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

paused and let the pain have its way and then realized thatthis was not pain. What had happened before deserved no other name, butwhat she was experiencing now was a powerful physical demand, one thatif she obeyed it produced no agony, only satisfaction. Her body, freedfrom the constraints of

her mind, reacted automatically. As itcontracted, she pushed, feeling the child make the long progress intolife. There was a moment when Justin gasped—the moment when a sleekhead appeared between her thighs and Stuart took over with smoothefficiency.

Nicholas, Viscount Beresford, catapulted into the world with a loudyell of protest, sound of wind and limb, to be held by his father whilethe cord was cut and tied and his great-grandmother wept freely and hismother demanded that her son be given to her this instant. Justin laidthe blood-streaked scrap against her breast without attempting tocontrol his own tears of joy, before taking the physician downstairsand informing the hovering household that his son and heir was healthy,Her Ladyship well, and anyone who wished to toast the baby's headshould do so in the best champagne.

The lights blazed in Grosvenor Square that night and the champagneflowed. Danielle examined her son, counted his fingers and toes, andgave him her breast. The child sucked greedily.When Linton eventually came back to the bedroom, intending to kiss hiswife good night and disappear next door, she clung to

him and said shewas cold and needed him beside her. He put little Nicholas into thecrib beside the bed and, ignoring all convention, climbed in to holdDanielle throughout the remainder of the night.

Chapter 19

On the night that the infant Viscount Beresford burst vociferously intothe world, the seeds of tragedy were being watered in a small Frenchtown some ten miles from Verdun. The town bore the same name as thewoman laboring in the peace of Grosvenor Square in a country wherecivil strife had been done with over a hundred years ago.

In the town of Varennes the tocsin pealed on the night of June 21,rousing the citizens and neighboring peasantry. They flocked in theirthousands to bar the entrances to the town, to gape at and to securethe hapless family of Bourbons held in a room over an

epicene

belongingto one Monsieur Sauce, the

procureur

of the commune who, in the absenceof the mayor, had exercised his authority to halt the travelers intheir four-horsed berline and to demand their passports.

The royal flight from the Tuileries had been planned with meticulouscare over many months and only

a chapter of accidents for which no oneperson was to blame resulted in its sorry conclusion.

During the winter and spring of Danielle's tempestuous pregnancy, theComte de St. Estephe became

one of Marie Antoinette's closestconfidants. After the return from their summer holiday in St. Cloud

theprevious October, the royal family had been made increasingly aware ofthe true nature of their imprisonment in the gloom of the Tuileries.The king reluctantly agreed to the secularization of the clergy butcontinued to practice his religion in the orthodox manner, refusing toacknowledge the bishops and parish cures who had taken the oath ofallegiance to the constitution. In Louis's opinion they were mereminions of the state who had abjured papalauthority and as such had no authority to hear the king's confession orto offer communion. The tide of public feeling ran high against a kingwho was not strong enough to refuse to accede to a measure he loathedand too stubborn to pretend that it had his personal approval.

Marie Antoinette, no longer the child who played shepherdess in thePetit Trianon while the people starved, finally accepted that themonarchy could never regain its popularity; they were prisoners of thepeople's whim and their only course was to break the chains. She busiedherself with plans for flight—a flight that would take them under theprotective umbrella of her family; a flight that would follow the pathof so many aristocratic emigres to Coblenz and the Austrian court. Fromthere they would march on France, quell the revolution, and restore theBourbons to an undisputed throne.

St. Estephe listened to the elaborate plans, ran messages for hisqueen, heard her secrets while he planted the spies amongst themaidservants and flunkeys, and reported back faithfully to therevolutionary committee. And aU the while he contemplated the abductionand eventual submission of the Countess of Lin ton. He learned muchfrom the Chevalier D'Evron on his visits to Paris—information that madesense of that lady's extraordinary behavior during her stay at theTuileries. An unsuspecting D'Evron, thankful only to find a self-styledfriend of the Lin tons who abhorred the possibility of blood and terrorin his native land, spoke freely. St. Estephe hugged his excitement;she would not be easy to break if all the chevalier said was true, buthis pleasure would be all the greater.

On the day that Danielle fought for the life and sanity of BrigitteRoberts, the chevalier, in the company

of St. Estephe, witnessed DaggerDay. A mob, incited by a rumor that the royal family were intending toflee Paris by an underground corridor from the Tuileries to the prisonat Vincennes, marched on the donjon at Vincennes. Nobles flocked to theTuileries, armed to defend their king, and rumor was seen as confirmed.As far as the mob was concerned, their king had made an abortiveattempt at flight and nothing could change that impression. He was nolonger to be trusted as a supporter of the new regime and could beclassified with the traitorous

aristos

who made up the emigre court at Coblenz—rich, dissipated, andriddled with plots to summon foreign powers to their side and put downthe insurrection

in their country.

From that moment the king's fate was sealed. Two months later, St.Estephe stood in the inner court of the Tuileries palace watching asLouis XVI's attempt to take his family early for the traditional summerholiday at St. Cloud was aborted by a riotous crowd, yelling protest asthey surrounded the coach, ignoring the harangues of the king'sgenerals and advisers, ignoring the king himself as, for two hours, heattempted to persuade them