coat, rinsed his face, and despaired at the state of his shirt. He didn’t have time to change; he heard the voices of men and the reply from a lady. He tied a plain, mostly clean cravat on hastily, stuffed the miniature of his daughter and a handkerchief into the pockets of his blue coat, and was just buttoning it when a voice announced, “Mademoiselle Hélène to see you, Monsieur le Colonel.”
He walked, outwardly calm, toward the woman who hovered in the doorway, her hand on Corporal Jouvet’s arm. Jouvet bowed, clicking his heels, and then bowed more deeply to this Mademoiselle Hélène. The boy was infatuated.
She was tall and slender, not awkward. As she pushed back the hood of a rough, brown cloak, he felt a stirring of appreciation and another of recognition, but still not enough to place her. Her face was narrow and pale, and her well-rounded pink lips were unpainted. Her next step drew her copious gray skirts against her legs, and he could see, firstly, that she wasn’t wearing as many petticoats as would be fashionable or warm and, secondly, that she had ample hips, probably overly ample for her otherwise slender form. She was looking him up and down, certainly not blind, though her eyes—large and blue—were squinting as if looking at something far away in dim light.
He bowed over her hand and said, “I am le Colonel de Cantière, Mademoiselle. How may I help you?”
She smiled at him vaguely, and he had the impression that she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I have come about your daughter’s safety, Monsieur le Colonel.”
“My daughter? Ondine? Is there something wrong? Is she well?” His stomach clenched for the only female other than his sister and mother for whom he would lay down his life. Though his mother was questionable.
“She is in a safe place near here,” she said.
“Near here? There is nothing safe near here. The Spanish are preparing an offensive to try to break our siege. We will be victorious, of course, but the fighting may range more widely than we would wish, rounds from siege guns shooting too long, and so on. This tent will be moved in the next half hour, relocated further from the lines.”
She gasped, and once again her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “I am sorry. I was hoping she would be safe with you. I will get away as soon as possible. I will take Ondine to a friend in Dijon, if you think we will be safe there. When you can get away, you can go to the abbey and ask for Frère Thomas, and he will bring you to me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why do you have my daughter? Who are you?”
Her face fell in obvious confusion. “You do not recognize me? You are truly Monsieur de Cantière? Is this a trap?”
He scowled. In a panic, she fumbled around with her pockets until she pulled out a lorgnette with a particularly thick piece of glass and held it to one eye. She glared at him through it and said, “Well, you are Jean-Louis de Cantière.”
He nodded and was about to say Oui, bien sur, and then have her thrown out, when she let her gaze travel down his coat and onto his legs—where it lingered with the glass pointed at his thighs. He glanced down and saw a large black smear—probably soot—where his ballooning breeches showed between the sides of his long coat. His incorrectly buttoned coat.
He muttered a curse, feeling like a little boy again, and the direction of her head and glass rose quickly back up to his face, her pale skin blotchy with a blush.
Her eye, magnified through the glass, glowed enormous and pale blue. He suddenly recalled where he had seen that monstrous eye before. “Of course! My late wife’s cousine, Hélène. I am sorry I did not recognize you, Mademoiselle. I am much distracted by the coming battle.”
Mademoiselle Hélène de Bonnefoi sighed as relief and disappointment battled in her chest. They had met any number of times—before, during, and after his brief marriage to her beautiful, viperous second cousin, Amandine. Hélène was three years older and, as the impoverished relation with no marriage prospects, had served as chaperone. Amandine always asked her to serve in that capacity because everyone knew that Hélène was virtuous and strict, and yet Amandine knew her cousin’s vision was even worse than the others thought.
Her latest eyeglass was stronger than ever, but as always she tried to get along without it, because it certainly didn’t improve her homely looks or make her overly tall, dowry-less self any more appealing.
She blushed again at the thought that he had just caught her ogling his legs. She hoped he thought she was noticing the dirt. She found herself glancing again at the superb legs, noting the high shine on his slouched bucket boots and spurs, when she realized that he was asking her a question.
“I am sorry, Monsieur le Colonel. I am overtired from the long journey and all the anxiety and was not paying attention.”
“I was merely asking again why you have brought my daughter to a war zone, Mademoiselle,” he snapped. His chin was up, his voice tight and angry. “And the tent will be taken down around us in ten minutes, so I would appreciate an answer as soon as possible.”
She stood up straighter, falling victim to his bossy demeanor as thousands of young conscripts surely had. She was half-asleep on her feet and had to hold herself steady to keep from swaying.
“There was an attempt on her life four days ago, Monsieur. Someone set a fire outside her room in my uncle’s house.”
He stared at her so hard she very nearly dropped her lorgnette to avoid his gaze. She did not, though. She stared right back into his dark blue eyes. Her gaze flickered to his very short, blondish-brown hair and decided he must wear a wig usually.
“This is unbelievable, Mademoiselle,” he said.
“I awoke when I smelled smoke. Ondine cried for her cat when I tried to carry her out of the window. I went into the dressing room and found the cat writhing and twitching on the floor. I told her the cat had already gone out, so we escaped and raised the alarm. The next morning, we left without saying where we were going.” She had been brave and resourceful in defying her uncle’s assurances that all was well. No one believed that the cat had been poisoned, saying that the cat must have died from the smoke.
“In your uncle’s carriage? And how do you know you did not bring a culprit with you as an outrider?” His brow wrinkled over his narrowed eyes.
“I hired another carriage once I got out of Paris.” She lowered her lorgnette, leaving her squinting at vague colors and shadows.
“And hired new outriders, as well?”
“I kept one, the one I trusted the most, and sent everyone else back. I hired another carriage in Dijon and sent that one back with the Paris coach.”
“I thought you were impoverished,” he said.
She sniffed in disapproval. “My uncle gives me a supplement to my allowance because I take care of Ondine. I suppose it is what you send them to pay a nurse. And I have some of my own money, just not enough to convince anyone to marry an ugly girl who can’t see.”
She blushed. She never had outbursts like that. It was fatigue, and because he did not recognize her right away. Of course, she had never spoken more than three words to him before.
He
looked at her for a long time before shaking his head. “You say Ondine is safe nearby. I shall send you away with an escort. I want you to retrieve Ondine and ride as fast as you can for Auxonne. There is an inn there where they know me. Change horses as often as you need, and do not stop until you are there. If you can so much as hear the cannons, continue on to Dijon.” He reached into his coat and brought out a small purse. “Here is money for fresh horses and to bribe anyone you need to.”
He held out a handful of coins, and she had to stuff her lorgnette into her pocket quickly to take them. They were still warm from his body, and she flushed slightly at the heat.
“My aide de camp is signaling me that he wishes to gather up all my papers and have the tent taken down. I have yet to put on my colors, as you see. You must flee as fast as you can. I will come and find you and Ondine when I can. In a day or two, I hope.”
She was glad her hand was on his arm as she stumbled over rocks and ruts keeping up with him on the way from the tent.
He handed her up into the carriage. Just before closing the door, he leaned in. “And you are not ugly. As for seeing, it does not matter, unless you would like us to train you with sniper rifles. Safe journey.”
He slammed the door and shouted for Jouvet, the boy who had led her in from the carriage, to ride with her and for the driver to make haste. As the carriage turned to pass in front of his tent again, she pulled her lorgnette out and looked toward Jean-Louis, Chevalier de Cantière. He scowled at her as his men bustled all around, a short, dark-haired man pausing at his shoulder to watch, as well. He waved and turned away just as the boom of a cannon sounded in the distance. Her last view of the camp was of soldiers running in every direction and the colonel barking out orders.
Author’s Note
Despite a background in French and history, I have used literary license in depicting 17th century France, sometimes for the purposes of the story, sometimes because the specifics are not always very specific.
Did the court travel from Fontainebleau to Vincennes in the summer of 1666? Did they have a clerk from the Finance Ministry check on the changes of horses? Did Mademoiselle de la Baume le Blanc, the official mistress, travel separately? No idea.
Did they make that trip sometimes? Yes. Did someone have to make sure horses were ready for the royal carriage? Yes. Did the king sometimes take pity on his wife and remove a heavily-pregnant mistress from her view? Yes. Did Louis XIV want to keep driving without pit stops (at least he didn’t insist on stopping at Taco Bell), travel with only his wife and mistresses, and seduce anyone in skirts? Yes.
De la Baume le Blanc (made Duchess of La Vallière and Vaujours the next year as the king’s parting gift) had two living sons in 1666, though I only name one; both died that autumn. Her sentiment, “I ought to weep for his birth far more than [for] his death,” was too powerful to pass up, though she said it seventeen years later. For an in-depth account, see Love and Louis XIV, Antonia Fraser’s book on the king’s relationships with women.
I’m not fashion-forward (my friends and relations just snorted coffee through their noses), but the elaborate clothing is a symbol of aristocracy in history, and I have tried to give the impression of it if not a full description.
A word about the author…
Philippa Lodge has been an avid reader since she asked her mother to point out where it said “Ma” in Little House in the Big Woods. She read everything she could get her hands on until grad school in French Studies, at which time she lost her reading mojo. Only through the twin discoveries of Harry Potter and romance has she gotten her groove back and gone back to the stuff she loved about seventeenth-century France: kings, swords, opulence, and love.
She lives in the suburbs of Sacramento, CA with her husband, three children, two cats, and a head full of courtesans. (Oo-la-la!) She edits the newsletter for her local chapter of the Romance Writers of America.
http://philippalodge.com
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