Pam Rosenthal (19 page)

She hadn’t been able to see him, but she’d felt his body’s heat, heard his calm breathing at her back. Finally (thank heaven) she’d heard his muffled groan—reassuring her that the extravagant slowness of his caresses had taken a bit of self-control on his part too.

But when he finally entered her, he did it quickly, confidently.

The new Duc’s “vassals”—bluff, reasonable-looking officials from the surrounding villages—recited hastily memorized pledges, cribbed by their lawyers from musty medieval books that no one had opened for generations. They were clearly impatient to be done with this nonsense, Joseph thought.

As far as he was concerned, it could go on forever.

As long as he had those mental images of her to sustain him.

Not to speak of those delicious sensory impressions that had been stamped, it seemed, upon every nerve and muscle of his body…

“Now,” he’d whispered, rising upright on his knees, pulling her up along with him. She’d leaned back against his chest, buttocks pressed against his groin, his thighs. He’d lifted her hair, buried his lips in the nape of her neck, moved his hands up and down her front. Closer, tighter, she’d squeezed him within her, bearing down upon him…

One could hardly make out what the bored-looking gentlemen were mumbling, Marie-Laure thought. Good thing Nicolas had explained it beforehand, that each of them was swearing to be “a good, loyal and faithful vassal of my lord Duc and his heirs…”

His heirs. A snicker came from somewhere in the courtyard. The Duchesse cast a defiant look at the crowd. Bertrande nudged Nicolas and shrugged.

Horrible old verses. And yet Marie-Laure felt herself responding to those phrases she could make out.

For there had been something lordly about the way he’d held her against himself; something of the conqueror in his hands’ insolent, proprietary slowness, even while he continued driving deeper into her.

She’d grasped back at him with all the force at her body’s center, she’d ground herself against him until she could feel the tiny muscles at the root of his sex, the wiry hairs at the bottom of his belly. But still he’d moved within her, thrusting upward, driving toward the mouth of her womb.

Her womb.

Dear God how much she’d wanted him to empty himself within her.

She caught her breath. Until this moment she hadn’t admitted to herself how desperately she’d wanted to feel that.

But she
couldn’t
want it. It was insane to want it. Yes, yes, of course she wanted every bit of him…but not so that her life could be ruined or ended. No.
That
was simply impossible, even if not having it was impossibly frustrating. She should feel glad, she should be grateful that he’d been so careful. But she wasn’t.

She forced herself to relax her clenched jaw, to breathe and collect herself. And right now, she thought, she should also be grateful for the sharp twinge of frustration that had brought her back to the present.

The endless ceremony was finally drawing to a close. There would be a big dinner for the participants. It was almost time to get back to work.

They seemed to be finishing their oaths, Joseph thought. The tedious reciting droned to a close.

“…to keep his secrets, to refrain from doing him harm, to seek his honest profit with all my power, and not to renounce or flee his jurisdiction.”

Not to renounce or flee…

And
to keep his secrets…

“And at least to get a good meal out of it,” Robert whispered to Marie-Laure. She giggled, while Monsieur Colet hissed at both of them to be quiet.

“Well, a good meal is all they’re going to get,” Nicolas concluded that evening, as the plates were returned to the scullery for washing. “I’ve already heard grumbling in the village about how cheap this new Duc is. He hasn’t even granted his peasants and villagers the reduction in dues that traditionally goes along with a gentleman’s assuming his title.”

Well, that was the way of it with aristocrats, Marie-Laure thought. Always cheating you out of something they owed you.

“No,” he told her that night. “Absolutely not.”

She wasn’t surprised. It was really quite wonderful how much care he’d taken during these past weeks. And equally absurd how intent she was on taking this crazy risk.

“Just once?” she pleaded. “Just once to have your skin next to mine inside of me? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

He looked away. “Yes, of course it would be
nice
. It would be more than nice.”

His voice was harsh. “You haven’t any idea how very very nice it would be.”

“Well then, show me. I know how good and decent you are. But just this once…my brother told me about it…you could, um, pull yourself out before…” Though in fact, what Gilles had told her was never to agree to such a thing if a man were to propose it.

He’d been in the midst of putting the sheath around himself. She reached to pull it off. To discover—
mon Dieu
—to discover that during the course of their little argument he’d quite fully, and quite uncharacteristically
wilted
.

He looked as astonished as she felt.

“I take it,” she said softly, “that this doesn’t happen to you very often.”

His mouth curved downward. “I believe that that’s approximately what I’m supposed to say at this moment. But it’s true, as it happens. There’s not a lot in this world that I depend upon myself for—certainly not any sort of goodness or decency—but…

“You don’t have to stay,” he added quickly. “In fact, perhaps it would be better this evening if you were to go. And I’m sure that tomorrow night…”

“I’m sure of it too,” she said. “I’m sure that by tomorrow night you’ll have contrived a way not to think about whatever made it happen. You’ll bury it deep with those other secrets I don’t know. And then I’ll never know them.”

She’d almost forgotten how cold his eyes could become.

“Always wanting to read what’s not on the page,” he muttered.

“It
was
on the page,” she said, “just not in so many words. And now it’s written on your face. I knew it then and I know it now.”

He’d wrapped his dressing gown around himself and was pacing the room.

“And if you found Monsieur X’s secrets? If you found out he…I was a murderer?”

“You’re not a murderer. I would feel it if you were. You were a soldier, of course…”

He’d collapsed into his armchair. “Well, not exactly a murderer, I suppose. But I’m not talking about death in battle. I’m talking about the death of an innocent…and very dear…person. And I caused it.”

She caught her breath, unable to quite believe that he
was
going to tell her. For a moment she considered taking her place in the window seat.

But it wasn’t that sort of story.

“Come here,” he said. “I don’t know if I can tell it if I’m looking at your face. But if I’m holding you…well, that might help a little.”

The story came out haltingly, without any of his usual facility or elegance of phrasing. Sometimes he’d speak in a monotone, sometimes in a breathless rush. Sometimes there were long silences when he wasn’t able to say anything at all.

It started at school before his fourteenth birthday. All his friends had already had their first sexual encounters, most of them with their mothers’ seamstresses or chambermaids.

Curled up in his lap, her head against his throat, she could feel his choked breathing and the vibrations of his voice.

“But I was the youngest of the group, and hadn’t yet. Of course I was mad to try it, after hearing their stories all spring. And so, when it was time to go home for a summer visit, I knew I was ready. I’d just celebrated my fourteenth birthday; I’d become a head taller in the past year. Suddenly I didn’t look like a little boy anymore.”

His voice slowed, stumbled.

“Her name was Claire. She helped my mother with her hair, or ribbons…or something, I don’t really know what. All I know is that she was remarkably affectionate and patient with me.

“She seemed very old at the time—I remember her telling me that she was twenty-six—and she wasn’t terribly pretty She had a broad, flat, rather stolid-looking face, and large, capable hands. And a wonderful touch—I know that now, though at the time anybody’s touch would have been wonderful. But the important thing was that she enjoyed our lovemaking.
That
was the miracle for me. She was such a passionate lover that even a clumsy fourteen-year-old boy could move her to ecstasy.”

He’d spent the summer in a sort of dream; the only reality had been her visits to his bed. And then he’d gone back to school and rather forgotten about her. Except, of course, to boast to the other boys about his new status as a man of the world.

“But when the Easter holidays came, I found myself overwhelmingly excited to be going home. I made hasty greetings to my parents and ran up the back stairs to where the servants slept.”

“But she’s gone, Monsieur Joseph,”
Bertrande had said. “Monsieur le Duc let her go, you know, as he always does when a girl becomes pregnant.” Her voice had been choked with helpless rage. But he’d only understood that later, after he’d thought about it. Right then his only thought had been to find Claire.

“Where?” he’d demanded. “Where did she go?”

She’d shrugged. “Home to her village. Where else could she go?”

He took the best horse they had, packed all his money and his most cherished possession, and galloped furiously through lonely mountain country.

“It wasn’t difficult to find out what had happened. It was a small, mean village; everybody knew everybody else’s business and seemed to take spiteful pleasure in it. The baby had come early, two weeks before I’d arrived. It had been a painful, bloody stillbirth, and when it was over, Claire was dead too.

“‘Well, can I at least give her family some money?’ I asked the innkeeper who’d told me the story. ‘I have a rather good telescope with me that I think will fetch a reasonable price.’ But the innkeeper said that Claire had no living family.

“‘What did she do?’ I asked him. ‘Who helped her?’

“‘She came here, to my place,’ he replied. ‘She had the last of her wages but she was saving that for the child, so I let her wait on tables when we had an overflow crowd, and clean the privies, and she slept by the fire and I gave her the food scraps, so she got by. And when the baby started to come, I only charged her a
sou
for a room to have it in. Half price.’ Looking very pleased with himself for his charity too.”

Marie-Laure shivered.
He’s never forgotten a minute of that day
, she thought.

He must have felt her shiver. “Quite astonishingly stupid, wasn’t it,” he asked, “to tell him about the telescope?”

“That’s not what I was thinking about,” she said.

“Well, it’s what somebody at the inn was thinking about,” he said. “Because the next thing I remember is waking up in the courtyard with a nasty bump on my head and the telescope and money gone. The horse too.”

“So I walked home. Well, halfway home, until I met up with Baptiste, who was out looking for me. We passed a monastery on the way and I had a fleeting fantasy of confessing my sins, pleading for asylum, and giving up women forever. But of course,” he laughed abruptly, “I didn’t say anything and we didn’t stop.

“Instead I demanded that Baptiste take me to the inn in Carency. I’d remembered comments my father had made about the girl who worked there. And he was right—with talents like hers she should have gone to Paris and made something of herself. I went there every day for the rest of my school holiday, befuddling my senses and acting as depraved as I felt the world to be.

“Which didn’t stop me from informing my father, the day I was to go back to school, that he was a tyrant, a murderer, and the scourge of everything innocent and good. And I never came home again. Until this visit.

“I didn’t tell anyone at school what had happened to Claire. In fact, I’ve never been such a consummate play actor as when I regaled my friends with salacious tales of what she’d allowed me to do during
this
vacation (drawing upon what I’d learned from the girl at the inn), until I wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t.”

He paused. “I haven’t told anyone the whole story until…until now. Baptiste knows, of course; I tend to mumble about it when I’m drunk. I think it’s always with me, though, making me guilty and angry and…confused. Terribly confused, Marie-Laure.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose you do know.”

But should she say something else? Should she comfort him, reassure him that she loved him as much as ever?

Perhaps she might tell him that he needn’t feel guilty.

“You were young,” she could say. “You were only a boy; you wanted to do the decent thing; it’s not your fault that nobody had taught you how.”

Or perhaps: “It’s in the past. You can’t spend your life blaming yourself for it.”