Sweet Savage Love

by Rosemary Rogers

  That first week, Ginny had clung to Michel as if she were afraid to let him out of her sight, afraid to be alone. It took several days before she was strong enough and calm enough to tell him the whole story of what had happened to her since the day she’d been abducted right under his eyes. He could hardly believe that she, so soft and feminine, so young, had actually been through so much in the space of a few months.

  She was so innocent, so pure, Michel thought painfully. I was going to marry her, I wanted to be the first, and then that American mercenary, that gun-hung bandit with the blue eyes, the same man Sonya Brandon had told him, weeping, had bothered Ginny before, he had taken her. By force. He had dragged her everywhere with him as a hostage, and had made her his mistress. He had actually married her in the end, and probably out of gratitude, she imagined herself in love with him. But when he thought about this man, this Steve Morgan who had so casually and belatedly given Ginny his name, Michel’s fists would clench and his fair brows draw together in anger. The bastard! he’d think. Merde! He deserved his fate—he deserved much worse! And as for the fat Colonel Devereaux, the “wily fox” as his friends called him, he, Michel, would deal with him!

  The young, popular Comte d’Arlingen, one of Marshal Bazaine’s favorites, was not afraid of the consequences of challenging one of his superior officers to a duel. The circumstances were extenuating, and he had already told Bazaine, in strict confidence, part of the story. Michel was disappointed when he returned to Durango and found that the colonel had been killed a few days previously, by a Juarista sniper. Well, at least he could give Ginny the good news when he returned to Mexico City—he hoped that would not be too long, for to tell the truth he hated leaving her there alone. Agnes du Salm had promised to look after her, but Agnes was flighty and never lacked for escorts while her husband was away. She’d get Ginny involved in that fast crowd, and God knew what might happen.

  Ginette—away from her, Michel wondered what would become of her. His little green-eyed, copper-haired siren! All the hardships and degradation she’d been through had not made her any less beautiful. She was thinner than he remembered, but it had only seemed to accentuate the fine bones of her face; give her eyes a new, vivid brilliance. He had remembered her as a girl, still shy and reticent. And he’d found her a woman. But what a woman, quelle femme! Unconsciously, Michel Remy echoed the late Colonel Devereaux’s impression of her. The first few days, he had been carefully patient, overwhelmingly gentle with her. He had hardly been able to credit the fact that she’d endured so much, and still managed to survive. How she must hate and despise all men! He must be careful, he must not push her, he would try to make her feel that he was her friend, her protector, that he would never try to force himself upon her, no matter how much he desired her. And strangely, he desired her more than ever, in spite of everything!

  The first few nights, he slept on a small couch in the big bedroom that occupied the whole of the top floor of their little house.

  Then, the third night she’d awakened from a nightmare, moaning and sobbing wildly with terror, he had suddenly found it impossible to tear his arms away from around her shivering body, especially when her arms were clasping him so closely. The desire he felt for her overrode everything else, even though he tried to be gentle, to take the time to caress her and whisper words of love and encouragement in her ear. He couldn’t help himself, he wanted her! He’d found her again, and this time he wouldn’t lose her. In spite of the fact that she seemed unable to respond to him at first, Michel persisted. Very tenderly, very gently, finally breaking down her natural resistance.

  On the last night that they had spent together, she seemed finally to abandon herself to him, forgetting her fear. He was amazed at her skill as a lover, once she had given in. Oh God, what passion! She drove him almost to the brink of madness with the wildness of her response. She was his now, exclusively his, or so he would like to think! She would be his mistress, his petite amie. She was different from those others he had taken to amuse himself with for an hour, perhaps a week, sometimes longer. He could take her out with him in public, yes even to the emperor’s palace at Chapultepec, and not be ashamed of her manners or her appearance. And before he left Mexico City Michel made sure that Ginny would have carte blanche at the more exclusive dress boutiques. He wanted her to spare no expense, and when he came back, perhaps in less than a month, he would take her with him everywhere, he promised. She clung to him, half-crying, before he left.

  “Oh, Michel! I’m going to miss you so much—I wish you’d take me with you. Please hurry back.”

  During the weeks that followed Michel’s reluctant leave taking, Ginny felt herself in a kind of limbo. At first, she could hardly believe that she was really free at last, that she was actually here, in Mexico City, with lovely gowns to wear again, and a maid and a cook to run the little house for her. It seemed strange to be a lady again, to have a friend like the bubbling, laughing-eyed Agnes du Salm, who insisted that Ginny must go with her everywhere, be introduced to everyone.

  “It would be too silly of you to stay home, cooped up like a prisoner!” Agnes exclaimed. “Michel would be the last one to expect it, he’s a man of the world, after all. And I did promise to watch out for you. Come along with me, do, I get frightfully lonely myself, and I don’t really have a close woman friend.”

  Agnes coaxed prettily, and Agnes was used to getting her own way. They visited the theater together, attended masquerades and balls at the palace, and went to tertulias at the houses of the more liberal-minded Mexicans. At first Ginny lived in fear that she would run into someone she knew—into one of the Alvarado-Ortega clan. But Agnes, who knew something of her story made discreet inquiries and informed her laughing, that all of the richer hacendado’s families always spent this time of the year in their summer palacios. “Mexico City is far too crowded with foreigners for that stuck-up crowd!” Agnes giggled. “You should have seen how some of them used to stare down their noses at me, because they all knew I’d been a circus rider! Really my pet, you’re well rid of them—I’ve never known such stuffy, old-fashioned people. They act as if they’re doing us a favor by letting us fight their battles, yes, really!”

  Agnes’s natural charm and her sense of humor were irresistible, and while she wondered guiltily if Michel would really approve, Ginny found herself swept along in Agnes’s perfumed wake, realizing what magnificent foils they made for each other—Agnes with her dark hair and snapping dark eyes, and she with her pale copper hair and green eyes. They became quite a familiar sight, these two, always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Ginny would tell herself that it did not mean anything, she could hardly go about unescorted, and as long as she was faithful to Michel, that was all that mattered. She felt a tremendous sense of gratitude toward him. He had been so kind to her, he had saved her life and her sanity, she owed him everything! And as a lover he had been gentle and undemanding, trying so hard to give her pleasure. She too remembered their last night together, when at last, for a few moments, she had managed to close her mind to everything in the past and allow herself to be controlled by her body’s innate sensuality. If it wasn’t an experience filled with pain and a sense of degradation it was really quite easy to let physical sensation take over, to close her mind to memories.

  On some nights however, or in the early hours of the morning, when she had just come home after a night of dancing, Ginny found herself haunted by the same memories she’d told herself she could shut out. It was not the state of degraded physical numbness that Tom Beal had forced her into that she thought about at these times. That time in her life, starting with her giving herself willingly to Colonel Devereaux in return for Steve’s life—such a useless and wasted gesture, that!—she was now learning to push away. But the memory of nights and days spent in Steve Morgan’s arms, even his occasional cruelties, were less easy to cope with.

  “A woman never forgets her first love, or the first man who made her a woman, darling,” Agnes had said when
Ginny tried to explain her occasional moodiness. “I can understand how you felt about this man, your husband who was a reckless adventurer, who taught you everything. Yes, because my Felix is a man like that. But what’s the point spending your life regretting? There will never be another first love, but there can be other loves. Your Michel—didn’t you say you once felt yourself in love with him? And that he’s a considerate lover? What more can a woman ask for, after all? It’s always so much safer to love a little less than you are loved. You can’t be hurt that way. No, Ginette, you must learn to live for today, just like me!”

  Of course Agnes was right, and she was always so practical. Having been deprived of luxury or even pleasure for so long, Ginny felt that she appreciated life much more now. She had no plans for the future—nowhere she particularly wanted to go, no one she particularly wanted to go to. So why not remain here, in this atmosphere of almost frenzied gaiety? Why not take pleasure in living, for a change? What did it matter?

  She felt restless and adrift, without purpose. She felt that yes, she loved Michel, when she thought about him, but she wasn’t in love with him. And, as Ginny was “discovered” by the cosmopolitan society of Mexico City, she also found more and more admirers. Men who swore they adored her and would die for a kiss. Men who offered her anything, everything, if she would consent to accept them as lovers. Now that she wasn’t the one to be manipulated by men, the feminist in her came to the fore and she found how easy it was to manipulate men—to use them and have them dancing like puppets to her tune. Even as a girl, Ginny had always been a flirt, and now, as a woman, she realized the power that flirtation could give her. She would have traded it all to have Steve—but he was dead. It had all happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly—she had discovered what love really was, only to lose it almost at once.

  “What does it matter?” It was the recurrent phrase in her thoughts. Like Agnes, she would learn to enjoy life, to snatch at its transitory pleasures while they were within her grasp. Tomorrow meant nothing when there was nothing to live for.

  At Michel’s gentle urging, Ginny had dutifully written a long and rather ambiguous letter to her father. It told him only that she had been married to Steve Morgan. “I discovered after a while, that I loved him,” she wrote, choosing words carefully. “I think that after all, he was in love with me too. He was not really as wicked as we all thought him at first, for he believed sincerely in Juarez and the revolution.” She went on to say that she had been widowed. She explained that she had since met the Comte d’Arlingen again, and was now living in Mexico City, under the chaperonage of the Princess du Salm. “Please don’t ask me to return yet,” she added. “It’s very gay here, there are diplomats from all over the world, and some of the richest men from Cuba and the West Indies come here on vacation—I find everything new and exciting, and I need to forget. You must not worry.” Thoughtfully, biting the end of her pen, Ginny had added that she did not need money, for the property settlement made on her by her husband had left her quite well off. She’d frowned thoughtfully. It was true, after all. The papers had been drawn up and signed, the money somewhere safely in a bank. She remembered with a sudden, sharp pang that Steve had left a will leaving everything to her. But they hadn’t talked to each other since, and all she knew was that he owned a ranch near Monterey. “Perhaps, when all this is over, I shall go there to live. I’ll become a recluse, I won’t need anyone.” But in the meantime there was life, to be savored all over again.

  Ginny sent the letter off, and hoped that her father and Sonya would understand. She supposed that she should write to Don Francisco too, after all, he had been so kind to her. But what would she tell him? How could she explain what had happened and expect him to understand? In the end, it was to Renaldo, who had been her friend, that she wrote. She could be frank with him, at least. She told him almost everything; almost, because there were still a few things she could not bear to talk about. But she was blunt about the fact that she had been fortunately “rescued” by a childhood friend from France, and was officially his mistress now. “You will probably be shocked, my dearest and kindest of friends, but I felt so depraved, and so empty; almost past caring what happened to me. I was a little in love with Michel as a girl, and he is kind and good to me. I suppose I am as happy as it is possible for me to be any longer. If there is some way you can explain to Don Francisco without upsetting him too much, I’d be grateful if you would do so.

  I suppose I am too much of a coward to face him, after all this—I feel as if everyone must think the worst of me. But I do want you to know the truth, as painful as it is.” Almost as an afterthought, as if it had been forced out of her, she added at the very bottom, in an almost indecipherable scrawl, “I loved him, Renaldo. If only I could have told him so.”

  With the country in such a state of turmoil, communications were at their very worst. Still, Agnes took the letter and promised that she would have it delivered somehow. “Don’t expect a reply too soon, my love,” the Princess warned her. “He might not even be there—the province is almost completely in the hands of the Juaristas, and most of the hacendados have fled to safety unless they were Juarist supporters themselves.” But at least the letter was written, and Ginny felt slightly better.

  When the Comte d’Arlingen returned he found his mistress gay and sparkling, the toast of the town. She was invited everywhere, and she insisted that he must take her. She even swore that she’d been faithful.

  “Michel darling, but I have missed you. Do you think I could ever forget what you’ve done for me?”

  “Oh, damn,” he groaned, “it’s not gratitude I want from you, Ginette! It’s you—I’ve found myself thinking constantly about you.”

  “And I’ve thought about you. Oh, Michel, hold me. Please don’t be jealous, when there’s no need to be!”

  He forgot everything in her arms. He felt hopelessly entangled, all over again. Before—yes he had desired her even then, but in the way that a man desires the woman he might choose to make his wife. Now she was his mistress; her lovely body, the same body that so many men had used and abused, was all his. Or was it? It was only in her arms that he could forget his jealousy. The more he had her, the more he desired her—she was like no other woman he had ever known before.

  The young comte, who had been one of the most sought after bachelor officers, now dropped all of his other mistresses and let it be known, quite subtly, it was true, that he was Madame du Plessis’ protector. He did not like the name that Ginny had chosen for herself, because it reminded him, as it did her, of a once-great courtesan of France. But as usual she had only laughed teasingly.

  “But why not? I am a courtesan. At the theater the other night I heard an old woman whisper to her friend, ‘look at la cortesana!’ Don’t look like that, I didn’t mind! Aren’t you happy that I’m yours?”

  Yes, he was. He had to admit it. He was proud to be seen with her—pride mixed with jealousy, though, when he saw the admiring, envious glances that were cast their way. She did not seem at all to be the same Ginette that he had known and had been so passionately infatuated with so long ago. She was a different woman—but a woman, Dieu, yes. And what he felt now, like a constant ache in his crotch, was desire. I am completely obsessed by her, he thought gloomily, and then in her arms he forgot everything but the pleasure that she gave him, and would give him again and again, as long as he could keep her.

  Ginny herself was not completely certain how she felt from one moment to the next. She loved Michel—yes, she did, as much as she was capable of loving any man again. But she had also begun to enjoy the open admiration of other men, the looks they gave her, the knowledge that she was capable of wielding a cruel power over them. When Michel had gone away she had missed him, for he had made her feel safe, he had been like a tower of strength that she could lean upon, as weak and frightened as she had been. And now, with her body filling out again, the fear gone as her mind began to heal itself, she was not quite certain what she wanted.
Michel was jealous, although he tried not to show it. When flowers and little presents arrived for her, he was furious. And yet she had learned how to tease him out of his anger. It was really so easy.

  Although the Comte d’Arlingen was now officially transferred to Mexico City, Bazaine kept him busy, as his trusted courier. He was constantly being sent here and there, to French outposts—or on tours of inspection. Wherever Bazaine went, Michel would have to go too. And so there were evenings when Ginny, rather than stay home alone, would accept other invitations; although she always made it a point to go with Agnes, and was never seen alone with any man but Michel. If he remonstrated with her, she pouted.

  “But you’re always so busy! Le marechal has you at his beck and call. What am I supposed to do? Must I give up all my friends? Don’t you trust me?” And he could never bring himself to say that he did not.

  On one of the occasions that Michel had to be away for two days, Ginny attended a private masquerade at the palace. The Empress Carlotta had just left for France on a secret mission to the Emperor Louis Napoleon. Poor Don Maximiliano needed cheering up! And besides, the news was very bad, and getting worse—there were rumors that all French troops were to leave Mexico soon. Why not have fun while the golden bubble still lasted?

  It was the height of summer—a summer which had begun early this year of 1866. Here in Mexico City one could feel isolated from the fighting going on everywhere else, and all the unpleasant attendant rumors.

  “Only a few people are to be invited on this occasion,” Agnes whispered to Ginny as they planned their costumes. “Just the cream of society, my love! Max’s advisers—some of the rich Mexicans who haven’t fled from the heat yet. And of course the handsomest of the officers and the corps diplomatique. What fun it will be!”