Forbidden (59 page)

Good God… Etienne thought.

"And bring me pleasure?"

"Truly Your Holiness, I live to serve you."

"We'll see," he said, as if in grudging reluctance he might allow her that office. He released her nipples, leaving her kneeling before him, waiting for his next command, docile and subdued. Taking his erection in his hands, he stroked it as Isabelle avidly watched, bringing its rigid length to a full turgid arousal.

"Have you been applying yourself to your handmaiden lessons?" he asked, languidly stroking his erection.

"Yes, absolutely, sir."

"Do you think you've reached a level of performance I would find satisfactory?" He circled the shiny red crest of his tumescent manhood with a slender finger while he watched her eager gaze.

"I've been most diligent in my studies, Your Worship," she breathed, her rapt eyes focused on the casual stroking of his fingers.

"Very well, we'll allow you a small compensation for your studious activities. Pleasure me," he said in a deliberate, commanding tone, "with your sinful mouth."

And Etienne watched with a curious detachment as his wife leaned over and drew the young pale-haired priest's aroused manhood into her mouth with an avid enthusiasm and skill and competence that did indeed indicate some lessons well learned. She sucked and licked and nibbled on the engorged and gleaming wet erection at some length while the priest's slender hands squeezed and fondled Isabelle's breasts in absentminded unconcern. Di-vinely motivated or not, it was obvious before too long the young man was reaching his peak and even spiritual discipline wasn't going to stop his orgasm. "On the couch," the priest curtly ordered a few short moments later, as if he were a general and not a clergyman, and Isabelle jumped to obey, lying open for him, guiding his rampant erection into her, like a dutiful handmaiden, clasping him in her arms and moaning softly as he drove into her with a frenzied violence.

The fair-haired man groaned softly in only seconds more, collapsing on the twenty-seventh Duchesse de Vec as though she were a scullery maid.

In a way this odd arrangement made Isabelle more human, Etienne reflected. He'd wondered all these years what she'd done with her life. But now he'd seen…

And no one could accuse him any longer of being the only libertine de Vec.

He was genuinely smiling when he opened the door to the hallway and then stepped from behind the screen.

"Good afternoon," he said, mildly surveying the astonished young priest lying on top of his wife. "I don't believe we've met. I'm de Vec. And that, I believe, is my wife warming your cock."

"Get out!" Isabelle screamed, an unholy rage glaring from her eyes.

"My, my, such a tone for a handmaiden of the Lord. I'm shocked." Etienne calmly settled his large frame into one of Isabelle's pastel and gilt chairs. "Had I known how pious inspiration stimulated you, darling, I would have embraced religion years ago. A truly awesome performance. And heated from my vantage point. You have a bit of sweat on your upper lip, darling."

"I'll have you thrown out," Isabelle snarled, attempting to move the body of the stupefied young man from atop her.

"By this slender young man? Really?" Etienne's smile was angelic, his breadth of shoulder twice that of the pale priest's. "Ah, there you are, Charbeau," he said to the footman entering the room, satisfaction evident in his voice. "Would you say I've found my wife in an um indelicate situation?"

"Yes, sir, Your Grace. My word on it in court."

"Get
off me
, Roger!" Isabelle exploded, shoving the startled young man onto the floor. "Who are you?" she shouted at Char-beau, arrogant even in her denouement. She stood before him naked, putting on her lace robe without a thought for his presence.

"You work here? Who hired you? I'll have their heads! You're dismissed. Get out!"

He had to give her points for noblesse. She had neither humility nor remorse, only this melodramatic rage. "It's a little late for theatrics, Isabelle," the Duc quietly said, "although," he added with a wicked smile, "you have a wonderful flair for acting. I never realized you could be so submissive." His dark brows rose in compliment. "I'm truly amazed."

"Roger, find your damn clothes and get out of here!" Isabelle commanded, she the general now, their roles reversed.

A more familiar posture for the Duc to comprehend. "Get his name," Etienne said to Charbeau as he watched the man struggle into his long cassock while he was moving toward the door, his crested underwear abandoned on Isabelle's couch.

"Yes, sir."

By this time, several servants had converged in the hall outside, standing well back from the open door, fearful of approaching too closely with the Duchesse's voice raised to that familiar pitch.

The Duc smiled at them all and waved a greeting before he closed the door behind the retreating figures of the priest and Charbeau.

"I have the legal right to shoot you and your lover dead," he pleasantly said, turning back to Isabelle. "You're aware of that, I presume, since you've been so dedicated to the infinite details of divorce these past months. Unfortunately, you don't have the same option with me. Unfair, I know, but men, after all, devise these laws so it's to be expected." His voice was softly amused, his green eyes touched with a sardonic neutrality. While he understood the injustice of the law, he'd suffered, too, under the injustice of his brother-in-law's patronage. Life wasn't always fair.

"So—are we even now?"

"I hate you!"

"Somehow I already knew that," he said coolly. "What I'd like to know is whether we can now proceed with this divorce like reasonable adults or whether you wish to be brought into court to recount the events I just witnessed?"

"I'll say you lied."

"Charbeau is a bailiff."

"Charles can have him dismissed."

"This isn't the first time, Isabelle, you've amused yourself with these… advocates of God on earth, only the first time I've seen you. Bourges has several other incidents on file concerning you and your pretty young priests that only require time to fully develop as potent cases against you. The Pope isn't going to receive you anymore if this all becomes public. Think of the waste for all those lace mantillas you have that Flemish village produce for you each year."

"Divorce cases are sealed."

His smile was brutal. "You know how gossip is…damaging even without corroboration. How do they put those tantalizing tidbits in
The Herald
or
Le Figaro… Duchesse X was seen being spiritually invigorated by Monseigneur
Z,
secretary to an important Archbishop at the Minister of Justice's reception last June
. You're right. Nobody would know it was you."

"Charles can censor those papers."

"Don't count on it. Was Baptiste the first of your priestly lovers?" he asked, the black disgruntled looks he'd received years ago from the Montigny family cure finally explained.

"I won't discuss Baptiste with you!"

"Are the twins mine?" he asked in passing, out of a morbid curiosity only, because, as he recalled, the Montigny cure was slender with light brown hair and his children favored the de Vec size and coloring. Even Jolie was tall for a woman.

"Of course!"

"Don't act so offended, Isabelle. You could have been fucking him too. Although what's the polite period of time for you convent-bred ladies—a virgin at marriage or at least the look of it. I was never quite sure. Did you bring him to your bed once you knew you were pregnant with the required heir?"

"You disgust me!"

"Pardon me for speaking plainly. I forget how damned refined you are. When you fuck priests, does it obliterate the pungent odor of sweaty bodies… and illicit sin?"

"Baptiste always said you were an animal! How all the girls were grabbing you at the May Day in our village at Poisse. And you teasing them back like some peasant. You had hands like a peasant, too, Baptiste said, too large, like your body. Maybe governesses like loutish men—"

The Duc's eyes opened fractionally at the citation about Ursalina.

"He told me about your pretty little governess who taught you more than French literature!"

"Like your abbe, you mean. With hands like these, Isabelle, I'm surprised you consented to marry me. You shouldn't have lowered yourself. So many other families were angling for the de Vec fortune at the time, I wouldn't have been devastated. You should have run off with your parish priest."

"He was penniless."

"Ah…" the Duc softly sighed, everything suddenly… infintely clear. He was the husband who made the Montignys so much richer, while the abbe was not only already wed to the Church, but worse—he was poor.

Oddly, he felt relieved to know.

Over the years, he'd brushed off the inadequacies of his marriage, but Isabelle's indifference had left some scars on his youthful psyche. Time had exonerated the taint of personal blame when so many females found him tantalizing, but he'd never forgotten Isabelle's cold repudiation once she was the Duchesse de Vec. He'd always questioned whether the fault lay with him.

"It was never very pleasant, was it?" Etienne said in a low quiet voice, gazing at the woman he'd considered his wife for so long, overcome with the small ruin of their lives.

"Good Lord, Etienne," Isabelle said in impatient exasperation, "you always had that romantic streak. Romance has nothing to do with marriage. We lead lives like everyone else, like our parents did, and their parents."

"What about happiness?"

"Your newest bitch-in-heat can give you that. She's remarkably dark, by the way… like a blackamoor."

So much for the finer points of happiness as a philosophy, Etienne realized. "Nothing's as black as your damned heart, Isabelle," he said, a great wave of loathing and weariness overcoming him, reminding him of the utter lack of feeling in his wife for anyone but herself. "If I hear another word about Daisy, I guarantee you, I'll see that every last person in Paris has a description of your interesting display of religious eroticism. And while I've never been formally introduced to your dominant partner, I recognized the embroidered crest on his underwear," he said, glancing at the black silk left behind. "I don't think the Duc de Nantes will appreciate you corrupting his darling son. He has influence with the Pope, I understand. Maybe he could have you excommunicated or your hypocritical cousin the Archbishop. Think about that for a minute or so while you ponder your decision on our divorce. I'm in a hurry though, so be quick."

"Do I have a choice?"

"It depends on your threshold of humiliation and my vindictive tendencies. You've put me through hell, Isabelle, these last few months."

"I don't particularly care."

"That's honest at least. Shall we have our lawyers begin some preliminary negotiations… in say—an hour?"

"Impossible!"

"What's impossible?" he said menacingly.

She had the good sense to say, "The time… an hour's impossible."

"Maybe one of your spiritual advisors could contrive a miracle then, because I want Letheve at Bourges's office in one hour. I'm leaving for America tomorrow."

He could see the light dawn in her eyes—the narrow thing it would have been to have had him leave unknowing. "You bastard!" she exclaimed.

"You lucky bastard, you mean," he said with a grin. "Tell Letheve not to ask for too much," he quietly added, "because I'm still smarting over that railroad takeover attempt you participated in."

"I'll get you someday, Etienne. Damn you!"

"Maybe," he said, because he didn't doubt her malicious intent, "but think of the bright side, Isabelle. With all these divorce matters out of the way, now you'll have more time to be a 'handmaiden' to all those pale young men."

She was picking up one of his ancestor's Ming vases when he decided it was time to leave. "That comes out of your settlement, Isabelle," he said with a grin, making a break for the door.

"Two of them," he murmured, sprinting down the hall, a second vase following the first in crashing crescendo. When he reached the top of the stairway, he turned back and winced at the sight and sound of smashing porcelain. "Three."