Falcon in the dive, p.15
Falcon in the Dive, page 15
She scanned the room for the duke but saw no one who resembled Aubrey in the slightest. No one with that prominent, pointed Beaumercy nose. “I hear… Is… They say your father comes to the theater every night.”
“Oh, do they say that…or does Josephine say that?” He smiled, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about his father any more than he wanted to talk about the horrors he must have witnessed in the Vendée—he hadn’t said a word on the subject all evening.
“Is your father here tonight?”
“Here?” Aubrey laughed. “Certainly not. He’s no doubt at a bawdy hurly-burly down the road with his mistress.”
Ani hid the disappointment. “And you’re here with your mistress.”
Aubrey’s face blanked.
“Like father, like son,” she said, though she managed to keep it light.
He recovered himself from her slight. “You may recall who asked to come here. I didn’t realize it was in hopes of a family reunion.”
She looked across the room toward a bar covered with velvet drapery and sporting a tender dressed as finely as the noblesse he served. “Are they serving wine over there?”
“Yes, they are.” He led her to the bar and reached into his pocket for his folded notes. “I don’t suppose you know what you want, mistress of mine,” he teased and stepped to the bar to order for her.
She cocked a brow and answered, “Château Lafite.”
Both the bartender and Aubrey snapped their heads to her. “Sir,” the bartender cautioned, afraid there might be some chance the marquis didn’t know what he was getting himself into. “That is the most expensive bottle we carry. Perhaps the most expensive anyone carries.”
“I’m quite aware.” Aubrey pulled more notes out of his pocket and laid them down. “Rouge. Not younger than ten, not older than twenty. Two glasses.” The marquis held up two fingers.
Ani said, “Might I pop the cork?”
The bartender took offense. “Certainly not, m’lady. This is Château Lafite 1776.”
“My, 1776!” Ani said. “It’s wine of the Colonial Revolution!”
The bartender was offended again, and Aubrey made a quieting motion toward Ani. “Have you ever removed a cork?” the marquis asked.
“No. That’s why I’d like to do it.”
“May she pop the cork, monsieur?” Aubrey laid another note on the bar. The bartender growled and slid the whalebone corkscrew and the wine across the bar toward Ani.
She held the neck of the bottle, and Aubrey assisted as she twisted the helix and pulled against the cork. As it popped, she said, “Liberty or death!”
Aubrey put his hand to his forehead and laughed into the crook of his elbow against the bar. His face had turned the color of the wine.
Ani slid the bottle back to the bartender. “Thank you, monsieur. That was enjoyable.” She shrugged to the crowd of astonished onlookers. “Not too many Patrick Henry followers in the room, eh?”
Aubrey passed her wine glass down the bar and raised his filled stemware to hers in a salute. He whispered, “Let them have death, then,” tinking the lip of her bowl with a clink, then they both took small sips.
A voice came from behind them, and Aubrey straightened. “Well, well, Marquis de Collioure.” He didn’t turn to face the graceful, lavishly dressed woman who called his name. “Is this why you’ve not returned my correspondence?” the woman said, looking Ani up and down with feigned interest. She flicked her hand at Ani.
“Baroness Annette Butte,” Aubrey acknowledged in introduction to Ani. “This is—”
“Comtesse de Foix,” Ani said but didn’t curtsy. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I’m sure it is your pleasure,” the baroness said solecistically. A smile oozed from her mouth. “I’m sure he’s told you that he and I are—”
“Would you look at that,” Ani said. “What lovely flowers.” She walked away from the bar and Baroness Butte, wine glass in hand, to feign looking at flower arrangements propped upon an arched altar near the entrance doors of the theater, but really to regroup, to think through a new plan now that this one had folded. She might as well simply enjoy a night at the theater if the duke wasn’t here.
“Marquis, come now. The Comtesse de Foix?” the baroness said. “Foix has had no provencial-states for over two years and has joined with Couserans.”
“I know this,” Aubrey said, “but most of the people here do not. She’s playing, so I’ll let her play.” He watched Ani as she touched gold trim on the decorations and listened to the conversations of important noblemen.
“Is she a patrician?”
“No. Not even close.”
“Has she proper lineage?”
“I’m still figuring that out.”
Baroness Butte waved dismissively in the direction of Ani’s amorous affections with neoclassical decorations. “Does she support the decisions of the king?”
“Oh, come, we all know that the king doesn’t actually make any decisions. He’s a handful of oiled ivory marbles that we’re trying to hold in one hand, while packing our bags with the other.”
“This may all amuse you, but you are a man spoken for. The wealth and property, the prosperity that would come from the blessed union of our two houses. Your father—”
“Do not mention my father when talking about ‘blessed union,’ Anne. Makes me limp as a fish.”
Baroness Butte recoiled, and Ani made her way back across the room toward the two conversers, perturbed that the baroness was still there.
“Comtesse,” the baroness addressed Ani as she approached, “I was inquiring with the marquis as to when you were going to inform us of the prospect of your becoming the next marquise?” The baroness beamed with a self-satisfied gaucherie.
Aubrey whipped toward her and opened his mouth to rebuke, but Ani reached out her hand to him. “My lord general,” she said, and he took her hand without hesitation. “They’re playing the clavichord in the ballroom. Would you care to waltz?”
“My pleasure, m’lady.” He tucked Ani’s hand around his elbow and led her through the partition between the social hall and the enormous ballroom where guests gathered before the opera began, the social aspect of which was enjoyed more than the actual performance.
“It is a clavichord, right?” Ani asked discreetly.
“It is.” He spared only one glance back toward the pouting baroness, and the glance was one of victory.
A staunch, erect man with an expressionless face stopped the couple at the threshold to the ballroom. “How may I announce you, your grace?”
“No announcement. Thank you, monsieur.” Aubrey didn’t wait in the entranceway for the man’s astonished eyebrows to curtail themselves back to expressionless.
“I’m delighted you know how to waltz,” Ani said, when Aubrey escorted her onto the floor, “because I haven’t the faintest.”
“Oh, dear God,” he cursed through tight lips, then crossed himself. “Can you at least follow my lead?”
“Most likely no.”
He sighed through his nose. “I’ll instruct as we go,” he said, smiling that smile he always smiled when he wanted the world to believe all was as it should be. He executed the movements as he instructed. “I bow; you curtsy. Give me your right hand; hold it high. Don’t look at me; look over my shoulder.” He took her right hand in his left, then reversed his direction, looking over her shoulder. “Your left hand on my epaulet, left elbow on mine; keep it high. Don’t look at me.” He stuck his right foot between her legs unexpectedly, and she chirruped as he wiggled her thighs apart with his kneecap. “Keep your legs shoulder-width apart. Don’t look at your feet. I step in between your legs. Keep a count of three, two, three, one, two, three. Move in a box, but move with the box as the box moves. I step to you, two, three. To my right, your left, three.”
His body pressing into her made her tense, taut as a bow string, but with her face that close to his neck, she could smell him again, and she hated how she knew his scent. French shave soap and chalky powder and skin oil made with clovers. Gone were the odors of the Vendée and the death that seemed so far away, where they moved in this box. She lost count. She looked down at her faint reflection in his shiny leather shoes and let him whisk her back to position.
“Loosen up,” he whispered. “Step toward me. Don’t look at your feet. Over my shoulder. Step, then my left, your right, two, three. Then we move toward you, two, three. Don’t look at your feet; just feel my thigh leading you. Don’t look at my thigh. Don’t look at me. Over my shoulder. Stay with me, right against me.” He pulled her into him so close that she couldn’t breathe without heaving her chest into his. “Good enough, two, three. If you can breathe, you’re not doing it right. Press against me like I don’t have the plague.”
“I’m not convinced that you don’t,” she said breathlessly.
“Two, three; don’t lose count. Don’t count aloud; it makes you speed up. Don’t look at your feet.” He tilted her chin with an imperceptible lift of his shoulder and corrected her posture with a tight grip on her shoulder blade.
“Baroness Butte,” Ani said, eying her at the edge of the ballroom. “She’s trying to dance with you.”
“She’s trying to marry me,” he said. “I can still see your lips counting; don’t count aloud. My father and her father have it all arranged for me. Look over my shoulder, not at me.”
He lowered his hand from her shoulder blade to the small of her back and pressed her torso into him. She felt that any minute the iron-maiden cabinet would completely close around her, and he’d stick torture spikes into her.
“We are on three,” she said, looking at her feet. “I think you lost count that time.”
“I most certainly did not. I could do this in my sleep. Don’t look in my eyes. Over my shoulder.”
“You were looking in my eyes.”
“Certainly not,” he said. “Ready for your next test? Song and composer.”
He spun her, and her eyes landed again and again on Baroness Butte who had moved farther into the ballroom to watch them with contempt.
“Do you realize the baroness has been watching us this while?” Ani asked.
“Yes. She wants to see you fall.” He twirled her in the opposite direction, so she didn’t have to face the woman. “Better? This is a medley from last year’s opera, Philippe et Georgette, by Nicolas d’Alayrac. All beautiful love songs by a noble Frenchman.”
“The baroness has wealth, beauty, breeding. I’m sure she knows this song’s composer. So why don’t you marry her?”
He allowed a pause. “I believe that I would like to marry you instead.”
Ani breathed in sharply, and he gripped her tighter so she couldn’t pull away. The sudden rush of air and anxiety stopped her midbreath, and she choked and coughed from the bottom of her lungs. The two came to a standstill in the middle of the dance floor as swiftly as those around them. She clutched her throat, her chest, and heaved such guttural coughs that she thought she might spit up more blood. The dancers stared in fascination. Even the violinist ceased his bowing to gawk at her. The ballroom echoed with whispers and the fit of coughs.
Aubrey waited patiently until she righted herself, and he extended his arm to her. When she’d caught some breath, she took his arm, and they walked from the dance floor as if it had never happened. They rounded the corner of the social hall and entered a private hallway where several noblemen were wistfully cooing to would-be noblewomen in the dim lighting. Pulling from his inside pocket her inhaler and powder, he held it to her mouth and inserted a pinch of her medication, ignoring her expression of surprise. He took calming, deep breaths in hopes of her emulation and shielded her from the prying eyes of the curious onlookers.
By the time the indecent noblemen had cleared the hallway, Ani had regained her breath, though she’d lost her false composure in the ballroom. “I’m sorry about that,” she muttered.
“Yes,” he sighed. “It was not quite the reaction I had envisioned.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say it.”
“Are you?” He groaned. “Well.” He looked down at his hands, absently holding the inhaler he’d remembered that she’d forgotten. “Think on it. We could both do worse than one another.”
A muted clarion trumpeted throughout the theater, indicating that the opera was beginning. Baroness Butte appeared at the end of the narrow hallway, clutching the arm of a nobleman from the ballroom. She glowered at Ani. Ani stiffened and righted herself, stepped away from the wall, and set an arm on Aubrey’s.
“I simply love d’Alayrac’s Philippe et Georgette, my lord general, don’t you?” Ani laughed loud enough to be heard, while quietly clearing a residual cough. “It steals the very breath from me.”
Aubrey looked to the baroness at the end of the hallway and back to Ani. “It happens to be my favorite,” he said, entwining his arm with hers and strutting past the baroness and toward the auditorium doors.
Ani raised an arm theatrically, her head still whirling. “Beautiful love songs by a noble Frenchman, don’t you think, my dearest lord general?”
Chapter Ten
Revolutionary coffee
Why has government
been instituted at all?
Because the passions of men
will not conform to the
dictates of reason and justice,
without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton
Aubrey woke suddenly in the false dawn, but he wasn’t sure if it were from a sound or a premonition. His nightshirt was sweat-through, but from the wine or sweltering heat or some kind of nightmare, he didn’t know. Quiet rustling came from the hall, he heard it now, and he drew the pistol from beneath his pillow, stood in his bare feet, and went to the door. He opened the latch quietly, stepped into the black hall.
Light came from beneath Ani’s bedroom door, and along the edge where it was cracked and stuffed with something soft. Some fabric. Aubrey walked closer to it, his gun drawn. It was a man’s shirt, and even in the dimness, he could see that the collar of it was coated in dried blood. He put a hand to her door and pressed it enough to see the flickering lamp on the sill, the windows drawn inward, twine rolled out the casement. Through slivers of the boudoir, he saw Ani, putting items into her satchel. She wore loose men’s trousers and an overly long men’s shirt. On her feet she still wore her floral silk brocade shoes, but she left her pantlegs long enough to cover them. She secured the court lilies and cross pendant beneath the top buttons of her shirt and twisted her hair around her fingers into a knot that she covered with a dirty peddler’s cap.
Aubrey watched for a moment, then closed the door on the muffling shirt and went down the hall, around the corner toward the servants’ rooms. He couldn’t risk the sound of knocking, so he softly entered Arnaud’s and Valéry-Marie’s quarters and lit a lamp.
Valéry woke instantly, and his eyes darted to Aubrey’s gun. “Sir, what is it?”
Aubrey shushed him and whispered, “I need your clothes.”
“My clothes, sir?” Valéry said sleepily. “You want clothes at gunpoint?”
Aubrey set the pistol on the dresser.
Arnaud stirred and woke. “My lord?”
“Clothing,” Aubrey said. “I need you to dress me pedestrian.”
“Sir,” Arnaud said, “you could never look pedestrian. Even your nightgown has gold leafing on it.”
“It’s not the time for flattery,” Aubrey said. “Just make it work.”
Valéry stood and rifled through his clothespress for an old blouse. He sniffed it and gurned.
Aubrey saw his disgust and said, “That one’s perfect.” Valéry protested, but Aubrey put it on, left it partially untucked, and was fastening the clasps of the cuffs.
“Oh no, my lord, you must not clap fetters.”
“Fetters?”
“Cuffs,” Valéry corrected. “Working men leave them loose.”
Arnaud grunted, slipped by the men, and walked into the hallway.
“And you can’t wear your halflings, so try these on.” Valéry handed him a pair of full-legged fallfronts.
“Halflings?” Aubrey said. “Why does everyone say that? It is a uniform. Is that what you think of my uniform?” He put on the fallfronts.
“Your worst waistcoat, at most. The one you’re embarrassed you own.”
“I don’t own one of those.”
Valéry yawned and pulled yesterday’s waistcoat out of the laundry basket, checked that it only had one row of buttons down the front, and handed it to the marquis, along with some dirty stockings. “No heavy or formal overcoat, certainly nothing military. Don’t shave off that morning face. Don’t curl your hair or pull it back.” He tousled Aubrey’s shoulder-length hair. “Leave it down and absolutely no powder. Don’t rouge your cheeks. No moles, no lips, no brows. No white cockade. Don’t polish your shoes.”
Aubrey crossed himself and looked down the front of him. “Shall I stuff?”
The servant stifled his laugh. “I would advise against it, my lord.”
Aubrey’s legs felt loose with nothing holding up the stockings. “So…I’m done, then? There are no ruffles?”
Valéry shook his head, and Arnaud came back around the corner with a tray brimming with creamy pudding, jars of preserves, and ham omelettes slathered in pheasant gravy. “Your breakfast, my lord.”
“Oh, Arnaud, you’re too good to me,” Aubrey said, “but I haven’t time for that. Enjoy it yourselves, gents.”
