The Ruins of Lace (9 page)

Against all reason, he kept planning for my future. He kept asking me my opinion of this count’s son or that duke’s nephew. As if I still had the chance to marry and become some great lord’s companion. In truth, I had never wanted a great lord, and without a dowry I would never have one now. But my dreams, as well as his plans, were dead.

I had only ever wanted to be the woman with a cool, gentle touch. I longed to speak in melodies and have hands that danced along to the rhythm of my words. To laugh without care and to offer grace without stopping to calculate the cost.

I wanted to be like my mother. I wanted to be worthy of my father’s pride.

But I had wanted overmuch.

I had insisted on playing with a pair of lavish lace cuffs instead of contenting myself with memories. I had longed for the love and admiration of Alexandre instead of accepting the consequence of my sins. It seemed I was destined always to want more than I could have.

And in the wanting, I had forfeited everything.

My hand found his as I knelt before him, weeping. “It’s all my fault.”

“No,
mon
trésor
. Never. The fault is mine. I should never have taken part in such schemes. And I should not have sheltered so abominable a young man as the count. If only I had turned him away from our door that night…told him to pass on to Mont-de-Marsan.”

His hand lingered a moment more on my cheek, a moment longer than I deserved, and then he dropped it with a sigh, turning toward Alexandre. “You can see, dear cousin, there is nothing else to do.”

•••

Was there nothing I could do? Nothing I could give in order that my father be allowed to retain the estates?

The count wanted lace? Would that I knew how to make some, but I did not. I could do nothing. Nothing of worth or real value. What use was there now for lute playing or singing?

There was a deep, profound, and abiding anguish that dulled Father’s eyes the next morning as he bid farewell to the count.

“I will have my lace, then.” The man didn’t even phrase the words as a question.

“You will have your lace.” Father’s speech was stiff, as if it caused him great pain even to speak.

The count smiled, a wolfish baring of teeth. “How generous you are. To a fault one might say. If you would allow me a suggestion…?”

Father inclined his head.

“One can always count on the abbey at Lendelmolen to make a lovely length of lace at a price worth the effort.” He presented a letter.

Father took it with a shaking hand. “The abbey at Lendelmolen.”

“Yes. And I think six yards would suffice. Six yards of their loveliest lace.”

Alexandre stepped forward, one hand at his dagger, the other balled into a fist. “You scoundrel! The length you lost was only three yards. You said so yourself.”

He blinked. “Did I? Well…I must have been mistaken.”

“Six yards will cost the viscount everything.”

“And if I tell the King about his secret activities, it will cost him one thing more!”

My hopes died within me. The estate would have to be sold. Better then to cease being the one thing that had always caused those I loved the most harm. Better to throw myself upon the mercy of a stranger. Then Father would be released from the debt, and Alexandre would be free to marry. “Take me. For pity’s sake!”

The count regarded me through a narrowed gaze.

I found myself falling at his feet. “Take me, and be done with it.”

“No!” Alexandre’s strangled cry and lunge made me grab at the count’s feet. If he would just take me in exchange for payment, then all would be right. But the boots I had grasped shook off my hands and then took a deliberate step away from me.

All was lost.

“Take you?”

I lifted my head, meeting a gaze from eyes so dark they reflected nothing at all. “Please. Take me instead. Instead of the lace. Take me and consider the debt paid.”

He stretched out a hand toward me.

Gathering my skirts about me, I sprang for it, grabbing at the certain freedom it would bring my father.

He seized it and pulled me to standing. “Yes, I will take you. I’ll take you for safekeeping, for I have an idea that assuring your safety will assure I get what I want.” He put an arm about my shoulders and turned me to face my father and Alexandre. “Don’t you?”

Shoving me before him into the carriage, he paused as he ascended behind me, turning to address my father. “I will take your daughter with me, since she has so kindly offered herself, but only as a guarantee. I shall expect that length of lace directly…if you ever hope to see her again.”

But…what? I had no other wish than to reach out for my papa’s arms. But I could not do it; the coachman had already put a whip to the horses. I scrambled toward the window, only to fall back as the carriage lurched forward.

The count’s companion laughed at me.

Trying once more, I reached for the window and pulled myself up to it. It was only then, as I saw something very much like despair stamped upon Father’s and Alexandre’s faces, I began to consider that I might have done the wrong thing.

I leaned forward, toward the opposite bench of the carriage, and lifted the girl’s chin with a finger. “Let’s see what we have here.”

Her gaze met mine.

“I must say I approve of your spirit. Your willingness to sacrifice…but I find myself inquiring as to whether you actually expected me to accept your kind offer as it was stated—your admirable self in exchange for your father’s debt and his unfortunate secret.” I pulled the gloves off my hands and then handed them to Remy.

Her cheeks went flush.

“You did?” I could not save myself from laughing at her. “Why, my dear girl, then you understand nothing about me at all!”

She pressed her back against the cushioned seat, putting herself out of reach of me…although Remy was sliding looks at her from underneath his lashes.

“What I am to do with you?”

She was rather pretty in a provincial sort of way. All golden ringlets and fair complexion. Though the girl’s attire was shamefully ill fitting, her figure might have attracted the glances of many of the men at court. She was the kind of girl my mother would have called correct…the kind of girl my mother had once called me.

There ought to be something I could do with her.

Remy leaned over and whispered into my ear.

I frowned as I tried to hide my revulsion. “Perhaps she’s to your taste, but she’s not to mine.” I did not care what he did with her. I could hardly demand fidelity in my lover when I could not always service his needs myself. Ignoring him, I addressed myself to her. “There must be some use that you can be put to. What is it that you do?”

She blinked.

“Are you dumb as well as daft?”

“I am not.” Something sparked in her eyes.

“Then speak on your behalf. If you do not wish to be used by the chevalier of Fontenay”—I inclined my chin toward Remy—“then you must be prepared to offer some other sort of amusement.”

She looked at Remy as if in horror, face blanched white. “Amusement…?”

I hoped she was not one of those girls who fainted at the slightest of provocations. “You’re the daughter of a viscount. I could hardly hire you out as a common servant, and my own requirements are adequately met, so what other good can you do me?”

“I can…I can read. And sing. I’m quite useful in the making of unguents and cures.”

“My father has a wife for all of those.”

“Excuse me, my lord. Your father?”

“It’s to his estate we are returning.” What I would not give to make it mine!

“I can play the lute, and I can dance.”

“I don’t dance. At least not with girls.”

Beside me, Remy snorted.

I turned to him. “If you cannot be kind, then you must not say anything at all.”

He gave me a sardonic grin. “I beg your pardon.”

The girl’s color had rallied, and she was no longer breathing quite so shallowly. “I’ve been trained to marry. To serve as a companion to persons of the
noble
class.” The look she shot at Remy was filled with poison.

Bred to marry, trained to be the perfect companion, as all fine ladies should be. Perhaps I
could
find a use for her.

•••

After the passage of four hours within the close confines of the carriage, the fact that the girl had thrust herself upon me began to grate. I did not want her. I had a horror of girls. What I wanted was lace. And I had tried my best to obtain some.

Journeying the byways of the kingdom to Souboscq had not been my original plan. I counted on the viscount’s money; it financed my gambling, sometimes, for the better part of a year. I would have much preferred to have kept that source of funds unencumbered.

I started my quest for lace at court.

Over a month before, the morning after Cardinal St. Florent’s visit, I roused Remy from my bed and made him find a servant to pack up the trunk.

“Whatever for?”

“For posterity’s sake. Both mine and yours.”

Though he scowled and muttered bitterly at having to face the day at such an early hour, he did my bidding. He always did my bidding. I had bought him his title, I had settled his debts, and I kept him in money when I could. I also shared my bed with him.

I made my excuses to the marquis, which he countered with his tiresome and familiar bluster. “Court? To do what?”

Collect the funds to buy the lace to guard the fortune he was so set upon denying me. “We’ve been here since your marquise discovered she was breeding. If you will not represent our interests at court, someone must, or you risk returning to find you have no interests left to protect.”

He opened his mouth in what seemed certain to be a protest, but then he shut it up with a frown.

How could he protest the truth? When new intrigues at court seemed to be birthed with the rising of the sun each day, it was far better to be present than to risk being implicated in one. These were trying times. The King was embattled with the Spaniards to the west and in the north, and with the Hapsburgs to the east and in the south. With the King’s brother intriguing against him, and the Queen Mother instigating rebellions from her exile in the Spanish Netherlands, it took only a whisper to link one to the wrong side. Indeed, it was difficult to find any right side of late.

At least the King was favorably disposed toward my father. And the Queen had made Gabrielle a favorite. My stepmother’s blue eyes generally sparked with merriment, and her rosy cheeks betrayed the high spirits that never failed to amuse Her Majesty.

Though I would pay my respects to the King, I would try my best to keep myself far from the Queen. Her Spanish sensibilities could not allow her to approve of me, and becoming known at her court had the disadvantage of becoming suspect in the eyes of the King.

Though His Majesty liked my father, I knew my kind weren’t his favorite. He preferred men like Remy, who enthused over hunting and horses. And he was not one to approve of the flaunting of wealth. His only passion seemed to be for working himself into an ill health.

And taking part in a ballet now and then.

Taking leave of my father with a bow, I pulled on my gloves, threw out the edges of my cloak, and adjusted the pleats. Then I cocked my hat at just the right angle: the one that cast a shadow over my eyes. When I joined Remy, who had aided in preparing the carriage, bits of straw and manure still clung to his boots. Though I’d bought him the title of chevalier, his breeding had a tendency to betray him at the most unfortunate of times. His father had been equerry to the King, and he could not seem to master his fascination for all things equine.

I, on the other hand, had difficulty tolerating the beasts. Their stench had ruined a pair of my breeches on more than one occasion. And their hair had the habit of working itself into even the most intimate of garments.

I pushed aside my cloak to mount the carriage and then straightened it once inside.

Remy sprawled onto the seat beside me, planting one of his boot-clad feet on the cushioned bench across from us. I removed it with a tap of my walking stick.

•••

Unfortunately, I lost the carriage at Madame Sainctot’s the first night back in Paris. It was unavoidable. I’d been dealt a bad hand, and my concentration had been inhibited. At least I hadn’t bet my brass pocket pistol. Losing that would have been the worst of sartorial sins.

Remy had been playing at a different table on the far side of the room. Above the clink of drinking glasses and the murmur of conversations, I had heard him laugh. There had been a certain timbre to it. And a telltale glimmer in his eye.

They were the laugh and the glimmer that used to belong to me.

As I watched him, he flipped the ruffled edge of his sleeve away from his wrist with a graceful twirl and reached out his hand to collect the chips with his long, elegant fingers. And then something on the far side of the room caught his attention.

I leaned past the Marquis d’Armont, to try to detect who or what it was, but I was not fast enough.

Damn him!

He wasn’t offering his charms to anyone in particular. Not yet. And not overtly. He was being subtle. Too subtle for anyone to think of casting glances at me, to begin laughing at me. Not for the first time did I curse my sex and my inability to command it.

The Duke of Mirebeau’s son winked at me as he laid down his cards. “Don’t worry. I’ll put the carriage to good use for you.”

“Thank you ever so much.” I tossed my cards into the middle of the table.

“A fine carriage like that. You might want it back someday.”

I wanted it back right then, for I didn’t envy a trip through the countryside on horseback.

“Let’s call your carriage a down payment on that pile of gold you owe me. Your father’s old. He’s bound to die soon. If we can make an arrangement for payment of your debt in full, I might one day consider returning the coach.”

“You’re a saint.”

He canted a smile at me.

“Are you playing this hand, then, Montreau, or would you rather flirt?” The Marquis d’Armont was beginning to deal.

“With you?” I gave him what I hoped was a look of disdain. “I think not. I’ve a certain standard to uphold.”

At a ribald pun on the word “standard” and a gesture too crude to be repeated, the table broke into laughter.

I slid my card back toward the marquis. “I find I’ve developed a sudden taste for company more refined than you.” I rose from my chair and bowed.

“And we’ve developed a taste for more of your fabled fortune. Don’t go! Don’t be a villein. You ought to share with those less fortunate. It’s good for the soul.”

“I have it on good authority, gentlemen, I have no soul worth saving.” I took up my walking stick, tucking it beneath my arm as I toured the room. What was wrong with me? I was here to win a fortune, and I couldn’t even concentrate on my cards.

•••

Four short days later, we rode from Paris toward Souboscq, traveling in a rented coach. It was more to remove Remy from the court’s temptations than because I had lost all my money. I had, in fact, retained some of it. Enough to last our journey. But my appetite for the game had disappeared. Though I had once risen to the challenge of cards and dice with the zeal of a warrior, this time I had not even been able to acquit myself as a nobleman.

I had taken up the habit of visiting the viscount of Souboscq at this time of year. The roads were generally in good repair, the weather was pleasant, and I could stop in at my own crumbling estate at Montreau on the way. If my father didn’t attach so much sentiment to the title, and if it weren’t for the fact it was the only thing he had ever given me, I might have well sold it. It didn’t do to be associated with Poitou and its renegade politics, or its heretic religion.

As we traveled, we passed field after field shorn of grain.

God, how I envied the peasants their crops! One good harvest could bring them a small fortune. I had no such luxury. Had I owned a field, I could not have worked it. I could have collected rents from it, but I could not have actually sold any of its fruit, nor could I have lent a hand to their labors. Not if I wanted to retain my nobility. Gambling was the only honorable way to make and dispense fortunes. Though could farming not be considered gambling of a sort? I wondered as we passed by those fields, who offered the better odds: God or man?

God had been none too kind to me. Much better to trust in the insatiable greed of Cardinal St. Florent. But to turn him to my side, I needed lace.

If I’d had those cuffs the Lefort girl had spoiled, I would have given them to the cardinal already. That would have solved all my problems. But I didn’t have anything at all, really. My finery was borrowed on my father’s good name, and every livre I had wrung from the viscount of Souboscq had gone to keep me in cards.

Only now the whole consequence of my father’s death had been placed into question.

But the cardinal was a creature quite like me. If I offered him something more than what my father could—and how could a length of lace fail to be more?—then he would respond in an entirely predictable way. My failures at gambling and my desperate need for lace are what had led me to Souboscq in Gascogne.

•••

Somewhere along the road back to Poitiers, the girl stopped glaring at me and fell asleep. So did Remy. I nudged him awake. “Don’t you know some countess or other in Berry?”

“The Countess of Bardelles…and the Duchess of Tillay.”

“The girl needs some presentable clothes and some slippers.”

“You’re going to keep her, after all, then?”

I scowled at the desire that lit his eyes. “Not for that.”

His face fell.

“If you’re unhappy with me, you only need say so…”

“No! No, I’m quite content.”

Was he? Truly?

“As far as the countess and duchess…I haven’t seen either of the women for some time, and I don’t know if they’ll be amenable to my charms.”

His charms. They were quite considerable, and they had always worked on me. I reached over to adjust the lie of his cravat, rearranging its ribbons. “Do only what you must.”

A several days’ stay in Berry yielded a stylish wardrobe. From the Countess of Bardelles we acquired a gorgeous basque and gown in blue Turkey velvet, decorated with gilt spangles. It was given to us with slippers to match. Two days later, from the Duchess of Tillay, we received a lovely green satin gown with its sleeves pinned back to reveal a gold-embroidered lining.

Remy tossed the satin beside me onto the bed we were sharing. It gleamed like a living thing atop the counterpane of gold-embroidered, claret-colored damask.

I resisted the urge to stroke the gown’s length, though I knew from damnable experience how the silk would feel against my legs. How the skirts would rustle when I walked. And how elegant the slippers would look on my feet. I rolled over onto an elbow and poked at them with my book instead. “And how did you manage these?”

“I told the duchess you required them.”

I raised a brow. “Indeed.”

“Do not blame me if she received the impression it was
you
who would be wearing them.”