The General's Mistress (50 page)

Michel, meanwhile, was engaged in serious discussion with the Doctor and his friends. I could hear a bit of it over the thunderous silence from Joba. Politics. The Doctor and the dark-haired man to his right favored liberal ideas and were staunch supporters of the Duke, Max Joseph, who wanted friendship with France rather than enmity. The other two gentlemen seemed of the other party.

“Is it not true,” the elder of them said, “that the ultimate outcome of unbridled liberty is chaos? Why should any man feel safe in his property or person when the mob may break free, as it did during the Terror? It behooves me to ask, General, how many innocents you led to the guillotine.”

Silence fell over that end of the table.

Michel shrugged almost negligently. “For my part, sir, none at all. I had never so much as set foot in Paris at the time. I was a lieutenant with the Army of the Rhine, and my whole occupation was fighting Austria. Surely you have no love for Austria?”

“Indeed we do not,” the Doctor said. “I think any true Bavarian will say as much.” He glared at his guests, daring them to disagree.

“I do not deny,” Michel said evenly, “that some tragic events occurred. I think we all can admit the truth of that. But the men
who did those deeds are for the most part dead, or fallen from power. The First Consul had no part in those events, nor any man here who now defends France.”

I thought of Moreau and his profiteering off the homes of the condemned, and wondered if Michel might be stretching the point a little. Or perhaps he simply knew nothing of how Moreau’s wealth was founded. We were neither as bad as they feared, nor as good as Michel believed.

“But what is the line,” the gentleman said, “between liberty and libertinage? Men follow their worst instincts, given the freedom to do so.”

“It all depends,” I said, “on what we believe of the nature of man.”

Michel blinked, looking at me as the other gentlemen looked round.

I toyed with the stem of my wineglass. “If men are by nature little better than beasts, and the common man an unruly mob trammeled only by the firm hand of Church and state, then his liberty is indeed to be feared, for such men can only spread chaos and destruction in their wake, bringing an end to fragile civilization. But if men are by nature the beloved children of God, made in His divine likeness, then surely the liberty that allows all men to seek the greatest good and happiness will eventually transform civilization for the better.”

The Doctor smiled broadly. The other gentleman frowned. “Such a fragile hope, Madame, on which to place our safety. Naïve, I believe.”

“And yet I have placed my safety upon it these last months, and my trust in the good of man is fulfilled,” I said.

“All men are not saints, Madame,” he replied.

“No, of course not. There are always scoundrels and villains and venal men who look for nothing but their own treasure.
But I will not fear them while there are such good angels as these men here to preserve liberty with both strength and compassion.” I smiled brilliantly at Michel and Ruffin, and at our host.

The Doctor’s eyes crinkled in an answering smile. “Well said, Madame! Let us toast Liberty, then.”

“And Friendship,” Michel said, raising his glass. “Liberty and Friendship, gentlemen.”

Dinner ended early. Our host said that he understood that we must all be greatly fatigued from the road, and so it was barely nine-thirty when we went upstairs. I went ahead of Michel, who had stopped to speak to a servant in the hall. He came in behind me, tossing his coat onto a gilt chair.

“You can thank me,” he said.

“For what?” I sat down to take off my boots. Tomorrow I was going to look for a cobbler and a dressmaker. If we were to be in Munich for more than a few days, I should have to have clothes. This was embarrassing.

Michel looked pleased with himself. “The servants are bringing up water for a bath for you. I thought you’d like it.”

“I adore you,” I said, laughing. “Adore. Will worship you with slavish abandon. Will do anything in the world for a bath!”

“I thought you might,” he said, grinning. “But I’d rather have you clean for that part!”

“And I’d rather have you clean, too. You get the second bath. Michel, you . . .”

“Stink?” He raised one eyebrow. “Yes, probably.”

And then we were both laughing. He picked me up and tossed me backward onto the feather bed, where I sank like a stone. He jumped on me, tickling, and we rolled around giggling and poking each other. He had a terribly ticklish spot just under each arm that almost paralyzed him with laughter.

A soft knock heralded a procession of servants with buckets of hot water. They filed in and out of the dressing room through a hall door, one after the other. It took three trips to fill the tub. When they were done, I went into the dressing room and stripped off every stitch gratefully, hanging up my only dress to let the steam get the wrinkles out.

There were a couple of bottles of oil on the shelf in the dressing room and a cake of milled soap. I opened one of the bottles. Rose. That would be lovely. I poured some in and sank in the tub up to my chin, then dunked my head and washed my hair twice.

Michel came in and sat on the delicate boudoir chair, one booted foot against the edge of the tub. He watched me as I scrubbed every limb. It was deliciously sensual to bathe under his gaze, though he didn’t touch me or even speak.

The water was gray when I finished. Michel held a towel for me as I stepped out, wrapping me in it so my arms were held at my sides and bending to kiss me.

I took a step back. “Not yet,” I said, dodging his kiss. “You still stink.”

He laughed. “Give me a few minutes, then.” He opened the door from the dressing room to the hall and called for the servants again.

I went back in the bedroom and tried to get the tangles out of my hair with a comb. As short as it was, it dried quickly, and in the candlelight shone golden and glossy like a cherub. I put on an old soft shirt of Charles’s that was the cleanest one I had. Its hem came halfway down my thighs, and the lace on the cuffs dangled over my hands. A dandy shirt, not one of the ones I’d bought for the campaign. I turned back the celadon silk coverlet and thick linen sheets and sat on the bed.

Michel came in from the bath and stopped dead in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his middle. “Oh, God.”

“Yes?”

“You look like a demon,” he said. “Like some Renaissance angel up to no good. Corrupting mankind.” He took a few steps toward me.

“Up to no good,” I said, tilting my head to the side with all Charles’s arch manner. “A succubus?”

“Nothing that feminine,” Michel said, and his voice was a little strained. Above the towel, the breadth of his shoulders gleamed in the candlelight, slick with rose oil, each red hair burnished and bright. The towel barely went around him, and it seemed a little strained, too.

“No?” I purred, crawling forward on hands and knees to the side of the bed. I pulled the towel away.

His phallus strained forward from a nest of red curls, lengthening at the touch of air. He made some muffled noise.

I knelt up on the edge of the bed, Charles’s shirt open at the throat, and took him in my hand. The lace ruffles cascaded down over my hands, roughened by weeks in the field, a young man’s hands, not a courtesan’s. The lace whispered against his flesh. He closed his eyes.

“Look,” I said in a low voice, tracing one long vein a little roughly. “I want you to see what it looks like. I want you to see me.”

Michel looked at me. “You look like . . .”

“Charles,” I said. I felt him firm in my hand, and I knew this was affecting him as strongly as it did me, wanting him this way.

He swallowed and said nothing, that hunted and hungry look in his eyes.

I smiled, a predator’s smile, the smile Charles had used haunting the ballrooms of the spas, had used on Thérèse. “Watch me,” I said, and took him in my mouth.

He groaned. And he obeyed. His hips shook and he pressed forward.

I let go. “Not yet,” I said. I had expected this, had known what we would both need.

“The damn letters,” he said, swaying a little against the side of the bed.

“Right here.” I produced one from my sleeve like a conjuror. I smoothed it onto him, weighing him with my hand, looking up with a Charles expression that was pure evil, tugging at his hair just enough to make him wince, winding it around one finger. “You’ve always wanted this,” I said, sliding up him, the lace at the front of my shirt against his chest. “Always.” I kissed him deeply, mouthing at his chin.

He reached for me, but I leaned back out of reach. “Michel,” I whispered, “I know what you want. Do it.” I knelt on the bed, looking back at him over my shoulder, my hands against the soft linen. Charles’s shirt didn’t quite cover my buttocks.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he slid down behind me, his hands running up under the shirt, along the planes of my back, up to my shoulders and back down.

I nudged back against him, feeling him there, warm and hard.

With a breath he thrust into me, tight and slick. I rocked forward on my elbows, then shoved back against him, pushing in counterpoint.

On and on without a word, our bodies moving together, time narrowing to this moment, this yielding cloth beneath me, a rhythm stronger and stronger, like our beating hearts. I put my weight on one elbow, slid my hand down to feel each movement. My pearl was hot and swollen. My hand moved against it in time with each thrust.

When the change came, it started as the tremors deep inside,
rolling outward, my breath catching and my eyes going dark. He made some noise as each spasm curled around him, over and over, deep as night, until I cried out and put my face against the cool sheets, wrung out as he finished.

It was a long time before the world stopped moving. He lay down beside me, his face buried in one of the pillows.

The candles flickered slightly. The celadon silk bed curtains swayed a little, whispering softly.

I put my hand against his back. “Michel?”

His face was turned away from me, his long red hair in tangles across the sheets. I stroked it. “Beloved? Was that too much?”

“I don’t know. No.” He turned his head, and his face looked almost blind with desire, with the separation from self. He put his hand against the side of my face. “Charles.”

“And Elza,” I said. “It’s me, you know.”

“God help me, I know,” he said, rolling over and putting his arms around me, drawing me against his shoulder.

I reached down and pulled up the sheet and coverlet. It closed us in within a cave of warmth. I stroked his cheek. “It bothers you to want Charles. But you do.”

“You drive me mad,” Michel said, and kissed me. “I have no idea what to do with you.”

“Love me,” I said, holding him tight. “Love me as I love you. All of me, forever and ever.”

“I do,” he said, and kissed me again.

Christmas in the Field

M
ichel was up at dawn. There were nine thousand men all over town who had to be drilled and reviewed and disciplined, not to mention fed. He kissed the top of my head before I was really awake and thumped down the hall.

I couldn’t get back to sleep. After tossing and turning for a little while, I got up, put on my only dress, and went downstairs. The house was very quiet. From one direction came the faint clink of silver and a low voice. I tiptoed across the carpets to investigate.

Breakfast had been laid out on the sideboard in the dining room, and two bewigged footmen stood ready to assist with the serving. As yet, they had little to do. Michel had presumably been and gone, and only Corbineau was sitting at the table, eating a huge plate of sausage en croute and reading a book.

I came in and joined him. Coffee was truly a wonderful thing.

“Up so early, Madame?” Corbineau asked, looking up over the edge of his book. He had it propped in his bad hand, while he tried to eat left-handed.

“Yes,” I said. “And today I’m going shopping. You may have noticed that the General has no clothes. Where did you get the uniform you had last night?”

“I brought it with me,” he said. “But if you have a mission, I am happy to assist. I may not be much use at carrying packages, but I do speak German. And the plan seems to be that we shall be quartered in Munich indefinitely.”

“Then I need clothes,” I said, “and would be happy for your translation assistance, Lieutenant.”

“Jean-Baptiste,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “You must think of me as your brother, Madame.”

“My rakehell brother, perhaps,” I said, smiling.

“Perhaps I should consider you my rakehell sister,” he said. “I’m a mere boy of twenty-two, so I suppose you are my senior.”

“You might,” I said. With a pang, I realized he was the same age as Charles, as the real Charles would be, had he lived. I missed him still.