The French Mistress (5 page)

“Perhaps,” I said warily, all the commitment I’d dare make. Though I was eighteen, I’d yet to feel the sweet sting of Cupid’s dart. To be sure, I’d danced with young gentlemen from other Breton families and granted a kiss or two to be stolen in the garden, but I’d never experienced this melting glow that Gabrielle was describing, nor was I certain I wished to.

“This is no invention,” Gabrielle assured me earnestly. “It has happened twice before, and likely will happen again. Both Madame la duchesse de la Vallière and Madame du Montespan began as young ladies in Madame’s household before they became His Majesty’s mistresses. When the king drops his lace-trimmed handkerchief before a lady, then the world becomes hers.”

“His handkerchief?” I repeated, mystified.

“Oh, yes.” Gabrielle nodded vigorously. “That is how he signals his desires. Everyone recognizes it as a perfect ritual. From respect, His Majesty will raise his hat to every female he meets, even if she is only a laundress—he has the most exquisite manners imaginable!—but he only drops his handkerchief before the fortunate lady whose beauty has captured his heart.”

I listened, and silently resolved that I would never be so fortunate.

“You may believe me, or not,” Gabrielle said, and swept her hand through the air briskly, as if to dismiss my foolish objections. “But after tonight, after you have seen
him
, then you will understand. And pray recall that they say even Madame was once half in love with His Majesty.”

“Madame!” I exclaimed, for what must surely have been the hundredth time that day. “Our Madame? She loved her husband’s brother?”

“The same. Now they claim to be no more than excellent friends, for whatever value there may be in that for a lady. But then, such is the power and majesty of our monarch.” Gabrielle smiled, more to herself than to me. Most likely she was dreaming blissfully of the king, as it would seem every woman (save me) in France must do. “In time I expect you’ll be as admiring as the rest of us, Louise, and as quick to put yourself in the way of his notice.”

She glanced back at my wardrobe and wrinkled her nose with pointed disdain. “Though not, perhaps, until you’ve had some more . . . acceptable gowns sewn here in Paris.”

“Mademoiselle de la Touraine!”

In the doorway stood a lady with a face so stern and severe I would have guessed her a Mother Superior, except that she wore a rich gown of dark purple and yellow instead of a somber habit.

At once Gabrielle curtsied before this fearsome woman, and I did as well, without pausing to question.

“Is this the new maid of honor, mademoiselle?” the lady asked, looking down her hawk’s beak of a nose at me.

“Yes, madame,” Gabrielle said quickly. “May I present Mademoiselle Louise de Penancoet de Keroualle? Mademoiselle de Keroualle, Madame du Frayne, our—”

“Later, if you please.” The older lady clapped her hands together, as cracking sharp a sound as any musket’s shot. “Her Highness requests Mademoiselle de Keroualle at once in her bedchamber. Go, girl, at once, at once! Never keep Her Highness waiting!”

“Yes, madame,” I said quickly, and headed through the door that Gabrielle had pointed out to me earlier. “Should I use the direct passage?”

Madame du Frayne nodded with curt approval. “Go now, mademoiselle.”

“You’re quick to learn, Louise, aren’t you?” Gabrielle whispered grudgingly behind me.

I didn’t answer, but hurried to join my mistress. But Gabrielle was right. I
was
quick to learn, and already I’d learned the most important lesson of any court, and one I’d never forget or ignore: trust no one but yourself.

Chapter Three

PALAIS-ROYAL, PARIS
October 1668

 

 

 

T
he back passage to Madame’s bedchamber was much shorter and more direct than the hall that Gabrielle had taken me through earlier. I’d no need of a guide here: the plain plastered passage led in only one direction.

The narrow arched door at the end stood ajar for me to enter, and I paused for a moment to smooth my skirts before I presented myself to Her Highness. I could hear her voice within, likely addressing a servant. I stepped forward, my hand on the latch to open the door fully. The princess stood with her back to me, her carefully arranged curls, threaded with blue silk ribbons and falling over her shoulders, and the sapphires hanging from her ears winked in the light from the fire.

Then the gentleman with her moved into my line of sight behind the half-open door, and I stopped with uncertainty.

He was the same height as Madame, but where she was slender, he appeared inclined to a plump softness, his doublet and sleeves pulling too snugly around his body. Yet it wasn’t only his form that had a womanliness: his dress was the most extravagant I had ever seen on a man, fair erupting with hundreds of pale green and pink ribbon
galants
at the hem of his short doublet, at his elbows, and around the knees of his breeches. His stockings were embroidered with golden lilies, and topped by flopping cuffs of rose point lace. More lace formed his collar, stiffened and starched so high that his chin seemed propped up on a froth of white.

His black wig curled in ringlets to his waist, with more ribbons tied into lovelocks, and heavy rings glittered on half his fingers. But it was his face that made me gasp, an exclamation I barely smothered behind my hand. Gabrielle had not exaggerated. The gentleman was painted as garishly as an actress, his skin whitened to gleam like the shell of a goose’s egg, his cheeks and lips reddened with cerise, his eyelids languidly darkened and lined with lampblack, with more to mark his brows into ink black arches. Yet despite so much womanly artifice, his features remained those of a man’s, with a long nose and a firm, if pointed, jaw, and hard black eyes that would miss nothing.

Monsieur
. I realized his identity with a start, remembering Gabrielle’s description. The brother of the king, the husband of my lady mistress. Philippe, duc d’Orleans.

Though I knew it was wrong of me to remain and spy on them like this, however unintended it might be, I also realized that if I tried to leave I might be discovered by Monsieur and that would be infinitely worse. My only recourse would lie in remaining as still as I could until he left Madame alone and I could join her as I’d been bidden, and thus I waited.

“So it is true, Henriette?” Monsieur asked. “You have been plotting again with my brother without either my knowledge or my consent?”

Though I could not see Madame’s face from where I stood, there was no mistaking how her shoulders tightened and narrowed, or how she clasped her hands together before her, as if to gird herself for his attacks.

“There are no plots, Philippe,” she said, her words brittle, and without any of the lighthearted charm I’d heard earlier. “There never are, save the ones of your own invention.”

“I do not invent, my dear, only perceive,” he answered. “And what I perceive is a plot to undermine my authority, contrived by the two people that heaven orders I must trust the most.”

Pointedly not looking in his wife’s direction, he held his hands out before the fire. Most men would do so for the warmth of the flames, but from the way that Monsieur turned his hands, snowy-white as two doves, he seemed more intent on admiring how the flicker of the fire lit the jewels in his rings.

“How can a wish for peace between France and England serve to undermine you, Philippe?” Madame asked. “If your brother trusts me sufficiently to meet with my brother on his behalf, then why can’t you do the same?”

“Diplomacy should never be put into the hands of a woman,” he said, unaware of the irony of his words as he continued to admire his own unblemished fingers: or perhaps he understood perfectly, being Monsieur, and more a lover of men than of women. “My brother cannot possibly trust you with such a grave negotiation. He may tell you so, to flatter you and to amuse himself with your pathetic rejoicing, but he would never believe it.”

“It is you who are pathetic, Philippe,” Madame answered contemptuously. “Louis is secure in his manhood. He can trust women because he has no reason to fear them.”

“Insults will not soften me toward your request, Henriette.” His voice now carried a most masculine edge to it, and a menace that oddly seemed all the more dangerous on account of his decorative appearance. “You know I expect obedience in all things of you as my wife.”

“But this is for the good of the country, Philippe, and for the benefit of the French people,” she pleaded, her hands twisting together as her earlier defiance seemed to shrink away. “If I can but speak to Charles, in person and in confidence, then—”

“You will not go to England,” he said, his voice as chill and unrelenting as ice itself. “You will not speak to your brother without my permission. You will remain here with me in France.”

“Please, Philippe, please,” she cried plaintively. “I beg you, for the love of God and France!”

“For the incestuous love you bear your brother, you mean,” he said. “I’ll not condone such unnatural affection between you Stuarts.”

“Lies!” she gasped, and shook her head with such vehemence that her tightly arranged curls began to loosen and come unpinned. “The love I bear for Charles is pure and honorable, a just love between brother and sister. For you to speak of unnatural love, you for whom every unspeakable perversion is—”

“Silence,” Monsieur said sharply, swinging around to confront her. “God has given you to me as my wife. Not your brother, not my brother, but God Himself. If I say you are to remain at my side, then you will.”

She made a harsh gulping sob of despair and held her clasped hands out to him. “Please, Philippe. It has been nearly ten years since I’ve stood on English soil, ten years since I’ve seen my brother.”

“It will be another ten years and more if you continue to grovel like this,” he said with disgust. “You are the daughter of a king, yet you carry yourself with all the dignity of a common slattern.”

“What do you want of me, Philippe?” I still could not see her face, but I knew she was weeping. “What must I do to please you, and earn the favor of a husband for his wife?”

“How dare you ask me such a ridiculous question?” he demanded. “Are you a simpleton, a half-wit? You know full well your duty to me, just as you know how you willfully withhold from me the one thing I most desire.”

Madame’s hands dropped back to her sides, her shoulders sagging. “Oh, Philippe, not that,” she whimpered. “I beg you, not again!”

“It is your duty as my wife, Henriette.” He took a step toward her, and she shrank away. “Your mother knew her role as a devoted wife, and as a true daughter of France. She gave your father three strong sons, while you refuse to grant me the only reason I have for tolerating you.”

“Children are God’s will, His blessing on a marriage,” she said, her words tumbling over one another as she continued to inch away from him. “I cannot be faulted if He has not yet granted us the miracle of a son!”

“But God will punish a sinful wife through her husband,” Monsieur said sharply. “An unnatural wife who prefers to abandon her husband’s bed and country to dabble in men’s affairs.”

“That is not true, Philippe, none of it!” She twisted to one side, trying to slip past him.

He grabbed her arm to stop her, his grasp so tight upon her that she yelped with pain, or perhaps frustration. He pushed her backward onto the bed, and climbed atop her, pinning her flaying legs beneath his knees. She fought him still, reaching up to try to claw at his face and chest, and with a loathsome oath he struck his palm hard across her cheek. She cried out with pain and anguish and resignation, too, and covered her eyes and her tears with her hands so she could not see what he did.

In my inexperience, I remained still in the hall, unsure of what else to do, and the awful image of what came next was soon seared forever in my consciousness. With a shocking swiftness, Monsieur unfastened the front of his breeches and pulled his shirt to one side. At once his member sprang forth, already furiously engorged and as unappealing as the rest of him. Breathing hard, he tore aside Madame’s skirts, heedless of how his impetuosity ripped the fine linen and lace hemmings. He pushed apart her pale thighs and fell between them, shoving hard without any preamble or pretense of lovemaking. Sparing not a single endearment to ease his wife, he grunted and found his own rhythm. She caught her breath, but that was all, and soon the only sounds were Monsieur’s animal-like groans and the creaking of the bed’s springs as he worked her hard, and without mercy or kindness.

I had never witnessed such a sight, either for its intimacy or its cruelty, and yet I could not make myself look away, even as hot tears of horror and sympathy for Madame’s plight slipped down my cheeks.

Though it seemed to last forever, in truth Monsieur was quickly finished. His face was blotched and florid beneath its cracking white paint, the tendrils of his black wig sticking to his temples and the back of his neck. He withdrew his staff, inspected it briefly as if it were his most treasured belonging (and perhaps it was), and at last tucked it away. He slipped from the bed and the silent form of his wife. With disgust, not tenderness, he pulled her skirts back over her violated nakedness. Her eyes still covered, she moaned softly and rolled to one side, away from him, curling her knees up tightly against her chest.

And for Monsieur, there was no further reason to linger in his wife’s bedchamber.

“I’ll expect you to attend my brother with me this night, Henriette,” he said as he gathered up his hat and cloak. “Do not disappoint me.”

In my inexperience, I’d no idea what to say or do to comfort my new mistress. Perhaps this hateful treatment was common between husbands and wives of long standing. Perhaps the sweet love and poetry of courtship for which I so longed was destined to fade after marriage, and deteriorate into the wretched treatment I’d just witnessed.