Royal 02 - Royal Passion (17 page)

"Isn't that Madame Dudevant, who signs her books as George Sand?” she asked in an undertone.

Michael turned to look, then nodded. “She is very drab this evening. Sometimes she enlivens the proceedings by dressing in trousers."

"That can't be a novel sight for you two,” Mara said, “after all, you see Trude in trousers all the time."

"Trude is—well, Trude.” Michael shrugged.

Perhaps Roderic was right, perhaps it was time Trude was made aware that she was a woman, Mara thought, but Estes spoke then, claiming her attention.

"Madame Dudevant is still mourning her parting with the composer Chopin, or so I would guess. They had the big quarrel over something to do with the marriage of her daughter, and he walked out. The estrangement, it appears, is to be permanent."

"I hear Chopin is in ill health,” Michael said.

"Lung disease,” Estes answered. “He blames Madame Dudevant for it, for carrying him with her to Majorca where he caught it several years ago."

"That hardly seems fair,” Mara said, “she can't have forced him to go."

"Hers is the stronger personality. She is older by some six or seven years."

"What has that to say to anything?"

"A great deal, as you will see when you meet her! This way.” The Italian caught her hand and began to ease through the crowd.

"No, wait!” Mara called, but he paid no attention. A moment later she was being presented to Aurore Dudevant.

"How do you do, my dear.” The writer turned with a gracious smile to her companion. “May I make known to you my friend, Balzac?"

The man beside her was, like so many in the room, nearing middle age. Heavy-set, with a large head and a thick neck set on bull-like shoulders, he was not particularly tall, but gave an impression of size. His face was red, his nose large and square, and, beneath a ragged mustache, his teeth when he smiled were discolored.

"A pleasure, Monsieur. I have read your books."

"Have you? Which ones?” The words were abrupt, almost eager.

"
Le Père Goirot,
of course, and a few other volumes of
The Human Comedy
, though not all. It is a marvelous endeavor, but such a large undertaking!"

"He is quite as much a glutton for work as for food, is he not?” Madame Dudevant said.

"One must pay one's creditors,” Honoré de Balzac said with a sad shake of his head. “Tradesmen have a most uncomfortable habit of expecting a man to have the money to match his desires. It is not possible."

"You and Dumas,” Aurore Dudevant said, her voice resigned. “You make money as if it pours from the ends of your pens, and you will both be lucky if you aren't buried in pauper's graves."

"With Hugo beside us."

"Victor is luckier in his women; they not only copy his manuscripts and letters for him as unpaid secretaries, they also manage his money."

"His wife, one hears, certainly holds the purse strings."

"A strong personality, Madame Adele."

"She at least has the good sense not to hold him on too tight a leash."

"Yes. She no longer complains of neglect, I hear. There may have been a lesson for her in the Praslin affair. There was a lesson for many."

Mara, made curious by the significant looks exchanged by the others, interrupted, “The Praslin affair?"

It was George Sand, Madame Dudevant, who explained. Some months before, at the end of August, the duc de Praslin had murdered his wife, stabbing her with a knife and bludgeoning her with a candlestick as she lay sleeping in their house on the rue de Faubourg St. Honoré. There had been whispers of the most virulent sort as to the cause. The duc was rumored to have been in love with his children's governess, Mademoiselle Deluzy; the duchesse was said to have been corrupting the children due to her exposure as a child by her own governess who had, as it was put, sometimes “fled not to the Isle of Cythera, but to that of Lesbos.” Some said the duc was a cold and withdrawn man who had lost his sanity, while others declared that he was a quiet man driven to madness by the emotional and sexual domination of his duchesse. The only thing that was known with any degree of accuracy was that the marriage had begun as a love match and continued so for some time, producing nine children in thirteen years. At that point it had disintegrated abruptly into violent quarrels and separate bedrooms—until one hot night in August.

The tragedy had come on top of other indiscretions, other acts of insanity among the highest figures in the country. Not too long before, the comte Mortier had tried to murder his children; the Prince d'Eckmuhl had in a fit of rage stabbed his mistress; the French ambassador to Naples had slit his own throat with a razor; and the Keeper of the Seal, Martin du Nord, had reacted to implication in an affair of morals by taking his own life. The general feeling among the people was that there was poisonous corruption beneath the respectable façade of the reign of Louis Philippe and that it should be destroyed, even if it meant starting at the head.

"Never will I forget the people outside the house where the Praslin murder was committed. They seemed to have no pity for the duchesse lying dead inside, nor any real anger against the duc, who had by then swallowed poison and been taken away by the police. Their rage was against the government. They kept screaming, ‘Down with Louis Philippe!’ and ‘Death to the king!’ It was as if it were the Terror all over again."

"It easily could be,” Estes said.

"Perhaps we should pray for another such scandal to persuade the king to listen to the cries for reform?” Balzac said.

"Or create one?” Aurore Dudevant suggested.

The seriousness of the group sent a small frisson through Mara. She had listened politely to all that was said, though after the first moments she had remembered hearing of the Praslin case from her grandmother. Now, recalling the beginning of the conversation, she asked, “But what has this to do with Monsieur Hugo?"

"He was fascinated by the details,” Balzac answered, “so much so that his good wife became disturbed. I fear that may have been the results he had hoped to achieve, though one cannot be sure. It's difficult to know how much of Hugo's selfishness is a pose and how much is natural to him."

"Ego Hugo,” Mara murmured with a smile of remembrance as she glanced toward where Victor Hugo talked to those at his feet without ceasing, waving his arms for emphasis.

"Precisely. He was a great ugly brute of a baby, and now that he has grown into a presentable man, he behaves as if he were still in his swaddling clothes."

"But he is a great man, a great writer,” Estes said.

"It goes without saying.” Madame Dudevant shrugged. “Who else could write a simple book about a hunchback and a cathedral and singlehandedly change architecture for the century, to say nothing of saving Notre Dame from falling completely into ruins?"

"I do not see Madame Juliette, I think, and I had heard so much of her beauty. I understood she and Madame Hugo were friendly.” Estes looked hopefully around him as he spoke.

"It is the other mistress, Madame Leonie, who visits Adele Hugo. Leonie is the one with whom Hugo was caught in flagrante delicto by the husband and for whom he was placed under arrest for the crime of adultery."

"Ah, yes. One has heard of the escapade."

"Who did not? But as Lamartine observed at the time, ‘France is elastic: one rises even from a divan.’”

"The French still buy his books,” Mara commented.

"More avidly than ever. It is more than one so notorious in his infidelities deserves."

"Now, Aurore,” Balzac said placatingly.

Estes lifted a comical brow. “This, from you, my dear lady?"

"Are you suggesting that I have been unfaithful?"

Beads of perspiration broke out on the Italian's head. “I would not dream of it. Still, one has heard..."

"Men are such gossips! I have always believed in fidelity; I have preached it, practiced it, demanded it. Others have failed to live up to it and I, too. And yet I have never felt remorse because in my infidelities I have suffered a sort of fatality, an instinctive idealism which impelled me to abandon the imperfect for what seemed to me to be closer to perfection."

"You do not hold the marriage vow sacred?” Mara asked since the woman spoke so openly.

"Hardly, since I have freed myself of a husband to whom I was little more than a chattel. No. It is only common sense and simple humanity that no wife should be forced to remain with a man she despises. Women, as well as men, should be free to love where they will. But it is not love but mere concupiscence to go merrily from house to house as Victor does, making love to three different women on the same day, and likely a few actresses as well."

"In his defense,” Balzac said, “I should like to remind you of his wife's notorious affair with Sainte-Beuve. It's my opinion that he has been disillusioned with love from the day he discovered it."

"It's no excuse."

"But to make a cuckold of him with his most virulent literary critic! Men will overlook much, but a betrayal of that magnitude will be neither forgotten nor forgiven."

Betrayal. It was not a subject with which Mara could be comfortable. She had not yet dared think of what Roderic would do when he discovered how she had used him. At one time she had thought it would not matter. She had been wrong. She permitted her attention to be snared by a man wearing an odd cloak of maroon velvet edged with gold braiding and frogging, with a tasseled hood hanging down in back. He was striking in appearance, tall and dark and saturnine.

"Who is the man in the strange cloak?"

"The burnous? That is Delacroix, the painter. A splendid figure, is he not? He picked up the idea of the burnous on his travels in Algeria. With so many going to that part of the world, it is becoming something of a fashion."

Beyond Delacroix—who was no relation, as far as she knew—was the entrance door. A man was just arriving, giving his hat and cane into the hands of a maidservant. He was also dark and tall, but he had a thin mustache and narrow beard and wore an expression of impatience as he scanned the room. De Landes's gaze found Mara, and he gave a small jerk of his head, summoning her.

Mara felt her nerves tighten like violin strings. That de Landes was here was an indication that her every movement was being watched. Did he know that she had not done what she had been told to do? What would he say?

It would be a wrench to leave the group she was with; still, it must be done. “Excuse me,” she said at the first opportunity, “I believe I saw Princess Juliana beckoning."

She moved across the room, pausing to speak to the princess, making a gay comment on the gathering, before threading her way through the crowd to where de Landes stood. He had chosen a spot somewhat shielded by a weeping willow growing in a lacquerware cachepot and a suit of armor complete with visor. She retained her social smile with an effort as she stopped beside him, but spoke without preamble. “What do you want?"

"How charming you look. That sales assistant was right; bright colors become you."

"You did not come here to compliment me."

"No, but I am beginning to wonder if I wasn't a fool for not giving you some personal instruction in the best way to win a man's—shall we say?—cooperation."

"The prince is most astute. It will not do for him to see us talking together too long since I am supposed to have no remembrance of friends. I repeat, what do you want?"

He looked at her long and hard, then gave an abrupt nod. “The Vicomtesse Beausire will be honored by the presence of the king at her ball. Louis Philippe will be arriving at ten precisely. You will not only make certain that the prince attends, but that he is standing near the entrance through which the king and his guests will pass at that time. Do you understand?"

"Near the entrance? Where? I know nothing about the house or its rooms."

"It doesn't matter. Just have him near the main entrance at the hour of ten o'clock."

"Ten. Main entrance. How is my grandmother?"

"Well enough, for now."

De Landes inclined his head and moved away. It was an instant before Mara realized that it was Roderic's approach that had routed him. The prince was bearing down upon her. He was smiling, but she was not deceived.

"Have I neglected you, have we all, that you must skulk among the greenery talking to strangers?"

Her chin came up. “Skulk?"

"Should I have said hide?"

"I wasn't aware that there was anything clandestine about talking to a gentleman at a literary salon such as this. You might have told me."

"I might have, had I thought it necessary."

"What is it you wished me to do? Stay beside you? But I had the impression earlier that you were trying to warn me away from that course."

His gaze narrowed. “And it rankled?"

She should have known better than to bandy words with him. It had indeed rankled that he had so easily overcome his desire for her, that he had seen fit, ever so delicately, to repulse her advances. But wasn't it better, for now, to admit to it than to have him press her for an answer concerning de Landes?

She lowered her lashes. “No woman likes to think that she has been obvious."

"Doesn't she?"

She was disturbed by the amusement that lifted slowly into his eyes as if at some pleasing memory. “I can't think a man would care for it either."

"It would depend on the man—and the woman.” He raised his hand and opened the visor of the suit of armor, letting it clank shut again.

She had the feeling suddenly that he was ill at ease, that he wished the words unsaid. That could only mean that he regretted them. Why should he, unless they held more truth than he wanted known? Before she could explore the thought, however, he swung back to her.

"Have you met Lamartine? He has the face of an aristocrat and the soul of a butcher, a poet turned politician, the most dangerous kind."

Alphonse de Lamartine had been roundly condemned by Grandmère Helene and her elderly French cousin as a radical, based on his speeches in the Chamber of Deputies and the publication over the past several years of his eight-volume
Histoire des Girondins
celebrating the rights of the proletariat. They called him a traitor to his class, a poltroon who was trying to pull down the most stable and peaceable government they had had in France in a hundred years, and a fool for refusing the ambassadorship that was offered by Louis Philippe in an attempt to seduce him away from his role of reformer.