The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (24 page)

So three days I had left to remain faithful to the memory of Remi. Three days to think of myself as a good woman, loyal and true. Three days of longing for Remi to rescue me from my fate.

No rescuer came. On the day of the Duc’s next visit, I woke early. Arlette and Elaine were as excited for me as two good women might be for a young girl about to take her first communion. They dressed me in a white dress patterned with tiny rose sprigs.

‘You could definitely go to church in that frock,’ said Elaine.

I would rather I had been dressed in black and heading to my own funeral.

Chapter 33

The day after Steven took me to the opera was a Sunday. There was no need to get up early. Neither of us needed to be anywhere in particular.

I rolled over and looked at Steven’s familiar shape in my Parisian bed. I reached across and took a curl of his hair between my fingers, gently stretching it flat. Then I tiptoed my fingers along his shoulder. I heard him sigh quietly, suggesting that my touch had broken through his deep sleep.

He turned to face me and opened his eyes. He kissed the tip of his finger then touched it to my nose, as though to transfer the affection. It was an unexpectedly tender gesture.

What did this mean? Were we back together? Was our unfinished business ongoing?

Had I been unfaithful to Marco? There was no point thinking like that. Marco had dismissed me, making it clear that all he wanted was to be left alone. I owed him nothing, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sad. It was a peculiar feeling. It wasn’t so long ago that I was convinced of my undying love for Marco and now I was in bed with someone else. But it wasn’t just any old someone. I had spent the night with the man for whom I would once have done anything.

‘You look so beautiful in the mornings,’ Steven told me. ‘Even with your eyes all screwed up like a baby mole’s.’

‘What?’ I swatted him lightly. Then I wriggled across the bed to be closer to him. Burying my face in his shoulder made it easy to hide the confusion and slight anxiety I actually felt.

Steven made breakfast. He was not exactly a keen cook, but when it came to Sunday mornings he was King of the Kitchen. He produced a sumptuous feast from the meagre offerings in my fridge. We ate our breakfast in bed. He fed me fingers of toast dipped in egg.

Afterwards, we made love again. This time it was less urgent, a little lazier. It was several kinds of wonderful. He made sure that I came first. He licked me and caressed me until I thought I would die from the pleasure. Then he fucked me slowly and deliberately, accompanying each stroke with murmured words of adoration and desire. When he came, I started to come again, responding to his ecstasy like an echo.

As we lay entangled in each other’s arms, the sun bathed us in its summer warmth through the open window. It felt like a sort of blessing.

Later, in the shower, I felt remarkably relaxed. It was as though I had slipped back into being an earlier version of me: the one who was happy with Steven in London and who would have laughed to think I could get involved in such a tortuous situation as had sprung up in Venice when this was what it could be like. Was I being offered the chance to have such simple happiness again?

Steven and I spent the whole of that day together. As promised, he gave me a tour of his favourite parts of the city. We walked all the way to the Jardins de Luxembourg and beyond there to La Coupole, where we had lunch surrounded by the best of old Paris, who fed tidbits to the
sac-a-main chiens
they carried everywhere.

Steven walked me back home again. We held hands all the way.

‘I won’t stay,’ he said when we got to my apartment block.

I nodded.

‘Got to teach a class of American exchange students first thing.’

I understood.

‘But it’s my birthday this week,’ he continued.

‘I haven’t forgotten.’

‘Want to take me out?’

‘I suppose I could. What would you like to do?’

‘There’s this club I’ve always wanted to go to.’

Steven must have noticed my expression change.

‘It isn’t that kind of club,’ he said quickly. ‘No one takes their clothes off. At least, no one in the audience. You must have heard of the Crazy Horse?’

I nodded. The burlesque club was one of Paris’s most famous attractions.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go there.’

Alone in the apartment again, I lay down on the bed where Steven and I had made love four times in twenty-four hours. The sheets wrapped me in his aftershave. I closed my eyes and began to drift into sleep. I felt myself rocking, rocking, rocking, as though on a boat on a calm sea. In my dream, I opened my eyes. I was lying on cushions in the
felce
of a gondola. But I was alone.

Had Steven’s returned banished my masked lover for good?

Chapter 34

Paris, 1840

On the appointed day, the Duc arrived exactly on time, as was his habit. When Elaine let him in, he bounded into the hallway as though he were the family dog, eager to greet his mistress. As Arlette had instructed me, I made sure I was coming down the stairs as the Duc walked in. In the white dress, with my hair braided with matching grosgrain ribbons, I was as ladylike as any girl the Duc might have met in his official social life. I might have been his daughter, even his
petite fille
. I was certainly young enough.

‘How ravishing you look, my dear! You are as perfect as a freshly opened peony.’

He thrust a bouquet of white roses into my trembling hands.

I thanked him and showed him through to the salon.

Elaine offered the Duc some tea. He said he had no need of it, but I was desperate to forestall my fate for just a little longer. I said that Elaine should bring me a large pot.

‘Very good,’ said the Duc. ‘A girl should not be thirsty.’

But after just ten minutes, I could tell the Duc was getting impatient. He kept asking whether the tea shouldn’t be cool enough to drink by now? Perhaps I should add some milk to speed the process? Wasn’t it terribly fashionable to take tea with milk in the English way?

I spun it out for as long as I could, as though five minutes more might make the difference. What was I expecting to happen? A volcano to wash the house away in a river of red-hot lava? After twenty minutes, the Duc took the choice out of my hands.

‘I do not have time for conversation this afternoon,’ he said, suddenly regaining his composure and speaking to me like the servant I was. ‘Mademoiselle, you have had enough tea. We have some business that I should very much like to conclude.’

I blushed hard.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Please follow me.’

I took him upstairs. Of course, I could not entertain the Duc in the
chambre de bonne
where I spent my lonely nights. Arlette had had Elaine change the sheets on her bed so that I could take the Duc there instead.

The Duc knew where to go. He pushed open the door and ushered me in. The curtains were already drawn, though it was still early afternoon. Elaine had filled the vases in the room with white camellias. She had heard about Marie Duplessis and thought I could benefit from the motif. I grew to hate camellias after that day.

The Duc took off his coat without asking me whether I minded. I sat down on one of the chairs by the fireplace and folded my hands in my lap. It being summer, the fire was not lit. I felt cold and I was shaking. Though the Duc was there by invitation, as far as I was concerned, I was a young woman about to lose her virginity by rape.

‘Not there,’ he said. ‘Come and sit next to me.’

He had loosened his cravat and sat down upon the bed.

‘Actually,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could take off my boots first.’

Once in that bedroom, he was a beast. I got down on my knees and started to unlace his boots. Pulling them off, I got an unpleasant whiff of hot feet. I tried not to look disgusted. Unable to resist my maid’s instincts and perhaps hoping to buy just a few more seconds, I took the boots and the Duc’s jacket and arranged them on the valet stand next to the cheval mirror, where many a man of note had checked his reflection after visiting Arlette.

‘Hurry up,’ the Duc said harshly. ‘We don’t have much time. I have a dinner to attend.’

I scurried back to the bed. He patted the mattress and I sat down beside him.

The first touch of his hand upon my cheek made my entire body shudder. Goosebumps appeared all over my flesh.

‘You’re such a pretty thing,’ he said.

‘I’m very glad you think so, sir.’

Though my words told the Duc that I was flattered by his attentions, my body would not countenance a lie. My stomach churned and gurgled loudly.

‘Sounds like you need something inside you,’ said the Duc. ‘Perhaps I might have something for you here.’

He patted the front of his trousers, where an erection was already tenting the fabric. It looked big. Arlette had told me that the Duc was as well-blessed physically as he was in land and riches. I saw now that she was not exaggerating.

‘Sometimes he left me so sore, I couldn’t sit down for days,’ she had warned me.

I sat rigid and petrified. The Duc took my hand and placed it on his crotch.

‘Bet you’ve never felt one of these before.’

Idiot man.

I simpered, as Arlette had instructed. I wanted to tell him that he was disgusting and he should go home to his wife. But even had I dared to say something so bold, I would not get the chance. He covered my mouth with his. I half-gagged as he stuck his tongue down my throat and waggled it as though he was trying to count my teeth.

At the same time, he squeezed my right breast like a housewife squeezing an orange. He was not gentle with me in the least. He undid the front of my bodice so that he could put his hand on my bare flesh. He found my nipple and pinched it hard. When I cried out, he gave a little snigger.

‘What lovely little titties you have,’ he said. ‘Even better than the girl in the painting.’

He was too lazy to undo all the laces in my bodice and he ripped the white dress in his eagerness to get my other breast out. He slobbered over them, sucking them like some obscene overgrown baby. I felt my stomach contract in horror as he pulled on my teats.

‘Lovely, lovely,’ he murmured. ‘And never been touched.’

Oh, had he known! I tried to block out the horror of the moment by thinking about the way Remi kissed me so differently. When Remi put his mouth to my breasts, I was transformed with delight. With the Duc sucking at me like a monstrous incubus, I felt sick to the very depths of my soul.

Worse was to come. Still sucking on my breasts, the Duc began to search for a way beneath my skirts. I was wearing a particularly complicated petticoat and I could tell that it frustrated him. He cursed under his breath as he failed to find a way in. Growing impatient, he pushed me back onto the bed as though I were a jointed dummy and devoted himself to getting passage to my knickers. He threw my skirt over my face and put his hand over my Venus mound. He rubbed at me through the fabric of my undergarments.

‘I can tell you like that,’ he said, as I tried to escape his horrible attentions. His touch was as arousing as the thought of stroking a rat.

But at least it meant that, despite Arlette’s instructions, I did not have to pretend to struggle. I wanted to get away from that man more than anything in the world. If I could, I would have run from the room screaming and not stopped until I threw myself into the Seine. But he was so much bigger than me and so much stronger. And he was not afraid to use his strength against me. The harder I struggled, the more excited he seemed to become. I could tell he was enjoying it. He did not want me to be entirely meek. He wanted me to resist his advances. He liked to use force to part my thighs. He did not want me to give myself to him. He wanted to take my virginity by force.

His cock was – as I had ascertained when he showed me the bulge in his trousers – far bigger than Remi’s. It was angry-looking, too. All red around the tip and already seeping with arousal. When it was free from his trousers, he instructed me to take it in my hand. I would rather have grasped an iron rod straight from the fire, but I did as he told me.

‘See what you have aroused in me,’ he said. ‘You are a bad girl and you will be punished for what you have done.’

‘No,’ I begged him. ‘No. Please don’t!’

In the end, growing tired of my struggling, he flipped me over onto my belly so that my face was pressed into a pillow. Then he pulled my legs apart again and pushed into me without mercy. At first he stabbed blindly but then he found my sweet spot and, stretching me wide with his fingers first, entered me triumphantly. He fell upon me heavily and began to heave and thrust.

‘See?’ he hissed in my ear. ‘See what happens when you make me so excited? You’re excited too, eh? I can tell.’

I was not aroused in the least and it felt as though his monstrous member was tearing me apart. When I cried out in pain, he took that as encouragement and continued to thrust and thrust harder. The more I protested, the harder he pushed. My face was in the pillows. I thought I might start to suffocate.