The Honorable Officer (6 page)

Hélène shoved it into her pocket. “My eyesight is terrible. I know staring at people through my glass seems terribly rude, but I can’t see you without it.” She cringed inwardly. She hated admitting to her weakness.

“Ah! Then maybe you haven’t noticed all the curious looks people give you,” said Catherine. “Everyone’s talking about you because you never look them in the eye. See, we thought you thought you were too good to speak to us. Some of the other mistresses were offended, you know. I’ll tell them about your eyes.”

“Oh, please…” said Hélène, starting to ask her not to spread the word about her failings. But she didn’t want to seem like a snob. On the other hand, she didn’t want to become a close friend of whores. Maybe she was a snob. Finally, she said, “Please, tell them I am…shy. Also that I don’t see well, but I am shy. And we are leaving here as soon as the colonel can think of a place for me to take Ondine.”

Catherine stared at her for a while, and Hélène lifted up her eyeglass again. Catherine grinned, and Hélène smiled back.

“And please do come by again. Ondine is terribly bored with staying close to me so she doesn’t get lost. We don’t know anyone.”

Catherine’s smile faded. Hélène was afraid she had offended the woman.

“Could I…” Catherine glanced around. “Could I leave Pierre here for a short while? I have had no sleep, almost, and he’s been crying all morning. Charlotte knows my tent’s just over there.” She gestured vaguely at the line of tents opposite.

Hélène relaxed on her spindly stool. “I’ll have to ask Charlotte, since she will watch them both. We were about to have some lunch, and I could give him some.” She felt almost like a real mother, letting her child’s friend stay for a meal.

Charlotte agreed, and they gathered around the tiny table Fourbier had found. The young soldier who was standing guard shyly accepted some bread and cheese. Little Pierre was quiet, testing the waters. After they ate, Charlotte brought out Ondine’s ball, which quickly became the center of a mighty struggle between the two children. When the game became unresolvable, it was called off amidst screams. Ondine was put down for a nap while Charlotte dozed on some blankets with Pierre. Hélène moved her stool back into the shadows of the tent flap and took out her lorgnette and the play she was reading.

She had only read two scenes, though, when a throat cleared behind her and she jumped and swung around with her lorgnette up. She smiled to see Colonel de Cantière.

“Who is that?” he demanded, pointing at Charlotte and the boy.

“Pierre. He is Catherine the Great’s son,” she said.

“You’re hosting the son of the most notorious…” He scowled fiercely, and Hélène cringed back, expecting at least a slap.

He pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his sweaty, dirty hair, sighing deeply.

“She was very tired and grateful I would let Ondine play with Pierre for a little while,” said Hélène, in a squeaky voice, still shrinking back.

“It’s only… You should be rubbing shoulders with the families of officers, not with their…ah…” He shifted from foot to foot, troubled and angry.

“No one else has spoken to me,” she whispered. “Catherine said everyone thinks I am your mistress.” She shoved her lorgnette into her pocket and turned away, not wanting to see his rejection. His silence left her confused. He should have laughed at the suggestion, shouldn’t he? “And none of the officers’ wives have come to speak to me, so they probably think the same thing.”

The colonel
stood with his hands on his hips, still silent. She finally brought her lorgnette up and saw he had his head down and his lips were moving. She thought he might be praying and crossed herself.

He looked up with a boyish grin. “Merci, but I wasn’t praying. I was saying things I will have to confess to later.”

She blushed, but smiled back at him. His smile faded as he stepped closer to her stool and crouched down next to her, much the same way Catherine had a little while before. Instead of a perfumed woman, though, she smelled damp wool, leather, musky sweat, and horse. She suppressed the urge to touch his leg, which was just inches from her hip.

He said, “I am sorry some people have misunderstood our attachment. I am sorry now we did not think of a false name for you and Ondine, because everyone will soon hear it whispered. The gossip will get back to your aunt and uncle, and your reputation will be in jeopardy.”

She nodded. It was wrong to hope he would solve the problem by marrying her. She knew it was sinful to hope he would take her as his mistress. Her face heated, and she looked around at passing people. A few glanced at them, but most weren’t interested.

She cleared her throat but couldn’t think of what to say. “Does the battle go well?”

He nodded. “As well as can be hoped. Some casualties, of course, but their force is weak, and they have asked to parley. I am to ride out with the prince after the first officers have established contact.”

She felt warm inside. “That’s a lovely honor. I am proud of you.”

He smiled up at her, then stood and stretched his legs. “I have to find Fourbier and clean up. He will know if I should wear my armor over a waistcoat and which cloak best matches my plumed hat.”

She laughed when he did, though his smile disappeared as he looked at her face. She blushed and looked away, resting her lorgnette in her lap.

“You are quite pretty when you laugh,” he said.

She raised her glass to look at him, but he was already turning away. He spoke to the young guard and then was gone, striding to a large horse and swinging up, riding away without looking back.

She felt a strange fluttering in her heart. Did he think she was pretty only when she laughed? What about the rest of the time?

Ondine walked out of the tent, rubbing her eyes. “Co-lell?”

“Yes, the colonel was here, chérie. He came to be sure we were all right. He thinks the battle is nearly over.”

The girl climbed up on Hélène’s lap and snuggled in. “Pretty Tata Nénène.” She yawned.

Hélène wondered just how much the girl had heard. She hugged her close and said, “Merci, chérie. And pretty Ondine, too.”

“Oui. Pretty Don-deen,” she said, so sure of the power of her beauty. Hélène wondered if she had thought herself pretty when she was little and her parents loved her.

Just then, a movement surprised her, and she turned her head and glass to look as Catherine came bustling across the narrow alley, apologizing she had slept so long. A wail came from Hélène’s tent, and Pierre ran to his mother, sobbing.

By evening, the positive results of the parley had spread through the camp. Charlotte went to her mother, the laundress, and both she and Fourbier came back with news that it looked like peace—or what passed for peace in France.

Fourbier also came to say he was moving their little tent beside the colonel’s command tent again.

Hélène made sure everything was back in their bags in the right places so she could find it in the dark or without her eyeglass. She didn’t like feeling the rumors would only double if her tent was next to de Cantière’s. And if he looked at her the way he had earlier and she blushed the way she had, people would certainly interpret it as meaning more than it did. She supposed it was the same hopeless
tendre
she had felt from the first time she saw him, when he and his father called on the Ferands to sign marriage contracts.

He always seemed angry now, as if he didn’t know why she was here to complicate his work. Today, though, he had spoken to her as if to a friend and showed a few signs of gentleness to Ondine. Ondine’s safety and happiness were all that mattered.

Charlotte came along with nothing but the dress she had on. Hélène suspected it was the only one she had. Her mother was a washerwoman, and from something Charlotte said, Hélène thought she also took in a few clients as a…lady of comfort? Hélène could hardly imagine such things. She had no experience at all, other than a few fleeting glimpses of farm animals making babies. At least, when she was about sixteen, that’s what Amandine had said they were doing, and then she teased her for lifting her eyeglass to look.

Once, when Amandine was about fifteen and Hélène eighteen, Hélène was making her way to her uncle’s library for a book. She ran her hand along the wall and held her eyeglass to her eye in a fit of minor defiance of her aunt’s edict to hide her poor eyesight. She had turned a corner more briskly than usual, thinking of what she would like to read, and was stunned to see Amandine and Bernard Ménine, son of the other owner of the manufactory, kissing passionately, their bodies as close as Amandine’s skirts would allow.

Surprised, Hélène dropped her lorgnette, so she saw only that they stepped apart, not the looks on their faces.

Bernard muttered something and Amandine giggled. “She didn’t see anything, darling. And she wouldn’t dare tell anyone if she did, would she?”

There was more muttering and they went through the door behind them. She heard it clatter shut and the lock click. Only as she recovered from her surprise and wondered if she should alert her aunt that Amandine had locked herself in with Bernard did she realize they were in the library. And she had wanted a book.

Amandine had been right: Hélène didn’t dare tell anyone. Of course at the time, everyone assumed the two of them would be married soon, uniting the company in the new generation. It was only after the Baron de la Brosse approached them that the Ferands realized they could aim higher to find a husband for Amandine. A second son of a rich baron, already established in the army, would get their daughter into court circles.

The
colonel had been more subtle than Bernard when he came to see his betrothed in the weeks leading up to their wedding. Hélène had interrupted their whispered conversations but had never seen them doing anything inappropriate.

****

Colonel de Cantière dined with them in his tent and invited his friend,
Colonel Hardi, who talked genially about his family and asked her about hers. When Ondine finished, Hélène let her fetch her picture book from their tent. Instead of coming back to Hélène, the girl went to de Cantière and stood next to his chair, staring up at him with huge blue eyes until he noticed her. He stared back at her with his matching blue eyes and then asked if he could read to her. Hélène lifted her lorgnette to her eye to watch the exchange and felt a lump in her throat as Ondine settled on his lap and leaned against him, looking up at him with a frown.

As soon as he finished, Ondine took the book and scrambled down from his lap to bring the book to Hélène and hide against her.

“Ondine, you need to say, ‘Merci, Papa,’ ” said Hélène softly.

The little girl muttered something.

“It was my pleasure, Ondine,” said de Cantière, smiling fondly at the girl, who dug her face deeper into Hélène’s skirts.

Colonel Hardi watched them with a sad smile. Finally, he said, “All of mine are too old to have books read to them, de Cantière. Makes me want to talk my wife into having more, seeing a sweet little girl like that.”

Hélène dared to turn her glass toward the colonel and saw him staring at Ondine. He looked up at her and smiled slightly. “I know she is in good hands when I am away.”

Hélène blushed.

****

Jean-Louis carried Ondine back to the tent next to his again, reveling in the weight of the warm little girl in his arms. She didn’t throw her arms around his neck like she did with Mademoiselle Hélène, but he hoped she would with a little time.

He shook his head after he kissed the little girl on the top of the head and said goodnight. There was no time. He would send them back to Paris as soon as he could get away for a few days to accompany them part of the way.

Jean-Louis would come back to Grey and finish the cleanup after the battle before moving on to the next one. No matter how much he resented that the Grand Condé, as he was called, had led enemy Spanish troops for years, he was a prince and a general, appointed by his cousin the king. If Jean-Louis ever wanted to be a general himself, which he did, he would need to take orders and not be demoted for insubordination.

As he tried to fall asleep after a long evening of studying maps on the best route for Mademoiselle Hélène and Ondine to travel home, he thought of Mademoiselle Hélène’s lovely face and how it lit up when she laughed. He shifted uncomfortably on his pallet of blankets, all the bed he had left, since Mademoiselle Hélène was sleeping on his cot.

Ondine, with Mademoiselle Hélène. It was only incidental that Hélène was sleeping on his bed.

He thought of Hélène stretched out on his small cot and wished he were in her arms instead of his tiny daughter. He cursed himself; he was never marrying again, never becoming more than vaguely fond of any woman, and certainly not marrying someone like Hélène, who not only couldn’t work in his favor with the court but was from the same family that had produced Amandine.

He finally fell asleep, very late at night, listening to the snores of Fourbier and Darton from their thin pallets on the other side of the tent.

Someone screeched.

He awoke with a jolt. He sat up, seeing flames flickering outside his tent. As he flung off his blanket, he heard a ripping noise and realized the wall of his tent just above his head had a knife protruding. He rolled from his pallet, reaching for his sword. A small form stumbled through the gap. He gripped the girl’s arm—Charlotte. A half second later, Ondine was thrust through and then Mademoiselle Hélène struggled through, gripping a knife.

“Fire,” she panted. “Our tent is on fire.”

Jean-Louis froze for only a second before shouting, “Fire!
Au feu
! Fourbier! Darton! Everything out, everyone out!”

His men had rehearsed an emergency departure—seizing first the boxes of official papers and weapons before rushing back in for cooking supplies, trunks, and furniture.

Jean-Louis lifted Ondine and grabbed Charlotte around the waist to rush them outside and deposit them with Colonel Hardi, emerging from his own tent across the dirt alley, holding up his breeches with one hand and shouting at his servants. Mademoiselle Hélène was halfway out of the tent flap when Jean-Louis lifted her. He left her at Colonel Hardi’s side. His friend picked up the screaming Ondine and handed her to Mademoiselle Hélène.