The French Mistress (15 page)

After the murky shadows of the coach, I blinked myself as my eyes grew accustomed to the day.

“What do you see, Louise?” Madame asked. “Pray tell us all!”

“I see trees, bent and blown by the rain, Madame,” I said slowly, wishing I’d something of greater cheer to report. “I see fields, and stone walls, and of course our guard riding before us, and the others behind.”

“No church spires?” she asked with disappointment. “No inns or signposts or other landmarks?”

“No, Madame,” I said. “I fear ’tis much the same as we’ve seen for days.”

“Days and days and
days
,” she said with unabashed discouragement. “I must say His Majesty’s kingdom might be a rich and bounti ful country, but it’s also a richly tedious one for travelers.”

“Yes, Madame,” I agreed absently. The coach was following a long curve in the road, and we’d just cleared a small hill. “Hold now, what I see—Oh, Madame, it is! The ocean, Madame! I can see it now for certain. The ocean!”

I
was
certain, too, and doubly excited by the prospect. Not only did it mean that our long journey by coach was almost done and England within our sights, but also this was the first time I’d seen the water of the Channel since I’d left home nearly two years before. Each morning of my girlhood I’d spied the sea in the distance from the window of my bedchamber, and I hadn’t realized until now exactly how sorely I’d missed that view.

“The sea?” Madame cried, and to my surprise she found the strength to sit upright and lean close to me at the window. “Open the shade, Louise, so I might see for myself!”

The nearest lady rested a gentle hand on Madame’s arm. “Take care, Madame, and mind your strength. Pray do not exert yourself without reason.”

“But this is a reason, and the most joyous one of all!” Madame exclaimed gaily. “If we are near the water, then we’re near to Dunkerque and our boats, and that much more near to England as well. Open this shade, Louise. Open it at once.”

“Very well,” I said. I untied the lashings that held the shade in place, and rolled the leather upward, tied it high. “There, between those two hills. That silvery stripe’s the sea.”

Madame squinted and winced, shading her eyes but refusing to look away. Then at last she spied it, too, and her face broke into a smile of such pure joy that it could have brightened the entire gloomy landscape.

“There it is,” she said, and laughed, giddy with delight. “The sea,
my
sea! Oh, now we’ll be at Dunkerque by nightfall for certain, and then my brother will be waiting to come meet me!”

“I pray you won’t be disappointed, Madame,” cautioned Madame de Beaulieu. “Surely His Majesty has many affairs demanding his time and energies in London, and you must not be disappointed if he isn’t waiting for you when you land.”

“But he will be,” Madame replied with perfect confidence. “My brother has been waiting for me in Dover this past week, so eager is he to welcome me himself. He wrote me so, again and again, and he would not lie. It’s I who have kept him waiting as we’ve wallowed in this mud and muck. But soon we’ll be together again. Soon, soon, soon!”

I grinned with her, pleased beyond measure to have her so happy—more happy, really, than I’d ever known her to be. This single glimpse of the sea had done more for her than a score of surgeons ever could, and I wondered at how her sorrows seemed to have vanished so completely, and her suffering with it. For the first time in our acquaintance, she appeared a young woman of twenty-six, a princess born of kings and queens.

“Soon, yes, Madame, but even Your Highness must heed the sailors,” warned Madame de Beaulieu, seemingly determined to play the role of the cautionary. “Most shipmasters won’t put to sea in such a driving rain as this. Then there are also tides to be considered, and the difficult process of embarkment itself.”

“That’s as nothing to me, Madame de Beaulieu,” the princess said fiercely, her gaze still intent on the distant stripe of water. “Consider all I’ve endured these ten years, and then ask again whether I’ll be stopped by a wave or a raindrop or even a tide?”

I listened, and marveled. Could the coming meeting with her brother truly inspire so great a change in her? She might have been taken for a different lady entirely, now that she’d left Monsieur behind. I’d heard that when she’d been younger, she’d been a girl of great spirit and fire as well as charm, and that was what I glimpsed now.

“Forgive me, Madame,” said the hapless lady. “I never meant to challenge you.”

Madame nodded, at last turning away from the window. “I’ll have you know this is no ordinary journey, my lady, no simple visit for pleasure. Surely you must have guessed as much from the gentlemen, the diplomats, among our escort?”

“Yes, Madame, I did,” Madame de Beaulieu admitted, persevering still. “But then if there is such importance attached to your journey, wouldn’t it be wiser to be cautious rather than rash?”

Slowly Madame smiled, a smile not of joy, but of a rare determination that I’ll never forget.

“Perhaps it would be more wise,” she said. “But pray recall that I was born a Stuart, and as a family we Stuarts have never been known to be cautious. If I chose to be safe, then I’d turn back now, and return to Paris with the others. But if I wish to secure the prize that dangles like the ripest fruit before both England and France, then I must be brave and stretch to seize it, no matter the risk of falling.”

I thought it the boldest and most stirring speech I’d ever heard spoken by a lady, and my heart beat faster from excitement just to listen. Perhaps because Madame had shared other confidences with me, I trusted her completely in whatever scheme she intended. Perhaps I believed with her that her brother could accomplish whatever he set to do, or perhaps even then I’d decided my own course in the world would be every bit as brave and bold as Madame’s declaration was on that rainy day.

But the older ladies were not so pleased. I saw the worried glances they exchanged with one another, as if they believed that the princess had quite scattered her wits or, worse, that she should be forcibly returned to the keeping of her husband, who would put a swift end to such ravings.

“You are certain that this is proper for you to do, Madame?” Madame de Beaulieu asked tentatively. “A great lady in your position?”

“I am,” Madame passionately declared. “And with God and my brother to guide me, I will succeed.”

 

 

Thus, in the earliest hours of the sixteenth of May, I stood on the heaving deck of an English royal sloop, standing close to Madame’s side. Overhead the two flags—the red-and-white crosses on a blue background for England, and a silk banner with the golden Bourbon lilies in honor of Madame’s presence on board—danced and snapped in the stiff wind. The sloop was part of an English squadron that had been waiting for us at Dunkerque, and though the skies had finally cleared enough for the English captains to clear the harbor, our brief crossing to Dover had proved a rough and challenging one. We two ladies were as good as alone on the deck at this hour, with the crew so occupied with their tasks that they kept a respectful distance apart from us, though always ready to assist the princess if necessary.

Not that they’d be needed. Proudly Madame displayed her ease at sea by clambering sure-footed up and down the companionways and across the slippery decks. She claimed such prowess was a natural gift granted to all English, on account of their being an island people and surrounded by water. It was certainly not a gift shared by her French ladies and servants. Every other member of her party save me was quaking and puking below, laid low in the most foul of circumstances by the rocking waves. Madame had been almost uncharitable regarding their distress, too, declaring it as proof of English superiority, at least where seafaring was concerned.

Not having so much as a drop of English blood myself, I wondered aloud that I wasn’t stricken as well, but Madame had an answer for that, too. She gaily proclaimed I’d either sailors or fishermen in the distant reaches of my family tree, or, gazing toward the future, she said I must be destined to wed an Englishman. I scoffed at that, and reminded her of the empty foolishness of the Abbé Prignani’s fortune for me, which made her laugh.

But then, on this day, it seemed most everything would make Madame laugh. She was that happy, that joyful, that relieved to be free of Monsieur. Like an old salt, she squinted into the blowing mist and rain, her dark curls limp from the spray and her fur-lined cloak beaded with seawater. Resolutely she turned her bare face (for she’d chosen to do without paint, rather than have it stream and puddle down her cheeks) toward the west, desperate for her first glimpse of England.

“The sailors believe we’ll make Dover by dawn, Louise,” Madame said to me, though her gaze never shifted from the wet, gray horizon. “To think that I could dine with my brother this very night!”

“Yes, Madame,” I said, shivering inside my plain woolen cloak. If Madame did not feel the cold, then I was not permitted to feel it, either. “Perhaps you should rest now, to be refreshed when you meet His Majesty.”

She shook her head, her gloved hands tightening on the wooden taffrail as if she feared I’d try to pull her away by force. “My brother will find me worn and changed and will scold me for it, too, yet I also know he’ll love me still, just as I love him.”

“Then please let me fetch another cloak to warm you, Madame, or—”

“I’m well enough, Louise.” She sighed restlessly, slipping one hand inside her cloak to press the pain in her belly. In her excitement, she’d suppressed her many illnesses, but she couldn’t make them vanish entirely, as much as she might wish it. Her brother
would
find her much changed, and perhaps he could make her agree to see his own physicians.

“You’re quiet, Louise.” Madame reached out to take my hand. “And here I thought you were the bravest of the lot.”

“I’m not afraid, Madame,” I said, and I wasn’t. “I was trying to imagine England, that is all.”

“England.” Her smile softened. “You will like it, I think. It’s a sweet, dear place, and now in the spring, everything will be lush and green and full of flowers.”

“It must be very beautiful, Madame.” Green and lush would be a pleasing change from gray and chill. I had grown so cold, I doubted I’d ever feel my toes or fingers again. “You’ve spoken of England with such fondness that I can scarce wait to see it for myself.”

She smiled absently, lost in her own musings. “And the gentlemen, Louise! The English gentlemen all follow the lead of my brother, which makes them the most charming gallants in the world. In turn they’ll judge you to be the most enchanting young lady they’ve ever seen. One look at your sweet face, and they’ll be lost—lost! Perhaps you’ll even find that special sailor you’re destined to wed. England is full of them.”

I felt my face grow hot with miserable shame, the way it always did whenever anyone teased me about marriage. I was nearly twenty, monstrously old to be unwed, without so much as the breath of a suitor hovering about me. At a time when most young ladies were considered in their prime at sixteen, I was perilously close to becoming a spinster, and a disgraceful disappointment to my family.

I dared to have great hopes for England. For the most part, I’d liked the English gentlemen that had come to call on Madame in Paris: they were often clever and amusing and handsome, too, if brash by French standards.

But not a sailor. “If you please, Madame,” I said, glancing pointedly at one of the less savory of the sloop’s seamen, a greasy, grimy rascal with a long, tarred queue and a single eye who’d been bellowing orders to the men aloft. “Not a sailor.”

She laughed merrily, the light from a nearby lantern slipping into her hood to wash across her face. “There are sailors, Louise, and then there are sailors. Recall that all my brothers have loved their boats and ships. Why, my brother James is the Lord High Admiral of the Navy, as fine a sailor as any to be found, and he fought with great bravery in the last Dutch war.”

I nodded, thoughtful. I’d forgotten how these English gentlemen embraced their navy. In France, the army was the gentleman’s service, but in England it seemed that even the king’s brother, the Duke of York, went to sea by choice. Perhaps there was some merit in the abbé’s fortune after all, at least when it was combined with Madame’s prediction, and I’d find myself loved by a seafaring peer.

But Madame misread my thoughts. “A sailor, yes, but not James,” she cautioned. “I’m certain he’ll be taken with you, as he is with most pretty young girls. But he is well and duly married, Louise, though he amuses himself with mistresses as if he weren’t. Your parents trust me to do better than that for you.”

“No, Madame.” I was thankful that the overcast night now hid my face as I blushed again, though this time with guilt, not regret. I’d never once imagined myself with Madame’s second brother; by her telling, he sounded dull and stubborn, if brave, and I’d not been taken with his fair-haired, ruddy face in the portraits she kept. But her oldest brother, Charles—that was another matter entirely, and I prayed she’d not ask me questions outright regarding him.

“No, no, indeed,” she said firmly. “I’ve not brought you with me to see you commit a folly like that.”

“Oh, Madame,” I exclaimed, “I’m so grateful that you’ve brought me with you at all!”

She smiled, pleased to be thanked, as all noble folk were. “I always told you I would, Louise. It’s an honor you earned with your loyalty to me, and one you deserved.”

“But it’s also one that many other ladies coveted,” I said, which was entirely true. When the names of those chosen to accompany Madame had been made known, there’d been a good many who’d been grievously disappointed, and who’d shown that disappointment by spitefully attacking me as unworthy. “And for you then to grant me an allowance for new gowns—why, Madame, I can never thank you enough.”