The Honorable Officer

by Philippa Lodge

  A young man in an ill-fitting justaucorps, long blond hair tied back with a dark ribbon, stood in the doorway, his face scrunched in bad-tempered confusion. “Are you the companion?”

  He strode into the room, glancing toward the landscape painting Catherine had just curtsied to. He looked familiar. His face was much like the baron’s, but with a sour expression.

  Catherine looked down at her hands, folding herself back into her invisible shell in the matter of a second before glancing up at him. “Yes, I am the companion.”

  “You’re better, then. I’ll take you to my mother on Monday. Leave Monday, anyway. I don’t suppose you can ride to Paris? We could make the trip in a day.” He fidgeted with the justaucorps, his borrowed coat two inches too short to be in fashion.

  She sat up straighter, curling her lips into her governess sneer—just respectful enough to keep from being sacked, but disdainful enough so her interlocutor would know he had overstepped. “I can ride, but am not sufficiently folle to wish to make such a long journey on horseback or in a single day. Especially as I am still recovering from the grippe I caught from your mother. It is much too hot for haste.”

  “Ah.” The man raised an eyebrow, much like the baronesse at her most condescending. “That’s too bad. Long journeys are all the more tedious when they take twice as long as they should. I decided I would ask, though I assumed your answer. We’ll borrow my father’s traveling carriage, unless mine arrives this evening. It’s more likely to arrive Monday after we’ve already gone. Or Tuesday.” The young man looked around again. “Where’s my family?”

  Not down yet, idiot, she wanted to snap. “I’m sure I don’t know, Monsieur…” She was sure this must be Emmanuel, the youngest son.

  He stared at her with a pained expression before he bowed deeply, waving his hand in intricate swirls. Mocking her. “Emmanuel de Cantière. Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mademoiselle de Fouet. I have read much about you in my mother’s letters. All the highest compliments, of course.”

  Catherine nearly laughed. Compliments from the baronesse? Two could play at this game. She rose from her seat and curtsied deeply enough for the king himself, like she had curtsied to her imaginary beau. “Enchantée, Monsieur de Cantière.” She rose slowly and elegantly but kept her head slightly down. “I have heard much about you from your mother,” whom you have neglected to visit in three years, “who dotes on you,” except when she’s lumping you in with the rest of the family, all of whom she despises.

  When she raised her head, de Cantière was staring directly at her. A hard scowl marred his face even though she hadn’t said the bad parts out loud. He shrugged. She realized the shoulders of the coat fit him too tightly, while the waistline swung loose. The long coat wasn’t even his own. It must have been his father’s justaucorps, because underneath it looked like Monsieur Emmanuel was all muscle. The baron was not fat, but he was a great deal more comfortable. She felt a momentary attraction and a momentary burst of shame for thinking cruel things, but she nodded, and her opinions were gone. She returned to her chair.

  No point in being attracted to him, even if he were the baronesse’s favorite. Besides, his face was nothing special, with the scowl of a brooding, spoiled child. Once one was a penniless companion, one might be a companion forever. She was resigned to it for the time being. She would escape to her property in Normandy one day and live alone. Then she would be free.

  There was a clatter in the hall, and the sounds of the front door opening and closing, then the comtesse’s voice coming closer—as she descended the front stairs in haste—and a man’s voice answering.

  “Dom’s back,” Monsieur Emmanuel said, glancing at the door as the voices in the hall both spoke at the same time. Silence fell rather suddenly. He glanced over with a half-smile which made him the handsomest man Catherine had seen in a long time. “They’re kissing. After all, they haven’t seen each other in three long days.”

  She looked down at her hands, blushing slightly. How long had it been since she had been kissed? Eight years?

  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 returned to the stuff she loved about seventeenth-century France: kings, swords, opulence, and love.

  She lives in the suburbs of Sacramento, California, with her husband, three children, two cats, and a head full of courtesans. (Oo la la!) She does the newsletter for her local chapter of the Romance Writers of America.

  Find her at:

  http://philippalodge.com

  https://www.facebook.com/AuthorPhilippaLodge

  https://www.pinterest.com/plodgewrites/

  http://philippalodge.com

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