The Chevalier (Châteaux and Shadows) (3 page)

The baron blinked at the “monsieur” but didn’t insist on being called Papa. “Of course, mon fils. I would advise you wait until Tuesday or whenever your own carriage has arrived.”

“My carriage is significantly less comfortable than yours, mon père.” Calling him “Father” didn’t really count as affection when said with that tone of voice. Was he complaining about being impoverished? He owned a carriage, and not many people did. Or did the carriage belong to his father or one of his brothers? There were undertones Catherine didn’t understand. Not understanding led to embarrassment, and she couldn’t have that.

“I’d like to see Maman for myself and return to Poitou as soon as possible. Maybe before Dom and Aurore go down in a few weeks.” Monsieur Emmanuel slouched back in his seat, his eyes intent on his father.

He’d rather be anywhere but with his family, wouldn’t he? The baronesse had complained several times about how her youngest son had abandoned her for his father, but he seemed to have abandoned everyone else, too.

The comtesse changed the subject, asking Monsieur Emmanuel about traveling conditions from Poitou. The comte and the baron discussed the hay harvest. Catherine wondered idly if her tenant had planted hay on her land. She wondered what profits he was making and if she could raise the rent to accelerate the moment she could retire from court.

****

When Mademoiselle de Fouet slipped from the dining room with a murmured “
Bonne nuit
,” Emmanuel saw his chance to escape, too. His stomach still burned with fear from the moment when the majordomo had announced Maman had gone and he had gone weak. He had to get to Paris to see his mother for himself.

At the top of the stairs, before turning down the hall to his usual room, he stopped and stretched, feeling the borrowed justaucorps strain over his arms. He untied the cravat—also borrowed—and rolled his shoulders. Before leaving for Paris, he probably should wait for his carriage to arrive with his better clothes.

Mademoiselle de Fouet barged out of a door to his right and came to an abrupt halt when she saw him. In the orange light of the sunset in the window at the end of the hall, her face looked softer and sweeter.

“Do you need assistance, Mademoiselle?” He was too tired to think, much less to think of something biting to say.

“A maid to help me prepare for bed, Monsieur.” He saw dark circles under her eyes despite the thin veneer of face powder. He imagined wrapping his arms around her, seeking and offering comfort. Her mouth primmed up until she looked just like his mother. He imagined her punching him in the nose.

He shuddered.

“Would you mind sending for a maid?”

Emmanuel realized he was staring. “My apologies, Mademoiselle. I am exhausted, too.”

He turned away, hoping to see a manservant or someone—anyone—at the bottom of the stairs.

“Monsieur de Cantière,” she said behind him.

“Oui, Mademoiselle?” His temper was tugging at the reins.

“Your family would like to speak to you.”

Emmanuel scratched his chin. “Right now?” He had just left his family.

She looked sad instead of cross. “I’m saying it wrong. Your family loves you and wants to take care of you. They would like to speak with you without you trying to score hits. Or whatever it was you were doing.”

“My sister and brother-in-law are wonderful people, Mademoiselle de Fouet.” Dom had taken him in and taught him discipline and fierce protectiveness. Aurore had loved him as his mother never had—with open arms, approval, pats, and humor.

“Your father, too,” she whispered.

He flinched. “
Mon cher papa
has nothing to do with me or the way I was raised. As a child, I saw him once or twice a year. Even when I was thirteen and he tore me away from my mother, he sent me to my sister. He never brought me home, never taught me…anything.”

Mademoiselle de Fouet’s eyes were large and dark in the half-light of the hall. She looked sympathetic and…sweet? “He…he argued with your mother.”

Emmanuel felt the bitterness rise inside him—an untamed horse with the bit in its teeth. “My father is very good at arguing with my mother, Mademoiselle. He seems kind and jovial until you get to know him. I was another bone for them to fight over, wasn’t I? Once he had turned everyone else against her, he had to have me too. And now Maman has you instead of one of her own children. Don’t get too attached, Mademoiselle de Fouet. When she dies, she will still have nothing to leave to any of us. It all rolls back into the estate and goes to my oldest brother. Even the land he said he would leave to Jean-Louis he is talking about giving to Cédric’s second son. Nothing for me, nothing for you.”

Mademoiselle de Fouet looked like she had been slapped, but only for a moment. “Is that the problem? She has no property to give you? Is that why you are distant? And why you haven’t seen her in three years, Monsieur Emmanuel? Do you love your family only for what they can give you when they die?”

Emmanuel felt that punch right in the belly. He stepped toward Mademoiselle de Fouet and growled, “My sister is a better mother than the one who bore me. It took her years to have her own son, but she never stopped treating me like I was hers even after he came, even when I was unkind. My brother Jean-Louis is my landlord in Poitou and charges me less than the going rate. My brother-in-law gave me the seed money and a prize mare—a beautiful chestnut Ardennais, daughter of a stallion Jean-Louis rode on campaigns. My mother ordered me whipped when I did not perform up to her standard. My father has promised me a dowry when I marry. A dowry. As if I were a little girl with stars in her eyes, dreaming of a handsome husband.”

Mademoiselle de Fouet looked like she might cry.

“What happened to you, Mademoiselle? Did your father promise you a dowry that never materialized? And a handsome husband?” Emmanuel felt his conscience twinge. It was unkind to rub an old maid’s face in her status.

“My fiancé died a week before my parents,” she hissed. “There were debts.”

His stomach fell. He had known Mademoiselle de Fouet was impoverished, but nothing else about her.

She turned away, her shoulders high and tight. She grabbed the door handle before her and glared at him. “Find a maid for me. I am waiting.”

She went into her room and shut the door gently behind her.

Manu’s ears buzzed from his anger. He decided it would be petty to not help, so he stumped down the stairs and shouted for a servant.

Chapter Two

Emmanuel sat as far as he could from Mademoiselle de Fouet in the old stone church in his father’s village. He stood and knelt and stood and sat by rote, muttering in Latin in the right places, the words coming back to him from the thousands of masses he’d attended before he went to live on his own. He stayed in his seat when the others got up to take the host from the priest.

Afterward, he held back until most of the other people were gone, as he didn’t like being jostled, but he found himself trapped next to her in the crowd of peasants filing out of the church. He had never felt he deserved the polite bows of his father’s farm workers and servants, having never spent much time in la Brosse, but he nodded politely in return. He clenched his jaw and looked everywhere but at Mademoiselle de Fouet.

“I saw you didn’t take the Eucharist, Monsieur de Cantière.” Her expression was bland, but her eyes didn’t quite meet his.

“I have been traveling all week and prefer to confess to my own priest.” Back in Poitou, he rarely went to mass and was rather lax about the confessional. It weighed heavily on his soul from time to time, though not heavily enough for him to spend the time saying the rosary and praying in penance. He received the sacrament no more than three or four times a year on important feast days. But the subject of his soul was a private conversation between him and the priests.

He cleared his throat. “I saw you came early with those who still needed to confess. I can’t imagine a lady such as you having many sins.”

“The state of my soul is between me, the priest, the saints, and
Dieu
.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but she finally looked at him, which he liked more than he should.

“Wrath, Mademoiselle?” He smiled, deliberately baiting her, though she had echoed his own thoughts.

She blinked and looked away. “Wrath, envy, greed. The priest told me I should not count my recent illness and recovery as sloth. I’ve never had trouble with gluttony, except on rare occasions.”

“But pride?” Manu was sure she had more than her fair share.

She glanced at him with a tiny smile on her lips. Her pink, plump lips. “Sometimes it is all I have.”

Moi aussi
, he almost said. He stared at her profile for a long while before offering his arm. They stepped out into the hot midday sun. Mademoiselle de Fouet adjusted her hat to keep the sun off her face, and he donned his brother Cédric’s hat, which was much nicer than his ragged riding hat but too big. He wasn’t sure he was thankful for his brother’s loan of clothing, as he would almost have preferred to wear his dusty leather riding clothes, which had the advantage of being comfortable.

They walked toward the carriage that stood waiting to take the ladies back to the manor. Manu’s thoughts turned back to confessionals.

“And what about lust, Mademoiselle de Fouet?”

She jerked in surprise, and he saw her cheeks flush red before she turned her head away and the brim of her hat obscured her face.

He stopped short in surprise, staring at her hat. Except for the moment when she hadn’t known he was watching and curtseyed to imaginary people, she had seemed like a hard-shelled, bitter image of his mother. That she lusted surprised him.

He wanted to ask after whom. He dreaded it was him. No, he dreaded it was someone else.

Manu took a long stride to catch up with her and helped her into the carriage with the other ladies. He stepped back with his father, brother, brother-in-law, and various nephews to return on foot with the servants. His father had always made a good case for walking, except in the worst weather, to give the horses and the servants more rest on Sunday. Manu wasn’t sure how walking half a league was rest for the servants who had been up since before the dawn to lay fires and cook breakfast, but he didn’t argue.

“Well, Manu!”

He thought the voice from behind his right shoulder was his father, but when he turned to look, it was his brother Cédric, twelve years older than he and heir to the barony. He looked and sounded more like their father all the time. He was even getting a bit of a belly.

“How is the horse farm?”

Manu narrowed his eyes to be sure his brother wasn’t teasing. He had been the most set against Manu starting a breeding operation, saying Jean-Louis would get better rents from grain harvests. Besides, a truly good horse breeder should set up operation close to a royal palace and hope to come to the attention of the court, not lose himself in the provinces. Manu could only afford the nominal fee that Jean-Louis charged him and liked being far from the court and from his family’s interference.

“Excellent, thank you.” Manu tried to sound more polite than he felt. “I’ve just sold a young stallion to a duke’s household. He hopes to train the stallion to race.”

Cédric appeared genuinely pleased. “Dom told me. It’s an excellent coup for you.”

Manu bristled at the implication he had success only through luck and not skill, but felt a hand on his other shoulder before he could retort. Dom smiled at him and raised his eyebrows in warning at Cédric, his oldest friend. “I’ll have to have a look at your horses when I’m in Poitou in a few weeks, Manu. If I delay, I won’t be able to afford your prices.”

“You wouldn’t have anything in carriage horses, would you?” asked Cédric. “My leaders are getting old, and I could use a new pair. Matched, if you have them, but anything strong, with good looks.”

They talked about horses all the way home, Manu describing his newest foals and Dom describing the broodmare he had tried to buy from Manu the year before, but which Manu had refused to part with. Cédric’s oldest son, Charles, tall, gangly, and almost a man, walked with them, listening and asking questions. The younger boys, including Dom’s only son, Dario, darted back and forth, chasing each other and the servant boys.

Dario darted in front of him and jumped up to knock Manu’s hat off. Laughing, Manu clamped one hand down on his hat and shook his fist in mock anger. The boy cackled and raced away. Manu couldn’t remember a time when he was as happy and free as his nephews, especially on a Sunday.

Manu’s mind, though, kept drifting to the becoming flush on Mademoiselle de Fouet’s cheeks. And to lust.

****

Catherine excused herself after the cold midday dinner. She still got dizzy after too much effort, even though she was much stronger than a few days before. She hoped she was well enough to leave for Paris the next day, as she didn’t think she could ask Monsieur Emmanuel to wait. She did not know how else she was to return to the baronesse without inconvenience to others, unless she waited a week or more to go up with the de Bures family. She worried about the baronesse, too. Catherine hadn’t been able to rise from her bed to wish her patroness a good journey.

The baronesse was up to something. Their voyage to the country had been a surprise to Catherine. The baronesse hadn’t seemed to have a real purpose, other than to argue with her estranged husband. She had always been honest with Catherine, but this trip appeared to have been a whim. Maybe she had felt her illness coming on?

Or was it something in Paris they had been fleeing, which the baronesse now faced alone? Catherine frowned in worry. She owed a debt of loyalty to the lady.

****

Manu paced in his own room. He was avoiding his father, who had invited him for an evening stroll in the gardens. After spending a few happy hours in the stables and then kicking and throwing a ball with his nephews, he had pled tiredness and a need to get ready to leave, but was doing nothing at all. He flung himself down in a chair and penned a note to his head groom in Poitou, saying he was going to be delayed by two or three more weeks and to let Pierrot do the haggling if anyone wanted to buy a horse. And not to sell the carriage horses because his brother might want them.