The General's Mistress (41 page)

He was quiet a moment. “Is Charles your son?”

I took a breath, but couldn’t quite answer.

“I saw the stretch marks last night. I thought that you must have a child, and I wondered . . .” He stopped, then went on. “I’m trying to say, if you have a child farmed out somewhere because you . . . Well, if you wanted to have him here with us—I mean, with you—it would be better, wouldn’t it? I like children. I grew up with a big family, remember? And if you wanted him here with you . . . Is he Moreau’s son? Because if so, that makes him an even bigger ass—”

I put my hand to his lips. “Michel, no.” Tears stung my eyes, and I pressed my face against his shoulder for a moment. One of his hands moved against my hair. Something hurt, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

I lifted my head. “I have two sons,” I said. “Klaas and Francis. They’re with their father. I haven’t seen them in four and a half years. They think I’m dead.” It had hurt for so long. Who could I talk to about it? Moreau would not even have begun to understand. He would have been jealous of anything that claimed my attention from him, even a child of his.

“Who’s their father?”

“My husband,” I said. “Jan Ringeling.” I hadn’t said his name in years. It seemed like another person who had been his wife.

“Oh.” He took a breath. “I thought you weren’t married.”

“He’s Dutch,” I said. “He won’t divorce me. I left him years ago for Moreau. And then you know how that went.”

“I do,” he said. “Barras’s lady told me.”

“Joséphine?” I was surprised he knew her. This was safer ground.

Michel seemed to understand that. “Yes. Madame Bonaparte. I’ve talked with her several times. The first time I was in Paris was when I went to that party of yours, and I met her then. Director Barras asked me to stay at his house. Which was sort of . . . unexpected. She’s very nice. And I mean that truthfully, not in the false way people mean when they say that and mean that someone is boring.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Politics,” I said. “I can see exactly why he invited you to stay. Moreau was out of favor, so Barras was entertaining other generals from the Rhine. I imagine he found you weren’t enough of a political animal and didn’t invite you again.”

Michel shifted uncomfortably. “Either that, or it was because I assaulted his valet.”

“You what?”

His voice was a little defensive, his provincial accent a little broader. “I didn’t grow up with servants, remember? I don’t know what they do, creeping around the house when everyone is sleeping. His valet came into my room early in the morning to brush my coat or some other damn-fool thing, and I thought he was a thief.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“I pinned him up against the wardrobe doors and threatened to rip his head off. It was a little awkward.”

I burst out laughing. “Oh, Michel! I imagine it was!”

I heard him smile despite himself. “Half the household came rushing in when he started shrieking, and I wasn’t wearing a nightshirt, and Madame Bonaparte was there, and . . .”

Still laughing, I asked, “And what did she say?”

“She didn’t say much, but she seemed to be enjoying the view.” He was laughing now. “I grabbed a towel off the washstand, but that didn’t really cover very much. I begged the poor fellow’s pardon and tipped him, but Barras never asked me back again. It wasn’t the best first impression I’ve ever made.”

“I imagine it made a good impression on Joséphine,” I said. There was something ironic about Joséphine appreciating Michel in the nude, considering how I knew her husband.

“It seemed to have done,” he said.

I propped up on one elbow, snuggling closer. “You are beautiful, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I wear those tight white breeches.” His hand strayed across my stomach caressingly. His
fingers were damp. “A good soldier should always make the most of his assets. If ladies of fashion like to look . . .”

“Just a provincial lad, knowing nothing of the ways of the big city,” I said airily. “Perhaps someone should show him around. I’m surprised you haven’t been shown around thoroughly.” It pleased me obscurely, to think of him showing off that way, made him a bit like Charles.

“I’ve been around the gardens a time or two,” he said. “But I never—”

I pressed my hand against his lips firmly. “Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say you love me.” How many times had he said it, and to whom? I had never felt jealous before. It had not really mattered to me whom Moreau slept with, and it had never occurred to me at the time that Jan might even be capable of infidelity.

He took my hand from his lips and kissed it, even the tips of my fingers. “Why not?”

I closed my eyes. “Because I’ll believe you.” He could hurt me. He could hurt me more than anyone ever had.

“Oh.”

I couldn’t look at him. “Don’t do that to me. Don’t make me believe in you. Just let this be what it is.”

“And what is it?” he asked quietly.

“An interlude,” I said. “A wonderful, glorious, passionate interlude. We both know it can’t last. It’s as fragile as this peace treaty. In a few months you’ll be gone back to war, and I’ll be working again, being with whomever. And the time will come when you marry someone else and send back all my letters.” I gulped. “I want this to be good while it lasts. I don’t want any lies.”

“You don’t believe I could really love you?” His hands never stopped moving, caressing and slow, gentle almost.

“No,” I said. “You have no idea who I am. You have no idea the things I’ve done. What I’m capable of doing.” And yet some traitorous part of me wanted him to know, wanted him to know everything, to have every power.

“You don’t know what I am either,” he said. “I might be a rapist or a torturer. I might beat you or cut you for fun.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Isn’t it likely? Knowing what you know of me?”

“No,” I said, “it isn’t. Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done. I can hear whatever it is.”

Michel was silent for a long moment. His hands finally stilled. “No,” he said quietly, “I can’t. Not yet.”

“Then don’t tell me you love me.” I put my face against his shoulder. It was too good. I must not believe too much, be drawn too deeply into this spell of passion, this illusion of friendship and mutual desire. “Live for half an hour in the world as it is.”

“A world without magic and love? With nothing more than flesh and bones and old blood?” There was a sadness in his voice I hadn’t heard before. “I don’t think I could survive half an hour in that world. If this is madness, then so be it.” His hands started again, slow and gentle. “If we compromise with sanity to create the worlds we love, the places where we thrive, then we do.”

“I want to be sane,” I said. “I don’t want to believe in visions and portents, in angels and demons and ancient gods and old oaths dragging me into stories I don’t understand. I just want to survive.”

“Maybe you’d survive better if you stopped fighting the current,” he said. “Like a swimmer pulled out to sea. Stop trying so hard and let go.”

I held him tight.
Tomorrow,
I thought.
It will be different
tomorrow. We will wake and these illusions will fade. But it’s not tomorrow yet.

And he said nothing, just rocked me against him until we both fell asleep.

I
n the morning, Michel woke me with a kiss. “I have to go back to my rooms,” he said. “I need to get a clean shirt, and I need to check on Eleazar. Livery stables sometimes don’t bother to exercise a horse if the owner isn’t checking in. I should take the poor boy out myself.”

I unfurled from the covers, stretching. “I could come with you,” I said. “Nestor could use a run too.”

“And clean up a bit,” he said. “Do you want me to tell the landlady to fetch you up a bath?”

I shook my head. “She’ll charge two sous to have her boys bring the tub up and fill it.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “If you want it, I’ll dress and pay her. They can put the tub in the other room, so you don’t even have to come out until it’s ready.”

I did want it. And I wanted to think about this, now, not some other things. My eyes went back to him, wondering if I had managed to completely disgust him with the female process.

Instead, he was getting hard. The expression on his face warred between arousal and embarrassment.

I slid over to the side of the bed and ran one stained hand up his thigh, watching the muscles twitch at my touch. His bloody phallus was half-erect beside my fingers. I understood something about him suddenly. “You like that, don’t you?” He moved his head, but didn’t answer me. “The idea that you’ve used that kind of force.”

“Elza, no. I would never—I have never—” He looked away.
“I’m not like that. It’s not that I’ve never had the opportunity. God knows I have, more than I would like. But I swear to you, I’ve never done it. I’ve never forced anyone unwilling. I’ve never done it.” His voice shook.

“But you wanted to.” He had. I knew that. He wanted to rape.

He closed his eyes, and his voice was ragged. “God help me, yes.”

A weight lifted from me that I hadn’t known was there. Michel sat down next to me, and I put my arm around his shoulders. “If you wanted to and didn’t, it doesn’t count. A sin you only think about isn’t the same as something you’ve done. Something you’ve wanted isn’t the same as something you’ve really done to another person.” That was the fear I had never named—what would a man do to me if he could get away with it, if there were no servants, no people who would talk? With him, I knew. And I knew he wouldn’t really do it. “What is it you want?”

He shrugged, and his shoulders moved under my arm. His face was turned away. “I don’t know. To tear into someone. To listen to them scream and beg. To throw her down and take her like an animal.” He put his head in his hands. “I wouldn’t do it, Elza. I really wouldn’t. I haven’t, when I had the chance and other people were.”

“What did you do?” I asked, my mouth dry, wanting to know and not at the same time. “When other people were.”

“Started shouting and laid into them with the flat of my sword,” he said. “Kicked some noncoms in the ass who really deserved it. They knew better. You can’t have that kind of thing. I wound up killing one of them. I didn’t mean to, because I just struck him in the arm to get him off her—but the wound putrefied. I swear to God, if I were the corps commander, rape would be a hanging offense.”

“And then?” My voice was very quiet and calm, like a priest in a confessional. But a priest would not understand this. A whore would.

“I got the town doctor out. He was hiding in the cellar of his house, and I scared him half to death. I put the girls in his care. He knew who they were, who their families were. He could get them home. I put everyone on report, and brought the ones who were the leaders, the ones who’d actually done it, not the ones who were watching, up on charges. Six months’ pay and two weeks in chains. Not enough, but it was the maximum in the corps.”

“Moreau’s corps,” I said, remembering the cantinière in camp with a rush of shame. I had not done half what he had. I had gone to bed, telling myself I needed a thicker skin. “Yes, I know about that.”

He nodded. “It’s not what I did that bothers me. It’s what I felt.” He took a racking breath. “I was helping one of the girls to the doctor’s house. The street was rutted and she was shaking, and I . . .” Michel turned his head away, his face drawn. “This Franconian girl my sister’s age, with long brown hair, and what had just happened . . . What kind of monster am I to think that?”

“What did you do?”

“I took her arm and helped her to the doctor’s house, and said some things about how I would arrest the men and that I hoped she would be all right and that the doctor would get her home.” His shoulders shook. “Surely God will judge me by what I did, not by what I thought.”

“I will,” I said. I put my arms around him and held him close, his head against my shoulder, searching for the words. “And if you believe in a forgiving God, then surely that grace
is easier to reach than a whore’s absolution.” I stroked his brow. “Michel, you can’t help your nature.”

He made some sound against me that wasn’t a word.

I ran my hands down his back. Last night had not even been the pretense of violence. It had been love and tenderness. “Michel,” I said, “you didn’t hurt me. Remember? It’s just the thought. Just the idea. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He lifted his face to mine, looking for something there. If it was fear, he didn’t see it, because I felt none. Perhaps I should have been afraid of him, but I knew in that moment that I never would be.

I kissed his cheek softly. “Really, my dear. I promise I would tell you if you hurt me. But it doesn’t bother me at all for the idea of hurting me to excite you. If you want to take me right now, I’ll even scream and struggle a bit.”

He laid his cheek against mine, two days’ beard prickling. He hadn’t bothered to shave yesterday. “Don’t tempt me that way.”

I took his hand and closed it around my wrist, letting him feel the shape of the bones, letting him see what it did to me to test myself just a little against his strength. “Why not?” I said. “If it’s a game between lovers, and no one is hurt? It’s just a quirk.”