The Corrupt Comte

Dedication

For R.H.

For N.K.

For S.B.

For N.T.

For H.A.

For T.W.J.

For my editor, Sasha Knight.

And for my parents, without whom I would not be here.

Acknowledgments

This novel would not exist without the invaluable reference of two distinct literary works:
The Duchess of Berry and the court of Louis XVIII
by Imbert de Saint-Amand and
Dirty French: Everyday Slang from “What’s Up?” to “F*%# Off!”
by Adrien Clautrier and Henry Rowe.

Thus at the flaming forge of life

Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

Each burning deed and thought.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Village Blacksmith”

Chapter One

9 February 1820, Paris, France

She didn’t say much, Gaspard Toussaint mused from across the parlor. She stood still, stayed silent and watched the revelry in the room with wide, dilated eyes. Shock lurked in those eyes, but not fear.

She couldn’t possibly be older than eighteen. Innocence radiated from her much as the cloying perfumes did from the vastly more experienced women giggling and running around the furniture. She watched, delicate jaw clenched shut, as drunken gentlemen chased their feminine counterparts with arms outstretched.

Raucous laughter filled the overheated air, but Gaspard didn’t join in. His role in these games was to sit in the wings, observing with detached amusement and providing dry commentary to those in the vicinity.

But he couldn’t stop looking at the girl. Her naiveté glowed from beneath the skin, a beacon drawing his gaze from the moment she’d slipped into the room, hot on the heels of the blond man now standing beside him.

“You’re being gloomy again, Gaspard,” Sabien Purvis murmured. “Go chase a skirt or two.” Then he laughed at his own joke.

Gaspard smiled wryly. “I’ll leave the skirt chasing to you, shall I?” Sipping his brandy, he tore his gaze from the girl in time to see Maxence,
le baron
Denney, catch a squealing, blindfolded woman in his arms.

“Too slow, Celeste,” Max teased in a low voice, anything but subtle in his intentions as he squeezed the woman’s waist. “You know the consequences.”

“I do, my lord.” After ripping off her blindfold, Celeste adopted a penitent expression, her coyness nauseatingly false. “Off to the closet?”

Max’s hand landed heavily on her backside. “Indeed.” The black-haired baron turned to the room. “Fifteen minutes, starting now.” He dragged Celeste and her heaving bosoms into the hall.

The mood of the room calmed as soon as the pair left. They had a quarter hour until the next round of lascivious merriment began, during which time the men would survey the women and choose with whom they wanted to spend those stolen minutes in the linen closet. More drinks were poured as the parlor’s occupants sectioned off into small groups to plot and scheme and ponder their fates.

Games such as this one often livened up parties during Paris’s winter season, but Gaspard rarely participated. The women here were easy prey for the bumbling, oafish men. There was no sport found in this sort of seduction, even if Gaspard were able to play—and a little sport might be just what he needed. Too bad his participation would draw more attention than a man in his precarious position was comfortable with.

His smile disappeared as he took another sip of his drink. “Which one are you after tonight?” Prior to Sabien’s time in London, the French army lieutenant had rarely missed an opportunity to be one such bumbling oaf. Since his return, though, Sabien had seemed somewhat…
off
.

Sabien shrugged. “One with tits.”

“Not picky, I see.”

“Does it matter? It’s only fifteen minutes.”

Gaspard quirked an eyebrow. “My understanding is that a lot can happen with a woman in fifteen minutes.” Or ten, depending on how desperate the man.

When it came to women, Gaspard was always desperate.

“Reading books again?” The other man shook his head in mocking despair, casting assessing hazel eyes over him. “I suppose you’re pretty enough. You need only take your pick of the women in this room, and you can satisfy your…curiosity.”

“I’m not curious.” Gaspard drained his glass. “And none here appeal.” It was a lie, but one he’d perfected over the years. Not even Sabien, the closest thing Gaspard had to a friend, knew the truth about him, and he preferred to keep it that way. He needed people to believe what they did, a consequence of the too-deep grave he’d been digging for himself ever since the war ended.

His gaze drawn unwillingly back to the unknown, dark-haired girl standing alone across the room, he frowned to feel a faint heat at his nape, wispy tendrils creeping down his spine to curl and solidify into an…an
awareness
, of sorts, low in his belly. It was a thoroughly uncomfortable sensation, foreign and unwelcome, and the longer he studied her, the less he was able to ignore it.

His breath caught briefly when he saw she stared back in his direction, but it wasn’t Gaspard who held her attention.

It was Sabien, and she watched him hungrily.

Gaspard dropped languidly into a nearby chair and reached for the brandy decanter resting on a side table, refreshing his glass. “There’s one who wants you to chase her.” He indicated the brunette with a tilt of his head.

The lieutenant slid into the seat next to him. “No thanks.”

“Why not?”

Sabien took the decanter from him, drinking straight from its mouth. “Look at her.”

“I am.” He hated that he couldn’t seem to
stop
looking at her. Her face was angular with a softly squared jaw that, when coupled with her pointed chin and slightly slanted dark eyes, gave her an almost feline appearance. She wasn’t pretty, not exactly—her features were too…something. Too loud.

Those hooded eyes
announced
themselves. “Who is she?”

Sabien sighed, a defeated sound. “Claudia Pascale. She’s English.”

Yet her wide mouth, high cheekbones and sleekly arched brows were utterly French. As was her name. “Pascale. Any relation to—”

“Amaury Pascale, yes. His granddaughter.”

Interesting.
“He didn’t come with her, I assume.”

“He’d be a dead man the moment he set foot on French soil. So, no, Pascale isn’t here.”

Gaspard let his gaze skim down her body, praying he appeared far more disinterested than he felt. The granddaughter of Amaury Pascale, couture perfumer to Louis XVI and purported court spy for the dead king, was a lush little thing. Short and curvy and the very picture of good health, even though her cheeks were pale and her eyes shadowed.

Those shadows bothered him, sparking an itch beneath his skin. It was ridiculous, not to mention dangerous, to keep interrogating Sabien about her, and yet— “An Englishwoman in Paris, at this time of year… Don’t tell me she’s on her honeymoon.” Gaspard managed an authentic-sounding scoff. “Bored with her husband already?”

“More like searching for one.” Sabien lifted the decanter, swinging it back and forth and studying the sloshing liquid. “We were introduced when I was in London this autumn, and next thing I know, she’s never more than ten feet away at every party, dance or musicale. She—” He broke off with a grimace.

“She fancies you.”

“She tried to kiss me once.” His lip curled distastefully before taking a hearty swallow of expensive drink.

Gaspard frowned. “I realize she’s no great beauty, but—”

“She stutters.” From the tone of his voice, Sabien might as well have said,
She has three noses, all with warts.

Irritation prickled across the back of Gaspard’s neck. “I fail to see the problem.” Not to mention that he couldn’t remember if he’d ever desired actual conversation with a member of the opposite sex, especially when a woman’s mouth could do so many more interesting things than speak. A mouth like the Pascale girl’s simply begged for silence. “She’s fair.”

“She’s fine.”

“More than fine.”

“And what would you know?”

He ignored Sabien’s belligerent retort. “You could take a wife. It’d make your father happy.”

“If you’re determined to discuss unpleasant topics, I’d prefer Claudia Pascale over my father.” Sabien scowled. “Speaking with her is a truly painful affair. I’ve done my best to politely declare my disinterest, but she always looks at me like a wounded animal might.” He paused, thoughtful. “One that’s been kicked repeatedly by its owners.”

After grappling the decanter away from Sabien, Gaspard refilled his brandy and studied the girl, his body warm all over with the buzz of oncoming intoxication. So much easier to ignore the heat in his gut, a heat that reminded him it had been far too long since he’d found solace in the wet clasp of a female body. “She’s looking at you now.”

Sabien glared down at his empty hands, as if just then realizing he no longer had the liquor bottle. “I don’t understand why she’s still unmarried, what with all that money.”

“Money?”

“More than you or that crumbling castle you refuse to visit would know what to do with.”

Ugh. That castle. It was fast becoming the bane of his wretched existence—the castle, the title and the thousands in damning debts and unpaid taxes that had carried over from the days of the previous Count of Lorraine-Mâche. He could care less about keeping the estate, but the title…the title he’d
earned
, with his body, his blood. His soul. It was a title he continued to pay for, every single desperate day of his life.

That price was too high for him to lose it over something as simple as money owed.

He just needed to get his hands on enough.

His jaw firmed as he looked again at the Pascale girl’s sharp face and soft body, the guileless eyes and the simple cut of her pale gown trimmed with royal blue velvet. Her chest rose as she sighed, full breasts straining against the low, squared neckline.

The fine lace at his cuffs shifted over his scarred skin as he rubbed a hand over his mouth, a timely reminder that he wasn’t the sort of man permitted to imagine baring those round tits, or using the blade he kept hidden up his sleeve to slice straight through the bodice of that gown. He couldn’t be allowed to imagine carefully peeling back the ruined fabric—or with quick, vicious yanks of rending satin in his determination to discover whether her nipples were peach or brown or the color of succulent summer berries.

He shifted in his seat as his groin stirred, and attempted to deaden his reaction with the consumption of more excellent brandy. His gaze drifted back to her face, and he swore the glint in those depthless irises as she watched Sabien was one of determination. More than the fantasy of her breasts, that glint…intrigued him.

His eyes narrowed. He couldn’t afford to be intrigued. That girl’s only temptation was her money, her body nothing he couldn’t find in a brothel across the riverbank. He knew marriage to an heiress would earn him laughter from his peers, but so long as he made it known that he sought a bride merely to hold off the taxman, laughter would be the only consequence.

The suspicions it would raise if he were to evince a show of actual desire for his bride…

Five years living as a homosexual in Parisian high society had earned him enemies and notoriety in equal shares. An expected consequence when one was a spy for the Crown, and espionage paid a pittance. There was no shame in needing extra funds, he told himself, even as his mood darkened. “How wealthy is she, exactly?”

Sabien’s fair head lolled to the side to stare at him incredulously. “Seriously?”

“Desperate times.” Admitted from between gritted teeth.

“The Crown breathing down your neck?”

“Something like that.” A closer truth was that his employer—the same employer who had somehow managed to gift Gaspard with the title five years ago—held the strings, and had been hinting for weeks now that the king’s coffers grew greedy for restitution—a petty but effective threat. Gratitude had long kept Gaspard under the spymaster’s thumb with the vain hope that somehow he could make Gaspard’s debts disappear, but gratitude faded over time, leaving resentful animosity in its place.