The French Bride (15 page)

‘Charles! Whatever is wrong …? You terrified me!'

‘I wanted to surprise you,' he said softly. ‘And I have a feeling I've succeeded. We'll shut this door, shall we, and open that one a little wider.… You were in bed, I see?'

‘I was.' She came out into the boudoir, and he walked past her and into her bedroom. It was empty, and one glance assured him that Anne had been alone. The pillows were arranged for one person; there was not a sign of disorder in the room, not a suggestion that any male had ever crossed the doorway. He did not trouble to open the cupboards or show his suspicions because he knew for certain they were baseless.

‘Would you please tell me what you are looking for, and why you burst into my room at this hour like a thief?'

‘Don't take that impudent tone with me,' he snapped. ‘I came here to talk to you. Sit down!'

‘You came to search my room,' Anne said coldly. She was beginning to feel angry, and angrier with herself because her inclination was to accept his behaviour in the hope that he would stay the night.

‘Isn't that a husband's privilege when his wife's reputation is in question?' he demanded.

‘Wouldn't it occur to a husband to defend her,' Anne countered. ‘Instead of believing she was guilty! And who did you expect to find with me tonight? Who have you ever found at Versailles when you came upon me unexpectedly? How dare you insult me like this. This is my house, and I ask you to leave it immediately!'

‘How independent you've become,' he mocked. He sat down on one of her little fragile chairs, balancing backwards on two legs. He watched her with a thin smile.

‘People are gossiping about you and that mercenary,' he said curtly. ‘The rumour is that you're his mistress. He's employed by you, isn't he, my dear … a single man, a gentleman too, and living with you in this splendid hôtel. Hardly wise, hardly the way a respectable woman of position should compromise her husband's name, is it?'

‘It is perfectly innocent,' Anne insisted. ‘I befriended Francis because he had no one to help him; and I had no husband to help me! He's my agent, but he's not my lover! Now will you please go?'

‘Francis,' Charles mimicked her. ‘How very intimate you two must be – tell me, does he call you by your Christian name?'

‘Yes, he does,' she retorted. ‘But not in public. We're friends, Charles, that's all. I'm lonely; I haven't seen you for the past month!' She stood up and turned away from him; she was very close to weeping.

‘If I
had
betrayed you, you couldn't have blamed me,' she said. When he moved, he moved very quickly and with little sound. He was beside her in a moment, and he caught her by the wrist so fiercely that she winced.

‘Don't ever try me,' he said. ‘You're my wife, you're a Macdonald now. If you smirch my honour and my name, I'll kill you, and I'll kill your lover first, in front of you.'

She turned so that she faced him and she looked quite calmly into the dark, angry face above her.

‘If you don't interfere with me, I shan't interfere with you, you can live as you please, you said that to me before we were married, do you remember, Charles? What's become of that promise now?'

‘I've changed my mind,' he said. ‘I shall do as I please, my dear Anne, and you will do what I tell you and what befits my wife. You did insist upon becoming it, you know,' he added. ‘Now you must pay the penalty. No more acts of friendship to penniless young men, no more flouting the conventions and causing scandal.' He lifted her hand and examined the red marks where he had held her wrist.

‘I don't believe you've been unfaithful; only stupid and naïve. You're still a country simpleton. How much money have you given this adventurer?' She tried to draw away from him but his fingers closed tightly over her arm again. ‘Don't do that, stay where you are, and answer me!'

‘The wages agreed for his services and not a penny more! If you knew Francis O'Neil, you wouldn't ask that question.'

‘Ah, then he's a man of principle, a nobleman too proud to take favours from a woman.… Really, what a little fool you are! Do you know how these mercenaries live? Do you know anything about this gallant gentleman with whom you've compromised yourself and made a laughing stock of me?'

‘Mercenaries fight for pay,' Anne answered. ‘There's no disgrace in that!'

‘The pay isn't what attracts them,' Charles said. ‘It's the sacking of captured towns, the loot and rapine after a victory – that's what draws them, like wolves from every corner of the world! How many women and children has this money soldier murdered? Did you ever ask him?'

‘What do you care what he's done?' Anne countered. ‘Your honour is safe, that's all that matters to you! If I consorted with thieves and trollops, what difference would that make to you?'

‘You do consort with them,' he laughed unpleasantly. ‘What else abounds at Versailles, hiding under noble names and the King's patronage? That brings me to another point. I hear my mother presented you to the Du Barry. I must speak to her about it. I object to my wife consorting with the most notorious whore in France. Next time, you imitate the dauphine and turn your back, do you understand?'

‘Charles, don't be so ridiculous. I did no harm; it's unlikely I shall ever speak more than a word or two to her. Besides, you can't forbid me, when your own mistress is one of her intimates. You cause some scandal yourself, I might say, and I have never reproached you!'

‘It wouldn't be wise if you did,' he answered. ‘Louise de Vitale is my mistress. That doesn't give you licence to enter a circle of whores. Nothing I do concerns you except to obey my instructions. Now tell me where I can find Captain O'Neil!'

‘Why?' Anne demanded. She was free of him now and she turned to him and touched him in a gesture of appeal. ‘Please, Charles, please don't hurt Francis – don't go and pick a quarrel with him!' Her mother-in-law's words came back to her: ‘Nothing would please Charles more than to kill an innocent man in a duel.…' ‘I'll do what you want me to do; I'll tell him he must leave, I won't invite the Du Barry to the ball, I'll do anything, only don't do him any harm. He's done none to you!'

‘Not for the want of trying, or the want of wishing, I'll swear to that. Where is he, Anne? Tell me and stop arguing or I'll take you down with me in your nightdress to find him. That should provoke this quarrel you're so anxious to avoid. Are you afraid I'll kill him? Or are you thinking of me, by any chance?'

‘I'm thinking of you both,' she said desperately. ‘He could just as well kill you as the other way about – he's an expert swordsman.'

‘How interesting,' Charles jeered. ‘You whet my appetite to try him. Once more, where is he?'

‘Probably downstairs working at the accounts; that's where he said he was going when I said good night. Please, I beg you, don't go down. Let me dismiss him in the morning.'

For a moment Charles considered her. ‘Go and dress in something,' he said suddenly. ‘You will dismiss him in my presence. That should be interesting. Hurry, or I'll do it alone. And I think you know what that will mean.'

At the door of her room she turned and looked at him; her eyes were red with tears.

‘Is there not one jot of human feeling in you?' she asked him. ‘Are you so completely cruel and merciless that you must punish both of us by making me do this?'

‘Cruel and merciless!' He grinned at her, pretending to be surprised. ‘When I've been moved by your pleas! I'd really intended to have him beaten by my postillions and thrown into the gutter outside the gates.… How ungrateful you are, my dear! Come, I'm waiting.'

Francis was in the small closet on the ground floor which he used as an office; there were two candles burning on the writing table and he was so intent on the heap of papers in front of him that he did not look up when the door opened. When he did so, and saw Anne, deadly pale, with Charles beside her, he sprang up with an exclamation. As Charles moved into the room, he stood very still behind the table. He had never seen Anne's husband before. The man who moved towards him, drawing Anne by the hand, was as tall and sparsely built as an athlete, fashionably dressed in brocade and laces, with the fierce, cruel face of a leopard, under his powdered wig, and one hand on his sword. His expression of arrogant contempt was so insufferable that even before he spoke, Francis stepped out into the middle of the room.

‘So you are Captain O'Neil, my wife's agent?' The drawling tone was as insulting as the look that went with it. Francis flushed an angry red. Watching him, Charles recognised the quality that made Anne say that he might just as well kill him if they fought. This was no worthless libertine; he had met men of O'Neil's mettle before. To his surprise he felt the same sharp pang of annoyance as on the first evening when he had seen the handsome young man waiting for his wife in the Salon d'Appollon. Charles had never been jealous of anyone before; he found the emotion difficult to sustain even for a moment. He was about to lose his temper.

‘I am, sir,' Francis said. ‘Who, may I enquire, are you?' Generations of proud and insolent O'Neils spoke through their descendant's mouth at that moment. It was an answer delivered in a manner worthy of any Macdonald at his worst. Anne pulled her hand away from her husband and came quickly forward.

‘Francis, this is my husband. We – I have something to say to you.'

‘Yes,' Charles said. ‘My wife has no further need of your services. You are to leave the hôtel.'

Francis turned away from him and came face to face with Anne.

‘Is this what you wish?' he asked quietly. ‘Don't be afraid. If you want me to throw him into the street, I'll do it. I won't let him harm you. Just say the word.'

‘I told you,' Charles cut in, and now there was no pretence between any of them. ‘Leave the house, or by God, I'll have my servants strip you and whip you through the streets! Anne, go upstairs to your room … your money soldier doesn't like being dislodged, I see.'

Francis looked over his shoulder at him. ‘No servant of yours will lay a hand on me before I've thrashed the master with the flat of my sword if he's too much a coward to try it at the proper end!' He spoke gently to Anne. ‘Do as he says. Go upstairs and leave this to me.'

‘No.' Desperately she faced him, moving between him and Charles. ‘No, Francis, I'm not going. My husband is right. I want you to leave. I'm not being forced; I realise it's necessary. My honour is in question and so is yours. Please, for the sake of our friendship, I implore you to go.'

‘Take her advice,' Charles sneered. ‘She knows I'll kill you if you don't.'

‘You flatter yourself.' O'Neil almost spat the words at him. ‘Whether I leave the house or not, you haven't done with me, sir. Once more, Anne, this your wish?'

‘It is,' she said. ‘If either of you fights, it will break my heart. For my sake, do as my husband says and go away.'

Francis came up to her and took her hand. ‘I am your servant, madame,' he said quietly. ‘In every sense of the word. I shall go because you ask it. If you need me, just send word.' He turned away from her and as he did so, she covered her face with her hands and began to weep. He came and stood very close to Charles and there was a look of murder on his face.

‘You'll account to me for those tears,' he said. ‘You haven't won. I'll take her away from you yet!' He pushed past him and the door slammed shut.

‘You haven't saved him, you know,' Charles said softly. ‘Only for tonight. I'm going to seek him out.…'

‘Don't trouble,' Anne burst out; she was trembling and near hysteria, ‘He'll seek you! Now you see he's not a coward! At least you can't despise him, however much you try!'

‘Dear me.' The mocking voice was unbearably smooth. ‘What a beautiful relationship I have disrupted – what mutual esteem you have for one another! A poverty-stricken exile, living by cutting throats, and my stupid, moon-struck wife with more money than intelligence. Go upstairs; you're making me quite sick! Go on, do as you're told, damn you, before I give you the thrashing you deserve and send my men out after that beggar to teach him a lesson.…'

She ran up the stairs, past the frightened servants who had come out and now shrank back into the shadows; only Marie-Jeanne rushed after her weeping mistress and closed the door. For a second she hesitated. ‘Pig,' she said fiercely to herself. ‘Savage! Let him do what he likes to me; he shan't get in here tonight.' Then she turned the key in the boudoir door, and following Anne into the bedroom, she locked that too.

But though the maid stayed awake until morning, watching her exhausted mistress sleep, no one came to disturb her until the chambermaid knocked with her tray of chocolate, and the second maid followed her with hot water for Madame's toilette. On the chocolate tray there was a note. Sitting up in bed, her eyes swollen with crying, Anne recognised the handwriting and tore it open. A single sheet of paper contained a few short lines, written by Charles and dated early that same morning.

‘If you persist in remaining in Paris, you must conduct yourself in a proper manner. If you see or communicate with anyone of whom I disapprove again, I shall petition the King to exile you to Charantaise for flagrant immorality with an inferior. I shall also have the person concerned killed.' It was signed with the initial C.

As Anne read the note, she looked up suddenly, and found the chambermaid, who brought her bath water, still lingering in the room. The woman was watching her intently.

‘What are you doing?' Anne demanded; she had seen the same servant once or twice before and there was something about her she disliked. ‘Put down the water and go. Marie-Jeanne, close the door!'