Under a Stern Reign (3 page)

The radical upheavals in Paris after the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 had been too distant to disturb de Tranville in his quiet, provincial abode, and he had not felt it necessary to leave the country along with many of his friends that year.

But the bloody purges that swept through the land from the summer of 1793 now wracked him with worry. He would often spend his nights pacing nervously up and down in his bedchamber, unable to find sleep.

The Reign of Terror, and the betrayals, arrests and executions of noblemen suspected of being counter-revolutionaries presented him with far greater danger than ever before. So many of his well-to-do friends and acquaintances in Paris and the provinces had been rounded up like cattle and butchered simply because of their aristocratic blood and a handful of wild allegations by resentful commoners calling themselves officials.

And he knew the same fate could befall him. Only seven months earlier his harmless, dear old friend, the Marquis de Montvert, had been executed along with all but one member of his family.

De Tranville remained reluctant to flee France, though, as apparent as the dangers of the revolution now were. His fears had become too well counterbalanced by both the love he felt for his ancestral home and his adulterous relationship with a local woman who would not agree to leave with him, should he ever ask her to.

She was a buxom, discreetly licentious brunette, and the wife of the local town mayor. She had indulged in numerous affairs during her fourteen-year marriage and the count prized her as a seasoned and urbane lover. They had begun their afternoon liaisons the previous year, and as the relationship grew so his sense of personal safety waned.

But at nights the fears flooded back and his dreams became interspersed with visions of his old friends being hounded by predatory bureaucrats, chained in stinking dungeons and decapitated before jubilant, bloodthirsty mobs.

But the turbulent times were far from the count's mind on that warm April afternoon in the year of 1794, as he eagerly awaited his mistress. Her arrival was seldom punctual and there was still no sight of her. But he could see his dark-haired stepdaughter Elise, walking with their new lodger Genevieve. The sweet young blonde was the daughter of his close friend, de Montvert, guillotined in Lyons seven months earlier.

Watching Elise walking with Genevieve on the other side of the bridge sent a shiver through the count; the previous day he was gazing at the portrait of his wife in the library. When Elise's mother had been taken from the world suddenly by pneumonia six winters ago, she left the count too devastated to pay much attention to her sulky teenage daughter. But the girl had truly blossomed. She was now even more darkly beautiful than the sultry beauty he married eight years before.

It was strange how life could rob him of his wife and now replace her with these two beauties. Together they seemed like night and day, and either of them could stir the passions of even the most lackadaisical of men. They were his, though neither belonged to him in blood, and neither belonged to him in bed.

For a fleeting moment he imagined himself being the lover of both young women. He studied them and pictured himself showering kisses on the napes of each of their graceful necks, caressing Genevieve's fair, svelte and silky body, nibbling the inside of Elise's warm limbs.

He imagined how he might one day find Genevieve doing something wrong, and chastise her in the library, sweeping his palm down vigorously on those virgin buttocks, as he had once done with Elise, not so long ago. Then he tried to chase the thoughts away as quickly as he always did when they occurred.

The last time he had punished Elise was a sensitive matter for him. It was two years ago and she had just turned twenty at the time. He had hired a new kitchen maid, a delightful slip of a girl, with long fair hair and doll's eyes. Genevieve vaguely reminded him of her, and he had only just started to enjoy her young body himself after instructing her to bring him his breakfast of warm chocolate and cakes each morning. He asked her to sit with him awhile on the first morning, and she did so with an enchanting smile. His loins stirred as he watched her coy face and glimpsed the upper slopes of her creamy breasts above her corset, and seeing his manhood rise beneath his nightshirt she had no qualms about taking it in her hand, as if examining some unusual object.

Despite her virginal looks the maid seemed to be acquainted with such practices. She rubbed it pleasingly and took it in her mouth, and the count was delighted in what seemed to be the start of a pleasant adventure for each morning.

But soon after he discovered the perverse relationship that had developed between the girl and Elise. The little nymph would have been such a delight, but how had she become entangled in those strange incidents with Elise?

What wicked spirits had possessed his stepdaughter at that time, and why would she be applying such cruel and intimate treatment to not only another young wench, but to the beauty he had handpicked strictly with his own pleasures in mind?

He'd had to dismiss the comely maid, with much regret and despite her sobbing tale of innocence. He recalled how lovely he had found her and her caressing lips on that first morning... and how voluptuous he found Elise's naked body as he thrashed her in his library.

The punishment had seemed to do the trick, for in the two years since he had encountered no further evidence of Elise's lusts and inclinations towards other maids.

It was also strange how mother and daughter could be so alike, he reflected. The hot-blooded woman with long blue-black hair and dark nature seemed to have been reborn in his stepdaughter, Elise. It was not just her looks. The girl carried herself with the same natural poise and confidence in her own desirability. And it was uncanny how, along with her beauty, she had the same way of instinctively instilling fear into servants and peasants alike. It was more than just the firmness of her voice or the coldness of her tone. There was something in the eyes. The same flickering flames when anger gripped her or when she was up to mischief.

How could someone as wilful as Elise now become so close to a girl as gentle as Genevieve de Montvert? As personalities went the golden-haired guest seemed to have little in common with Elise... except youthful beauty, of course.

The count's keen eye noted the shapeliness of Genevieve's slighter contours each time they met, and though they were not as pronounced as those of Elise, they belied the innocence of her soft eyes and announced to the world that the fruit of her womanhood was full and ready.

Unable to resist the distraction, the count again began to imagine being the lover of the girls. He imagined them naked, which was not hard to do with Elise, for he had seen her so and the delicious vision remained embedded.

From afar he studied Genevieve intently, savouring her beauty, but his musings were caught short, for a coach was moving along the road leading to Chateau Tranville. It was the wife of the local town mayor arriving at last, so he hastily chased his improper thoughts of the girls away.

 

Genevieve did not notice the approach of Madame Margaret Coubette's coach as she strolled with Elise. Her thoughts were too preoccupied with her companion. Her shock over the arrest of her family had overwhelmed her, but now, seven months on, she was becoming more and more absorbed by the world of de Tranville's chateau and his stepdaughter.

Seven months before a faithful elderly maid, Madeleine, managed to hide her when a revolutionary committee led a mob to her home. They took away her parents and her elder brother, Gustav. Madeleine hid her in a broom cupboard while they ransacked the de Montvert estate, and it was the last she saw of her family. The terrible news of their execution was broken to her one week after Madeleine took her by coach to Count de Tranville.

And while mourning their loss over the following days, a further loss was added. Madeleine died too, the strain of the times proving too much for her aged heart.

It took Genevieve quite some time to adjust to her new life, the count seeming distant while Elise was new to her in all ways. She was deeply shy of her at first. The thoughtful young lady was singularly attractive, but there was something so daunting in the boldness of her tone and manner.

As the months passed, though, so too did her shyness. They began to talk more freely and Genevieve became enchanted by the courteous and generous nature of her dark-haired companion, as well as the frequent compliments she paid to her own fair beauty.

It was thus, that by that afternoon in April, the two girls had found themselves enjoyably locked in conversations on a subject that was now at the top of Genevieve's interests - love. She had so many questions to ask and was intrigued by Elise's curious views.

‘But why do you distrust men so?' she laughed softly as they walked together.

‘Men are simply cruel boys that temporarily pretend to be poets,' Elise replied curtly. ‘When they like a woman they capture her heart with beautiful ideas and words,' she explained, staring mirthfully into Genevieve's clear eyes. ‘But just like spoilt boys they need to be entertained or else they get bored and roam away in search of other amusements. As boys become men they soon learn that their greatest pleasures derive from what is done to their bodies... by us, by themselves and by other men too, sometimes.' Elise whispered with mock indignation. ‘At least, that is what I have seen, and learned.'

‘But that is love of the senses, not true love,' Genevieve said.

‘There is no distinction,' Elise continued in a hushed tone, taking Genevieve's arm. ‘Love is nothing more than the satisfying of the most primitive pleasures with the person one desires at the time. It is a transient thing, as you will see for yourself soon,' she added abruptly, and turned Genevieve's waist firmly to make her face the path leading back to the castle.

Genevieve gazed at Elise bemusedly for a moment, but remained silent. Feeling a sudden quickening of her heart she remembered that, as Elise left her room the night before, she had used the same words.

 

Talk of love between Genevieve and Elise had grown more intense after the visit of the son of one of Count de Tranville's friends, a young Portuguese gentleman called Rodolfo, two months before. While the two girls dined with de Tranville and Rodolfo, Genevieve found herself frequently blushing as she gazed at the handsome foreigner, even though he addressed himself mainly to the count.

Through dinner she timidly stole glances at him, his healthy bronzed skin and the shiny blackness of his hair. And when Rodolfo addressed her occasionally, his wintry-blue eyes made her feel as if her insides were on fire. Elise had looked at her continually during the evening with a whimsical smile, but the glances she exchanged with him were decidedly chilly.

News that Rodolfo would be visiting again had prompted Genevieve to speak to Elise the previous evening, not just of love in general, but of the feelings for the young man she'd experienced during that dinner. The two girls chatted each night in Genevieve's room, usually after they'd bathed, and took turns in brushing each other's hair.

Genevieve had been sitting on a leather trestle by the warm wood fire in her room, freshly bathed, enjoying the feel of her nakedness beneath her cool light shift and the strokes of Elise's brush through her silky hair. It was then that she confessed her feelings towards Rodolfo during the dinner. ‘I have never felt so nervous,' she reflected. ‘My hands were actually trembling. I wonder if that's what love is.'

‘Rodolfo is a man who takes his pleasure as and when he pleases, he is unlikely to be content with just one woman,' Elise snapped, and seeing the sting of her words in Genevieve's eyes, she laughed. ‘He delights in breaking the hearts of sweet little things that know nothing of love, like you.

‘Let us see... if I were you and you were Rodolfo, how would you kiss me, for example?' She was smiling broadly, revealing neat white teeth.

‘Kiss you?' Genevieve started in puzzlement.

‘Yes. Have you ever kissed a man?' Elise raised Genevieve gently to her feet. She stood about half a head taller and her elegant hands gently brushed Genevieve's blonde hair behind her neck and over her shoulders.

Feeling artful fingers squeezing into her soft flesh, Genevieve giggled at the game. ‘You are so dashing, Rodolfo,' she found herself saying playfully, and to her own surprise she allowed her hands to gently stroke Elise's hair in return. She tried to imagine Rodolfo standing before her.

‘Kiss me as you would kiss Rodolfo,' Elise commanded in a determined whisper, and Genevieve closed her eyes and moved her lips gingerly to hers, finding them as soft as petals but as warm as fire.

‘That is how you would kiss a child or a friend good day,' Elise scolded mockingly, in a hushed voice, then tugged Genevieve's limp body sharply and tightly to her, her hands like pincers as they clamped on her shoulders, and Genevieve felt her friend's succulent lips pressed to hers. Elise's tongue probed into Genevieve's mouth, and as she held the blonde girl her firm breasts and stiff nipples pressed tightly against her. Genevieve felt her own nipples harden and tingle at the touch, and her heartbeat quickened.

‘That is how he would probably kiss you, my silly darling,' Elise whispered as she pulled away. Intense warmth had radiated between them, leaving Genevieve glowing, heat and moisture gathering between her thighs.