by Karleen Koen
She lay instead like a limp rag doll against the jolting carriage seat. Well, her foremost admirer was lost, in a style that only her brothers would appreciate. Now she would not be fashionable anymore. Why had Roger been rude to her in public? If he did not care for her…She bit her lip. But then another thought diverted her. Had she truly broken St. Michel's nose? What would Roger say to that?
* * *
Roger sat sprawled in a chair in his bedchamber, watching Justin put away his clothes. He wore his shirt, breeches, and stockings, but had ripped off his coat, waistcoat, and wig the moment he stepped into the room, as if they were choking him. Justin had taken one look at his face and, without a word, brought him the brandy bottle. Dear Justin, thought Roger, tipping the bottle back and feeling the brandy burn all the way down; Justin knew him better than anyone. Justin had been with him when he was nobody. Since before Philippe. He drank from the bottle the way he used to years ago when he was a brash young soldier, and he had made it through another battle, when the man next to him had died screaming with a pick–axe through his shoulder, slicing it off in one neat stroke, as a butcher does beef. Years ago when the smell of blood and smoke and fear seemed to be everywhere; his hands shook with their memory as he drank to forget. Drank and drank.
Justin folded his coat and put it away. He brought Roger his slippers. He pulled down the covers on the bed. Deftly, he scooped ashes into the warming pan and warmed the bed with it. He drew the draperies. He did the hundred and one soothing tasks that made Roger's life comfortable. And all the time he never said a word, never asked one question. Did nothing more than glance at Roger from time to time. He knows, thought Roger. He has known since Sceaux. When Justin was finished, he sat in a chair near the fire, silent, ready if Roger should need him. When Roger finished the bottle, he called for another. Justin brought it and went back to his place by the fire.
"Justin," Roger, said. His words were slurred. The edges were blurred. Good. "Justin. What am I to do?"
Justin was silent.
"He is here, you know," Roger said.
The sound of dogs yapping penetrated to the bedchamber. Justin straightened. He almost smiled.
"Lady Devane is home," he said to Roger. "Go see Lady Devane. She is a good girl, sir. A good wife."
He went to Roger and took away the bottle and retied the ties on Roger's shirt and helped Roger to stand.
"Go on, sir," he said. "She will make you feel better. She loves you, sir. Go on. That's it, sir."
The puppies ran yapping to the doorway of the bedchamber. They jumped up and down, their shrill voices filling the room. Barbara was in her underpetticoat, and Thérèse was pulling off her hoop.
Roger stood swaying in the doorway. He was drunker than Barbara had ever seen him. She motioned to Thérèse, who called the dogs and left.
"Barbara?" Roger said her name tentatively. He walked into the room but stumbled into a chair. She ran to him and put his arm over her shoulder, half lugging him to the bed, where he fell back like a dead man.
"Dear Barbara."
She pulled off everything but her chemise, and snuffed the candle and crawled into the bed beside him. He took her in his arms. She put her hand to his face; it was wet. She forgot everything else and wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head on her breasts.
"I feel so sad."
"I love you," she said. "I love you more than anything else in—"
His mouth stopped her words. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he made love to her as if he were going to die tomorrow. She had no time to meet his passion. Everything was touching, feeling, probing, wet. There was only his need, and her giving. I give you everything, she thought, covering his face with kisses, feeling the moisture from his tears. He was cry ing even as he made love to her. She whispered his name, her love, wrapping herself around him. He sank against her.
She touched his face, gently, tentatively. "Tell me why you cry."
"I am too old for you, Barbara. I have done too many things…." His words were slurred. She did not understand them all.
"Hush," she soothed him, as she would have done Anne or Kit or Charlotte. "Hush. I am here." She thought of St. Michel. The urge to confess, to have her sins forgiven, filled her.
"Roger. Roger, I have done a bad thing—" She poured out her story, not certain whether to laugh or cry. Roger would know what to do. Roger knew everything. Even if he were angry, at least she would have confessed.
He did not answer. He was asleep. She pulled the bed covers up about his shoulders and felt his forehead with her lips and smoothed back his hair. He had not heard a word she had said.
* * *
White sat at a small table near the windows in his sitting room. He was supposed to be working, but he was looking at the gardens. Thérèse Fuseau was there, with the page, Hyacinthe, and the puppies. She was planting pansies in a corner of the garden under a budding lilac tree while Hyacinthe threw sticks, and the puppies ran after them, yapping and falling over themselves. They were roly–poly with fat. The gardens were ready for spring. Fresh gravel had been carted in and raked in the paths. Everywhere, bulbs were lifting their green heads, and already tulips were beginning to unfurl their glorious blossoms. The lilac trees showed purple buds. Everything was wakening after its winter sleep.
Thérèse finished planting the last pansy. Carefully, she patted the dirt around the thin neck of its blossom and sat back on her heels, satisfied with the tiny, private garden she had created. Even though the day was chilly, the sun was warm on her back. She listened to Hyacinthe's shrill, high, joyous boy's laughter. It made her smile. She wiped her hands off and went to sit on a garden bench to watch him. He ran back and forth with the lithe energy only a young boy possesses, and the puppies fell over themselves to follow him. He threw the sticks and then ran ahead of them as they gamboled after. She had been to see a physician for the bleeding, which had lessened, but not completely stopped. When he had examined her, his probing hands had made her writhe with pain. "An infectious irritation to the female organs," he had told her afterward. He gave her a powder to drink, told her to eat plenty of eggs and beef broth to build up her blood and then said, "When the infection heals, you will be unable to conceive children." Hyacinthe's happy laughter rose and fell in the garden.
She heard steps crunching on the gravel and looked up to see Pierre LeBlanc, the majordomo of the house, coming toward her. He was fat, middle–aged and ugly, with freckles on his face and hands. What can he want? she thought, standing and shading her eyes as she watched him. Was he going to chastise her for sitting in the garden? Or complain of the slowness of the new laundress? As she was Lady Devane's personal maid, his jurisdiction over her was tenuous. And then she knew. She knew as surely as she knew her own name. There could be no other reason. She kept her face calm and smiling.
"A lovely day," he said to her gesturing for her to sit back down. "You have no duties, I see."
"Lady Devane has no complaints of me," she said coolly. "I am stealing a moment of free time. Surely there is no crime in that."
"No," he agreed genially, sitting down beside her even though she had not invited him. "But there is a crime in stealing other things."
"What things?"
"The housekeeper tells me a set of sheets is missing from your room." He pulled a penknife from his pocket and began to clean under his nails. Thérèse did not answer. He was too calm. He knew everything.
"Look at me, look at me!" Hyacinthe called. She waved to him.
"What were you doing out so early in the garden some weeks ago, Mademoiselle Fuseau? But I may call you Thérèse, yes? I look from my window, and I see Lady Devane's new maid digging like a madwoman in the dirt under that very lilac tree there. What lovely pansies you have planted. What can she be doing? I think. I am a curious man, Mademoiselle Thérèse, and a careful one. I run a clean house, a strict one. Is she burying jewels? I ask myself. Has she stolen from the young mistress? Does she plan to dig them up
and meet a lover in the middle of the night? Yes, these are the things I ask myself. So, after you leave, I go to the garden, and I dig. And what do I find? I find bloody sheets, Thérèse. Bloody sheets. Sheets which I now have in a trunk in my room. And I remember how the pretty new maid faints in the laundry room. And how the chambermaid complains of vomit in the slop jar. And how the cook says you eat nothing on your tray. I run a strict house, as you see. Sooner or later, I know everything. About everyone. And so now I know what the pretty, stuck–up Mademoiselle Fuseau has done. I know. And I think to myself, Pierre, she should be dismissed. Lady Devane should know. But I like you, Thérèse. And then I think, Why not give the young lady another chance? But I am a selfish man; and I also think that I should be rewarded for my kindness. What do you think, Thérèse?"
Thérèse did not answer. Each time he had said her name, he had said it with a knowing contempt. She watched Hyacinthe playing with the puppies. The morning was chill, but crystal clear, as if the spring sun was shining on the world with a radiance that made everything shimmer.
"Tonight," LeBlanc said, standing up, closing his penknife and pocketing it. "I will come up the back stairs. Leave your door unlocked."
He walked away. She did not stare after him, but closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun. She could feel its warmth penetrating like the touch of warm, gentle fingers on her face. Hyacinthe was whistling to the dogs, trying to teach them to come to him. His whistle was clear and shrill in the quiet of the garden. Once more she heard someone's shoes crunching in the gravel. Involuntarily, she shuddered, but then there was a skittering sound, as if the person walking had stumbled. She opened her eyes. Caesar White stood a few feet away, his good arm against a small lime sapling. He grinned at her.
"I stumbled," he said. He nodded toward his crippled, shortened arm with its tiny hand. "Sometimes this makes me lose my balance."'
Thérèse said nothing, neither encouraging nor discouraging.
"I saw you from my window," he said, coming closer. "You were planting flowers. They were pretty. Your face has a strange expression on it, Mademoiselle Fuseau. Did LeBlanc say something to annoy you…or am I the annoyance?"
He was remembering the evening she had been rude, as she was remembering it. That evening seemed a long time ago to Thérèse. So much had happened since then. Why had she been rude? Of course, because she was feeling sick. She patted the bench.
"Sit down, Monsieur White. And stop frowning. I was rude to you the last time we talked, but I was not feeling well. Now I am fine. LeBlanc was complaining because I was enjoying the sun." She shrugged, as if to say, He can complain all he wants, but here I am. "He put me in bad spirits. You, however, Monsieur White, have raised them." She smiled at him. Her maid's cap was very white against the dark of her hair, her lips were soft and rose–colored.
"Caesar," White said distractedly. "Call me Caesar."
"And you must call me Thérèse."
There were several moments of strained silence. Thérèse smiled to herself.
"I am glad spring is coming," she said.
"Yes. Yes, I am, too. The—the gardens will be beautiful."
"Yes, they will."
Both of them watched Hyacinthe for a while.
"Thérèse," White said in a rush of words, "sometime may I take you walking or for a carriage ride? On your day off?"
He is a nice boy, thought Thérèse. He has a nice smile. Niceness would be good after LeBlanc. And LeBlanc did not own her. It would do him good to know that. Because she must establish a certain superiority with him as soon as possible or her life would be hell. She had had enough of hell.
"I would like that."
"Would you? That is wonderful, Thérèse."
When LeBlanc knocked on Thérèse's door that night, she was sitting up in bed, the covers folded neatly at her waist. Her hair was brushed and hung down in two plaits onto her shoulders. She wore a high–necked nightgown. She looked young and fresh and virginal. She felt a hundred years old. But calm. The worst that could have happened to her had already occurred. Once one had faced the worst, life was simpler. She nodded to Hyacinthe, who scampered out the other door, the door leading to Lady Devane's bedchamber. LeBlanc knocked again, She could hear the impatience in that sound.
"Come in." Her rosary beads were twisted together in her folded hands.
LeBlanc barreled into the room. He pulled off his wig and threw it to the floor. He shrugged off his coat and hopped on one foot trying to twist off a shoe. As he finally began to pull off the other shoe, he looked at Thérèse, who had not moved since he came into the room. Something in her face made him stand still.
"There are certain things we must get clear between us, Monsieur LeBlanc." Thérèse looked him in the eye. "First, you will never spend the night. Lady Devane's page sleeps in my room, and I will not have him shivering in a bedchamber corner all night when you have your own bed to sleep in. Second, you will always tell me when you wish to visit, and I will inform you whether it is convenient or not. Tonight is not convenient, as I would have informed you, had you given me time this morning. I am still in my flux. You may, of course, insist, but it will be messy for both of us, as well as painful to me. Third, the physician says I must have red wine and beef broth and eggs to heal properly. You will arrange that. The sooner I am healed, the sooner you may take your pleasure. Fourth, you will bathe and shave before you come to my bed. I will not sleep with a man who smells like a pig. And fifth, you will ascertain that no babies result from this liaison. You are never to come inside of me. Never. If you should give me a baby, I will go to Lady Devane and tell her everything. I will be dismissed, monsieur, but so will you. I know Lady Devane, and I am certain she will insist on it. I am finished. Do we understand one another?"
Various emotions had played across LeBlanc's face as she spoke: anger, incredulity, stubbornness.
"I could force you here and now," he growled. But Thérèse noticed that he made no threatening move and she was alert for that.
"Naturally," she said calmly. "But I am a strong girl. I would scream and fight; Hyacinthe would hear me. Everyone would know. I would be dismissed but so, Monsieur LeBlanc, would you. I guarantee it. Lady Devane is very fond of me."
He stared at her, his mouth open, sagging. She decided it would be wise to be generous in victory.
"I know your power in the household. And I respect it. I have no intention of denying you. I am not stupid. I ask only that you consider my feelings, and my health. If I am well, the experience will be more pleasant for us both."
"I could give you to the footmen."
But his threat was hollow, and they both knew it. Hesitantly, with one eye on her as if she would spring from the bed and attack him, he picked up his wig and coat and shoe. He looked ludicrous.
"Mind you do not take too long with this flux," he said in an effort to restore his dignity. "I am an impatient man."
"Be sure to bathe," she answered. "Red wine, beef broth, and eggs. Remember."
The door closed behind him. She leaned back, sagging, her mouth dry. He had taken it far better than she had expected. He was a bully, unused to others standing up to him. And not very clever. Her attack had taken him by surprise. Now he would view her differently. The balance of power between them had shifted slightly. She shuddered at the thought of his big, naked body on hers. She would think of something else, or recite her rosary. And she would go walking with White and enjoy his bashful regard. His regard would make her feel clean again. This would pass. Things always did. The important thing was that she survived. She thought of the girl she had been just months ago, singing and laughing and thinking the world her oyster. But that girl had never known a man's body or felt love or jealousy or hurt or fear. She got out of bed and called for Hyacinthe. She was teaching him his catechism. Listening to the lisping words of God, watching the earnestness of his sweet, dark face gave her comfort. The little boy meant a great deal to her; he might be the only child she would eve
r have. There was freedom in that fact; and there was sadness.
* * *
"What did you do to Henri?" Richelieu asked Barbara immediately, before she could even untie her cloak.
His question made her flinch. Did anyone in Paris do anything other than gossip? (St. Michel had said rogues had attacked him. He had ignored her as if he had never known her. His nose was broken.)
"Nothing!" she said irritably. Roger was as distant as if they had never made love, as if he had never cried in her arms and told her of his fears. "Now, do we play cards, or do you kiss your horse good-bye forever?"
"I would much prefer to kiss you."
She turned around midstep and stalked toward the door. She was not taking anything from anyone. Richelieu could go hang himself. Thérèse was already unfolding her cloak. Richelieu caught up with her and grabbed her arm. She jerked it away and turned on him. He smiled.