Delphine

by Sylvia Halliday

  “I have a fine leather one,” said Despreaux smoothly. “The boy is finishing it now. You shall not find the price untoward.”

  Delphine turned to Gilles, struck with a sudden thought. “He will not use the damaged piece of leather, of course?”

  Despreaux’s eyes flickered for a second but he smiled. “Certainly not!” He bowed again. “I bid you good day, Monsieur le Marquis.” The smile held until the marquis had left the shop. “You will oblige me, Delphine,” he said coldly, “by allowing me to conduct my own affairs.”

  “But—I—” she stammered. “But surely you would not have sold him the footstool with the hide damaged?” Her face wore the expression of innocence assaulted.

  “Mais non. Certainly not. But it was my place to speak of it—not yours! Come along,” he said, as she continued to look troubled, “and I will show you my house.”

  His house was beautiful, far grander than anything that Delphine had seen before. They had supper in a handsomely appointed salon on the main floor, and the next night when she came again to dine he arranged to have their food served at a small table in the secluded garden, under the stars.

  He smiled at her across the single candle that was the only light, noting the way she had begun to tilt her head coquettishly when she spoke, the way she used her hands with a grace that had not been there when first he met her. Each day brought changes in her—she seemed almost pathetically eager to please him. Except for her temper that flared from time to time (and he resolved to put a stop to that!), he found it surprisingly easy to mold her to a woman of his own creating, much as he created a fine piece of furniture. And she was useful. She had distracted the marquis, kept him from examining the chair where the brocade had begun to fray, allowed him, Despreaux, to sell the footstool he had been eager to be rid of—though it had cost him an additional piece of leather and he had beaten the boy soundly for that!

  Despreaux leaned back in his chair, sipping his wine, feeling the cool night breeze on his face. Yes, all would be well—except for one thing. He was going mad for the wanting of her. She was a woman of fire, of passion held in check; he ached to release that flame. She allowed him to kiss her, to fondle her breasts while she gasped in sensuous delight at his touch, to hold her quivering body tightly against his own—but that was all. His tricks, his guile—useless! She was adamant. She was not a whore; she would go down for no man.

  She was laughing at something he had said, her deep, musical voice rolling over his senses like waves on the shore. Oh God! he thought, what exquisite pleasure it would be to take her. “I want to bed you!” he blurted out, his voice ragged.

  She shook her head, her eyes full of pain. “No, Gilles, please. Not for you. Not for any man.”

  “Not even for a husband?” he growled.

  “That would be different, of course.”

  “Then marry me!” He felt reckless, driven by his hunger.

  She jumped up from the table, unable to speak, shaking her head from side to side. “No,” she whispered at last. “No. No.” He clutched at her arm, half tempted to throw her down to the grass and rape her here in the garden. “Let me go, Gilles, please. Is your carriage waiting to take me home? Let me go.” She fled through the garden gate to the coach that waited in the silent night.

  She tossed and turned on her straw pallet, unable to sleep, hearing the soft splash of the waves against the beach. How could she marry him? She did not love him. It was flattering to have his attentions, and she was grateful for all the ways he had helped her to become a lady—the lady who would someday break André’s heart—but that was all. She knew she was a sensual woman—one night with André had taught her that. She delighted in Gilles’s kisses and caresses, her body trembling, her senses aroused, but the passion she had felt with André was missing. Damn his blue eyes, she thought, punching her pillow with tight-clenched fists. He had ruined her for any other man. If it weren’t for him, she might be able to feel more for Gilles than superficial fervor. Damn him! Damn him! She would hate him forever!

  Delphine glanced up at the lowering sky and shivered, wrapping her shawl more tightly about her shoulders. It was cold for mid-August, and if the rain should catch her she would in all likelihood take a chill and be forced to spend the next few days in bed. What had ever possessed her to come on such a fool’s errand? She was half minded to retrace her steps and seek the warmth of home and hearth; then she turned down a cobbled street and saw the Church of Saint Jacques before her. Well, she had come this far, and she had no one else to talk to. The streets were narrow, the old half-timbered houses crowding close, their upper stories cantilevered out so it seemed they must surely fall of their own weight. The lane behind the church was dark, its rubbish-strewn gutter rank with all manner of foul things. Delphine nearly gagged, pulling her shawl across her nose and mouth to keep out some of the odor.

  An old man was hobbling toward her, leaning on a gnarled stick. She pushed back her shawl and managed a friendly smile. “If you please, monsieur—I am looking for La Sorcière.”

  He grunted and lifted his stick, pointing to a door in a crumbling hovel. “You’ll find the witch there—may she be cursed. She will not tell me how soon I shall be rid of my shrewish wife. A pox on her!” Still grumbling, he moved off down the lane.

  At Delphine’s timid knock, the fortune-teller opened the door. “I knew that you would come,” she said.

  Delphine looked surprised. “How could you know? I did not know it myself until this morning!”

  The old woman indicated a small bench by the fireplace where Delphine was to sit and pulled up a three-legged stool for herself. “I read it in your palm.” Her shrewd eyes searched the troubled face before her. “And now you have a question for me.”

  Delphine stirred nervously in her chair. “No. Yes. I have brought three sols. Will that do?”

  The fortune-teller nodded and took the coins from Delphine, holding the girl’s hand in her own and peering intently into the soft palm. “Your question, little one.”

  “If—if a—person suffers from—the sickness of the sea—day after day”—Delphine made a rocking motion with her hand—“and she is on dry land, does that mean—that the sea is calling to her, and she must return?”

  “Is there a lover who waits—at sea or ashore?”

  “No!” A vehement cry.

  “But there was a lover, was there not? In the spring, mayhap.”

  Delphine gave a little gasp. “How did you know?”

  “Your hand does not lie.” La Sorcière frowned, remembering the look on Gilles’s face. She had not liked that one! “Was it the man at the fair?”

  “No.”

  The fortune-teller hesitated. How could she be evasive? She pretended to pore over Delphine’s palm, making a great show of tracing the lines that ran from fingers to wrist; then she sighed heavily. “There will be a child,” she said at last.

  Delphine’s face went white. A child! Ah Dieu! What a fool she’d been! There was much she did not know about being a woman, but she remembered many a whore counting out a nine-month on her fingers and heaping curses on one or another of the crew. It was just that the night with André had been like a dream; it had nothing to do with the reality of children. She buried her face in her hands, yearning for her father, for Gunner, for someone to trust. But Olympie would not return for at least a month, and if it was true—that she carried a child, a seed that had been planted more than two months ago—she could not wait so long.

  La Sorcière put a sympathetic hand on Delphine’s shoulder, waiting for the tears. Instead the young woman raised her head and smiled, a brittle smile, a smile of determination. The fortune-teller sighed. She did not need palm reading or a magic crystal to know that innocence had just flown out the window.

  “Merci,” said Delphine, rising to her feet and wrapping her shawl around her. “Thank you for your kindness, old woman.” She hurried from the cottage and made her way down the cobbled street in the direction of Gille
s’s house, all the while rehearsing what she would say to him: she could not live without him, she yearned for him with a passion that would not be satisfied until she was his wife. She might even manage to say all that without choking on the words. Ah Dieu! she thought suddenly, fighting back her tears. Gosse would never have lied! She turned her tortured eyes to the dark sky.

  “The list grows long, André,” she whispered, her voice sharp and bitter. “The list grows long!”

  They married as soon as possible, Delphine’s impatience matched by Gilles’s, though for vastly different reasons. They supped in the garden in the last pale glow of twilight; then the housekeeper, a thin old woman with a kindly face, led Delphine to her bedchamber. Because the night was warm, the straight bedhangings had been folded back to reveal a mound of soft pillows and a fluffy coverlet on a bed so enormous that Delphine could scarcely imagine that it was meant for her alone. She trembled suddenly, caught between fear and anticipation, remembering that Gilles would share it sometimes. It seemed strange to stand and do nothing while the housekeeper helped her off with the white cambric falling band and black silk gown that Gilles had bought her for the wedding. That, at least, was something to be pleased about: as the wife of a bourgeois merchant she would be expected to dress in somber colors, and black accented her high coloring—the rosy complexion, the yellow hair—as nothing else did.

  Clad at last in a soft linen nightdress, her bare feet luxuriating in the fine carpets that dotted the tiled floor, she padded about the room and waited uneasily for Gilles. But why should she feel such trepidation? She enjoyed his kisses, and when he caressed her breasts she had only to close her eyes and concentrate on her tingling flesh—she supposed that any man could arouse her if he touched her so. But—sweet Jesu!—when she looked in his eyes she felt nothing, when she saw him her heart did not cease beating. It was only her body that responded to him, and nothing more. She extinguished the candles that stood on a small table near the bed, leaving only one light on the mantel; she did not want him to see her eyes when he made love to her.

  She turned toward the door. He had come quietly into the room and was watching her, an odd expression on his face. His shirt was unbuttoned and pulled carelessly out of his kneelength breeches, and he wore neither shoes nor stockings, though the lower edges of the wide breeches were still cinched with black silk garters. It was as though something had stopped him in the very act of undressing; some thought, some—need had sent him to her chamber in disarray. He stepped back to the door to close it, then turned to face her again. God’s blood, she thought, seeing him sway slightly, he has been drinking.

  His eyes bored into hers, burning with fever. “What are you?” he said at last, an edge of torment in his voice. “An angel or a devil?”

  She frowned, mystified. “I am Delphine. Your wife.”

  “Take off your gown and let me look at you.”

  “Gilles—”

  “Take it off!”

  She bit her lip and did as he asked, unbuttoning her nightgown and sliding it down over her shoulders to fall at her feet. There was no point in arguing with him if he was drunk.

  His eyes raked her body—the lush contours of her breasts and hips. “God, I’ve waited for you!” Then, “Are you a virgin?” he growled.

  She bristled, feeling suddenly defensive. “You never asked before—why should you ask now?”

  He paced the room, a man bedeviled by thoughts that overwhelmed him. “Because my mind’s image plagues me!” he burst out at last.

  “Enough to drink yourself into folly?” She stamped her foot in anger, ignoring the scratching of her own conscience. “My life—my body—were my own before I met you! Why must I tell you aught?”

  He stopped pacing and smiled suddenly, the brown eyes filled with cunning. “I’ll know, of course,” he said softly. “You kiss like a whore and defend your virtue like a holy sister—but I think you are far too artless to counterfeit a maidenhead that is gone. I’ll know!”

  “Damn your eyes, you poxy whoreson! You shall not know! I fell from the rigging years agone. There will be no show of blood tonight! And, sink me, I shall not tell you what you want to know!”

  “You tormenting bitch!” he said, pulling her suddenly into his arms and grinding his mouth on hers. She could smell the wine on his breath and she pushed him roughly away from her.

  “Go to the devil,” she said in disgust, wiping his kiss from her mouth.

  He turned and, weaving slightly, stalked from her chamber. When she knelt to retrieve her nightgown, she was surprised to discover that her hands were shaking, as though her very body protested against the deception she practiced.

  He was gone all the next day. She sought for him in the shop and sent in vain for the housekeeper, inquiring of his whereabouts. She ate a lonely supper, growing more and more frightened and uneasy. Who would have thought he would care whether she was a virgin or not? She was almost tempted to blurt out the whole truth—André, the child, everything—then thought better of it. If he knew, he might cast her out, and she was unwilling to bring a bastard into the world. It was important to go to bed with him as soon as possible—when the child was born she might still be able to persuade him that it was his.

  She had almost given up hope when he came to her bedchamber, clad in a long dressing gown and—thanks be to God—sober. It was easy to wear a mask of contrition—so close to the genuine guilt she felt—and she swallowed her anger even in the face of his deliberately cruel words.

  “I trust,” he said, his pleasant face twisted in a sneer, “I trust you are in better humor tonight.”

  She smiled in apology, and put a gentle hand on his sleeve. “As God is my witness, Gilles, I never lay with any of Olympie’s crew.” It was not a lie. It was not!

  He pulled her possessively into his arms, scarcely comprehending his own feelings for her. She was his—his alone. He had molded her, created her. And the passion, the fire—it was for him to bring to life. Only him! None other, in the future, nor the past! And though of course he knew he was a skillful lover (hadn’t that trollop in Dieppe, Lucie, always flattered him and told him so?), he had had fewer unpaid women in his life than he would have wished, and he suffered to think of Delphine comparing him with anyone in her past. Almost roughly he caught his fingers in her short hair and pulled her head back, covering her mouth with his own, forcing her lips apart, tasting, enjoying, owning what was his!

  She closed her eyes, feeling his lips on hers, trying not to think of her anger at his abandonment, or her own falseness that poisoned this moment. His mouth was pleasant, his roving hands stirred her senses. When he pulled her down to the bed, his fingers tugging impatiently at her nightdress, she was roused to the point where she was able to concentrate on her throbbing body, anticipating the moment when he would enter her and fill her being with joy and contentment. The way André had done.

  But he was not André. He had not the skill, the awareness of her feelings, that André had seemed to have. He took her, grunting, thrusting, lost in his own pleasure, sating his own hunger. She almost cried aloud in frustration, feeling her senses cooling, her anticipation fading away to emptiness. It was like rounding a lush tropical isle in Olympie, heart pounding with excitement, and finding an ugly, desolate beach.

  At last his body stilled and he moved off her, leaning on one elbow and peering closely at her, his eyes still heavy lidded with passion. She turned her head away, fighting back the tears, hoping he would not read the look of shocked disappointment on her face.

  Gilles stirred uneasily and frowned, wondering what had happened, what had gone wrong. Where was the fire he had expected to find, the tiger he had hoped to unleash? Had he imagined a passion that was not there? Or misread her response? Afraid to speak, he rose from the bed and, donning his dressing gown and his tattered pride, left her chamber.

  Delphine cursed and sat up, filled with remorse. After all his kindness to her—and now she had wounded him grievously. She threw h
er pillow impatiently at the foot of her bed. What an artless fool she was! She had not yet learned to compose her face into a mask of deception—but life was proving a bitter teacher.

  She would learn, by heaven. By André’s lying heart, she would learn!

  Chapter Nine

  “Open the casement, Anne-Marie. I shall stifle this morning!”

  “Yes, Madame Despreaux.” The old housekeeper threw wide the window, brushing away the crisp leaves—flame colored, golden—that had collected on the outside sill overnight. She turned to the large bed, waiting patiently for her orders.

  Nestled among her pillows, Delphine motioned the old woman away. “Leave me for a little. I would spend a few quiet minutes abed. I shall ring when I wish to get up.” She stretched and yawned, inhaling the sweetness of the morning air, tangy with the crisp scents of fall. Thanks be to God she no longer awoke with her stomach queasy; she had found it near agony to sit every morning and watch Gilles eat a hearty breakfast while her insides churned in protest at the mere sight of food.

  Well, she would not breakfast with him today, damn him! She closed her eyes and slipped her hand under her nightdress, stroking her breasts and her belly that had begun to round ever so slightly, drawing comfort from the sensitivity of her flesh, responsive even to her own fingers. It was her comfort—and her weakness. And that devil Gilles knew it. For the six weeks of their marriage he had used it against her—always sweet, always charming, the hornet hidden in the soft bouquet. (“Delphine, ma chère, if you wish me to come to your bed tonight, you had best learn to descend the stairs with grace. Not like a stomping bull! Try it again!” Or, “Delphine, I shall not kiss you, nor touch you, until you can manage to balance the household accounts. I do not wish to be cruel, my sweet, but—”) And she would exhaust herself trying to please him, eager, hopeful that this time—this time, sweet Mother of God!—when he came to her bed she would feel more for him than the momentary excitement of his caresses. She was always surprised by her ultimate disappointment, making excuses to herself (she was tired, he was concerned about his trade) that the next time would be better. She tried to hide her discontent from him, but an undercurrent of anger nagged at her—anger that he should so callously use her appetites against her, anger at his clumsiness as a lover.