The General's Mistress (39 page)

I looked down at the chicken on my plate, half touched, then looked up. “How can you do it? Wide-awake, knowing what you do?”

“It’s what I was born to do,” he said, almost gently. “We are both who we were born to be.”

“You can’t know who I am,” I said. I stood up a little unsteadily, knocking against the edge of the table. The plate and china rang. “And you wouldn’t like it if you did.”

“Ida—”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.

“Why not? You can call me Michel.”

“Because it’s not my name,” I said, turning away. The cheese. The Madeira. The plums. That would be a distraction.

“Not your name?” He tried to make a joke of it. “Then who are you? I thought that I was having dinner with the famous Madame St. Elme.”

“It is a stage name,” I said with some annoyance. “Do you think I would use my own name as I have used this one?”

“What is your name, then?” he asked gently. I heard the chair move as he stood up.

I took a deep breath. “Elzelina van Aylde Versfelt Ringeling.” I didn’t look at him.

“Elzelina,” he said quietly. He stood behind me. “Elza.”

“Yes.”

Reaching around me, he took my hand in his and pressed it slowly to his lips, leaving a trail of fire that made me shiver, his eyes warming me to the bone. “Hello, Elza,” he said.

I gathered my wits about me, looking anywhere but at his face. “Do not tell me that you will not hurt me,” I said harshly. “That is a promise you can’t keep, and I would as soon that you never made it. And do not ask if I will be faithful. I am not the kind of woman who can be faithful, even to someone she feels sincere friendship for.”

“That is as well,” he said evenly. “I am not the kind of man who can be faithful either. Certainly not when I am away in the field.”

“That would be unreasonable to expect,” I agreed. “I could not be faithful if I were left behind.”

“No fidelity, then.” He shook his head. “And the money? I am not a rich man, and I live on my pay.”

“No fidelity. But I must live.”

Michel sighed. “So must I. And I actually live on half my pay. My father’s arthritis is so bad that he can’t work anymore, so I send half my pay to him and Margarethe, who takes care of him. I’m still paying off the farm I bought them. It has a little orchard that I thought could be Margarethe’s dowry if something happened to me.”

I blinked at him. “You do know that you’re too good to be true,” I said flatly.

He shrugged, looking for a moment like an embarrassed schoolboy. “Anyone would do as much.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” I said.

“I’m not in a position to make any offer you could accept. I can’t afford two establishments. I have rooms like this.” He looked around. “I’m renting from an old woman on Île Saint-Louis.”

“We’ll manage,” I said. “You should try selling some favors in the corps.”

“I would never—” he began hotly. Then he saw my face. “Elza.”

I looked at him then, and he was smiling, his face half-turned from me. “Michel,” I whispered, “it is better if we never begin this.”

“You were not frightened two years ago,” he said, reaching for my hands and drawing me toward him.

“I was a different person two years ago.”

“Two years ago, you were my commanding officer’s mistress,” he said. My eyes came just to the level of his shoulders. Moreau had called him an Alsatian bull. He might have been right. I wanted to press against those tight pants, see if all that bulge was real.

“It would be better if we were only friends,” I said. “I do have a sincere regard for you.”

“And I have a sincere regard for you,” he said. My face must have been disbelieving, for he smiled at me and said, “Elza, surely you don’t want me to say that I love you.” His long fingers brushed at my cheekbone, at the curve of my face. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did. You are so young and so much a woman of the world.”

“I am twenty-four,” I said, trying not to sound breathless. I wanted him as I had never wanted anyone in my life.

“And I’m thirty-one,” he replied.

“I know.” He was an innocent anyway, much more than I had ever been. I had never been wholesome.

His mouth was drawn, fine and strained, his eyes searching my face. “Is it ordinary, do you think, to remember a woman you met once, two years ago, who sent you an inexplicable letter, so vividly that you must go and find her two years later?”

“Of course it’s not ordinary,” I said, trying to ignore the touch of his hand on my face. “You aren’t an ordinary man.”

“Elza, why are you fighting me?” he asked, one thumb tracing my jaw lightly. “What do you have to lose?”

I shook my head, smiling at him. He was so beautiful, this stranger, but familiar all the same, as though I had known him in distant infancy and only forgotten. “You are arrogant, and you are shamelessly manipulating me.”

He cupped my face, brushed back a stray tendril of hair. “I thought I was being pretty transparent.” I could feel the sword calluses on his palm, the rough places where reins would lie.

“Let me think,” I said, and he released me. I sat down in my chair and leaned back, telling myself that my head was only spinning from the wine. I closed my eyes.

How could he be different from any of the others who lay with me for a night or a week or a month, and whom I was forgetting?
If I have him, he will be no different,
I thought,
one more lonely soldier, one more Gantheaume, whose face I barely recall. If I do not, I can continue to love the idea of him, my modern cavalier, flawed and dangerous, the imperfect ideal of everything a man should be. If I do not have him, do not know him, he cannot disappoint me, or tear away the last thing I have to believe in.

I heard him get up and cross behind me, his booted footsteps hesitant. “Elza?” He was behind my chair, but he didn’t touch me. “Would you like to go to a concert tomorrow night? It’s a drinking kind of party, and I don’t know if you . . .” Oh yes, I knew what he was really asking. Will you or not? he wanted to know.

“I don’t know either,” I said. “Shall I let you know in the morning?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “It’s after midnight now.”

“Goodness, is it that late?” I said, getting up and trying to look businesslike. “I didn’t realize.” I tried not to look at his face.

His voice was not cool and sophisticated, even though he said the right things. I could hear the hurt. “Perhaps I should be going,” he said, looking behind the table for his gloves. “Thank you for an excellent dinner.”

“I enjoyed it very much, too,” I said, going to get his hat and handing it to him. “Let me show you down. I’ll have to lock the street door behind you this late.”

I unlocked the door to the hall, still not meeting his eyes. My body was aching for him, yearning toward him, aroused by the mildest of touches, by one almost-kiss.

The stairs were narrow, and there were four flights and four turnings to the bottom. I held one of the candles high so that we could see our way, lifting my skirts and holding the banister with the other hand. He was behind me on the stairs, his boot heels heavy on the polished wood, walking with the heavy scuff that always means cavalry, a man used to walking in spurs.

When we reached the bottom, I already felt the draft of cold air under the door. I put the candle on the stand while I unbolted the heavy door, my back to him. “Good night, Michel,” I said.

“Good night,” he said, sliding his arms around me. I turned, and somehow we were locked together, all the warmth of him flooding into me like a tide submerging all the rocks. My arms went around him, pressing him to me, feeling the scratchy wool of his coat on my bare arms. He pushed me back against the door, its solidity holding me up. My mouth opened under his, and I felt the warmth and hardness of his body against me, slipping my tongue into his mouth, pulling at him.

I came up gasping, but there was no respite. His lips were on my neck, the smoothness of his shaven cheek against my throat, one of my hands tangling in his hair. I moaned and pressed against him, his knee in the cleft between my legs, his hardness against my thigh.

He bent his head, his mouth opening and closing on my nipple through the thin muslin. With a ragged breath, I started tearing at the cravat at his throat, dropping it and ripping the buttons open so I could get at his flesh. Our mouths met with some sort of primal sound. His hands were on my breast, and I could taste the wine on his breath. Upstairs, I heard a door open and close.

“Michel.” I tried to surface, pushing against his shoulder. I didn’t dream of this, to be taken like an army whore drunken in a stairwell and forgotten tomorrow. Better the ten-course banquet we had both imagined.

He raised his face to mine, flushed and intent. “Elza?”

“Let’s go back upstairs,” I said. “It’s more comfortable there.”

He put his arm around me, his hat suddenly in the way. “Elza, I promise you—”

I put my hand to his lips. “Don’t promise me anything, Michel. Then it will be easier when you don’t do it.”

I couldn’t see his face in the shadows. “If you trust me so little, why do you want to make love with me?”

“Do you think I have to trust you for that?” I asked with a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.

Two of Chalices

W
e went upstairs together. I locked the door, then took one of the candles from the table and carried it into the bedroom. He followed me.

Light made everything spring into place at once, the crimson curtains at the window and door, the bed with its gold covers and curtains, the gilt mirror over the dresser reflecting and refracting bottles of oil and perfume, the curved handle of a hairbrush, the china box that held my tarot cards. The light left shadows in the corners. One candle does not show too much.

Michel stood just inside the door, something oddly uncertain in the way he stood, like a man who has gone into a secret place and doesn’t know what to make of it. The flickering candle turned his red hair bronze again.

His shirt was open, and I could see the pulse at the hollow of his throat. Below the sunburn his skin was redhead fair and freckled. He took his coat off and looked for somewhere to put it, settling for hanging it on the end of the screen that separated the necessary pot from the rest of the room. I walked over to him and undid every button on his waistcoat.

He reached for me, but I pushed his hand back. “Wait,” I said. “Let me do this. Let me see you.”

He stood still while I hung the waistcoat. I walked behind him and undid the black ribbon that held his hair, spreading it in a copper river down his back. From behind him, I lifted his shirt over his head.

Redhead fair, indeed. Long red hair and skin as creamy as a girl’s. But no girl was ever muscled that way. I ran my hand along the line of his shoulder, traced one long white scar around his ribs. His stomach was flat, and he shivered at my touch.

“Beautiful,” I said, looking up at his face, at the longing there, his lips slightly parted. “Do you know that you’re beautiful?”

Michel blushed. He glanced away.

I put my hand to his face. “Look at me,” I whispered. “I want you to see me looking at you.”

He turned his face against my hand, kissing my palm. His eyes met mine, scared and hungry at the same time, half wanting and half dreading what I seemed to promise.

“And be still,” I said, smiling.

I put my hands on his shoulders and ran them lightly down his chest, so lightly that I felt the goose bumps rise. Pale skin and bronze curls, running in a straight line down to his waistband. I stopped and played with one nipple, feeling it slack between my fingers. Then I bent and suckled it, drawing and licking as though he were a woman.

He certainly wasn’t, from the size of the erection pushing at me through his breeches. He made some incoherent noise. His hand moved, then stopped as I closed my fingers around his wrist, pressing it back to his side.

“Be still,” I said. “Wait.”

I unbuttoned his breeches and pushed them down around his hips; sharp bones and another scar, this one across the top of his hip, angling toward the groin. His phallus was hard and thick, jutting straight forward out of a nest of red hair, almost purple with blood. Very deliberately, holding his eyes with mine, I went down on my knees and took it in my mouth. He moaned and swayed, catching on to the edge of the dresser for balance. The flame dipped, shadows moving around the room.

Large and thick. I couldn’t take all of it at once, so I played with it, drawing and licking, almost letting go and just pressing my lips to the tip. I looked up at him. His face was almost white.

“This can’t be taken,” I said. “It can only be given.”

I worked his breeches off, boots and stockings. More scars. The half-healed one on his right leg crossed over an older one, while his left foot a mass of seams like a starburst. I ran my fingers along it.

“Bayonet through the foot,” he said, somewhat breathlessly. “Now . . .”

I shook my head, smiling. “Go and lie down. I don’t want you to fall over.”

I led him to the bed and sat down beside him, pressing him back against the pillows. Moreau had had this power over me, but until now I had never understood what he felt, the power of someone lovely and trembling in your hands, ready for you to make them into another person.