The Forbidden Rose

Six

HE WAS HUGE AND DARK AND SUDDEN AS A LANDSLIDE. His arms closed around her, trapping her against his chest. The stone wall jabbed her back. His hand filled her mouth with leathery, unyielding force. She couldn’t twist away from it.

She bit down with all her strength. No reaction. Nothing could have told her so clearly that her struggles were unimportant.

At her ear, he breathed, “Listen.”

A faint, rhythmic tapping.

She stopped biting. At once, he spread his fingers so she could breathe. The beat of blood slowed in her ears. Now she heard it clearly. Horses walked the front drive, slowly approaching. Two or three horses. Someone was coming.

She nodded against the hold on her mouth, and LeBreton loosened the grip. They both looked toward the grilled door in the garden wall. Through that she could see a narrow slice of courtyard. Pale gravel, scattered with debris, stretched to the ruins of the chateau.

The village of Voisemont had become achingly poor since the Revolution. The army had come three times to requisition horses in return for worthless paper. The horses that were left plowed fields and drew wagons. Even the mayor did not ride out for pleasure these days. Who would come to the chateau at first dawn?

A scramble and scratching slipped over the wall behind them. Adrian landed beside her, softly, on bare feet. Shockingly, he came with a knife between his teeth. Then it was in his hand, held low, at his side, flat to his waistcoat. He was totally silent.

“Lead the donkeys out.” LeBreton’s lips shaped the words, almost without sound. “Green stuff on top. You’re gathering herbs for your grandmother. Go. And hide that damned knife.”

Not even a nod. The boy fitted toes into the wall and was up and over in an instant. Noiseless.

Voices pricked the surface of the silence. Paris voices, out of place against a background of country birds and crickets. They were close. LeBreton said, “Don’t move.”

He had done this before. He’d hidden from men hunting him. She stayed still.

He drew his coat around her. Pulled her to him and wrapped her deep in it. LeBreton was earth brown. His hat, his clothing, even his skin were the dun and buff of the trees around them and the wall at her back. He would be invisible in this corner of garden among the disorderly branches of the pear tree. And she was hidden by him. Surrounded by him.

She took fistfuls of his shirt. Pressed close. The warm cloth, the sense of his muscles underneath, the tension of his skin, his breath moving in and out, steadied her. The scar on his face was altogether harsh and menacing. But this time, all that menace and power stood between her and whatever was coming up the drive.

He settled his coat one last careful time around her and opened it a slit to let her see out. The iron grille that was the gate of this garden showed a narrow slice of courtyard.

He listened as if he were sorting a hundred sounds apart, assigning meaning to each one. He was still, the way an animal is, in the woods, when a man walks by.

They waited. One cannot stop breathing. She did it in shallow, slow breaths, very quietly.

Soft thuds and then crisp, loud scrunchings came, marking a transition from dirt paths to gravel. Adrian came out of the kitchen garden and slouched into their line of vision, leading the donkeys on the full length of rein. They were transformed, those donkeys. He’d piled the panniers and the backs of the donkeys high with great heaps of green herbage. Basil. Lavender. Rosemary. Sage. On top he’d tied bundles of long hazel poles, the ones the gardeners cut and peeled to make bean towers.

The animals disappeared beneath the load. He’d smeared dirt on their necks and legs. They were the meanest of village donkeys now, muddy, unkempt beasts kept by the lowest farm tenants. Adrian had become slovenly as well. The cheeky defiance was gone from him. Slumped, dull, placid, moving at a snail’s pace, he strolled through their sight.

LeBreton set his hand on her bare shoulder, a tight, warning touch. He must have known what was coming next.

“You! You there. Halt.” The harsh Parisian accent came at a distance. Hooves speeded up. “Come here.”

Adrian had dallied in the courtyard in a lackadaisical way. The riders had seen him and the donkeys. He was caught.

“Who are you, boy?”

I know that voice. Edged like a razor, carrying with it the slums of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the east of Paris. This was the man who’d broken into her room the night the chateau burned. The man she’d fought. The one who’d come to kill her.

“You have no business here. What are you doing?” The clop of hooves. She could see nothing, but she could hear the breath of the horses. “Explain yourself.”

LeBreton’s muscles registered no surprise. He’d sent the servant boy to play out this scene in the courtyard. Exactly this.

“Looting is forbidden.”

The Jacobin had screamed when she slashed his face. He’d shrieked loudly enough to be heard by the mob on the lawn. His blood spilled over her hands. Covered the letter opener she held like a knife. When she fought to get away the night candle fell from the desk. Her papers caught fire. The curtains went up in flames.

He’d survived. Hidden in the dark, in the damp niche under the bridge, shaking and sticky with blood, she’d heard him howl her name.

“We will not tolerate a plague of scavengers, stealing from the people.”

Crouched like an animal in her hiding place, she’d watched that man stalk through the mad carouse of the burning. She’d seen him, his head dressed in a rough bandage, going through the crowd, grabbing women to search their faces, rolling drunken couples on their backs to get a good look, yelling, “Where’s the de Fleurignac bitch? She has to be here somewhere. Find her.”

The servant boy whined. He had done nothing. Nothing. The people could have the greens. He didn’t want them. Here. Take them. His grand-mère would find other herbs for her stew. Nobody told him he couldn’t—

The outraged squawk said Adrian had been booted to the ground. The men snickered. That was the sport they brought out of Paris these days, bullying a farm boy.

LeBreton closed his hand on her. Quiet. Quiet.

Adrian had a widowed mother. His grand-mère was aged. She had no teeth.

“God rot your grandmother.”

The boy hurriedly mentioned more destitute relatives.

The Jacobin said, “They are a plague upon us. If we tolerate vermin like this, they will strip France bare.”

Adrian would give everything back. All of it. They were only herbs from the garden. He was not a plague. Please.

“Better to hang a dozen now as an example.”

“He’s a boy.” That was the other voice. Slower, deeper, better-natured. She had seen this man as well, that night, wandering his way through the rioting, wine bottle in hand, annoying the young women. A long pole of a man with the loose jowls of a hunting dog.

“Boys his age are fighting for France. No, I don’t want a load of damn weeds. What do I—” The squeal of a horse. “Fils de salope. It bit me!”

One of the donkeys had helped itself to a chunk of Jacobin.

A barked obscenity. Horses stamped. Gravel scattered. Adrian let loose a dozen panicked apologies, fitting them between snarls and gutter oaths from the men.

I wish I could see.

From the sound of it, the Jacobins had their hands full, keeping their horses under control. They were city men. Not used to riding.

“Get those stinking asses out of here. Out! Get out. Allez!”

Reins jangled. Hooves scraped iron on stone. A donkey brayed. Paris accents cursed the horses. Adrian hurried past the grilled gate, limping and bent over, being a hapless country lad. Lying with every inch of his body. The donkeys were in on it, too. They nosed along after him, heads hanging, mistreated and down-trodden. It was not altogether her imagination that they looked pleased with themselves.

Quiet. LeBreton said it through his hands, pressing the message into her skin.

The Jacobins trotted by. One man, then the other, then a horse on a lead, loaded high with bags and bundles of loot from the chateau.

They’d confiscated themselves better horseflesh than they could manage. The man in front, heavily bandaged, jerked the reins, making no impression on the mare. The other Jacobin, pale-skinned and pockmarked, followed, clinging to the mane of his horse, riding like a sack of potatoes.

They did not glance into the goldfish garden. They jogged through her sight and away.

She had learned stillness at Versailles, in the hardest school on earth. One does not fidget in the presence of a king. Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, with pins sticking into one’s bodice, with feet that ached, hour after hour, one does not wriggle. Those first weeks at Versailles, Uncle Arnault stood behind her and pinched her every time she blinked.

The thud of hooves turned dull on the grass beyond the terrace. The path in the front took up the noise. Long minutes later, three horses, not matching steps, took the road that led toward Paris. A busy, rustling wind blew by and scattered the sound of the last hoofbeats.

Time lengthened. She closed her eyes and released the breath she was somehow holding and let herself relax against Guillaume LeBreton. Her cheek comprehended the folds of his shirt. A noisy little piece of her mind insisted on figuring out each line, each seam, but she ignored it. She let herself stop thinking.

Her lips were open and rested upon him. His waistcoat had a dark, pungent taste, like rye bread. In the space between them, she breathed back her own warm breath mixed with his. He was leather, and wood smoke, and a smell like morning, green and alive.

Complicated textures of his clothing pressed against her everywhere. Compelling. Overwhelming. She felt each distinct, hard button he wore and the smooth fabric of his trousers. She was naked, so she felt this with great exactness.

He was hugely erect. The hardness grew and stirred against her.

He desires me.

The moment fell between them like a ripe fruit. She felt a shock in him that mirrored the shock inside of her. He had not planned this. She had not imagined this.

She was naked, after all. She was plastered against him. It was not amazing that a man should notice.

He was not the first man to push her against a wall and shove his interest in her direction. Versailles had been a viper pit. Men with power believed they could take anything they wanted. Many of them had wanted a fifteen-year-old girl. She had avoided dark corridors.

If she pushed him away, he would let go. His hands were ready to open and set her free. Whatever else she believed, she knew this. He wanted her very much and he would let her go.

The hard, hot, animal insistence against her belly filled the center of her mind. A curious silence took possession of her. The busy niggling of thought faded away. There was only feeling. What had been fear transformed to an explicit, earthy wanting. She tightened and throbbed. A heady sweetness invaded.

LeBreton’s chest rose and fell in deep, even strokes. The little motion of his breathing was a caress to her skin. The calloused palm he held on her neck slid downward. When his hand got to her bottom, he brought her an inch closer. Pressed her to him.

He waited to see what her answer would be.

She wanted this. It would be so easy, so natural, to take this pleasure. To let her body answer his. There was no one on earth to stop her.

Except herself. Except herself.

She said, “I wish . . .” I wish I could lie with you. I am afraid and alone and I would be comforted by you. She picked one drop out of the sea of what she wished and put it into words. “I wish I were the miller’s daughter and you were the farmer’s son and we could play foolish games in the stable loft. I wish you were someone I could . . .”

“Be foolish with.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “But I am not the miller’s daughter. I have never owned such simplicity. I do not live one minute without calculation.”

“Pretend I’m someone you can kiss.” His lips came down softly over hers. Holding back, brushing lightly. Hinting. The taste, the possibility, was enough to hold her while he retraced the path up her backbone and slipped the calluses and strength of his hand under her wet braid and enclosed the nape of her neck.

He muttered, “We’re both going to stop calculating for a minute.”

He kissed across her mouth, slowly and deliberately, as if this were exotic territory and he was exploring. As if this were the first time he’d ever kissed a woman and he was getting surprised.

The whole length of his body was persuasive against her. His cock, hard in his trousers, throbbed at the cradle of her belly. His hand on her was heavy as his strength. Light as if it were part of her. He stroked with the tips of his fingers, making circles on her skin like whirlpools in a stream of moving water.

He slipped the kiss into her mouth. Kissed rows of exploration, back and forth. Wrestled a new hold on the corner of her lip. She felt herself pulled gently into his mouth. Licked. Tasted.

“Oh, my,” he whispered. “My God.”

She kissed him back. She felt him fighting his reaction to her. She had this much power over him. He twitched, as if shocked, when her tongue ran across his tongue.

She closed her teeth gently over his lips, capturing him for an instant. His instant of surrender overwhelmed her. They captured each other, teeth, lips, tongue, back and forth.

“You are . . . I don’t know what you are.” He growled it in the deep of his throat.

She unraveled. A curious liquidity, warm and quivering, spread from her belly. She pulsed inside her skin.

One of the goldfish giants of the pond surfaced and fell back with a slap of the water.

He froze. His arms tightened around her. It was as if the corners of the earth folded inward. “They could come back, any minute. Anybody could come walking by. And I’ve left that damn boy free to plunder France. You make me stupid.”

“We make each other stupid.” She resented him. She was also annoyed at her own body.

He pushed away from her. “Put your clothes on. We have to leave.” Before he stomped off, he said, “We’ll talk later.”