Jane Feather - Charade by Unknown (howl and other poems .TXT) 📕

anything with that damned pot, I shall use yourhairbrush in a manner for which it was not intended." He backed away,watching her warily, and saw with relief the sudden speculative gleamin the brown eyes.

"You would not." Danielle paused in her tracks.

"Throw it and see," he responded.

She lowered the prospective missile. "Now you have made me want tolaugh," she reproached with a comical grimace. "That is most ungallantof you. I was enjoying my anger."

"Well, I have a better way for you to utilize your surplus energy. Puton your britches and we will go together to the Palais Royal."

"That was exactly what I wished to propose until you made that nastyremark."

"For which I beg a thousand pardons." He apologized meekly and Daniellechuckled as she threw off

the wrapper and donnedher beloved britches, twisting her hair into a knot that disappearedbeneath the cloth cap.

"Molly is sleeping well," she informed Justin. "I think she has quiterecovered from her sickness, but tomorrow I will buy food that she mayprepare for herself. It will be better so, do you not think?"

"I think so," he agreed, walking to the open window looking out overthe garden. "I will meet you under the third tree. Come here and let meshow you."

Danielle was instantly beside him and he slipped an arm around thenarrow waist. "I will leave first since my comings and goings will notbe questioned. Follow me in five minutes. If you are challenged by theguards, I feel sure you will find a way to persuade them of yourcredentials."

"Mais, bien sur

, milord. I ama mere servant lad in search of a

putain.

"

"A part you will play to perfection," he said dryly. "In five minutesthen."

While the Earl and Countess of Linton roamed the cafes and clubs of thePalais Royal, listening to the impassioned talk and maintaining agenerally low profile except for the occasions when Danny entered

thering with all the enthusiasm of a backstreet worker and turned theconversation into an alley that provoked the interests of theinformation-gatherers, Roland, Comte de St. Estephe, sat in hisdarkened chamber and thought of his father on his death bed.

The old man had been as vicious under the imminent sword of death as hehad been all his life, the words spurting forth with a venom thatexhausted his last strength. But he had exacted the promise from hisson and heir that the insult would not go unavenged. His wife had paiddearly for her infidelity with the young English earl, but the earlhimself, when challenged, had turned the tables and driven his pointthrough the shoulder of the

comte

.He had refrained from delivering the

coup de grace

in tacitacknowledgment that he had been in the wrong—onedid not seduce another man's wife with impunity, but unknowingly he

hadleft alive an enmity that would span the next generation.

Roland, throughout his childhood, had become accustomed to the abuseinflicted upon his mother and

had learned the lesson well. By the ageof twelve he was sexually active and used the maidservants freely. Theyhad little choice but to submit to the rape and those few who resistedbore the marks of their resistance as examples to their fellows.

The contempt for womankind engendered in the young Roland by hisfather's brutalization of his mother became crystallized when he heardthe death-bed story. He stopped not to consider that his mother mayhave sought, like Louise de St. Varennes, a brief respite from theabuse that was her lot in life, thought only of the betrayal and, afterhis father's death, treated the widow with the same venomous crueltythat she had received in her husband's lifetime—and all women who fellinto his path, vulnerable and eager for his attentions. Women deservedno other form of treatment and he would take his father's revenge onthe house of Linton through the woman. It was entirely appropriate andwhen Linton, after the event, challenged him then he would face a finerswordsman than his father had faced and there would be no quarter thistime from the "guilty" party.

But how to achieve the seduction of a bride who looked with such doeeyes at her husband? The fact that Linton appeared to love his wifemerely added spice to St. Estephe's plans, but if the wife could not bepersuaded to play her husband false . .. He smiled in the darkness.There were many methods of persuasion and he had always preferred theless gentle ones, particularly with such a diminutive, fair-skinnedpiece of frailty.

Closing his eyes, the

comte

mused pleasurably on the prospect of havingthat frail body in his hands. She wo'uld not resist him for long andwhen he eventually returned her to her husband ... The excitementbrought about by these reflections sent the

comte

off in search ofrelease and the young kitchen maid

that he found was, as a result,unable to leave her bed for a week.

The next morning he positioned himself behind a tapestry screen in thecorridor outside the Lintons' apartments. He thought it unlikely hewould succeed in taking her from the palace, but his plans would

be best laid after careful observation ofher movements.

The earl left the chamber first and strode purposefully down thecorridor, elegant yet unremarkable in

a silver gray cloth jacket andknee britches. He looked as if he had business other than pleasure toattend to, St. Estephe reflected, but the nature of that business wasnot what concerned him.

What did concern him emerged some ten minutes later and the

comte

stared in disbelief. The young countess was almost unrecognizable in adull round gown of brown merino, stolid, serviceable, and horriblybourgeois. She wore a plain chip hat with a heavy veil, carried awicker shopping basket of the kind carried by all French housewives,and was accompanied by a wan-faced maidservant, also with a basket.

"Let us make haste, Molly. I do not wish to be seen abovestairs in thisguise. Once we are in the back corridors we will be unremarked."

The

comte

waited until theyhad rounded a corner and