Hearts Beguiled (18 page)

Take me, hers answered.

He kept his eyes locked with hers as he dipped two fingers in the wine. He brought them, dripping with the sticky red juice, between her legs and pushed them deep inside her. She shuddered, her muscles jerking reflexively in surprise and pleasure. Then his head followed his fingers, licking up stray drops that had fallen on her stomach, moving lower and lower until she felt the exquisite shock of his tongue thrusting into her.

"Max!" She gasped as a jolt of white-hot sensation ripped through her like a flash of lightning.

She had seen pictures—the Palais Royal had several pornography shops that brazenly displayed their wares. Pictures of men doing this to women, and of women—

Surely she shouldn't let him . . .

But she was letting him, for he was licking and sucking her sweet, slick cleft, and the jagged lightning bolts of pleasure came faster and hotter, until she didn't think she could bear it. She grasped his hair. "Please," she moaned, not sure if she was begging him to stop or go on.

He cupped her buttocks, lifting her. "Open to me, Gabri-elle," he murmured, his breath hot, his lips moist against her. "Let me love you."

She surrendered then to the glorious, conquering assault of his mouth and lips and tongue. The canopy above her head began to whirl and licks of fire sizzled over her skin. He entered her at the peak of her climax so that it went on and on until her heart felt as if it were pressing against her chest, pushing against its fragile prison of bone and flesh, and she thought the inevitable explosion would surely kill her.

She opened her eyes to see his beloved face floating over her.

He cradled her head with gentle hands. "God, I do love you, wife."

Love for him filled her, so intense she felt smothered by it. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she squeezed her lids shut to hold them back.

But one escaped and he brushed it away with his thumb. "Gabrielle? Don't cry."

"Max, you shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have let you."

He misunderstood. "There's nothing wrong or sinful in what we did. How could there be?"

She shook her head wildly, and the tears flowed freely now. "You shouldn't have married me. I'll only bring you trouble."

He held her tightly. "Cherie. There won't be any trouble. I've been a disgrace to the name of Saint-Just since my birth.

Even in my father's eyes this marriage will seem the least of my crimes."

"No, no, you still don't understand."

"Then explain it to me."

She couldn't.

"Tell me, Gabrielle." He leaned over her. It was too dark now for her to see his face, but she didn't have to. She could feel her own fear emanating like sweat from the pores of her skin. "Tell me, Gabrielle. Tell me who you are." He said it softly, but he might as well have shouted, for the words were torn from his heart.

He was her husband and he was asking for her faith, her trust. And still she said nothing.

"Gabrielle ... I love you. No matter what, I will always love you." It was his final plea.

Now, she thought. Tell him now.

And Max would . . . hate her.

He would hate her for not telling him sooner. He faced imprisonment and exile because of her, and he didn't even know it. She should have told him long ago, should have warned him to stay away from her. Instead she had married him, and now it was too late.

Because if he left her . . . She loved him so much, she couldn't bear—

Tell him.

—losing him. But she would survive. She had survived before, she could survive—

Tell him.

—almost anything, but not that. She couldn't survive losing Max.

G
abrielle's grandfather had been a galerien, a galley slave.

For eight years Sebastien de Servien rowed the Mediterranean chained to an oar. Naked, his head shaven, ruled by the whip, he learned that only one thing mattered in this life—to survive.

It was a lesson he passed on to his daughter. And she in turn passed it on to Gabrielle.

Sebastien had been born a Noble of the Sword, one of his illustrious ancestors having won the title during the Crusades four centuries before. As the marquis de Servien, Sebastien could have attended the king's coucher had he so wished. But Sebastien disdained the frivolity, the licentiousness of court life. He had no desire to join the fawning multitudes at Versailles, begging for crumbs from the king's largess. Instead he stayed in his country chateau and worked his land along with his peasants and serfs. He was poor, poorer than many of his own tenants. Yet he was still their seigneur, their lord.

When he was thirty, Sebastien fell in love with a girl from a neighboring estate. The girl, Charlotte, was noble; she even had a dowry. But there was one not-so-insignificant problem—she was a Huguenot, a Protestant.

At that time the king was putting terrible pressure on the Huguenots to give up their faith and convert to Catholicism. When the Huguenots tried to escape conversion by leaving France, the king forbade them to depart the country under pain of a life sentence to the galleys. Anyone, even aristocrats, foolish enough to aid or shelter a Huguenot was to receive the same sentence.

Sebastien didn't care about Huguenots or Catholicism or the king's laws. He wanted Charlotte in his bed and he saw that one sure way of getting her there would be to put her devoutly Huguenot father safely on board a ship bound for America. But they were caught by the king's men, and it was Sebastien who found himself on a ship—chained to an oar.

For eight years Sebastien endured the hell of the galleys. Then one day a great plague broke out in the port of Marseilles. The dead stacked up in the streets like cords of wood, for no one could be found to bury them. As the death toll mounted to one thousand a day, the provincial intendant became desperate. He offered the gruesome job of clearing the city of its dead to the galley slaves, who would earn their freedom if they survived the disease.

Sebastien survived.

He returned to his estate to find his fields overgrown with weeds, his manorial walls crumbling, and Charlotte waiting for him. They married and had one child—a daughter with the red-gold hair and violet eyes of her father. They named her Marie-Rose.

Her parents died together of a fever when Marie-Rose was fifteen. Alone and penniless, with nothing but her father's striking looks and his tough determination to survive, Marie-Rose left the crumbling Chateau de Servien and went to Paris. She took to the stage, creating such a sensation that the chef of the famous cafe de Caveau named a dessert after her. Within three years she had acquired a titled husband, a daughter, and a rented hotel on the Rue de Grenelle in the fashionable part of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. She had also accumulated enough debts to paper the walls of the palace at Versailles. The husband didn't last long, but the daughter and the debts remained.

Marie-Rose opened her salon to the elite of the artistic and literary world, and before long some of the most famous names of the time passed through her doors. Some found their way into her bed as well, and the gifts they gave her— the jewels and the silks and the money—all helped her and her daughter, Gabrielle, to survive. She never went to the court at Versailles; the court came to her.

Some of Gabrielle's earliest memories were of her mother's salon. The room, decorated in blue and silver, seemed to glitter with rich clothes and bright conversations. Until the early morning hours, poets recited their verses, writers read from their manuscripts. The philosophes argued among themselves about the power of reason, the general will, and the tyranny of kings. Everyone spoke about liberty.

But Gabrielle couldn't remember a time when she felt the carefree existence of a child. She grew up learning Latin and philosophy—and how to use a smile and a promise to get credit from a tightfisted shopkeeper. She could speak fluent Italian and do complicated sums—and she knew the location of every secondhand clothing store in Paris. She wore silk gowns in the latest fashion, while underneath, her chemise would be in tatters. She learned to pretend not to be hungry when lackeys dressed in fine livery would pass half-empty platters around her mother's table.

Gabrielle learned very young how to survive.

And then one day, the only son and heir to the duc de Nevers came to the salon on the Rue de Grenelle. There he saw Gabrielle, and there he fell in love.

❧

I love you, Gabrielle.

The first time Martin de Nevers said those words was on a Sunday afternoon in January. They had been walking through the garden of the Tuileries, bundled up against the cold. The trees were bare, the dirt paths hard and frozen, and the fountains dry and clogged with dead leaves.

She didn't believe him. She was only sixteen, but already she knew love didn't really exist. It wasn't fashionable.

"La!" she exclaimed, laughing, teasing. She brushed her fur muff against his pale, thin cheek. "I know how to play this game, monsieur. You protest your love and I protest my virtue. You protest your love again and I surrender my virtue."

He didn't laugh. He stood before her, with his narrow, earnest face and his wide-spaced hazel eyes looking hurt and a little sad. And she realized then that she did believe in love. She had to believe in it, for she loved him.

"I meant it, Gabrielle," he was saying, and the words condensed into vapor around his sensual lips. "If there was another way to say it, words that hadn't been used a thousand times before . . . but there isn't. All I can say is I love you." Suddenly he shocked her by kneeling at her feet. "Gabrielle . . . would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

"Jesu, Martin! What are you— For God's sake get up. People are starting to look at us."

He seized her hands. "Let them look. I want all of Paris to know that you are going to be my wife."

She pulled away from him, angry with him because she knew the only possible end to all of this was that she would be hurt. They lived in a society where the basest of immorality was condoned, but marrying beneath one's station was not.

"Don't be a silly fool, Martin. Monseigneur le Duc your father would never allow such a misalliance."

Martin stood, brushing bits of dirt and dead leaves off the knees of his satin breeches. "Why should he object? Your father was a Vauclair, your mother is a Servien. That's as good as a Nevers any day."

"My grandfather was a galley slave and my mother was an actress."

"And my great-grandmother was a scullery wench. Although we don't speak of it within the family." He tried to laugh, to gather her into his arms. "Gabrielle—"

"My mother takes lovers and I haven't got a dowry."

"And my father has had dozens of mistresses and he's got piles of money. Enough that he doesn't need a rich daughter-in-law. Once he sees you, once he meets you, he won't object to our marriage. I want you, Gabrielle, and my father has always given me what I want. Besides, I'm his only son. He doesn't have any choice." But in that Martin de Nevers was very wrong.

❧

The duc de Nevers sent his lawyer Louvois to the house in the Rue de Grenelle. Gabrielle received him in the blue and silver salon.

She received him alone. "If you insist on marrying this boy, cheri, Marie-Rose had said to her, "then you must play the role out by yourself. If you don't mind very much, I shall only lend you my support by applauding loudly from the gallery."

Gabrielle detested Louvois on sight.

She turned to face him as he entered, and it seemed at first that he was an insignificant man. Short and small-boned, he wore a plain coat and a short waistcoat and loose breeches. His shirt was without frills, his dark hair unpowdered and worn loose about his face. But as his protruding eyes stared unblinkingly at her from behind a pair of thick spectacles, her skin began to tingle as if a thousand ants nibbled at her flesh. She knew then that he was dangerous, and that she was afraid of him.

She lifted her chin. "Before you speak, monsieur, I should tell you that Martin de Nevers has asked me.to marry him, and I have accepted."

"So Monseigneur le Duc has been informed. It is unacceptable."

"To the duc perhaps, but not to me. And not to Martin. We love each other."

Louvois inclined his head. "Monsieur Martin needs his father's permission to marry. I am here to tell you that in your case it will not be forthcoming." A thin smile crossed his face. "Go fish in other waters, Mademoiselle de Vauclair."

Gabrielle said nothing.

Louvois sighed softly, assuming the look of a father exercising great patience with a trying offspring. "You fail to understand. If Monsieur Martin elopes with you, he will be disinherited. His support will be cut off. The duc has promised this. It is no idle threat."

"Then make it to Martin, not to me. I've managed to survive thus far without the goodwill of the duc de Nevers."

"Ah . . ." Again Louvois sighed. "But you have yet to try surviving with his enmity."

Gabrielle felt cold then, chilled with the premonition of the fear that was to come. She trembled slightly, and Louvois's watching eyes saw it.

"What will it take to convince you to look elsewhere for a husband?" he asked softly.

Gabrielle smiled. "Just what sort of incentives are you offering me?"

An expression of disappointment might have flashed across the lawyer's face as he stared at her. Then, looking away, he dipped two long, white fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat to withdraw a stiff, folded piece of paper. He handed it to Gabrielle.

It was a bank note.

Gabrielle had rarely seen one. They weren't used often, for the French had little faith in forms of currency whose worth couldn't be tested with the bite of a strong pair of teeth. The piece of paper Gabrielle held in her hands claimed to be worth one hundred livres.

"There are five hundred more bank notes where that came from," Louvois said. "Fifty thousand livres. Is that sufficient incentive, mademoiselle?"

"It is indeed a lot of money," Gabrielle said, and Louvois smiled.

But his smile began to fade as she ripped the paper in half, then in half again. Ripped until the pieces were the size of coins and then let them slip through her fingers onto the carpet like flakes of snow.

She looked up and met the lawyer's dark, angry eyes. "Tell your master, lackey, that I cannot be bought."

He took a step forward until he was right in front of her. Grasping her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he lifted her face, squeezing until tears started in her eyes. But she didn't pull away or make a sound.

"You're a haughty little aristocratic bitch, aren't you?" he said with a sneer. "But everyone has a price, Gabrielle de Vauclair. Someday I will discover yours. And when I do, I will use it to destroy you."