Amour: Historical Romance (Passion and Glory Book 1) (11 page)

“Well, Madame, how comfortably the crown of hypocrisy sits upon your brow. The Comte de Marbéville for Julienne? I congratulate you. It is indeed an undeniable coup, and just a short time ago, based on your erstwhile assertions to me and many others who considered themselves your friends, I would have considered such a match unthinkable. Of course none of us, those of your so-called intimates, saw it coming, and you did not deign to confide even in me on such an important matter. To think I was actually naïve enough to believe all the things you said against Blaise and...what was it you called her? Ah yes, I remember now, his ‘black harlot,’ wasn’t it? Now you have her for a relation, so what, pray tell, do your actions make you besides patently deceitful and a hypocrite as well? How amusing we must seem to you now, those of us who were foolish enough to accept your words as truth and to love you!”

“Charlotte my dearest heart, I beg you to temper your passion and grant me leave to explain. I wanted to tell you, to confess everything in my heart to you as I have done in all other matters, but in truth it was my husband’s doing this time, not mine. Of course I had my reservations and still do, but Marbéville’s mother was French and noble. The marquis only went astray after her death.”

“How easily you absolve yourself of both blame and responsibility. You feel no shame to have betrayed your friends, your word, and all the assurances you have given? Need I remind you the lengths to which I have gone to support you, despite the power and influence of the marquis and his clique of friends, and the more obvious fact of my disagreeing entirely with all the White Hats stand for? Now you make me, and all who supported you look like the grandest of fools and dupes. Why should we—nay, why should I—trust you now, or even speak to you?” Madame de Talonge said hotly.

The baronne seemed completely unperturbed by Madame de Talonge’s accusations. In fact, she appeared to relish the heat coming in slow gentle cloudbursts from the comtesse. She moved closer, her voice soft, pleading and sincere.

“I knew you’d be cross, Lottie, it’s why I wanted to come to you today and explain myself, to beg you on my knees to forgive me. I know I’ve acted selfishly. Please allow me to make it up to you. Of course I shall do anything you wish.”

Agnès circled the comtesse until she was directly behind her, then pressed herself against the comtesse’s back. Her arms folded around the narrow waist of the comtesse. Charlotte willingly leaned back into the baronne’s embrace.

“And how do you propose to erase the enormity of your deceptions? How can I be sure I’m still your dear sweet Lottie?”

“I shall convince you of it in the most earnest and sincere manner.”

The baronne’s voice ached with tender longing. She kissed the comtesse behind the ear, then lower down on the side of the neck. It was a secret place they shared between them. One of the many amorous zones she had discovered and mapped on the hidden realm of the comtesse.

“And perhaps a little gift from me to you of, say, ten thousand livres
[iii]
, might help to ease your injured feelings?”

The comtesse closed her eyes, her lips in full pout as she allowed the baronne’s hands to stray persuadingly upward across her midriff.

“And what of our friends? What are we to say to them, Agnès?”

“Would a thousand for each troublesome meddler suffice? I shall give the whole amount to you at once, my dearest, and you may dispense it as you wish.”

Madame de Talonge let out a light laugh, placing her hands over the baronne’s busy fingers, which strummed the length of the comtesse’s torso as if playing a tender harp of flesh.

“Oh, Agnès, how I do love your money.”

The baronne allowed her hands to wander up from the comtesse’s midsection toward fuller, more enticing delights.

“Of course you do, my sweet, gentle dove. And other parts of me, which love you too. Which is why we get along so well. The two of us are birds of a feather.”

Madame de Talonge broke away from the baronne’s embrace, adjusting the neckline of her gown where the baronne had toyed with it, in the tall standing mirror near her armoire.

“Twenty thousand livres, Agnès, and in gold. That is the price of both your duplicity and your redemption.”

Madame de Salvagnac recoiled. For a moment her entire torso appeared frozen in time, like a Greek bronze rendered in exacting detail. She was about to protest, but the Venus of the Indies silenced her with two fingers, placed upon the baronne’s lips. Slowly, they traced a line from the cleft in the baronne’s chin down to the rapidly pulsing hollow at the base of her throat. The gentle press of lips against soft thumping skin found not cold unyielding metal, but the wondrous alchemy of yielding flesh.

“How I adore it when your heart races so, Agnès. It shows me how much I’m wanted. Grant me what I ask and I’ll do more than salvage your reputation amongst those who matter. For so great a sum, my sweet, I shall do what’s truly needed. I shall redeem even the marquise herself.”

Before the baronne could answer, the comtesse pressed her lips against the baronne’s mouth, offering her just the briefest taste of her long serpentine tongue. Then abruptly, she pulled back, withdrawing to a more discreet distance.

Singed by the heat of the comtesse’s kiss, the baronne craved for more than just a sampling of affection. “Do what you must, but can you not stay with me a little longer?”

“Come back and see me when you have the sum I require, then I shall know your heart is true. I promise I shall send all my servants away, maybe even Casimir, and we can be together, just the two of us, for an extended visit.”

Twenty-thousand livres was a very large sum and the baronne seemed to waver about how, precisely, she would procure it from her husband. To seal the bargain, the comtesse again moved forward. She took the baronne’s hand and raised it to her mouth, then began sucking on the baronne’s thumb, moaning softly in her throat as her head moved languidly back and forth.

“Lottie….oh my...”

The comtesse moved from finger to finger, then offered her own hand to the baronne’s waiting lips so Madame de Salvagnac might return the tender favor. As the baronne sucked greedily, the comtesse replaced fingers with lips, her kiss both ardent and urgent. The comtesse’s moistened fingers slipped beneath the low hemline of the baronne’s gown. The baronne felt the moist heat between her legs as the comtesse tweaked on one nipple, then the other. She, closed her eyes in bliss. Her breath came in short gasps. Then abruptly the hand was gone, taking the magic with it.

The baronne opened her eyes. The comtesse stood in front of the mirror, arranging her appearance.

The comtesse surveyed her make-up a final time and then turned to look directly at the baronne. “My price first, Agnès. The reward will be more than worth it.”

Madame de Talonge left the room without another word. The baronne watched her go with a forlorn sigh. She reproached herself with bitterness. How on earth could she convince her husband to part with the princely sum of twenty thousand livres?

Never mind your worries, you always find a way in the end. Just remember the blessed heaven you’ll have for recompense
. Madame de Salvagnac adjusted the wandering hem of her décolletage and pushed her friends back in place. Then she went out to join her hostess and the rest of the waiting guests.

“
Dear Nicolas.
No. That doesn’t have enough feeling.
Nicolas, my sweet.
Oh that sounds too much like the latest novel.
My most dear Nicolas…
”

Sérolène let out a long sigh of frustration. She returned the unused quill to its silver canister and stared across the room at the painting which hung to the left of her bed. The anonymous landscape of an idyllic Tuscan village was always a favorite place for her eyes to wander when she was bored or needed to think. The people in it seemed so industrious and happy, their lives all put to useful purpose.

“None of these will do at all. It’s my first love letter and I want it to be just so!”

The vicomtesse closed up her writing desk and sauntered distractedly toward the window. Outside in the garden, her
cousine
Éléonore was walking with their Governess, Madame Tarnaut. Before Éléonore could see her, Sérolène turned away. Éléonore’s constitution was fragile, so Sérolène was usually obliging whenever Éléonore summoned her to play. At the moment, however, she wasn’t in the mood to be drawn out.

Sérolène left her room and turned right toward the east wing of the house, dragging the longing to see Nicolas, along with her. It was unbearably heavy and settled deep in her chest like a stone, the weight of it making each step as aimless as her thoughts. Only seeing him again could lift the burden her soul now seemed to bear. She needed to be free of it if she were ever going to know happiness again. Just to see him, to talk to him, to watch the daylight kiss his cheek and shine in his magical green eyes, to illuminate the lips that she had kissed, when the sweetness and purity of his oath had made her forget herself and all that she owed to duty and restraint. But it had been beyond wonderful, that first magic kiss. And now she craved another like a drowning man craved air. Oh, when would she reach the surface and at last be able to breathe?

Why was Caesar looking at her? Or rather why was the marble bust of him? Sérolène stood outside her uncle’s library, where the life-sized half torso sat in a recessed ornate wall sconce. The daydream had carried her back to the place from which it had begun. Back to the library, where she had first met Nicolas. She went in. Not hurrying this time, but neither at ease. It was deserted as usual. She stared at the very chair Nicolas had been sitting in and felt his presence in the room, or was it in her heart. It didn’t seem to matter. She eased herself into the soft leather and imagined his arms folded around her. For a moment, the sensation even seemed real. She closed her eyes to prolong it. When she opened them again, they were pointed toward a red jacketed tome, one of hundreds in the neat and tidy rows of ordered bookshelves. It was the one with Ronsard’s Poems. The one Nicolas had been reading. She stood and took the book down, then sat in her beloved’s chair and ran her fingers over the engraved outer cover. Her uncle and aunt had gone to see Madame de Talonge. She had all the time she needed to seek a proper muse.

Sérolène opened the book to a random page and there it was. The perfect poem. The very words she’d been searching for to express the inexpressible. But Ronsard had made them ready, plain and beautiful. She carried the open book to her uncle’s desk at the far end of the room and set it down on the polished walnut surface. From the top drawer to the right she withdrew a single sheet of paper and centered it on the desktop. She took a long, grey, goose quill and dipped it in the inkwell, letting the feathered end tickle the underside of her chin as she gazed again at the words of Ronsard. In a long and elegant hand, she began to write.

My dearest beloved. I don’t know the proper way to begin, nor to express all the affectionate feelings I have for you. But remembering the tender moment when our lips first touched, I have, in these few lines below, attempted to make Ronsard speak for your La Bouhaire.

Embrasse-moi, baise-moi, serre-moi,

Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie,

Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie

Mon amour veut tout sans nombre,

Mon amour n'a point de loi

Du crépuscule à l'aube j’attendre

Mon amour ne veut que toi.
[iv]

How I miss you and think of you every day. I pray you feel the same and have not forgotten me. Forever your dearest,

Sérolène

The sun shone through the clouds. Melancholy gave way to relief. Doubt yielded to hope. At least the first part of her mission had been accomplished. Sérolène regarded her handiwork a final time, folded the paper with care and sealed it in an envelope. She applied her lips as a seal and then the heated wax, waiting nervously until it was cool enough to conceal in the bodice of her gown. She returned Ronsard to his perch on the shelf, then began to make her way back toward her room, where she would conceal her treasure until it could be delivered.

But how on earth am I to accomplish so difficult a thing?
There were so many practical obstacles to completing the last and most important step of her task. How was such a thing to be accomplished? Who could she turn to for help? The empty length of the central hallway provided no answers. Nor did the many vacant sitting rooms she passed.

“Mademoiselle de La Bouhaire?”

The voice was familiar but Sérolène couldn’t place its owner by sound alone. It came from inside the sitting room she had just passed. She heard footsteps and waited for them to conjure the voice’s owner in the hallway. The upper part of a man’s torso leaned out into the corridor.

“Monsieur de Marbéville!” Sérolène exclaimed, curtseying at the sight of Julienne’s intended.

The comte beamed back in greeting. He was wearing a suit of similar pattern to the one she’d first seen him in, but of much lighter hue, a shade between copper and tan. Sérolène thought the change in color suited him very well. 

“How delightful to see you again, Mademoiselle. I came to pay a call on Julienne and was shown here to wait. I happened to see you pass along the hallway. I hope you don’t mind me being so forward as to call out to you. Since I’m to marry your dear
cousine
soon
,
I should hope you would consider me as a brother to be.”

“I don’t mind at all, Monsieur,” Sérolène replied. 

The Comte de Marbéville offered Sérolène his arm.

“Might I escort you to the
salon de compagnie
? I should very much enjoy your company while I await the arrival of my beloved.”

“Thank you, Monsieur, I’d be most happy to keep you company,” Sérolène agreed.

Perhaps here was her opportunity! When they reached the salon, the comte guided her to a seat, but instead of sitting, Sérolène quickly turned away from the comte to reach into the folds of her gown. When she turned back toward him, she held a small envelope in her hands.

“Please, Monsieur, I beg of you. Would you give this letter in confidence to Nicolas? I know it’s very unexpected that I should ask, but I understand he trusts no one more than you. You are my only means of reaching him.”

Sérolène held out the letter for the comte to take. He hesitated. The sound of approaching footsteps rendered Sérolène’s plight, and the need for the comte to decide, ever more urgent.

“Please Monsieur, I beseech you as a brother. You are my only hope!”

The comte reached out to secure the letter, tucking it inside his waistcoat just as Julienne entered the room. “I shall do it. But we shall speak later of this matter.”

“My dear Francis, what a pleasant surprise!”

Julienne’s voice was full of warmth, but her eyes measured the proximity of Sérolène to her betrothed, with cool calculation. Julienne strode forward to receive the comte’s greeting, stepping in front of her
cousine
to emphasize her place. Sérolène gladly stepped back and moved to the side.

“How radiant you look, my dearest. I’m sorry to have disturbed you, but I wished to inform you of the arrangements being made with regard to the signing of the wedding contract and other matters pertinent to us. I happened to see Mademoiselle de La Bouhaire pass by as I waited and she was generous enough to do me the honor of keeping me brief company,” Francis explained.

Julienne looked back toward Sérolène, signaling with her eyes that she needn’t stay any longer.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I should go and practice my lessons on the pianoforte…or harp. Good day, Monsieur de Marbéville. It was very nice talking to you.”

Sérolène cast a last hopeful glance toward Francis before hurrying out of the room. Julienne watched her go, then led the comte by the hand to a comfortable
marquise
, where she coaxed him to sit next to her.

“I wonder what’s gotten into her. She’s been acting very peculiar as of late,” Julienne remarked.

“I suppose the fault must be mine. Perhaps I shouldn’t have disturbed her. I take it she is not often in the company of gentlemen?”

“Lena? Why, of course not. She is still young, and the greater part of her experience and education has been acquired behind the walls of the convent. It’s only in the last year Papa has allowed her to be out more in general society.”

“Have any plans been made for her as of yet, my dear?”

“Not yet, Francis, though I suppose they cannot be far off. But as of now she is unattached and no soundings or plans have been made.”

Julienne’s tone of voice was even, but she began to wonder why her betrothed was showing so much interest toward her
cousine
. She smiled warmly at Francis. He took it for the warning that it was.

“Well, my dear sweet Julienne, enough of such trifles. Since we last parted, your sweet lips have been an enduring preoccupation of my mind. Might I prevail upon you, as your future husband, to grant me the favor of another kiss? A token of consideration to strengthen our bonds and ease my suffering, sweet though it may be.”

Julienne was delighted by the boldness of the comte’s question, though to accede to his request bordered on the improper, despite their engagement. But no one was there to watch them. She had made sure that Madame Tarnaut, their Governess, was preoccupied with her sister Éléonore. And of course her parents were out visiting Madame de Talonge.

Julienne leaned in toward Francis, pressing her shoulders inward so that her delightful bosom was displayed to best advantage. She allowed her eyes to stroll over the comte’s body, lacing her voice with practiced coquetry.

“You have missed me, Monsieur? Truly?”

“I have indeed, Mademoiselle.”

Julienne stared with feigned shock just below the comte’s belt, then laughed as Francis crossed his legs to conceal the extent of his admiration. He ran his fingers lightly across the top of her gown, caressing her neck and cheek.

“You see I spoke truly. If you should find it meet to--”

The rest of his words were swallowed up by her mouth upon his, their lips and then their tongues finding each other in a delicate sweet ballet which both were eager to begin. It was Julienne, however, who managed the duration and ardor of the kiss. And it was some time before she chose to come up for air.

“Dear Francis. How long must it be until we are married?”

This time, the want in her voice was real. It was in her eyes too. Francis could see that. And it was also somewhere much lower down that he could only dream about. At least for now.

“Thank you for reminding me of the purpose of my call, Mademoiselle, though it pales in comparison to the receipt of such tender favors.”

Julienne leaned her head on Francis’ shoulder and took his larger hand in her own. She pressed it to her lips and held it. Content to remain close to him in silence.

“It is the preference of my family to hold the principal ceremony of the wedding in Paris, to ensure the attendance of certain important members of the court. But the actual signing of the marriage contract will take place here on the island, and no later than the end of the year.”

Julienne pouted. “But that’s almost three months away!”

“I know, my dearest, but there’s much to be done in preparation. I assure you the time will pass quickly enough.”

“I don’t know if I can wait so long, dear Francis. I know I must remain chaste until we are married, but when you kiss me so sweetly, I feel rather less inclined to be so resolved.”

Francis was more than happy to hear such a confession.

“I promise I shall do all I can to hurry things along if it should please you, my dear.”

Julienne pressed his hand to her lips again. She lifted her head so that she could see his face. It seemed to Francis that there was something she wanted to ask.

“What is it, my sweet? Is there something you wish to ask of me?”

Julienne nodded. “There is something, Francis. Will you promise not to be angry at my question?”

The comte squeezed her hand in reassurance. “Of course, my dearest. You are to be my wife. We must confide in each other in all things.”

Encouraged by this pronouncement, Julienne decided to broach the subject she’d wanted to discuss ever since the night of their engagement.