Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (96 page)

“There’s not the least harm in it. Every lady has her admirers,”

“I know that well enough, but he admires you a bit too extravagantly, and too often, for comfort. His admiration is leaning toward an excess of affection that you will find embarrassing.”

“Does that trouble you?”

“The question is, does it appeal to you? Armand Moulin is young and idealistic and with a comfortable fortune behind him; he’s everything, in fact, that you have a right to expect in a prospective husband.”

Cyrene got to her feet, moving away from him. “Is that your way of saying that you think I should accept a proposal if it is made?”

“By no means. I’m only — only pointing out his suitability.”

What he was doing, René saw well enough, was indulging his jealousy. It was, as Cyrene said, quite the thing for married women and those in the keeping of other men to have admirers, men who worshiped from afar and found in the forbidden object of their affection some outlet for their suppressed passions and a subject on which to perfect their techniques of amorous dalliance. Knowing these things did not make it easier for the man in possession of a beautiful woman to bear with the lovelorn.

“I see,” Cyrene said. “Yes, I suppose he is suitable.” What she also saw was that, whether he wished to admit it or not, he was telling her that she might wish to look around her, that her arrangement with him would not be permanent.

“What was he telling you when I came in just now?” René asked.

“Nothing of importance.”

“That I have trouble believing. He has a glib tongue, but he has not yet learned to control his blushes.”

Cyrene, standing with her hand on the back of the settee, could not help smiling a little; Armand had indeed been perfectly crimson. “It was nothing salacious at all. We were merely speaking of your brother.”

“My brother?” René’s tone was sharp.

“I had not known of his death. I’m sorry.”

“He isn’t dead.”

The words were cold, their lack of expression more disturbing than a shout would have been. “But I understood—”

“He shot himself, but he did not die. He destroyed his mind; his body lives and breathes, eats and sleeps and ages and will, when my father dies, carry the titles and honors of the eldest son.”

René watched her closely, but there was no reaction on her lovely face except pity and distress. They were useless emotions. He should know since he had expended so much of the same.

“‘Titles and honors that would have come to you if he had died?” she said, her tone tentative.

He made a quick gesture of repugnance. “No. Never that. For those things I have no use, none at all.”

15

GOVERNOR VAUDREUIL DID NOT forget the amateur theatricals that he had mentioned when Cyrene had first met him. The play they would do was a comedy by Marivaux, a shortened version of his
Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard,
or
Game of Love and Chance.
With Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, the day of final, frantic merriment before the forty days of abstention required by the Lenten season leading up to Easter, so close upon them, it would be some time before it could be presented. That was all to the good, however; they would need the time for rehearsal.

The story involved a gentleman and a lady promised to each other, sight unseen, in an arranged marriage. Both of them being dubious of the match, they each decide to view the other first without revealing themselves. They therefore change places with their own servants for the initial meeting, the lady with her maid and the gentleman with his valet. They fall madly in love. Their servants are also smitten with each other so that there are four people involved, two of whom think the people they love are beneath them in station and two who think the people they love are above them. It was a challenging play, for much of the humor depended upon the posturing and posing of the characters in their unaccustomed roles and the rapid-fire delivery of the dialogue.

Cyrene, cast as the lady opposite the governor as the gentleman, was not certain she was up to the part, though the marquis insisted she had just that combination of independence and spriteliness necessary. René was assigned the role of the valet, while the maid was played by Madame Pradel since Madame Vaudreuil could not be persuaded to tread the boards with them.

The governor’s wife declared that she enjoyed a play as much as anyone and was delighted that La Pompadour had revived the pastime of amateur theatricals, but play she could not. To learn so much dialogue was simply beyond her, the marquise declared, though Cyrene thought privately that what the lady meant was that it was beneath her. Playacting had always enjoyed a rather risqué reputation, and the patronage of the king’s mistress had done little to change that.

There was a great deal of practice necessary, for the governor, though not a perfectionist, required that the production have a certain polish. Everyone must be able to move with grace and style as well as declaim their lines with as few embarrassing mistakes as possible. He made his wishes clear, but it was, in fact, Madame Vaudreuil who saw that they were achieved. She took upon herself the job of stage director and sat in the back of the long room, where the performance would be held, calling out complaints and instructions. The marquis himself was unfailingly generous in his comments and tactful in his suggestions; still, Cyrene, remembering what Armand had said, began to watch the couple and to wonder if Madame la Marquise was not simply carrying out her husband’s will.

For Cyrene, acting with him, playing scenes of a suggestive and amorous nature in such close proximity was a daunting experience, despite his charm and exquisite manners. Vaudreuil was somehow larger than life, with so high a polish on his person and his personality as to give an appearance of being mirror hard and bright. Moreover, there was a great deal of unconscious arrogance about him.

Nor did René help matters by the close watch he kept on her every movement, her every smile and gesture. It made her more nervous than she was already. Why he regarded her so closely, she could not imagine; she was not blind to the appreciation in the gaze the marquis turned on her, but there was no familiarity in the gentleman’s manner and certainly none in hers.

The same could not be said for Madame Pradel, who missed no opportunity to place her hand on René’s arm or to lean over him as they practiced their lines. It was a tasteless display, and quite distracting. Not that she was jealous, of course, or that she credited René with any such degree of concern over her. No, René’s attitude toward her, she thought, was one of possessiveness, like a dog with a new bone. There was nothing in that to preen herself over and much to annoy her.

She particularly did not appreciate the way he came up behind her and stood listening as she sat having wine and cakes with the marquis when the rehearsal was over. They had been talking of this and that, with the governor, like some royal personage, asking questions or introducing topics and she merely responding. He asked if she had family and friends, indicating with a few words that he meant other than her mother and father, whom he knew were no longer living. She told of her grandfather in Le Havre and also of her estrangement from him.

“Ah, yes, I knew the gentleman in New France to the north, I believe.”

“Did you really?” she asked, her eyes lighting with pleasure.

“It was some time ago, before I was appointed governor of Trois-Rivières. But I remember your grandfather striding around in a cloak of beaver fur so long it swept the ground. He always declared he would rather be warm than fashionable. It was a sentiment I thought quite practical at the time.”

She laughed. “I daresay he is still the same; he was when last I saw him. And did you know my mother as a girl, perhaps?”

“Indeed, a most charming creature. You have a great look of her, as I remember. I’ll never forget the despair among the beaus when she married. That was her first husband I speak of, naturally.”

“Her first husband? What can you mean? There was only one.”

“But I was sure… Your mother’s name was Marie Claire? Marie Claire Le Blanc?”

“Yes, but I never heard that she had been married before. Who could he have been? And what became of him?”

The governor stared at her for long seconds, then it was as if a shutter closed somewhere behind his eyes. “Perhaps I was mistaken, mademoiselle. I must have been. Forgive me.”

“But you had the name correct,” she protested in puzzlement.

“Correct name, perhaps, but most likely the wrong woman. My poor memory. In any case, the man I was thinking of died in the wilderness, as I recall. The lady married again soon after.”

“In New France?”

“So I believe.”

That was all right, then. Cyrene’s own parents had met in New France but had been married at Le Havre.

It was then that René spoke from where he stood behind them. “If that is the end of the family history, Cyrene,
ma chérie,
shall we go now? Acting, I find, is most fatiguing. I long for my bed.”

Madame Pradel sauntered to René’s side as Cyrene turned to look up inquiringly at him. The older woman gave a tinkling laugh of appreciation as she heard his comment. Her tone suggestive, she said, “Among other things, I don’t doubt.”

René did not glance in her direction. He stepped around Cyrene’s chair and offered his arm. Drawing her to her feet, entwining her arm in his so that she was held to his side, he looked down at her, the smile he gave her heated with promise as he agreed, “Among other things.”

Cyrene made no move to remonstrate him, either at the governor’s house or on the short walk back to his lodgings.

When they were inside, however, and the door closed behind them, she drew away from him.

Over her shoulder she said, “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You know very well. Why did you sweep me from under the nose of the governor and all the others as if you could not wait to bed me?”

“Perhaps it was for that exact reason.”

It was more than that, René knew. He resented the ease with which she seemed able to talk to Armand and even Vaudreuil while she had hardly a half-dozen words to say to him at any given time. Knowing the cause did not make it any easier to bear.

“Indeed?” she said, her voice chill. “What are you waiting for, then? If that is your pleasure, help me out of these clothes and let us retire to bed at once.”

He heard the derision in her voice, saw the pain that fueled it. He was not unmoved by either; it was just that they did not count against his great need of her or his certain knowledge that there was communication of a vital kind between them as they lay in bed. Whether she knew it or not, or whether or not she willed it, there was also to be found surcease for his doubts and sanctuary, however temporary, from his fears.

“How can I resist so gracious an invitation?” he said, his eyes crystalline in their gray darkness. “By all means, what are we waiting for?”

Cyrene had quickly become used to having afternoon callers. Armand’s visits became a routine affair. He often brought his friends with him, young men of his age and station who spent as much time laughing and joking among themselves as paying court to her. Not that she minded. It was almost like being with Gaston again, though, of course, Gaston never brought her tokens of candy or flowers with the dew still upon them, never wrote poems to the beauty of her wrists or the piquant arch of her brows.

Armand had asked if she meant to receive in the morning, to hold a levee, as so many ladies did, while she completed her toilette for the day. Cyrene had laughed aloud at the very idea. She had not yet gained the habit of lying in bed until the morning was half gone. She very much doubted that Armand and his friends would be up and dressed themselves in time to see her perform her sketchy toilette, and even if they were, the idea struck her as ridiculous. She was no queen whose every movement, from the time she opened her eyes in the morning until she closed them at night, must be attended with punctilio and a myriad of witnesses. It was bad enough to have René watching her every move without a gallery of other spectators as well.