TheEnglishHeiress Page 3

  Anyhow what had happened had not really started with the calling of the Estates-General. Papa always said the trouble had started long, long ago when Louis XIV gathered the entire government into his own hands, giving power and wealth only to those men who hovered around him. Thus, the nobles were divided from the people, and… Leonie stopped, shook her head again. It was ridiculous. She sank down to the dirt floor. Of course the history of France had affected their lives, but Louis XIV had acted as he had because of the history that preceded him. The abuses that had exploded France into revolution had grown slowly. One could go back and back to Adam and Eve.

  Besides, it was not the trouble in France that had thrown them into prison and killed Mama and François. Color fed by hate and rage rushed into Leonie’s face, making her light brown eyes as fierce and golden as a she-wolf’s. The lips of her wide mouth curled back, showing strong, white teeth, and the nostrils of her straight nose flared. Leonie was not, strictly speaking, a beautiful girl. Her features were too strong to satisfy the current craze for porcelain-delicate, pretty dolls. Also, the mingling of her father’s blond and her mother’s dark coloring had produced an odd combination. Leonie was a brunette in complexion, but with honey-gold hair.

  Leonie looked down at her hands, which in her tense anger had curved into claws. She sighed and straightened her fingers. Hate was unpleasant and unnatural to her. She had inherited her mother’s temperament, placid and sunny. Hate made her feel shaky and sick, yet there was no other response possible to the memory that had come to mind. Papa had made one mistake. Once only, he had done something that should have been done differently. When Jean-Paul Marot had tried to incite the peasants on Mama’s estates to rebellion, Papa had prevented the people from killing him. The peasants had been enraged against the rabble-rouser because Papa had offered to excuse all rents and taxes—after the poor crops of 1787 and 1788 people were already starving. Jean-Paul Marot had stood up and begun to shout that Papa’s offer was no favor, that it was the right of the people to be free of rents and duties.

  Perhaps it had not been gratitude toward Papa that made the peasants so angry. Perhaps they had secretly agreed with Jean-Paul and had only been afraid that Papa would take back his offer of relief. That made no difference. If Papa had not intervened and had Jean-Paul arrested, the peasants would have torn him apart. He would have been dead. He would not have been released from prison in Dijon when, after the Bastille had fallen, the whole country had gone mad and opened all the jails.

  Jean-Paul Marot was the beginning, middle and end of all the trouble. Leonie jumped up again, breathing fast. He, so full of noble words about equality and justice, so full of vicious, evil deeds that hurt everyone… She tried to wrench her mind away, but it was impossible. The whole story played itself out again.

  They had come home from Paris several months after the constitution was approved, and Papa had suggested that the mayor call a meeting of the electors and other responsible citizens so he could report to them. Was the mayor ignorant of the fact that Jean-Paul had been rousing the unemployed, the dissatisfied, the dregs of the town, or did he simply discount the importance of such people? Papa would not have made that mistake. He had seen what the mob could do in Paris. But Papa did not know there was a mob in peaceful Saulieu.

  All the family had come with Papa to be at the meeting. They were all so proud of him and of the new hope for France. Instead of joy, violence had resulted. Instead of freedom, the despotism of mob rule was created. Jean-Paul had planned it well. With all the responsible citizens in one place, his mob had only to storm the hall. Jean-Paul and his mob had seized power. Even then Papa had not recognized him. It was only when the monster had reminded him…

  Leonie shuddered and buried her face in her bands for a moment, struggling to block out the memory of that night, of herself and her mother spread-eagled on the floor, violated by man after man while her father, bound and gagged, was forced to watch. Jean-Paul had taken her first, not even looking at her, laughing in her father’s face and reminding him of the “injury” Papa had done him. Papa had saved his life! Leonie lifted her head, her eyes brilliant with hate again. Jean-Paul had intended to destroy her, but he had failed!

  Then the flame died out of Leonie’s eyes and her expression grew thoughtful. It was strange but that horror had not been all bad. The thing itself, yes, but the results… She considered what she had been before that night, a person insulated from life. Nothing unpleasant had ever touched her. Even the bloody violence she had seen in Paris had seemed like scenes in a painting—dreadful, but nothing to do with her. What she had not realized was that nothing good had really touched her either. She had accepted the love of her parents, her physical comforts, the courtesy of everyone around her with mild pleasure. She had known neither love nor hate.

  Now she knew both. Strangely, love had come first in a burning uprush that had seared out the pain and shame of rape. As soon as Jean-Paul and his mangy dogs had left them, Mama—battered and bleeding as she was—had crawled to wrap her daughter in her arms, to comfort her, to assure her it was a passing thing, that she would be better in a very little while. It was true too, Leonie remembered. Perhaps because she had not been alone, because Mama had undergone the same horror and made light of it perhaps because the eruption of violence, the sudden seizure, had shocked her so much already that she could feel nothing strongly. She remembered what had happened, but the memory of horror was less important than Mama’s tenderness and Papa’s wild grief. How she loved them for what they had given her! For the first time in her life, she had really loved.

  Hate had come later, after her stunned mind had taken in what had happened, after Leonie realized that they would not be killed as those others in Paris had been killed and their heads paraded through the streets on poles. Perhaps that was the strangest of all, the way a love for life had grown up side by side with the hate.

  Jean-Paul had come again to the cellar the next day, and after his men had subdued Papa, he had laughed at them again and told them that they would not be killed—that was too good for them. They would learn what he had learned in the prison at Dijon—how to die by inches.

  There could be no doubt Jean-Paul had done his best to fulfill his threat, but instead Leonie had learned what joy was. All the things she had taken so much for granted that she had not even noticed them became a source of infinite pleasure. A breath of fresh air or taste of wholesome cheese was more wonderful than the most elaborate dinner.

  Unfortunately, the things that bred strength in Leonie had worked as Jean-Paul planned on the others. The dark and filth, the slimy cold in the cellar, even though it was summer now, had sapped strength from Mama and François. The child had sickened first. Tears dimmed the glow of Leonie’s eyes, and she began to pace once more. She had done her best to save him, inventing stories and games, trying to make him laugh and want to live, but she had not been able to save François or Mama.

  Leonie stopped again and allowed her eyes to rest thoughtfully on the wooden door. She had been out of that door any number of times. Possibly she could have escaped herself, but she had never considered it—not while Papa, Mama and François were still prisoners and might be tortured or killed for her freedom. Now there was only Papa, and he was not so physically weakened as Mama and François had been. Escape was no longer impossible. What was more, her lover—Leonie uttered a slightly hysterical giggle. What an inappropriate word for Louis le Béb��. Louis loved nothing and no one, except himself.

  A disdainful smile curved Leonie’s lips briefly as she sat on the floor, her legs pulled up close to her body, resting her chin on her knees. She did not hate Louis. After all, their purposes were exactly alike. He used her to satisfy the needs of his body, but she was using him also—and she had the better of it because she knew what Louis was, but he was much mistaken about her. He thought her weak and stupid. Perhaps he even thought she was in love with him. Leonie laughed softly.

  Then she grew thoughtful
again. She could have loved Louis. She was ripe and ready for love, and at first he seemed so lovable with his round, innocent face. Heaven made a great many mistakes, but Louis’ soft features—youthful, guileless—which had gained him the soubriquet of le Bébé, must be more than a mistake. It must have been a deliberate joke or a deliberate test of people’s perceptiveness. Louis was everything his face was not. He was a thief with a keen eye for what would do him good and a heart as cold as ice. Louis sought comfort, pleasure and advancement. He had chosen his profession deliberately and had never gone hungry or been caught. Louis never did anything without a good reason, and although he took no personal pleasure in the misery of others, he would never hesitate to use pain and misery to advance his own cause. But Leonie did not know that in the beginning.

  Leonie only knew that Louis had shrunk away rather than press forward when Jean-Paul had signaled his other dogs to take their turn on her abused body. It was a small thing, but that had burned itself deeply into Leonie’s mind, one tiny flicker of humanity in a black night of bestiality. Weeks later she recognized him at once when he brought them food, and her good opinion was confirmed because for once the meal was not deliberately made more foul. Louis, unlike the guard who usually brought the food, did not throw the stale, moldy bread into the slime on the floor or spit into the stinking soup, prepared with meat a starving dog would have refused. Made bold by desperation, Leonie whispered a plea for a drop of clean water, a crust of fresh bread, for her little brother. Louis had not answered but had given her some decent bread. He had had to be quick, for the other guard had come down the stairs to curse him for spending too much time with the prisoners.

  “You were late I thought you were not coming,” the young thief had answered mildly.

  “So what? Let them starve as we have starved,” the older man growled, his eyes suspicious.

  Leonie had turned away, sick at heart, hiding the clean bread with her body. Sometimes she could hear what went on in the courtyard through the half-window in their cellar, and she had once heard one of Jean-Paul’s men threatening to accuse another of treachery, or currying favor with the ex-magistrates of the town so that if the revolution should fail, he would be safe. If the old guard wanted to get the young one into trouble, he had only to accuse him of trying to ease the lot of the prisoners whom Jean-Paul hated so much.

  At first Louis did nothing to help the de Conyerses, but neither did he do anything to increase their torment. Once in a while, the rarity heightening the value of what was received, he did more. He pretended fear when he brought a decent stew, fresh bread, a wedge of good cheese. He said he had thrown away the foul portions destined for the prisoners and taken the good food from his own table. He could not do it often, he whispered apologetically. Someone would notice or his own family would starve.

  Later, when they believed in him, he offered to take Leonie out for “exercise”. He could not take the others, he said. No one would question him or look to see the face of a young girl with whom he chose to walk, but an older man or woman or a young boy would cause comment. Once, the first time, they actually did walk a little way while Louis explained what he wanted. He gilded it finely with hints of the desperate danger he courted to give Leonie’s family the little ease he could. He veneered with talk of self-sacrifice the ugly fact that he was demanding that Leonie pay with her body for the favors of clean water and an occasional mouthful of unspoiled food for her mother and brother.

  Louis had been clever, but he underestimated Leonie. She knew what love was—the giving without thought of recompense. She knew what honor was also. She knew a man worthy of love did not ask nor expect payment for dangers voluntarily undertaken out of sympathy or justice, more especially when those favors were bestowed on someone utterly helpless, utterly within one’s power. Nonetheless, she agreed without much argument to what Louis wanted, fearing if she did not that her parents and young brother would suffer for her resistance. Leonie knew she had neither maidenhead nor reputation to protect, and she had no feeling of “wrong” attached to sexual promiscuity. Her cooperation was a matter of survival.

  Later, Leonie came to realize that she had benefited from Louis’ selfish desire for a cost-free and delicate bedmate. Simply to be out of the fetid atmosphere of her family’s cell had helped her resist the soul-killing despair that destroyed her mother and brother. In addition, coupling with Louis had removed from the act itself the taint of torture it had held after she had been raped. Louis was not a good lover. He was far too indifferent to his partner’s needs. However, he liked comfort. He had no intention of forcing or frightening his bedmate so that she would be stiff and inflexible or would struggle against him. Thus, he was gentle if not considerate. He did not bother to try to wake Leonie’s desire, and he never brought her to climax. Yet he made intercourse simple and acceptable, a thing not to be feared or avoided.

  Leonie could not help smiling. Louis had explained how and what to do to arouse a man. Leonie enjoyed that part so much that she invented new devices that produced quite dramatic results. The pleasure she derived came from reducing so self-possessed and calculating a creature as Louis to a sighing, moaning mass of quivering flesh. More importantly, instructed by Louis’ total selfishness as well as by his lust, Leonie had learned that her body could be a valuable trading device and weapon.

  Not that she tried to trade with Louis for anything beyond what she knew he was willing to give anyway. Not even lust could divert Louis from his own purposes. However, Leonie knew that most other men were different. Louis had taught her that too, laughing about the weaknesses of others, at the gifts his companions gave their women, at the things they did for them. Leonie listened with downcast eyes, a model of dullness and docility, smiling inside herself at the weakness Louis displayed. Because he needed to boast of his own powers, of his own growing influence and importance, he had told her a very great deal.

  Jean-Paul’s grip on Saulieu was no longer as strong as it had been when he first seized power. There was serious unrest in the town that was being repressed with fiercer and fiercer measures. So far no one had been executed, but it was only a matter of time. Louis had grinned when he told Leonie that the previous night, and that grin had given her serious food for thought. Although he still retained only his position of night watch in the Hôtel de Ville, Louis was now one of Jean-Paul’s confidants. Leonie suspected Louis was only waiting for Jean-Paul to go a little too far, shake the faith of those who still followed him just a little more, and then topple him and seize power in his stead.

  No consideration of past service or friendship would save anyone Louis decided to sacrifice to gain that power, and that was what made Leonie gaze at the door of her prison with such fixed attention. She was convinced that Louis’ grin, when he mentioned execution, signified that the sacrifice he planned to use to overthrow Jean-Paul was the execution of herself and her father. After the shock of Jean-Paul’s take-over had subsided and dissatisfaction had begun to grow, Marot had used Papa to pacify the people, bring him from his prison, cleaning him and dressing him well, and forcing him to say that he was in comfortable quarters, well cared for. There was no danger that Papa would not do as he was told, not while she and Mama and François were in Jean-Paul’s power.

  However, Jean-Paul had not been able to use Papa that way for more than a month. The signs of grief and deprivation were too strong. No amount of cleaning and elaborate clothing could hide the effects now. Thus, Leonie thought, it might be easy for Louis to convince Jean-Paul that Papa and she had outlived their usefulness, except for being an object lesson. Some accusation could be trumped up, they could be executed, and Louis could use the anger and resentment caused by their executions to overthrow Jean- Paul.

  It was a large assumption to build on the small ground of a grin and sly expression, but it was too dangerous an idea to neglect. Yet it was dangerous to act, too. Leonie had begun to hope that enough unrest would develop to topple Jean-Paul. His fall would almost certai
nly lead to freedom for herself and her father. No one else had cause to hate them personally, and even if the new leaders were “of the people” and did not want Henry de Conyers, the aristocrat, near Saulieu, Papa could promise to leave for England.

  Unfortunately, it seemed too late for that now. At least, Leonie was not willing to take the chance of waiting any longer. It might be difficult to rouse Papa to the need to escape, but she had an idea that might work. If it did work… Leonie’s eyes danced. She would use the weapon she had so long and so laboriously fashioned—Louis’ belief that she was dull and docile, loving, inventive only of sexual variations to please and delight the man she adored. Slowly, patiently, she had drawn and filled in that picture of herself until Louis was convinced—convinced enough to permit himself to sleep in her presence after making “love”.

  First it had been a bare closing of the eyes. Later had come a time of testing, when Louis lay limp and snoring. Leonie had not known he was testing her. She had made no move to harm him or to escape because her brother was dying and her mother already sick. Nothing could have convinced her to leave—even if Louis had offered to help her escape, she would have refused because it would have meant leaving those she loved behind. She had in fact, innocently convinced him that she had no intention of harming him or escaping by acts of dishonesty. While Louis was “sleeping”, Leonie had stolen a few little things she did not think he would miss—a few crusts of bread, a leftover piece of cheese, a candle stump, a flint and tinder to light the candle. Thus, Louis felt he understood her completely, and he relaxed his guard in her presence. Then he slept naturally, silently curled into a fetal ball. Leonie recognized her mistake and her victory at the same time.

  She had been careful to preserve that victory, continuing her “stealing” by taking items that, she now realized, were left out for her to take. She would not have bothered after her mother’s and brother’s deaths except that it gave her a reason to be moving around Louis’ room. She encouraged Louis’ belief in her “love” for him in every way she could, with sweet words and anxious care. Once or twice for instance, after a particularly satisfactory climax, Louis had overslept. Dutifully, Leonie had woken him at the time he usually returned her to her cell, saying she was afraid she would get him in trouble. Oh yes, time and time again Leonie had proved herself careful of Louis’ welfare. He still did not leave weapons where she could get them, and he still secured the keys to the cellar around his neck, where Leonie could not steal them without waking him, but within the bounds of reasonable caution he trusted her.