The General's Mistress (42 page)

He felt me shiver as he tightened his fingers, solid but not quite bruising, just on the very edge of pain. “And what are yours?” He smiled against my face, and his voice was almost normal, leading him back out of the dark places.

“I like dominating men twice my size,” I said almost playfully, leaving it so he could take it as a joke if he wanted, leaving me a way out, “and I like being made to come in public, and the pretense of seduction. And I like dressing in men’s clothes and sleeping with women.”

“That’s quite a list,” he said.

“Do you think you’re up to it?” A glance showed he clearly was. I didn’t frighten him or disgust him any more than he did me.

“I love a challenge.” He smiled again, and this time it touched his eyes. “But I don’t think I can manage the being a woman part. This is the body I have right now.”

“We can work around it,” I said, and kissed him.

Autumn

T
he weeks that followed were the happiest I had ever known. Michel moved his things over and let go the rooms he had taken to save on rent. There was no sense in his paying for rooms he was never in. We were together every moment, as lovers are when no sense of fatigue has set in, and when neither has any more pressing responsibility than to be together night and day.

On clear days we rode in the Bois de Boulogne, cantering through the parks and scattering the squawking ducks and geese, taking the bridle trails at breakneck speed. Nestor didn’t have Eleazar’s wind or his stride, but he did his best to keep up.

Michel leaned out of the saddle, laughing, waiting for me to come thundering up beside him. Nestor and I were both sweated. My hair had escaped from its binding, and Charles’s shirt stuck to my body beneath a waistcoat. We walked the horses under the trees. Michel’s boots were scuffed, and the fallen leaves crunched under his feet.

“I look terrible,” I said, taking my hair down and trying to tie it back more neatly.

“You worry too much,” he said. “You look beautiful no matter what you wear. It’s disturbing.” He looked at me sideways.

I paused, hands raised to tie my hair back. My coat was stuffed in my saddlebag, and I wore dove-gray breeches and a black waistcoat, cut a shade higher than the current fashion so that it came just above the line of my breasts. With the fullness
of the shirt and cravat above, there was no curve at all, just long slim legs and golden hair in a tail. I looked like a young man of seventeen or so. “Disturbing?”

“You carry it off well,” Michel said. Nestor stepped between us, so I couldn’t see his face.

“What, being a young man?” I almost said
being Charles,
but stopped myself in time.

“It’s the way you walk. The way you move. When you dress like that, you don’t move like a woman at all.”

I took Nestor’s reins and held him by the head, so I could see around him to Michel. One golden leaf had fallen and caught in his red hair. “It’s safer on the road to travel as a man. And my father taught me to fence, which I suppose accounts for the way I move.”

“Really?” He looked at me around Nestor’s head.

I nodded. “And I’ve taken lessons this way. People see what they want to see.”

“Are you any good?” That gleam he’d had in his eye galloping across the park was back.

“I’m not bad,” I said. “But I’m not about to cross swords with you. You’ve got a head of height on me, and six inches of reach. Not to mention a much heavier sword.”

He wore it even in Paris, and glanced down at the belt now, a worn general-issue saber weighing a good ten pounds. “No,” Michel said. “You’d need something lighter. But it’s not all weight and reach. I wish it were.”

“I’m left-handed,” I said. Perhaps a gentle introduction to Charles was best.

“I have to see this,” Michel said, grinning with delight.

Nothing would do then but that we had to go to the fencing
salle
he favored right away. It wasn’t one of the fashionable ones, but I was coming to expect that. The owner was a wicked
Sicilian with muscular thighs and an old-fashioned curled wig. His rooms were popular with young army officers who wanted to fight dirty, and with green boys who needed a quick turn or two before an affair of honor.

He greeted Michel like a brother. Michel hung about his neck, pounding him on the back, while they cheerfully insulted one another, Michel in bad Italian and M. Vincenzio in worse German.

“My young friend,” Michel said, “is in need of a few lessons. Perhaps you could take him through a pass or two and tell us what is needed?”

M. Vincenzio looked me up and down with a somewhat skeptical expression on his face. His ornate brocade coat looked as though it were ten years old, and smelled like it too. “The boy has to fight a duel?”

“He often travels,” Michel said smoothly. “And it would be well if he could defend himself.”

Vincenzio raised one eyebrow and addressed me. “How fortunate you are to have such a friend who has concern for your well-being. Have you ever crossed swords in earnest?”

“No,” I said. “But I killed two men with a pistol on the road from Milan this summer.” I was not about to be cowed. And Charles would never be, arrogant as he was. I put one foot forward, standing negligently, as the young bucks did. I flicked my cuff back as though to take snuff.

The other eyebrow went up. “You are a fair shot?”

“I am a fine shot,” I said. Which was true. Not that it took much of a marksman to hit someone with a horse pistol at point-blank range.

“And where have you learned to fence?”

“My father taught me, having been a swordsman in the service of the Czar. And then I had lessons in Italy when I was a youth.”

“With your pretty face, you’ll need all the lessoning you can get,” he said. “We’ll try a pass or two as a favor to the general here. It seems it would disturb him if you were to be scarred.” He walked over to a group of foils hung on the wall and selected one for each of us.

Michel gave me an encouraging smile, apparently entirely oblivious to the implications flying over his head.
Sometimes,
I thought,
it’s like he just crawled out of a cabbage patch.

I took the foil Vincenzio offered and tried the balance. A bit battered, but a serviceable practice weapon, tipped with a nub of India rubber. It would bruise if it connected, but not really do much damage unless wielded with exceptional force. I stepped back, saluted, and sank into guard.

He pressed me almost at once. My footwork consisted mostly of retreat and endless riposte. He touched on my off shoulder in seconds. I went back to work, circling grimly. I knew I was outmatched, but I wouldn’t make this easy.

The next touch was a glancing one on the sword wrist, a disarm that didn’t quite work. Vincenzio nodded approvingly. “Better, my boy! That would be a pinking, but it wouldn’t stop you, not in a real fight. This would.”

He lunged. The third touch was an absolutely stinging blow to the back of my left hand. Even tipped, it broke the skin a little, a star-shaped red mark spreading.

Vincenzio lifted his blade and saluted formally, handing off his foil to an assistant.

I shook out my hand, trying to feel my fingers.

Michel grinned like a proud papa. “My friend’s not so bad, eh?”

“I’ve seen worse,” Vincenzio said. “I see the eastern influence. A guardsman’s style, not a nobleman’s. I bet that father of yours was in some keen fights, not affairs of honor. None of the
extraneous flourishes the Austrians are teaching these days. Was he foot or horse?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “He died many years ago.” And I didn’t. I had assumed he was an officer and a gentleman, but an illegitimate son left to make his way in the world might just as easily have been a street fighter. For the first time in years, I felt suddenly close to him. Perhaps he would have been proud of what I had become, little Elza who could deal with the world being a dangerous place. An adventurer, like her father.

My chin rose. “Will you teach me, Monsieur Vincenzio? I see that I have a lot to learn.”

“If you’ll work at it,” he said. “And if your friend will pay.” He looked at Michel.

Michel shrugged. “Once a week?”

“Three times a week,” I said. “If I’m to learn it, I want to learn it well.” I glanced at Michel. “If you’re paying.”

He laughed. “I’m paying. And three times a week, if you want it. You’ll be so stiff and sore you won’t be able to move, but I suppose I can deal with that.”

I found myself blushing with as much embarrassment as if I had been Charles. I nodded and wandered off by the door to put on my coat while Michel dickered about the cost of lessons with Vincenzio, who swore he had a special stop thrust that he would show Michel himself for just a little extra, the perfect lethal move only for a man of his skill, shown only to very special pupils for a very special price. He came over to join me shaking his head. I handed him his hat.

“Did you pay for the very special stop thrust?” I asked as we went down the outside stairs to the street.

“I will,” he said. “Sometimes Vincenzio has some good things. And he’s practical. He’ll teach you how to handle people a lot bigger than you are.”

“You could show me that too.”

“I could,” Michel said cheerfully. “But I’m not a good teacher. I’d probably lop your ear off in the process.” He threw an arm about my shoulders enthusiastically. “I’ve never seen a woman who was as good as you.”

“You know,” I said, stepping around a market stand of apples that spilled onto the sidewalk, “he thinks I’m your lover.”

“You are my lover,” Michel said, jostling me as he avoided the mud splashed by a bottle-green phaeton passing at too quick a pace for the city.

I looked at him sideways. There was mud on his boots anyway. “He thinks I’m your lover and he thinks I’m a man.”

Michel stopped. I walked a couple of paces farther before I realized it, then went back. He shrugged, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re not.”

“No,” I said, linking my arm through his and drawing him to walk down the street, “I’m not. Not physically.”

“But you think people will think so, when you dress like this?” He kept pace with me now, his voice dropped.

“They usually do,” I said. “You said yourself how well I passed.” I didn’t want him to decide whatever it was. It was too much to expect that he should love Charles as well. A tentative truce between the parts of my life was the most I could hope for.

He stopped walking again, stood facing me, one small line furrowing between his brows. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who wanted to ride and shoot and fence and talk about interesting things, never mind all the rest of it. That I know what to say to out of bed.”

“And in bed’s not bad either,” I said, reaching for his hand. I held it. “But if I hold your hand in the street dressed like this, you know what people will think of you and of me.”

“It’s a masquerade,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure.

I shook my head. “No, Michel. It isn’t.” I could not pretend, not with him. “This is who I really am.”

“More than a quirk?” His blue eyes were very serious, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Yes,” I said, and my heart sank. “More than a quirk. More than a costume.”

He looked down. His hand in mine, big and callused, long fingers scarred from too many things; my hand small and tense, a swollen red mark from Vincenzio’s touch blossoming. It didn’t look like a woman’s hand, not emerging from a man’s coat sleeve, the lace cuff falling short of the first joint. Michel looked at it. Then, very deliberately, he lifted it to his lips.

He kissed my hand in the open street, reverentially, like a lover who has achieved a great prize. His eyes met mine over it as people walked around us, curious or knowing or censorious.

I looked back at him, and something broke inside me. “I love you,” I said.

Michel fell into pace beside me, walking down the street, still holding my hand. His steps were light. “I had to know if I could,” he said. “If I’m brave enough.”

“For what?”

He shrugged. “For whatever. And I love you, too.”

I stopped suddenly, pulling him around, and kissed him passionately in the middle of the sidewalk, my arms twining around his neck.

People jostled past us. I couldn’t have cared less what they said, what they thought, whether they laughed or disapproved or just wished we’d go somewhere private; I kissed him in men’s clothes in the middle of Paris, and he kissed me back. He could live with Charles, and it was more than enough.