The Courtesan (36 page)

Ariane, all to pieces? Gabrielle could not even begin to imagine it. Her older sister had been a pillar of strength for as long as she could remember. The Lady of Faire Isle, the wise one, the great healer. It was frightening somehow to think of her being beset by the sort of woes that afflicted other, lesser mortals. All this while Gabrielle had been fancying Ariane’s life so perfect, Ariane had been suffering from some of the worst kind of pain any woman could know.

“I should have been there with her,” Gabrielle berated herself. “Why didn’t she send word to me, let me know? She should have realized nothing would have kept me away if I thought she was in trouble. I don’t know what I could have done, but at least I might have offered her some comfort.”

“You know what Ariane is like, Gabby. She always felt she had to be strong, never burdening anyone else with her sorrows. Infernally independent, not unlike someone else I know.”

Miri dropped a kiss on Gabrielle’s brow. Gabrielle wrapped her arms about her little sister and they hugged each other close. The sunshiny scent of Miri’s hair reminded Gabrielle poignantly of the sweet scents of Ariane’s herb garden, carrying her back to those days on Faire Isle when it had been just the three of them, she, Ariane, and Miri. The Cheney sisters. Despite their differences and disagreements, there had been a unity among them, sisterly bonds that Gabrielle had brutally snapped when she’d fled to Paris.

She feared she had cost Ariane enough grief. She could not let Miri do so as well. Much as she might wish to, there was no way Gabrielle could permit her younger sister to remain in Paris. Not with all the dangerous currents and intrigues swirling about Gabrielle, threatening to engulf her at any time. Not when there was so much about her that her innocent sister didn’t know and Gabrielle would just as soon Miri never did.

But for the moment she held her sister close, stealing precious moments of warmth from her presence. Miri leaned her head against Gabrielle’s shoulder with a deep sigh. “I have missed you, Gabby. When you went away, you never even said good-bye to me.” Miri’s voice was not so much accusing as hurt.

Gabrielle knew full well why she had played the coward’s part and avoided bidding farewell to her sister. Miri would have cried and clung to her, asking too many awkward questions. How could Gabrielle have possibly told Miri she was running off to Paris to make her fortune by seducing powerful men, that she was going to be living in the house purchased for their father’s lover? Miri had been closer to her father than either of the other Cheney girls. If Miri were to ever find out the full extent of his betrayal . . .

Gabrielle’s gaze skated uneasily over the lush trappings of the bedchamber once owned by Louis Cheney’s mistress. “I am sorry, Miri. I never meant to hurt you, but when I left there was so much you were too young to understand.”

Miri raised her head from Gabrielle’s shoulder. “Such as your determination to become a courtesan, the same as the woman who used to own this house. The woman who seduced our father.”

Gabrielle stared at her in shock. “Then you—you know about Papa—”

“I have known for a long time. I overheard you and Ariane the night you quarreled, about you coming here to Paris and accepting this house.”

“Oh, Miri.” Gabrielle groaned. She tried to hug her again, but Miri slipped out of her reach, standing beside the bed. She managed to smile but the expression in her eyes appeared far too sad and wearied for her years. “I truly am not a child anymore. I know that there aren’t unicorns and elves hiding in the woods. That my Papa was not perfect and my sister isn’t either.”

Gabrielle recalled how often she had been vexed with Miri for her whimsical imagination and longed to shake some sense into her. But hearing her renounce those childhood beliefs was almost enough to break Gabrielle’s heart. She had never allowed herself to be ashamed of the path she had chosen, but Gabrielle felt her cheeks burn. She lowered her head, unable to meet Miri’s eyes.

“Oh, Miri. How you must despise me.”

“Don’t be foolish, Gabby.” Her sister cupped her chin, forcing Gabrielle to look up at her. “I am often disappointed and made unhappy by the choices that the people I care about make, but that has no effect on the way I love them.”

Gabrielle felt a lump rise in her throat. Unable to speak, all she could do was press Miri’s hand.

“I have even managed to forgive Simon,” Miri added.

Simon Aristide, the young witch-hunter who had once taken part in the raid against Belle Haven? Miri had persisted in believing that Simon was her friend until he had betrayed her trust most cruelly.

Gabrielle regarded her sister with a troubled frown. “You still think about that boy? I hoped you would have forgotten about him by now.”

Miri drifted away from her to stare out the bedchamber window where twilight had deepened into night like a heavy warm mantle being drawn over the city of Paris.

“I don’t grieve for Simon as I once did. But I do think about him from time to time,” Miri admitted. “I hope that wherever he is that he overcame his pain and bitterness, that somehow his spirit managed to heal.”

Necromancer padded over to the window, pawing at Miri’s skirt as though sensing his mistress’s sorrow. She scooped the cat into her arms and buried her face in his fur. “No matter what Simon did, I loved him, Gabby.”

“Miri, that was three years ago. You were little more than a child,” Gabrielle protested faintly. “It was but your first infatuation.”

“No, I loved him. And when I love someone, it is forever.”

Gabrielle was both awed and disconcerted by how sure Miri sounded. She couldn’t help envying her sister this ability to love so simply and with such conviction. Especially when Gabrielle’s feelings toward Remy were so complicated. She had told Miri nothing about Remy as yet, his miraculous return or the peculiar nature of their betrothal. She winced, wondering if Miri would be able to be quite so accepting of that. But there was time enough to broach that subject tomorrow.

Miri’s head drooped and she started to look fatigued. Gabrielle bustled over to her and gave the girl’s shoulders a light squeeze. “We have much more to talk about and catch up on. But you have to be exhausted. I will summon Bette to draw you a bath and fetch you a light supper. Then straight to bed, young woman. As delighted as I am to see you, you do realize that I am going to have to find a way to send you home.”

Miri snuggled her cheek against her cat, but her lips thinned into that stubborn line Gabrielle knew all too well. “I have no intention of going anywhere until I am sure you are safe and happy.”

“You mean to stay in Paris the rest of your life?” Gabrielle asked wryly.

“It is nothing to jest about, Gabby. It is not a whim that brought me all this way to find you. I have been having my bad dreams again. This time about you.”

Gabrielle’s smile faded. Her sister’s dreams certainly were nothing to laugh at. From the time she had been very young, Miri had been afflicted with recurring nightmares of a prophetic nature. She had dreamed about both their mother’s death and the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre long before either event had occurred.

“What sort of dreams have you been having?” Gabrielle asked.

“You know what my nightmares are like, never clear until it is too late for me to do anything about them.” Miri shuddered and cuddled her cat closer. “I keep seeing this grand palace with endless halls and galleries. The air is full of voices whispering about you. I hear your name over and over again. Gabrielle, Gabrielle.

“And then I see a blond-haired woman in a lovely gown, drifting through the halls. I can never see her face, but I am certain it is you and you keep moving closer to these doors. Somehow I know where they lead. To the bedchamber of the king. I keep calling out to you, trying to stop you, get you to come back. But you never hear me. Each time I have the dream, you get closer to those doors.”

Gabrielle felt a hot flush creep into her cheeks. How was she to explain to Miri that what her sister regarded as a nightmare was the very goal Gabrielle had been pursuing these past months? Miri’s dreams only confirmed what Nostradamus had predicted. Gabrielle would become the king’s mistress. This was her fate, her dazzling future . . . and she felt as though someone had just hammered the final nail into her coffin.

But she forced herself to rally with a brittle smile. “Your dream doesn’t sound so alarming. Some regard sharing a king’s bed as an honor, a great opportunity.”

“I know that. But I still have this suffocating feeling of danger. The same feeling I had when I tracked you to that house today where that strange woman hides.”

Miri cast Gabrielle a worried look. “There is something very troubling about your new friend, Gabby. Something dark and disturbing.”

“Cass? I’ll admit she can seem a little . . . disconcerting sometimes. But she has had a very hard and tragic life. You only exchanged a few words with her. Aren’t you being rather quick to judge?”

“It is not my judgment. It is Necromancer’s.” Gabrielle solemnly hefted the cat a little higher in her arms as though fully expecting the feline to confirm her words. “He thinks Cassandra is very dangerous.”

Gabrielle did her best not to roll her eyes. She had never shared Miri’s fixed belief in the wisdom of animals. “Er—don’t you think Necromancer is being too harsh? Cassandra’s dog obviously adores her. That ought to count for something.”

“Necromancer doesn’t have a great opinion of dogs either. He thinks they are notoriously undiscriminating.”

“Perhaps being a cat, he is a trifle prejudiced on that score.”

“Perhaps,” Miri said with a rueful laugh. “Just be a little careful around Mademoiselle Lascelles, all right?”

“I am always careful, little sister.” Gabrielle gave Miri another hug, then went to summon Bette.

Amid the flurry of joyous greetings between Miri and the former housemaid from Belle Haven, Gabrielle quietly gave instructions to another of the servants regarding which bedchamber should be prepared for her sister. Then, before Bette bore Miri away to tend to her, Gabrielle thought she had better mention Remy’s return from the dead. She didn’t want her sister fainting from shock the way she had done.

But when she informed Miri as gently as she could, her sister’s lips merely curved into one of those odd little fey smiles of hers.

“That is excellent news, Gabby, although . . . even when I grieved for Remy, it was more because I missed him. Somehow I always knew he wasn’t dead.”

Toting her cat, Miri walked off with Bette, leaving Gabrielle gaping after her.

There were times, Gabrielle thought, when her younger sister could be a bit unnerving.

Chapter Fifteen

T
he gossip spread from the corridors of the Louvre to the lowest taverns in the city. There had not been tidings of such startling and scandalous nature since France’s beloved Princess Margot had been married off to that Protestant oaf, Navarre.

During the next few weeks nothing else was talked of but the miraculous return of Nicolas Remy. The man known as the Scourge, enemy to all loyal Frenchmen and devout Catholics everywhere, had somehow survived the St. Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre.

But as wondrous as that was, it was completely eclipsed by the more startling fact that upon his return, the Scourge had not been arrested. He was to be welcomed back at court under the blessing of no less a personage than Queen Catherine herself. The matter was much discussed in the shops, the streets, and the marketplaces. The wiser of the Parisians shook their heads over it, muttering that the ways of the Dark Queen were very devious. The general consensus was that Monsieur Le Scourge had best watch his back.

Attired in her usual somber black, Catherine lingered by the windows of the king’s antechamber. She had an excellent view of the hive of activity taking place in the courtyard below, the rasp of saws, the banging of hammers as carpenters labored nonstop to construct the lists and the stands in time for the morrow’s festivities. Pennants already fluttered in the breeze, stirring in Catherine unwelcome memories of another tourney held long ago to honor the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to Phillip of Spain. Three days of costly celebrations, culminating in that fatal joust on the last day.

Despite the fact that his hair had turned to gray, Catherine’s husband had cut a fine figure in his armor, sporting the colors of his lady. Not her colors of course, Catherine reflected grimly, but those of Henry’s beloved mistress, Diane. Powerful and strong as ever, Henry had defeated each opponent, one by one, until he faced the young Comte de Montgomery.

If Catherine closed her eyes she could still see that last terrible charge, the two horses thundering toward each other, the two armored figures coming together in a mighty clash, lances breaking against shields, the wood splintering. Henry reeled, slipping over the pommel of his saddle, and tumbled to the ground, blood spilling from his visor where the shard of lance had pierced his brain.

A freak accident, no one to blame, but the king of France was dead. Catherine remembered weeping until her eyes were red. It was the last time she ever recalled crying for anyone. Her tears had owed as much to guilt as grief. Nostradamus had warned her. The great seer had predicted Henry’s death long before the event and Catherine herself had had a dark premonition only that morning.

So why had she not tried harder to stop Henry from entering the lists? Had some dark secret part of her welcomed the death of her husband, the chance to finally seize the power so long denied her? Catherine still didn’t know, but she supposed it hardly mattered now. Henry and his mistress were both long dead.

Catherine was no longer a shadow queen. But that was the damnable thing about attaining power, she thought with a wearied sigh. One had to strive to keep it and of late, Catherine had begun to find the struggle wearisome.

Her spy still had not arrived from Faire Isle. She had no idea what was going on at those secret council meetings of Ariane Cheney’s. And as for Gabrielle, the girl had made no effort to carry out her promise to seduce Nicolas Remy. As near as Catherine could discern, Gabrielle had not even been near the man since the night of the masquerade. Not that Catherine had truly expected anything different. She would have to deal with the Scourge herself and she had already laid her plans.