Love Charade Part 28

Justin most definitely did not want his wife embroiled in undercover adventuring with yet another of her aristocratic countrymen, however innocent and worthy the cause. But he could not remove her from the queen's side until she had been dismissed and Marie Antoinette appeared to be enjoying herself.

Danielle had chosen to play the part of ingenue during this visit to the French court. It was one that provided a perfect mask for what she was really about and people talked freely in front of the little de St. Varennes, who was such a sweet child with her innocent questions and naive observations. The queen found her delightful and was now much amused as the world-weary sophisticate played gently with the innocent who tossed her head coquettishly and blushed prettily. The comte was equally delighted-the child was making it so easy for him. He would turn her head tonight, be cool and distant tomorrow, and repeat the process until she knew nothing but a piqued confusion. The rest should be simple . . .

"Madame." It was Linton's deep voice.

"Ah, Linton. Are you acquainted with the Comte de St. Estephe? He has been amusing your wife quite wickedly."

"I am indeed grateful to you, St. Estephe," Justin said smoothly. Danielle's hand slipped into his and he smiled down at her. The look that the comte intercepted threw that gentleman back on his heels. It was not, then, as he had thought. This was no marriage of convenience between a man of middle years reluctantly accepting the family duty, and an eligible young aristocrat with many childbearing years ahead of her-a giddy young woman who could be persuaded of the dullness of her loveless marriage and her ent.i.tlement to one brief fling:- The comte decided that he must avoid jumping to conclusions in future. The game would take rather longer to play, and he must have a care to his hand-something a little more devious than his original plan which had, after all, been rather crude. No, on the whole, he decided that he was pleased with this turn of events. The St. Estephes had waited close on forty years for their revenge on the house of Linton-a little longer would make no difference.

"I wish for some music," Marie Antoinette declared, suddenly bored now that the appearance of the chit's husband had put an end to St. Estephe's flirtation. "Danielle, you will play for us."

"I play indifferent well, Madame," Danielle demurred, and a deep frown of displeasure darkened Her Majesty's countenance.

"I should like to be the judge of that myself," she said coldly.

"As you command, Madame." Danielle curtsied and made haste to obey the royal edict.

"Now you may regret your misspent youth and wish you had practiced a little more," Justin teased in a low whisper as he escorted her to the spinet.

"That is unkind, milord." But she could not help a chuckle. "Anyway, it is Toinette who will suffer." She took her seat on the embroidered bench. "Do not stand beside me, Justin. It will only make me nervous."

"I was intending to turn the music for you," he said with a fair a.s.sumption of hurt.

"Then you will have idle hands, for I shall use no music."

Justin barely controlled his grin as he wondered what she was about. This conventional gathering would not take kindly to Danielle's extensive repertoire of earthy country songs, particularly if she chose to extemporize as she did at home, much to the somewhat shocked amus.e.m.e.nt of Jules and his friends. He left her and took a seat where he could see her face without his observation disturbing her concentration.

Danielle thought for a moment, her fingers running over the keyboard as she dug out the memory. Then, with a small satisfied nod, she began to play, singing softly at first and then with increasing power as the memory of long afternoons in Languedoc took over from this grim, stuffy room of as yet unacknowledged imprisonment. She played the songs her mother had played, Cornish folk songs and the songs of Languedoc-the songs of the people, sometimes haunting and plaintive, sometimes filled with the elemental joy of those who lived their lives by the elements.

What was she? St. Estephe gazed in fascination. She played and sang from memory the words of a culture that few in this room had ever acknowledged existed, let alone troubled to learn. And there was no mockery in her hands or voice. He glanced at the husband who sat smiling, eyes half closed, clearly quite at ease with this facet of his wife. Perhaps the child was not the simpleton she appeared. The comte looked around the room. In general, attempting to entertain this court was a thankless activity. Conversation scarcely paused and even 'Toinette lost interest after the first few bars. But the de St. Varennes was heard in silence. The applause when she had finished was muted, but when she looked to the queen for permission to leave the spinet she received an imperative beckoning finger, "Where did you learn those pretty songs, Danielle?"

"From my mother, Madame," Danielle replied. "I am happy that they pleased you."

"They provided a most refres.h.i.+ng change," Marie Antoinette said. "A little light, of course, but that is no bad thing these days. You shall play for us again tomorrow."

Danielle accepted her dismissal with a deep curtsy and even deeper relief. She was now free to leave the salon and did so with a comprehensive look at Justin that told him to follow her with all decent haste.

He did so within the half hour and found her in a silk wrapper pacing the bedchamber like a jungle cat suddenly behind bars. "Justin, if you do not take me out of here for a few hours, immediatement, I shall go quite mad and I am sure you would not care for a wife in Bedlam."

"No, I do not think that would be at all the thing," he concurred gravely and was rewarded with an involuntary chuckle.

"Justin, I am quite in earnest," Danny persisted. "I cannot continue in this way without relief."

"Forgive me, my love, but I was under the impression that this was what you wanted. You went to considerable trouble to achieve this end, as I recall." It was quite irresistible, but Justin regretted the teasing remark instantly as a veritable tempest of shoes, books, and pillows was launched at his head with Danielle's usual accuracy, accompanied by a torrent of invective that seemed even richer than usual.

"Danny, do stop," he begged, dodging a flying hairbrush that crashed into the wall, narrowly missing the mirror.

"How you can say such a thing after everything I have been through," she stormed. "All those women, chatter, chatter all the time, and the place is so dirty and it stinks! But you go where you please, talk to whomever you please, amuse yourself. . ."

"Danny, I do not amuse myself. I am merely executing my half of the task whilst you execute yours."

"Oh, yes. That is so easy to say, is it not? Tomorrow, you may stay here and I will put on my britches and visit the Palais Royal..."

"You will not." Her husband was betrayed into a shout of protest, knowing full well that Danny never made idle threats.

"And why not, pray? I should do every bit as well as you, I daresay; probably better since the language is my own."

"That may be so, but I will not permit it." Odd's breath! One of these days he would learn not to say that! But before he could soften the statement Danny had dived beneath the bed to emerge in the wink of an eye and with the heavy porcelain chamber pot which she brandished menacingly over her head.

Justin tried not to laugh as she advanced on him, a slender, scantily clad figure rigid with a determination that he knew he must diffuse. "Danny, if you try anything with that d.a.m.ned pot, I shall use your hairbrush in a manner for which it was not intended." He backed away, watching her warily, and saw with relief the sudden speculative gleam in the brown eyes.

"You would not." Danielle paused in her tracks.

"Throw it and see," he responded.

She lowered the prospective missile. "Now you have made me want to laugh," she reproached with a comical grimace. "That is most ungallant of you. I was enjoying my anger."

"Well, I have a better way for you to utilize your surplus energy. Put on your britches and we will go together to the Palais Royal."

"That was exactly what I wished to propose until you made that nasty remark."

"For which I beg a thousand pardons." He apologized meekly and Danielle chuckled as she threw off the wrapper and donned her beloved britches, twisting her hair into a knot that disappeared beneath the cloth cap.

"Molly is sleeping well," she informed Justin. "I think she has quite recovered from her sickness, but tomorrow I will buy food that she may prepare for herself. It will be better so, do you not think?"

"I think so," he agreed, walking to the open window looking out over the garden. "I will meet you under the third tree. Come here and let me show you."

Danielle was instantly beside him and he slipped an arm around the narrow waist. "I will leave first since my comings and goings will not be questioned. Follow me in five minutes. If you are challenged by the guards, I feel sure you will find a way to persuade them of your credentials."

"Mais, bien sur, milord. I am a mere servant lad in search of a putain."

"A part you will play to perfection," he said dryly. "In five minutes then."

While the Earl and Countess of Linton roamed the cafes and clubs of the Palais Royal, listening to the impa.s.sioned talk and maintaining a generally low profile except for the occasions when Danny entered the ring with all the enthusiasm of a backstreet worker and turned the conversation into an alley that provoked the interests of the information-gatherers, Roland, Comte de St. Estephe, sat in his darkened chamber and thought of his father on his death bed.

The old man had been as vicious under the imminent sword of death as he had been all his life, the words spurting forth with a venom that exhausted his last strength. But he had exacted the promise from his son and heir that the insult would not go unavenged. His wife had paid dearly for her infidelity with the young English earl, but the earl himself, when challenged, had turned the tables and driven his point through the shoulder of the comte. He had refrained from delivering the coup de grace in tacit acknowledgment that he had been in the wrong-one did not seduce another man's wife with impunity, but unknowingly he had left alive an enmity that would span the next generation.

Roland, throughout his childhood, had become accustomed to the abuse inflicted upon his mother and had learned the lesson well. By the age of twelve he was s.e.xually active and used the maidservants freely. They had little choice but to submit to the rape and those few who resisted bore the marks of their resistance as examples to their fellows.

The contempt for womankind engendered in the young Roland by his father's brutalization of his mother became crystallized when he heard the death-bed story. He stopped not to consider that his mother may have sought, like Louise de St. Varennes, a brief respite from the abuse that was her lot in life, thought only of the betrayal and, after his father's death, treated the widow with the same venomous cruelty that she had received in her husband's lifetime-and all women who fell into his path, vulnerable and eager for his attentions. Women deserved no other form of treatment and he would take his father's revenge on the house of Linton through the woman. It was entirely appropriate and when Linton, after the event, challenged him then he would face a finer swordsman than his father had faced and there would be no quarter this time from the "guilty" party.

But how to achieve the seduction of a bride who looked with such doe eyes at her husband? The fact that Linton appeared to love his wife merely added spice to St. Estephe's plans, but if the wife could not be persuaded to play her husband false . .. He smiled in the darkness. There were many methods of persuasion and he had always preferred the less gentle ones, particularly with such a diminutive, fair-skinned piece of frailty.

Closing his eyes, the comte mused pleasurably on the prospect of having that frail body in his hands. She wo'uld not resist him for long and when he eventually returned her to her husband ... The excitement brought about by these reflections sent the comte off in search of release and the young kitchen maid that he found was, as a result, unable to leave her bed for a week.

The next morning he positioned himself behind a tapestry screen in the corridor outside the Lintons' apartments. He thought it unlikely he would succeed in taking her from the palace, but his plans would be best laid after careful observation of her movements.

The earl left the chamber first and strode purposefully down the corridor, elegant yet unremarkable in a silver gray cloth jacket and knee britches. He looked as if he had business other than pleasure to attend to, St. Estephe reflected, but the nature of that business was not what concerned him.

What did concern him emerged some ten minutes later and the comte stared in disbelief. The young countess was almost unrecognizable in a dull round gown of brown merino, stolid, serviceable, and horribly bourgeois. She wore a plain chip hat with a heavy veil, carried a wicker shopping basket of the kind carried by all French housewives, and was accompanied by a wan-faced maidservant, also with a basket.

"Let us make haste, Molly. I do not wish to be seen abovestairs in this guise. Once we are in the back corridors we will be unremarked."

The comte waited until they had rounded a corner and then followed stealthily as they made for the working part of the palace. The Tuileries and the Louvre housed over two thousand souls of every station in life and the presence of a respectable French matron clearly on her way to market would attract no attention. Danielle exchanged cheerful greetings with those they pa.s.sed and the comte gasped in surprise. Cone was the delicate speech of the aristocrat, in its place a country tw.a.n.g. What the devil was she? he wondered for the second time.

He followed at a discreet distance as they walked briskly through the streets of a city that in these days was far from a quiet, restful place of residence. Street corners were covered with posters announcing the latest regulations of the commune, print shops abounded, and the sellers of newspapers cried their papers and pamphlets from every doorway.

His quarry appeared unaffected by the signs of tension, the beating of a drum, the sudden alerting peal of a church bell, the pounding of a patrol of militia down narrow alleyways. She went in and out of shops, haggling ferociously over the price of an ell of stuff and a yard of ribbon. In the open market on the rue St.Andre des Arts she bought bread, wine, fruit, and cheese, selecting the produce with all the fastidious care evinced by her fellow shoppers with whom she blended as easily as a chameleon on a leaf. Not even one of the spies of the comite des recherches, mingling with the crowds, noting looks and recording remarks, would find anything unusual about her.

But why? St. Estephe was quite at a loss as the conviction grew that there was much more to the Countess of Lin ton than met the eye-a master of disguise who sang the songs of the people! Quite clearly he was going to have to find out a great deal more about her before making his move; and London was the place to glean that information. But he couldn't leave Paris at the moment. Not until he saw which way the political wind would blow eventually; not while he had a foot in both camps.

Part 3: The b.u.t.terfly.

Chapter 17.

St. Estephe was a shrewd and cautious man, building contacts amongst the revolutionary factions as carefully as he played the committed aristocrat at court. When France decided which way it would jump, he intended to be on the right side, preserving his material wealth in the only way possible-by a position of undisputed power in the government that must at some point stabilize. For the moment he played a waiting game, sensing the potential danger in aligning himself too soon with any one faction-unlike that ambitious fool Mirabeau, whose domineering manners and open desire for power had alienated both sides. The king rejected his advice and the king's confidants would not listen to him and he was without credibility in the a.s.sembly, for all that he was quite the most capable politician around at the moment.

St. Estephe would play his cards close to his chest-he cared not whether the king or the people achieved the final sovereignty but he knew that it would not be found in a middle course of moderation and compromise, and he would play whatever part was necessary when the time came. To do that, he must remain in Paris with his ear to the ground. The matter of Danielle and her husband must wait awhile longer. It would come to no harm for the keeping.

Four days later, as firmly convinced as St. Estephe of the inevitability of a volcano of blood and horror that would tear the country apart, Justin and Danielle left Paris with a relief that was only surpa.s.sed by Molly's.

In the peace of the Cornish countryside, the married lovers pa.s.sed an idyllic summer during which Danielle displayed an inordinate interest in making love in the strangest surroundings. Her powers of invention delighted her husband who, as Lady Lavinia remarked to the Earl of March, appeared to grow younger by the day.

"I do not care for this at all, Justin."

Justin looked up from his solitary repast in the breakfast room at Danesbury the Christmas morning following their excursion to Paris and surveyed his wife. She was an entrancing sight as she came into the room-the white velvet wrapper as crisp as the snow-covered landscape beyond the French doors, her hair tumbling unconfined to her shoulders. Her feet were bare, he noticed, but at Danesbury Danielle rarely conformed and, as a result, their guests were always carefully selected. So far, not one of the small group had emerged from their bedchambers this holiday morning, but it was not yet ten o'clock. Linton, after failing to persuade an unusually drowsy Danielle to join him, had taken an early ride and was now addressing his breakfast with some enthusiasm.

"What business, my love?" he prompted when she seemed disinclined to expand her comment.

"This business of babies," she announced, lifting her bare toes to the crackling fire. "I was not aware that it would make one puke so distressingly, but it is the same every morning . . ."

"What did you say?" The earl choked on a mouthful of beef and had recourse to his tankard of ale.

"I beg your pardon," she apologized, warming her other foot. "It is a very vulgar word, but it is actually a very vulgar activity-this vomiting."

"I do not care what you call it," her husband spluttered.

"What is it that you are saying?"

"Why, that I do not care to be sick every morning." Her eyes widened innocently. "But Grandmaman

says it is good because it means that the baby has taken firm hold . .."

"What baby?" Linton exploded, wondering if he had taken leave of his senses.

"Yours, of course, milord." She turned from the fire and smiled.

"Danielle, I do not quite understand." Linton spoke carefully. "Are you saying that you have decided to

conceive, or that you have already done so?"

"You are a slow top this morning, sir," she chided. "I would hardly complain in antic.i.p.ation of discomfort; it is not my way."

"Come here." He pushed back his chair and patted his knee imperatively.

Danny deposited herself firmly on his lap and reached for a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter from the table.

"It helps sometimes," she informed him, taking a healthy bite. "A little plain food seems to soothe the stomach. I cannot imagine, though, how I ever cared for coffee." She glared at the silver pot on the sideboard with the utmost distaste.

"Stop playing games now, Danielle." Linton turned her face toward him. "You have amused yourself at my expense quite sufficiently. When do you expect the child?"

"In June." She kissed his nose. "I did not mean to tease you so abominably, Justin, but . . ."

"You couldn't help yourself," he finished for her with a chuckle. "I wonder if you will ever be anything but an outrageous wretch, Danny."

"Do you wish me to be?" She scanned his face with a small frown.

"No." He shook his head. "And I can only hope that if you provide me with a daughter she will take after her mother."

"And if it is a son, he must take after his father," she said softly, placing her mouth firmly on his.

"Oh, beg pardon." Julian burst into this scene of conjugal harmony. "Didn't mean to be de trop."

"Oh, you are not, Jules," Danielle rea.s.sured, making no attempt to move from her husband's knee.