The Ruins of Lace (4 page)

What I wanted was lace: the perfect, irresistible bribe. That I needed it at all was a humiliation, predicated upon the whim of a tyrannical old man who was grieved beyond measure that he must call himself my father.

I closed my eyes against the headache building at the bridge of my nose.

If only he hadn’t commanded us all to the countryside. If we had been at court, then I might not have aggravated him so easily. But in such close quarters, where he was daily confronted with the fact that I was his son, how could I have expected him to treat me with anything other than contempt? He’d surpassed even himself that morning when he stormed into my chambers and placed my entire future in jeopardy.

He hadn’t bothered to announce his presence. He’d thrown open the shutters, bathing the room in ungodly light. One lamentable thing had led to another, and soon we were doing what we had always done. He was yelling; I was pretending not to listen, infusing my indifference with a tincture of ennui.

“My son?” The venom in my father’s voice had matched the look on his face. Things always finished badly when he referred to me in that tone. “My
son
?!”

But it was even worse when he pronounced it like that, as if I were some grand disappointment to him in his old age.

“I gave you one of my titles, but I’ll be damned if I give you another! There is nothing I can do about the happenstance of your birth, but I will not live to see you destroy my good name.”

I clasped my hands behind my back. “There are other options…” I could think of several, though only one had any true appeal.

“What? What was it you said?”

My mistake. He was not yet so old that he was deaf. I lifted my shoulders. Took a deep breath. Bowed my head in a way I hoped would convey all of those sentiments I did not feel: obedience, filiality, humility. “I said, ‘Please, sir. What are my options?’”

“Options? Options!” His face was contorted with rage.

“My options. If you please.”

“There are no options. Not anymore. I’ve told you before: you must turn your back on your despicable ways, marry, and produce an heir. Had you done it, I might have considered leaving you all of those things to which your birth entitles you.”

He had said those things before. But this was the first time he had placed himself in danger of paroxysms to make his point.

“So then…you say I must marry?”

“I said you must produce an heir.”

“There are some things only God himself can provide.” It was true, though, I was not yet so aged I could not expect to sire a son…should the situation ever permit itself.

“I wish you had fallen to your knees and begged for a miracle.”

“I don’t see why it should matter so much.”

“Because I have had enough of your disgraceful and contemptible ways. And”—his cheeks flushed even darker—“your stepmother is breeding and—” He frowned. “I’m drawing up papers to have my marriage to your mother annulled.”

“You…what?”
What! What was it the bastard had said?

“I should never have married her. She lured me into it, and then she turned on me. I can’t say I wasn’t warned. She
was
my half-sister…” His voice had petered out, and his eyes glazed over. I could only assume he was lost in memories we both tried not to revive but had never managed to forget.

“You can’t just—!”

“I refuse to speak to you of this again.”

“You would risk my validity as your heir on the birth of a son? What if it’s a g—?”

“It will be a son. It can be nothing else. I won’t accept anything else!”

The fool. Was he so certain of Providence’s favor that he would deliberately tempt Fate?

“Soon, you will find yourself my bastard, and then you’ll have to take your vices somewhere else.” In one last burst of rage, he spun on a heel and left my chambers.

I stood there for a moment. Long enough to be sure he had, in truth, gone. And then I released all the air corked up inside my lungs.

A snicker erupted from my bed.

I turned my back on the door and addressed the bed. “Come. You heard him. We should fall to our knees and beg for a miracle.”

Remy emerged from the bedclothes where he had been hiding. He pushed the bed-curtain aside with a sweep of his arm, surveying the detritus of the previous evening’s entertainments. “Do you think he noticed?”

Noticed? The upturned gilded chair? The collection of drinking glasses? The flurry of feathers that had fallen about the room? Or the pile of discarded gowns in the corner? How could he have failed to notice those excesses any more than Remy could have failed to note my inadequacies? The spirit, as they said, was willing. It was my damnable flesh that had, of late, become so flaccid…and so weak. “Noticed you? When I was standing in front of him quite naked?”

“You don’t think he noticed.”

Oh, he had noticed. But he had refrained from directly commenting upon my proclivities. He always did, for he preferred as much as possible not to acknowledge them. He was too much a gentleman for that. And I was too much a gentleman to let Remy know. Mother always said “better the foot slip than the tongue.” And I had always tried to follow her decrees.

•••

Some time later that morning, after Remy had gone out hunting and I had taken myself back to bed with a book, a knock sounded at the door. My manservant announced the visitor. “Physician Bresson.”

My headache increased. I had no complaints but the normal kind. To which he would no doubt respond with his normal cure. It was thought an enema was the best way to treat the symptoms that had increasingly begun to plague me.

“And how are we this day, my lord?”

I pulled the covers up under my chin. Bresson was one for poking and prodding at the most inconvenient of places. I did not relish his visits, though I hoped fervently for a cure. “
We
are fine.”

“No pains in the head?”

Bon.
Maybe I was not completely, unequivocally fine. “A few.”

“No pains in the bending of the arms or the legs?”

“Some.”

“And you have only your usual complaints?”

Usual? They were
un
usual and not welcome, which was the reason I had complained. But I nodded.

“I can see…?” He gestured toward my nether regions. He wanted me to turn back the covers and lie in a state where he could observe me like some prized pig. “You have had no more sores down…there?”

“
Non
.”

“Not even one?”

“Absolutely not.”

Bresson frowned. “It is very important you tell me the precise truth.”

I smiled. “The truth is I am so very thankful for your conscientious care.”

“Well.” He turned from the bed and fumbled with his instruments while I turned over. “I would not wish for you to be syphilitic.”

Neither would I.

•••

Once the physician had gone, I had my servant dress me. I went down to the hall, only to discover the meal was nearly over. I was late. I took my stepmother’s hand up in mine as I passed by her chair, and pressed a kiss onto it.

“Good afternoon.” She smiled up at me.

“Still in your morning coat?” My father’s tone was not benign.

“I was so involved in my affairs I had no time to change.”

He looked a question at me.

I busied myself with my food, refusing to respond.

“I hope I made myself clear earlier.”

“Quite.”

“
Bon.
You must see there are things that need to be arranged. For posterity’s sake…” As he tried to delicately refer to the spawn my stepmother was breeding, a high color sprouted on his cheeks. How endearing. He cleared his throat. “…some things are necessary.”

•••

As I waited for Remy to return from his hunt, I decided to take a turn in my stepmother’s garden. The air had chilled with autumn’s coming, but there were still blooms bursting forth everywhere. Over on the bench beneath the shade of a tree was Gabrielle herself. She looked like some overfed cow. And she was trying, without success, to stand.

I walked over and offered her my arm.

She nearly pulled me down on top of her with the heft of her extra weight. “
Merci
, Julien.”

“It is my very great honor,
ma
biche
, to be counted upon to assist you.”

“You see, it’s for this reason exactly you should find the taking of a wife so easy!” How grand she must seem to herself: married and a marquise at the age of twenty. And how generously she bestowed the wisdom gained from all of her life’s experience upon one who’d already seen nearly twice her years. She dimpled. “You could charm a nun from her convent.”

“If I had to charm anyone into my bed, don’t you think a monastery more suitable to my tastes?”

She laughed. That was something my father would never have done.

“Why does no one ever believe me when I speak the truth?”

“Because we want so much to believe the state of your soul matches your angelic looks.” She frowned as she stood there, trying to regain her breath. “You must know I have nothing to do with this plan to disinherit you.”

“He wasn’t serious.” He couldn’t be serious. If he were serious, then I might as well kill myself now to save my many creditors the trouble. Though my debts were great, everyone at court knew my eventual inheritance would be greater still.

If I were but there!

Nothing could be gained here in the countryside but a virulent cough. For all my father waxed rhapsodic about them, there was nothing noble about our peasant countrymen. About their cows and their hayseed. I would give all the fresh air in Orléanais for Madame Sainctot’s salon in Paris, though it be fogged with tobacco smoke, soaked with the scents of a dozen different perfumes, and underscored by a mad melody played on a relentless harpsichord. Give me a place where every word was calibrated for amusement and spoken with wit…instead of this moldering château where words were wasted on topics as mundane as the latest calvings and the rising level of the miller’s stream.

I yearned for my gaming tables.

Draughts,
hoc
, or
hasard
. I wasn’t as particular as some. To risk all on the roll of a die or the turn of a card. God! That took true courage.
That
was an exercise in daring! These country bourgeoisie didn’t understand. If you had to gamble with the wringing of hands or the constant wiping of the brow, then why gamble at all?

It had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with the nature of the man. To stare Fate in the eye and dare her to slap you? That took nerve. To respond as stoically in the winning as one did in losing? That required true nobility. My father had earned his on the battlefield. I had found mine in the tumble of dice and the dealing of cards.

Unfortunately, noblesse required that eventually one repay his debts…or at least not leave that possibility in doubt. If my father spoke too loudly of his desire to change heirs, then I, too, might be reduced to the wringing of hands.

I took a turn around the path with Gabrielle. She needed exercise; I needed not to be in the vicinity of my father. It was difficult to hide from him, out here in the country, if one was not impassioned, as was Remy, by falcons or riding or the hunt. But at the end of our circuit, as we turned back toward the château, I spied a figure watching us from the head of the garden. “There’s my father. He’s scowling at me. Again.”

“He has only your best interests in mind.”

“He has his own best interests in mind. He always has.”

“He wants so much to be proud of you.”

Proud of me? When had he ever been proud of me? He was proud of his hunting dogs; he was pleased with his new wife; he was delighted with the year’s harvest. But he had never, not once, entertained any synonymous sentiment regarding me. I bowed at my father’s approach. Released my stepmother from my arm.

She moved forward with all the grace of a lumbering ox.

“My dear.” He offered her his arm. She took it and walked off without a backward glance.

•••

One could not be particular about companions when there was so little company to be had.

Gabrielle and I were thrown together once more the next day. She was picking at her needlework in the petit salon, while I was pretending to read. I wished she hadn’t chosen to work her design in taupe and saffron. Those colors each made the other look more insipid.

A sudden rattling came from outside, followed by howls from the hunting dogs.

I went to the window and peered down into the courtyard. “Who is this come to visit?”

“Hmm?” She lifted her gaze from her work.

“There’s a carriage. A man of the church, by the looks of it.” The coach was carved from ebony and gleamed with gold. The windows were hung with crimson curtains.

“I expect it’s probably Cardinal St. Florent.”

What reason would the cardinal have to visit? He generally preferred to perch in grander places than this.

“He’s come about the arrangements for the annulment.”

I shut up my book with a vehemence that surprised even me. “There will be no more talk of annulments! I already told you he wasn’t serious. You wouldn’t know this, but he’s been spouting threats like that one for years.”

She fastened her gaze upon me. “I don’t think it’s a threat this time.”

“You don’t know my father.”

“Perhaps not as well as you do, but he did make a special request for the babe’s baptism…” She held up her needlework, and before my eyes appeared the coat of arms of the Marquis of Eronville. A shield upon which ten blazing suns, reflecting the presumed glory of our King, surrounded a lion rampant. It was a coat of arms reserved for the Marquis of Eronville alone. And that was my title. At least, it should be.

I lingered in the salon until I heard the cardinal leave my father’s chambers. I caught him as he was descending the front steps toward his carriage. When he offered up a plump, gout-swollen hand, I kissed his ring.