The General's Mistress (27 page)

“It was painful enough to begin with. But now it’s quite bearable, thank you. I can still manage quite a lot, even with a broken arm.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?” I asked, cutting my eyes at him. His uniform was indeed new, and the braid was real bullion.

“Whichever you prefer.” He signaled to the waiter. “I’ll have what the lady is having.” The waiter nodded and disappeared.

“Do make yourself at home,” I said.

“Thank you, I will.” Gantheaume set his hat on one of the empty chairs and grinned again. “I have so few days to have lunch with pretty ladies before the coils of war again ensnare me.”

“Alas,” I said, smiling. “And you cherish every opportunity to make precious memories to sustain you amid your travail?”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” he said. “Spoken like a cavalry lieutenant. They always say they’re better at gallantry than us poor navy boys.”

“You look like you’re doing well enough,” I said.

The waiter returned with his wine. “I have a rich and doting uncle and a pocket full of prize money. And just twenty-nine days to enjoy it before it’s back to Le Havre and the sea.” He raised his glass. “To liberty. And a pleasant leave.”

I touched my glass to his, smiling. “You are the most transparent rogue,” I said. “What makes you think I don’t have a protector?”

He shrugged. “If you had, you would have said so by now. Or perhaps you’d not mind a charming and transparent rogue on the side? A genuine naval hero who could go to his doom with the image of your fair countenance before his eyes?”

I burst out laughing. “Lieutenant Gantheaume—”

“René. I insist that you call me René.”

“René, then. Just what did you have in mind?”

“Dancing at the Exchange tonight? An intimate midnight supper?” His black eyes were bright.

“How intimate?”

He grinned again, showing very white teeth. He hadn’t been at sea long enough for them to be otherwise, presumably. “For only two. I don’t intend to share you with all my friends.”

“That would be extra,” I said, still smiling.

He looked at me as though he wasn’t sure whether to take me seriously or not.

I raised my glass. “The kind of memorable leave you seem to be proposing isn’t cheap. I hope you have plenty of prize money. My last protector was a cabinet minister.”

He hesitated a moment, then touched his glass to mine. “Why the hell not? I’ve got twenty-nine days, and if I go back to sea flat broke it won’t matter. Better to have a leave to remember.”

“I’ll make it unforgettable,” I promised. After all, why not? Why not someone my own age who was handsome and charming?

I
had expected that he would have a hired room, but instead that evening he took me back to an elegant old house on Île Saint-Louis. A bewigged butler opened the door. “Master René,” he said, bowing respectfully.

“Good evening, Louis,” he said, handing him his hat and my wrap. “I trust you’ve got a collation laid out.”

“Yes, sir. In the green room, sir.”

René escorted me down the hall to a lovely little Louis XIV parlor where a table was drawn up near the fire, two gilt chairs beside it, the cushions worked with golden roses on a celadon background. He held my chair for me with a flourish.

“Very nice,” I said. “Surely this isn’t yours?”

He sat down opposite me. “I told you I had a rich and doting
uncle. Admiral Gantheaume. I thought you would recognize the name. But he’s at sea right now, and fortunately told me to make free with his house while I’m in town.”

“I don’t know the naval commanders,” I said. “Mostly the army.”

“Aha!” René exclaimed. “I knew you’d gone with some army fellow or other. Probably someone who ranks a measly lieutenant.”

“I was with General Moreau for nearly two years,” I said.

He whistled. “Ranks a measly lieutenant indeed. I thought for a moment you were going to say Bonaparte.”

“Why should you think that? I’ve never met him,” I said. “I don’t really have an opinion of him.” Moreau, of course, had a great deal to say about him, but I wasn’t quoting Moreau anymore.

“He’s a genius,” Rene said. “I met him in Alexandria last year, when we were supplying the Expeditionary Force. Best general the Republic has, in the opinion of this measly lieutenant. He talks to you like you’re really there.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, helping myself to the smoked trout.

René took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Most senior officers don’t notice lieutenants any more than you notice a waiter or a footman. When you’re a lieutenant, you’re part of the furnishings. Part of the military trappings. Bonaparte sees you. He actually talks to you. He remembers people’s names and what they do. I think half his staff is in love with him.”

I laughed. “That’s the kind of thing the army says about the navy and the navy about the army! We all know about sailors, don’t we?”

He took it in good humor. “I’ll show you all about sailors after a bit! If you’ve never had one before, you should come
over to our side. You’ll never go back to great brutes smelling of horse.” He shrugged, and his face stilled. There was a good mind behind those laughing eyes, I thought, a young man with more to him than bravado and charm. “Not like that, I mean. He looks at you, and it’s like he’s not just seeing you. He’s seeing what’s inside you. Something more. You reminded me a little bit of him, just a shadow. He’s more than real, maybe. Like the realest thing in the world.”

I shivered involuntarily. “A general who reminds you of a woman who does séances? I’m not sure that’s a recommendation.”

“A general who reminds me of a companion? I’m not sure that is either.” René grinned. “Not really. Not what I meant by love. I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.”

“Why should I? You know what I am,” I said, shrugging prettily. “I’d much rather you showed me the truth about sailors.”

But I knew what he meant. I knew far too well, and a sorrow I could not place pierced me to the heart. I kissed him so that I could forget it.

P
erhaps that conversation was what spoiled my mood. I went through the evening feeling slightly off-kilter the entire time. It was nothing René did. He was handsome and considerate, and after Chaptal’s heavy-handed intercourse he should have been a fresh wind. He was certainly skilled enough. If his tastes were less extreme than Moreau’s, at least he could think of something to do besides the obvious.

And yet I was oddly detached. My mind kept wandering. I was thinking about the rent and the book that I would now be able to afford since I hadn’t counted on a month of companionship. I kept falling out of that place where one should be making love, losing the rhythm and pushing myself back into it. And a
few minutes later I would drift off again. I pushed myself hard to come, and finally did with his hand on my pearl and his lips against my throat. But it didn’t feel quite right, and when I lay beside him afterward I could not sleep.

I rolled over to the edge of the bed, beyond his outflung hand. Would it be different if it were someone else? Or was it that I missed Moreau’s games of passion, and now answered only to dominance and humiliation?

Get a grip on yourself,
I told myself sternly.
René is a kind young man, a charming lover, as pleasant and accommodating as any woman could want. If it’s Moreau you’re missing, you’ll have to get used to it. And if it’s Ney or some other dream lover you’re wanting, then you need to grow up. Don’t throw away a piece of luck because it’s not your beautiful ideal. What’s a month with a handsome, generous man? Enjoy it while it lasts and make the most of it, as he will.

R
ené Gantheaume left for Le Havre and the frigate
Minerve
a week before Walpurgis Night. It had been a perfectly spectacular leave. We had dined out somewhere nice and expensive every night; there had been fireworks displays over the Seine, picnics in the Bois de Boulogne, theater and dance halls. And night after night at the Admiral’s house on Île Saint-Louis.

I saw him onto the coach for Le Havre, kissed him goodbye to the cheers of two of his friends. And of course the coach didn’t start right away. He got back out and came and stood with me while the coachman and the stable master discussed the foot of the left rear horse. René loosened his stock. It was going to be a warm day. “Will you be all right?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

He nodded, and there was something wistful in his face. “Another month and I might have won you.”

“I think you’ve already had me quite thoroughly.”

“Not really.” René looked over at the equine mysteries transpiring. Now there was a farrier in it, pointing and gesturing. “Your heart . . .”

“My heart is not for sale,” I said gently. “Or even for rent.”

“Who does it belong to? Moreau?”

I shrugged. “René, would you believe me if I told you that it was a man I’ve met one time, who probably doesn’t even remember my name? And I have no idea why.”

“I would believe you,” he said. “There are some strange things in this world, like currents that cross beneath the sea. Who is he?”

“A soldier,” I said. “I dream about him. I dream that I know him, that we are meeting in some distant place and we are old friends, that he’s my lover, my husband, my son, my master, even my prince. Sometimes I hear something and it brings it back to me like a punch in the stomach, like seeing an old lover across a crowded street.” I didn’t know why I was confiding in René, but how could it hurt? He was off for Le Havre and the sea, and he had been kind.

“Perhaps you’ve known him before,” René said. “In some other life.”

I looked around at him sharply. “You believe in that kind of thing?”

René shrugged. “I don’t know why not. I’d rather believe in Virgil’s underworld than Dante’s.”

“As simple as that? You can dismiss eighteen centuries of Christianity like that?”

“Why not? If men can worship Reason or the gods of India, pray to Buddha or a Deist clockmaker, why not Mars or Aphrodite? Doesn’t it all come down to the same thing in the end?”

“Does it?” I asked. “To dismiss Church and Reason both?”

He put his hands gently on my shoulders. “I’m a sailor, Ida. I don’t claim to understand the workings of eternity. But a simple builder who hauls stone to the work site doesn’t understand the plan of the great cathedral he builds, how the mathematics of the buttresses work, how the windows should be made, and yet he contributes to the work. I’m a sailor, and you’re a courtesan. Neither of us can see the pattern. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

I looked at him, and it was as though I were really seeing him for the first time. There was a tiny squint line beginning between his brows, the shadow of a beard on his face though he had shaved only a few hours before.

“Make up a story for me,” he said. “Don’t worry about whether it’s real. Just tell me a story.”

I dropped my eyes to the glitter of braid on his arms, tried to catch a reflection of the sun. “A rower,” I said. “A rower with a wounded shoulder. On a galley under sail in a heaving storm.” I could imagine the green sea washing up her sides, the movement of the deck beneath me, the cold seawater around my ankles as I struggled to move an unmanned oar, to get it inside so it didn’t foul the stroke. The wind tore at me and the rain lashed down. “A wounded rower,” I said, “with an arrow in his shoulder—”