The French Mistress (8 page)

Yet just as I came within reach, she stopped abruptly, pressing one hand to her side. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth open as if in pain.

“Madame, what is wrong?” I let the snow drop from my hands and swiftly went to take her by the arm and guide her to the nearest bench, sweeping the snow away now with a purpose beyond frivolous play. “Are you unwell? Sit, if you please, and I’ll go fetch—”

“No, Louise, stay with me.” Her voice wavered unsteadily, and she sucked in a deep breath, then another, before she finally opened her eyes again. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I—I was laced too tightly, that was all, and my busk felt as if it were pressing the very air from me.”

“Then let me go—”

“Stay,” she said, taking my hand and linking her fingers into mine to make sure I didn’t leave. “That is, please stay with me. Please. I’ll be better in a moment.”

We sat together, and I watched her anxiously, wishing the color would return to her cheeks. I’d seen for myself that Madame’s health was fragile at best. Because she was as delicate as a songbird, her bones were apparent through her flesh, her translucent skin stretched so tautly over them that it was possible to see her lifeblood beat within her veins. I was convinced that only her determinedly bright spirit kept her from failing, as any other woman would.

To see Madame falter like this made me recall the grim whispered portents I’d heard, predicting an early death for her. Four older sisters of hers had already died young, claimed well before their time. She was the last of the Stuart princesses, and I prayed Madame would not be soon to join them.

“Are you certain you are well, Madame?” I asked again. “You are sure?”

“I am.” Her fingers tightened around mine, though from gratitude or pain, I could not say. “Besides, I can’t be ill today. I’ve finally agreed to receive that wretched Duke of Buckingham, and if I don’t, he’ll go back to Charles with all manner of tales about how ill I am.”

She forced herself to smile, more a grimace. “And I won’t have that, Louise. Buckingham has always been a charming dissembler on his own without me supplying him with any further falsehoods.”

“He’s the ginger-haired Englishman, isn’t he?” I asked, deciding to follow her lead to other subjects, and let my concern for her health pass. I’d seen the Duke of Buckingham both at the Palais-Royal and at the Louvre, one of many highborn Englishmen who presented themselves to Louis while visiting Paris. I’d remembered him because he reminded me of a fox. It wasn’t just the color of his hair or the small pointed beard he affected. He’d a sly, glib air of superiority, as if he believed himself to be a thousand times more clever than these dullard French, and it was not pleasant. “The one who thinks so highly of himself ?”

“The same,” she said, her expression showing both her disdain and dislike. “That gentleman has plagued me all my life, Louise. Even now his sister is a lady-in-waiting to my mother, and the pair of them cannot be avoided here in Paris. Our fathers were friends, and he was as good as raised as another brother with my own. Surely Charles treats him so. But, fa, what a cuckoo he’s been in our family’s nest! Over and over again, Buckingham behaves with no regard to the laws of men or God, and again and again my brother will forgive him.”

“I do not believe the duke finds much favor at our Court,” I ventured with care. It was one thing to listen to her opinions of these royal folk, for to her, they were no more than any other vexing family members. But for me to speak with the same familiarity of these kings and dukes would be presumptuous, even treasonous. “His Majesty receives him, but not with any warmth.”

“Nor should he!” she exclaimed, her vehemence finally restoring the color to her cheeks. “Would you believe that he once professed a violent passion for me, all for the sake of furthering himself ? He was a member of the English party that accompanied me to France for my wedding to Monsieur, and he returned the honor by attempting to seduce me, and claim me as his own. His foolishness not only dishon ored me and my brother, but Monsieur, too, until Louis finally packed him back to England. You can imagine the scandal, Louise. But that is how it’s always been with Buckingham. He’s a low, conniving rascal, and he never will change.”

She clicked her tongue with disgust, and leaned back against the back of the bench. “The last time he was here in Paris, the winter before you came to Court, Louise, he’d had to flee England yet again on account of murdering another peer.”

“Murder?” I gasped, for even among jaded courtiers, murder was still regarded as a mortal sin.

“Exactly,” Madame said, her eyes widening with indignation. “He had abandoned his own wife to conduct a most despicable intrigue with the Countess of Shrewsbury, and when at last her poor husband challenged Buckingham to a duel, Buckingham murdered him.”

“But it’s not murder in a duel, is it?”

“It is when the cuckolded earl is known to be a bumbler with a sword, and when the duke is as good as a master,” she said. “A low, shameful affair all around, made worse by my brother’s pardon.”

This surprised me even more than the crime itself. Madame seldom admitted any faults in her older brother, yet this was a large one indeed. For a king to be so loyal to so undeserving a friend: that was a revelation.

“And now this—this
rogue
of a duke dares come to me pretending friendship and compliments, as if I were still a callow girl of fifteen,” continued Madame. “I am certain he wishes to usurp the confidence Louis places in me, and claim it as his own to my brother.”

“You must not let him, Madame,” I said, sharing her outrage. “You must not! You must hold firm. You’ve toiled too hard to do otherwise.”

“But how?” she asked, throwing up her gloved hands with despair. “Buckingham is a wickedly clever man, able to insinuate himself into another’s good favor at will. How can I stop such a man who always has my brother’s ear?”

“Because you have his heart, Madame, and his blood,” I said, my enthusiasm giving me the courage to speak boldly. “His Majesty may forgive this friend of his, but he trusts you as no other. Admit His Grace, receive him, and play the cordial lady that you are. Let him prattle on about himself, as gentlemen always do, and let him believe you share his own lofty opinions of his merit and designs. Let him fill the room with his puffery, but offer no words of value in return. Not a one.”

“But when he asks me of the alliance—”

“Then you say nothing, Madame,” I said firmly. “If he tries to beguile you with empty flattery, then turn his words about, and ask him his views as if they were the grandest things under heaven. If he’s as vainglorious as you say, then that should be enough to divert him.”

She did not answer at first, making me worry that I’d overspoken. She sighed, and looked down at the bench on which we sat, absently tracing circles in the dust of snow with her fingertip.

“You are right, Louise,” she said finally. “There is nothing Buckingham prefers to the sound of his own voice.”

“Then let him hear it, Madame,” I said gently. “You’ve labored far too hard to let him or anyone else take this from you.”

She smiled at me, her eyes squinting a bit against the brightness of the snowy morning. “You’ve become a wise lady, Louise. You’ve learned much since you’ve joined our household.”

“Thank you, Madame,” I said, pleased beyond measure by her praise. “But it is you who should take the credit, as my generous teacher.”

“Oh, it’s not to my credit,” she said. “It’s the Court that’s changed you, not I.”

It was true. I had changed in the six weeks since I’d come to Court, because I’d no choice left to me to do otherwise. I’d learned much since I’d traded my parents’ château for the Palais-Royal, and most of those lessons had not been easy.

I’d learned that the role of a virtuous lady is perhaps the most lonely one of all at Court. When I refused to be led by gentlemen into darkened hallways or gardens to be kissed and fondled and worse, they ceased asking me to dance as well. Without either a fat dowry or a taste for flirtation, I’d become as good as invisible among the scores of other well-bred young ladies at Court. I’d no gift for singing or playing a guitar or harp to set me apart, or wit enough to make my jests repeated, the way Madame du Montespan’s were. I was too shy for the elegant conversations of Madame de Sevigne, and too unschooled to discourse on books or plays, the way that Madame’s good friend, the Comtesse de La Fayette, did with such seeming ease. Among the galleries of the Louvre, I wasn’t even considered beautiful, not when His Majesty’s tastes for ladies with golden hair and wide blue eyes had made my own too-contrary appearance woefully out of fashion.

What talents I discovered I did possess were not as apparent, but perhaps even more valuable. Because I was so often unnoticed, I found I could watch and listen to others undisturbed. In this way, I acquired the graceful skills of a lady of the French Court, from how to eat with the daintiest of bites, employing the table forks that were newly imported from Italy, to gliding down a staircase without looking at my feet. Because my convent education had been that of most well-bred girls in the country—to say my prayers demurely, and little more—I now sought to improve myself by reading the books Madame suggested from her library. In silent awe, I listened to the gifted and educated people who gathered about her at the Palais-Royal—playwrights like Racine and Molière, the poet La Fontaine, the soldier and writer the duc de La Rochefoucauld—and came to appreciate their words and thoughts.

But far more importantly, I learned to discern which people at Court were of influence and why, and which could be ignored as powerless. I learned all I could of the politics of the day, not only to understand Madame’s conversation, but also that I might one day further my own ambitions. For that was the single greatest thing I’d learned at Court: that my success here would not depend on my securing a wealthy husband, but rather on how well I twined myself into the life of this slender English princess sitting on the bench beside me.

“I have every faith in you, Madame,” I said gently, “and so does your brother. I would not worry overmuch about the Duke of Buckingham. He may be your brother’s friend, but you are and always will be his sister.”

“That is true,” she said, but there was something wistful and sad about how she gazed not at me, but out at her dormant garden, the flower beds empty and the roses cut back and shrouded for the winter.

“Yes, Madame,” I said, striving to cheer her. “And consider how joyful a reunion you’ll have with your brother next summer, and what a glorious celebration he’ll have waiting for you in London.”

“London,” she repeated, making the word sound hollow and bleak. She drew her cloak more closely about her arms and hunched her shoulders. “I’ll tell you my small secret now, Louise, since in this place it will not be a secret much longer. There will be no visit to my brother next summer.”

“How is that, Madame?” I asked with surprise. “His Majesty himself has sworn to you that—”

“This is no affair of His Majesty’s.” Her smile held all the bleakness of a broken heart behind it. “Monsieur will have his way, exactly as he wished it. What say does a wife have in such matters?”

I shook my head. “Forgive me, Madame, but I don’t understand.”

“Oh, Louise,” she said softly. “I’m two months with Monsieur’s child, and pray to the Holy Mother that it’s a son.”

 

 

The news of Madame’s pregnancy was greeted with much interest at the Court. Despite the fact that Louis and his queen, Therese, had been wed ten years, she’d given him only a single surviving son, the dauphin. Monsieur remained second in line for his brother’s throne, and if the child that Madame now carried proved a son, then he would become third, a significant inheritance waiting for an unborn infant.

Madame’s mother, the frail Dowager Queen of England, who now devoted her fading life to holy reflection at her château at Co lombes, immediately promised to have more prayers said to vouchsafe her good health and safe delivery. Blessed with a pious mother myself, I wept with Madame when she learned of her mother’s good wishes, and together we sent up prayers for that aged lady’s swift recovery from her own ills.

Monsieur appeared more disgusted than joyful, and with his usual callousness, expressed the hope that Madame would not die in childbirth—always a risk—and cause him to lose this important link to her brother. Louis in turn understood entirely that this child had been begotten not from love, but malice, and if he’d any doubt of his brother’s intentions, Monsieur made it clear, cackling gleefully about the Court like a painted bantam rooster, and boasting of how he had stopped the intriguing of two kings and his wife, through the skill of his lovemaking alone.

In private his treatment of Madame became far worse. He gloried in her humiliation, alternating between spiteful gloating and the vilest of oaths to swear he would keep her perpetually pregnant rather than let her go to Charles. He taunted her with the Chevalier du Lorraine, kissing his favorite’s fingertips and slipping sweet-meats into the other man’s mouth while we were all together at table. He mocked Madame’s thickening body as repulsive to him, and we berated her until she wept. In his cruel arrogance, Monsieur didn’t bother to dismiss Madame’s attendants before he attacked her, and we huddled together with shared misery, forced to sit by as silent witnesses. Yet because he was Madame’s husband, he was by law free to treat her however he pleased, and no one, not even His Majesty, could come to her rescue.

The only one who showed true sympathy for Madame’s plight was, as always, her brother Charles. In an outpouring of solicitude, he sent rare delicacies to tempt her appetite and cordials to build her strength, and even a beautifully extravagant barge for the river, lined in blue velvet and embroidered with gold, to keep her from walking overmuch: so delicious a plaything that Louis’s queen begged to borrow it for her own use. Every courier from England brought another letter from him urging her to be mindful of her welfare, for the sake of herself as well as her child.