The Chevalier (Châteaux and Shadows) (2 page)

He sighed. “She has to have known I would come.”

Aurore hugged him around the waist, her puffy, lacy cap barely brushing his chin. He squeezed her close for a few seconds. Her silence seemed ominous to Manu, since Aurore could talk through anything.

They heard footsteps in the hall and turned to the door as their father entered, talking even before he came in.

The Baron de la Brosse’s face was grayer and more lined than just a year before, when Manu had last seen him, though he smiled and laughed and embraced Manu as heartily as ever. He said he had sent a message to their oldest brother and his family to come over from their smaller house for dinner.

Manu backed away, irritated again. “
Mon père
, why did you send me a message if Maman was not truly ill?”

His father sighed. “She had a terrible bout of the grippe. She was more ill than I have ever seen her. We couldn’t rouse her, so I sent for all you children. She awoke two days later, confused, so I sent the next message, but the messengers must have missed you.”

“Jacques and I took a faster route on horseback and let the carriage go over the roads.”

“
Voilà!
I hope my men met up with yours and didn’t get all the way to Poitou before turning around. They’ll be at least two days behind you. Maybe more, since they can’t travel tomorrow.” His father glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Manu didn’t know if he was assessing to see if Manu approved or disapproved of traveling on Sunday.

“But Maman? How could you let her leave?”

“Ah. Your mother hasn’t
let
me tell her what to do for thirty or more years,
mon fils
. She packed up her maid and her men and was gone.”

His father sounded so cheerful Manu had to turn away, clenching his fists. The anger he had learned from his mother rushed into him.

His father strode out, calling for his valet.

He felt Aurore’s warm hand on his back through his shirt. “Go to Paris, Manu. She’s lonely, even if she made herself that way. Oh, and she left her companion here because she fell ill. The companion, I mean. She’s better now. You can take her back to Maman.”

He shoved down his angry reaction and nodded. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

****

Catherine de Fouet slipped silently into the drawing room, hoping no one would notice her. And no one did; there was no one there. She exhaled in relief. The Comtesse de Bures, her host’s daughter, had flitted into her bedchamber, felt Catherine’s forehead, pinched her cheeks to make them rosier, and declared her healthy. Catherine hadn’t had a fever even when she was ill, but she’d been so lethargic she couldn’t raise her head from her pillow. Yet who could argue with Madame de Bures? Catherine was nearly healthy and would have been ashamed to hide in her room.

Her gown fell somewhere in the vast, imprecise borderline between the elegant court gowns the baronesse bought for her and her shabby at-home gowns. Somewhere between the frilly gowns appropriate for young demoiselles and the severe, dark gowns of the confirmed old maid. The ensemble was mostly pale brown, with some blue panels in the skirt and pretty, blue, wave-like embroidery at the neck and waist of the stomacher, which made her think of the sea near her home in Normandy. She had pinned her mother’s opal-and-silver brooch to the strip of creamy linen chemise that showed above the neckline of her stomacher. The brooch was the only jewelry left her after her uncle barred her from her parents’ rooms after their deaths. Her uncle had probably sold the other jewelry.

Her clothing was perfect for blending into the background without quite looking like a servant. Perfect for being overlooked. Perfect for the baronesse’s companion, when the companion was the daughter of a dead friend and paid in food, lodging, and clothing. A lady-in-waiting would have more style. A handmaiden, maybe? The baronesse wasn’t there to see her, to pass her critical eye over Catherine and
hmph
.

Catherine looked around the drawing room, empty even of servants. She held herself up very straight as she glided with a little extra hip sway to a small armless chair.

The fine, beautiful, rich demoiselle sweeps into the room. Every eye is on her as she curtsies to the handsome beau, who bows deeply, smiling in approval, then to the nobles, who raise their quizzing glasses to look her over. She sweeps up and smiles to her right, where her beaming family tries—and fails—to look nonchalant. Her handsome father gestures to a chair next to her mother’s, and she goes to it, sweeps around, and sinks slowly to the edge of her—

A young man in an ill-fitting
justaucorps
, long blond hair tied back with a dark ribbon, stood in the doorway, his face scrunched in bad-tempered confusion. “Are you the companion?”

He strode into the room, glancing toward the landscape painting Catherine had just curtsied to. He looked familiar. His face was much like the baron’s, but with a sour expression.

Catherine sat and looked down at her hands, folding herself back into her invisible shell in the matter of a second before glancing up at him. “Yes, I am the companion.”

“You’re better, then. I’ll take you to my mother on Monday. Leave Monday, anyway. I don’t suppose you can ride to Paris? We could make the trip in a day.” He fidgeted with the justaucorps, tugging at the coat’s buttons and sleeves. It was two inches too short to be in fashion.

She sat up straighter, curling her lips into her governess sneer—just respectful enough to keep from being sacked, but disdainful enough so her interlocutor would know he had overstepped. “I can ride, but am not sufficiently
folle
to wish to make such a long journey on horseback or in a single day. It is much too hot. Especially as I am still recovering from the grippe I caught from your mother.”

“Ah.” The man raised an eyebrow, much like the baronesse at her most condescending. “That’s too bad. Long journeys are all the more tedious when they take twice as long as they should. I decided I would ask, though I assumed your answer. We’ll borrow my father’s traveling carriage, unless mine arrives this evening. It’s more likely to arrive Monday after we’ve already gone. Or Tuesday.” The young man looked around again. “Where’s my family?”

Not down yet, idiot,
she wanted to snap. “I’m sure I don’t know, Monsieur…” She was sure this must be Emmanuel, the youngest son, the baronesse’s pampered, rebellious darling.

He stared at her with a pained expression before he bowed deeply, waving his hand in intricate swirls. Mocking her. “Emmanuel de Cantière. Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mademoiselle de Fouet. I have read much about you in my mother’s letters. All the highest compliments, of course.”

Catherine nearly laughed. Compliments from the baronesse? Two could play at this game. She rose from her seat and curtsied deeply enough for the king himself, like she had curtsied to her imaginary beau. “
Enchantée
, Monsieur de Cantière.” She rose slowly and elegantly but kept her head slightly down. “I have heard much about you from your mother,”
whom you have neglected to visit in three years,
“who dotes on you,”
except when she’s lumping you in with the rest of the family, all of whom she despises.

When she raised her head, de Cantière was staring directly at her. A hard scowl marred his face even though she hadn’t said the bad parts out loud. He shrugged. She realized the shoulders of the coat fit him too tightly, while the waistline swung loose. The long coat wasn’t even his own. It must have been his father’s justaucorps, because underneath it looked like Monsieur Emmanuel was all muscle. The baron was not fat, but he was a great deal more comfortable. She felt a momentary attraction and a momentary burst of shame for thinking cruel things, but she nodded, and her opinions were gone. She returned to her chair.

No point in being attracted to him, even if he were the baronesse’s favorite. Besides, his face was nothing special, with the scowl of a brooding, spoiled child. Once one was a penniless companion, one might be a companion forever. She was resigned to it for the time being. She would escape to her property in Normandy one day and live alone. Then she would be free.

There was a clatter in the hall, and the sounds of the front door opening and closing, then the comtesse’s voice coming closer as she descended the front stairs in haste and a man’s voice answering.

“Dom’s back,” Monsieur Emmanuel said, glancing at the door as the voices in the hall spoke at the same time. Silence fell rather suddenly. He glanced over with a half-smile which made him the handsomest man Catherine had seen in a long time. “They’re kissing. After all, they haven’t seen each other in three long days.”

She looked down at her hands, blushing slightly. How long had it been since she had been kissed? Eight years?

The Comte and Comtesse de Bures were known to embrace in any slightly private alcove or quiet corner of a garden. The baronesse’s circle sometimes made comments, mostly to goad the baronesse into condemning her only daughter’s behavior. Catherine had barely seen the comte and comtesse on this trip, since she had stayed by her patroness’ bedside while the baronesse was ill, then took to her own bed when she fell ill herself. Then the baronesse left her behind, breaking the news of her departure through her maid, Anne. The maid had smirked at Catherine, who could hardly open her eyes.

“Come say hello to Papa.” The comtesse was coming to the drawing room.

Catherine rose. The Comte de Bures, tall, regal, and handsome, came in with his diminutive wife hanging from his arm—his arm clad in dirty leather. “I should go get cleaned up and changed for dinner.”

“Oh! Papa isn’t down yet. But here’s Manu.” The comtesse beamed at her brother. “Is that Papa’s blue coat? You look like a little boy playing dress up, except for those shoulders, Manu.” She gave her brother a quick hug and squeezed his arms—drawing Catherine’s eyes again to the powerful breadth of the man—before stepping away so her husband could embrace Monsieur Emmanuel. “And here’s Mademoiselle de Fouet, Maman’s companion.”

The comtesse was less excited to see Catherine, no matter her earlier encouragement. The smile didn’t dim, really, but her eyes were wary. One of the regrets Catherine had about becoming the companion to one lady after another in her father’s circle of friends—the baronesse’s circle—was the wariness with which others treated her. She had little influence over the circle of sharp-tongued harpies, but people avoided her. She had not been able to help the worthy people who approached her hoping to gain influence within the circle. Catherine had learned to nod in false agreement and stay silent and invisible.

Most of the time, Catherine was grateful she didn’t have to live on her small stipend far away from court. She sorely missed her land and especially the sea, which was so near to her home in Normandy she could smell it when the wind was right, but that place was rented out. The income went directly into savings for the time in the dim future when Catherine would stop being a companion to some grande dame and would
be
a grande dame. Or a grande demoiselle, since the property wasn’t much of a dowry. And besides, the gentlemen who did notice her were of the sharp-tongued, devious sort themselves. The kind, friendly gentlemen—the sort she preferred—stayed far, far away.

****

Emmanuel needed to stay far, far away from Mademoiselle de Fouet.

She was in his mother’s company most of the time, and before that had been companion to one after another of Maman’s cruel friends. “De Fouet”—“of the whip”—was perfectly apt as her family name. He remembered the girl’s father as a loud, angry man who preached uprightness, spread vicious gossip, and was rumored to have affairs.

Manu had a moment of pleasant surprise when he walked into the drawing room to see the tall, thin woman, her hips swaying invitingly. He imagined for a moment slipping his hands around her narrow waist and kissing the back of her long neck. He was even more surprised to see her curtsey to the painting of the hill above Jean-Louis’ house in Poitou and then swish her narrow, plain skirts around as if she wore a fine gown with a train. When he saw her pale face staring at him in shock, he decided she must have given in to whimsy.

Whimsy? From someone associated with his mother? From this sharp-tongued girl?

The arrival of his sister and Dom had broken the tension. Aurore still spoke to him as if he were a boy and not a twenty-five-year-old man, but she loved him with all the fierce affection she had been forcing on him for more than a decade. Aurore babbled pleasantly to Mademoiselle de Fouet about some entertainment at court a few weeks before, when King Louis XIV had returned from the Dutch front. Manu called to a passing servant for a glass of wine.

As he turned back, Aurore was weighing him with a sparkle in her eye. Mademoiselle de Fouet looked at her hands again, her cheeks slightly pink. He spread his hands in silent question.

Aurore asked sweetly, “Won’t you see to getting us some wine, too, Manu?”

He blushed—he was glad his face was browned from the sun because the blush probably didn’t show as much, though he felt its warmth—and turned to call after the servant. He turned back to the two ladies. “I…”

“You’ve spent too much time without the company of ladies, Manu.” His sister’s voice was laughing but chiding. “You should see to our needs before your own.”

His blush heated, and he thought about the peasant widow he was having an affair with at home. In five years of only leaving his horse farm when absolutely necessary, he had lost his polite manners.

Maman would be appalled.

****

Supper was a trial. Catherine had a headache and her stomach churned, but she had to be ready to travel in two days so as to not be an inconvenience. The baron seated her at his right hand and was faultlessly polite: much too polite for an informal family meal. He probably saw Catherine as an extension of his wife, who draped only the lightest of veils over her hostility toward him, so he danced around her accordingly.

At the end of the meat course, he leaned back in his chair. “Leaving Monday, Manu?”

Monsieur Emmanuel stiffened, probably reading criticism into his father’s words. His mother had said he was quick to take offense. “If Mademoiselle de Fouet is ready, and we can borrow a traveling carriage, monsieur. Mine is still somewhere along the road. The grooms are bringing my horses along in slow stages.”