The Companion - Time For Eternity Part 14

"Well, there can't have been much of interest in the bookstalls for you," he said, effectively changing the subject. "All tracts and philosophy these days. How boring."

She managed a smile. "Sometimes we longed for a good novel or even a batch of poetry that wasn't filled with homilies. Thank goodness for the English."

"Hmmm. So you read English?"

"Yes. And German and Italian, of course. Lady Toumoult thought languages essential to a woman of the world. " She could practically feel his doubtful smile. "Well, I might not be so much of the world as you are, but I'm not ignorant." She was going to do something about her ignorance and her innocence tonight. Rebellion coursed through her. Frightening. Exciting.

"I have copies of some of Mr. Fielding's novels in my library. You might enjoy them, though they've caused a bit of a scandal.

I'm afraid I don't have Richardson's Clarissa, if that style is more to your taste, but I have Rousseau's Julie. It is much the same."

"Not my style," she said firmly. "Neither heroine takes the slightest action to avert her fate. They always just slide into a decline and die. I mean, you have to do something. You can't just wish things were different."

That sentiment resonated inside her in a way she couldn't explain, like a violin string vibrating in sympathy with a cello. "Even if it's difficult."

"Yes."

That word was weighted somehow, fraught with as much emotion as he ever let himself display. Suddenly, she thought that a carriage ride to Versailles with the duc held many possibilities. She resolved to embrace them, regardless of consequences. She was not going to become Lady Toumoult, no matter how dear her aunt had been to her.

They talked about Rousseau and Voltaire and how the Revolution had twisted their ideas into zealotry. Henri was surprised.

They discussed the line between individualism and the needs of society. She was intelligent. Her opinions were surprisingly sophisticated for one who'd seen so little of the world.

In short, Henri found her an enigma. He couldn't think of the last time he didn't know instantly who someone was and what they would say next. That was the curse of living as long as he had. Especially fascinating were those times when she seemed to surprise herself by what she said. He'd first noticed it that afternoon when she had obviously never had brandy burning down her throat and yet correctly guessed that it was twenty-year-old Remy. Where did she get that knowledge of spirits if she'd never actually drunk any?

They clattered up to the back gates of Versailles, the ones that gave entrance to the park. He wanted her first view of the palace to be from the park, not through the village across the court in front of the stables where all was obscured by that crowd of government buildings. Two guards stood just outside the old stone gatehouse, dressed not in the red and blue of the revolutionary guard, but in plain brown and gray coats. Locals pressed into service and glad for the job. Henri leaned out the carriage window.

"My good man, are we too late for a tour?" His query was greeted by a guffaw that was quickly swallowed when he let the light from their lantern glint over the gold in his hand.

"Just in time." The older of the two men grinned. His coat was b.u.t.toned over a swelling belly. There was a coin for each, probably more than they made in six months. The guards caught the largesse he flipped to them in midair.

The younger one, his hair like errant straw, scrambled for the gate. "Just this way, Citizen." The wrought-iron gates topped with spikes made of fleur-de-lis creaked open. Henri sighed. They were rusted. What had Versailles come to? But it didn't matter. The girl had never been. And everyone should go to Versailles once in her life.

The coach rolled smoothly down the graveled drive through the winding park. The girl slid over the seat to crane her neck out the window on his side.

"I can't see very much," she said. "But those gardens look very inviting."

"They are in the English style, less formal, full of meandering paths used for trysts, formerly by members of the court, and now by the citizenry that comes to picnic here."

"Is that a village?" she asked in astonishment. "How very quaint."

"Of sorts. The late queen had a hamlet built so that she could play at being a milkmaid."

She looked at him with big eyes. "How sad that she needed to escape her real life."

"We all want to escape our real life." But there was never any escape.

"Is that the palace?" He could hear the excitement in her voice. She was on the wrong side for it to be the palace. He peered out. "Good G.o.d, no. That is one of the smaller palaces Louis XV built for trysting with Madame de Pompadour."

She turned to him. Her smile was mischievous. "A smaller palace. A nice distinction I shall strive to remember."

They turned left on the Avenue de Trianon, which allowed a plain view of the grand ca.n.a.l and its terminus in a gigantic fountain surrounding a statue of Apollo. They could hear the water flowing even over the crunch of the gravel under the wheels. What would she think of that?

"Oh, my." Her tone was reverent, astonished. He would hear that a lot tonight. It should portend frightening boredom. But he wasn't sure he would be bored. How odd. He wanted to be the one to show her what she had longed to see. He wanted to see it through her eyes as a wonder of the world, and not the den of silly iniquity and excess it had always been in his experience. Now, where would he take her to eat Pierre's picnic? The formal gardens? It was warm enough tonight. But a heaviness in the air and some electric sense of antic.i.p.ation said they might get wet.

"Where is the Grotto of Apollo?" she asked suddenly.

"The Ba.s.sin d'Apollon is that big fountain at the end of the Grand Ca.n.a.l. I didn't know there was a grotto. Who told you about it?"

"N-no one. I mean ... I don't know who told me." She looked profoundly disturbed at that. "It has three statues that were displaced when a building was torn down. They put them in ... in a man-made cave of some sort." She looked a bit appalled at what she'd said.

"Well, I'm sure we can explore if you're up to it. You had a late night last night."

"Oh, I slept into the afternoon today, really." She looked up at him, examining his face. "I'm starting to keep your hours."

"Depraved indeed," he murmured.

"I wonder." She sat back in the squabs of the upholstered bench. "I think you're sensitive to sunlight. That's why you keep the house dark all the time. I definitely saw you squinting when you came into my room as though even the late afternoon sun were painful."

Too bright by half. "Guilty as charged."

She frowned. "Is it a medical condition?"

"Yes." He glanced out the window of the coach. "And if you are any more inquisitive about my illnesses, you will miss the palace entirely."

She craned forward. "Oh ... My!

"Precisely."

They swept up the center drive. The facade was so long it faded into the night. Faint light glowed in the rooms behind the great portico but most of the gigantic palace was dark and cold. The ornate symmetry of the last century looked ... hard. At least she would probably think it so.

Henri stepped out of the coach almost before it had stopped rolling. He handed the girl down and reached for the basket Philippe lowered. "Take the carriage round to the stables and get yourself some dinner in the village. We won't need you until a couple of hours before dawn."

"Very good, your grace." The carriage rolled away.

"Well, where would you like to have our dinner? We could explore the park and look for your grotto. " If indeed there was a grotto. The question was answered by several large drops of rain, rapidly multiplying into a downpour. He grabbed her hand and they ran to the grand portico. She was laughing. Laughing at something so simple as rain. He couldn't help but smile.

"Oh, dear, all your finery wet." She giggled as the rain thundered down in a curtain just beyond the grand marble columns of the portico.

He took off his tricorn and shook the drops from it. The silk of his breeches would be ruined, unless you liked watered silk.

"You're not exactly dry yourself." As a matter of fact, her pale rosy-orange dress was almost transparent over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s where her cloak, flapping as they ran, had allowed it to get soaked. He could clearly see her nipples, just at the edge of her decolletage.

He cleared his throat and tried to ignore his wakening interest. The last thing he wanted to do was to frighten her with a c.o.c.kstand.

Though he might not have much choice about that. "Let's see if we can get someone to let us in."

It was an excuse to turn away, concealing his rising interest. He was about to rap the great ceremonial knocker when the door swung open on hinges that creaked. He remembered when these doors had been better tended and when the place had blazed with light, when the crush of courtly bodies had made pa.s.sage impossible. Those days were gone. Perhaps just as well.

The dour man who opened the door must have been eighty. Wisps of white hair wafted round his head like pulled Egyptian cotton. He peered out at them from rheumy eyes, holding high a candelabrum.

"What do you want?"

"To give ourselves a tour, with your permission," Henri said, polite this time. This was a remnant of the old guard, beleaguered as he might be in these troubled times.

The man's gaze roved over them, sharpened, then he bowed. "Please forgive my lack of manners, your grace. There is so little use for them these days." He opened the door wide. Henri hadn't expected to be recognized. Was it the electric feel of his Companion that stamped him?

"And you are?"

"Brendal, your grace, the last permanent remnant of the palace."

"You have a hard but important job, Brendal. My sympathy and my grat.i.tude. " Henri looked around. He hadn't been to Versailles in ages. It had been too silly and too dangerous a place when the unbalanced king and his overmatched queen had been in residence. The entrance hall was much the same, if bare of furniture. "Have they stripped the place?"

"Not all of it," the caretaker said, his mouth a grim line.

The girl was staring about her with big eyes. As well she might. The huge, dim hall was really just a grand foyer, but the carved ceiling was twenty feet above them and the chandelier that hung in the darkness was a good ten feet in diameter. The paintings, the gilt wood carving everywhere, the marble expanse of floor, even the echo of emptiness spoke of a grandeur lost, or never realized.

The building might be grand, but the people who used to reside here were not.

"I'd like to show my young guest about with your permission. We've brought a picnic dinner. I'm sure there is enough to share."

"Your grace is kind, but my chere wife made a nice pullet for dinner. A tour perhaps?"

The girl wandered into the center of the hall, staring up at the chandelier. How he wished she could have seen it lighted. "No need," he said to the caretaker. "I know my way."

The old man glanced to the girl with a small smile. "Very good, your grace." He turned to another candelabrum sitting on a small table and lighted each candle from one of his own. Who did not smile when they saw her? Her beauty was fresh. But it was that light of intelligence in her eyes, her emotional resonance, that moved her from the ordinary into the extraordinary. He 'd barely noticed her, though she'd lived next door for nearly a year. And now he could hardly take his eyes off her. What had changed?

And now she was off-limits because she was his ward.

"One can hardly imagine living in such luxury," she murmured.

He, of course, could hear her clearly. "The public rooms are very grand, and of course the king's and queen's suites. But the courtiers lived in tiny boxes, three thousand of them crowded into a veritable rabbit warren."

"Really?"

"Oh, quite, my lady," Brendal confirmed. "Almost squalid conditions."

Henri picked up the candelabrum, nodding his thanks to the old man, and slipped the expected gold into a discreet hand. "So we shan't bother with them." He motioned her ahead. "The Hall of Mirrors, however, is definitely on the tour." With his flickering light in one hand, and their dinner basket in the other, he trailed after her as the old man drifted away. The sway of her dress shushed across his senses. The aroma of wet hair and fresh female flesh wafted behind her. None but he could have caught the scent. He found it more erotic than the perfumed elegance of the women who usually filled his bed. All that perfume was meant to mask long hair rarely washed, just powdered and ratted, and bodies that bathed once a week at best.

Who would have guessed that the simple scent of a woman could rouse him so?

"Who are all these people?" Francoise asked as they came to a salon with portraits hung in dizzying profusion from the wainscoting to the ceiling on red padded wall covering.

Her companion obligingly held up his candelabrum. "I've no idea," he said after a moment. "I'm afraid the painters are more recognizable than the subjects."

"What do you mean?"

"Well ..." His eyes searched the wall. "Third down and five over from the doorway. Dutch school. Vermeer. And two over from that, Rembrandt without doubt." She went to look closer at the Rembrandt.

"Why, it says it's a self-portrait. How odd that he wouldn't make himself more attractive. It's very alive-feeling though, isn't it?"

Avignon followed and held up the light. She was acutely aware of his body standing so close to hers. The power of his muscled frame was only enhanced by his electric sense of aliveness. A thrum started inside her. "He was more interested in light and truth than in conventional notions of beauty. Not good for business, I'm afraid."

She couldn't help but chuckle. She turned back to the face that glowed out of the dark canvas. "Memorable, though."

They wandered on, through salons sometimes stripped of carpets, always stripped of anything small enough to be carried away, like clocks and lamps. Often only the huge rococo chests were left. "I wonder what this would have looked like when it was fully furnished."

"Overwhelming. That's the effect they wanted. Austere on the outside, and overornamented on the inside. They thought it made them grander themselves."

He pointed out the pastel pastorals of Fragonard, populated by chubby women and cherubs, and the romantic myths of Poussin in huge canvases that dominated the walls.

"I wonder how much gilt they used in here?"

"Ah, you are coming to the best, the Grands Appartements." He led the way into a huge room. "This is the Hercules Salon." He pointed up. "Each is named for the painting in the ceiling. Lemoyne, if I remember."

She peered up into the dimness. The immense painting was only partially illuminated by Avignon 's flickering candles. Hercules was apparently being welcomed into heaven. "Imagine having that stare down at one."

"Remember, not for living, but for overwhelming. Louis wanted everyone to feel small."

"He achieved his aim," she murmured, touching the gilt carving of the fireplace set with the faces of Hercules.

Avignon led her through room after room, each with another painting on the ceiling. It all began to run together. "You're looking a little peaked. Are you ready to dine?" Avignon asked.

"I don't suppose there's an intimate little dining room around here anywhere."

"No." He smiled. She liked that smile, roguish and always a little rueful. She understood the rueful part on some level. "But it wouldn't be a picnic then, would it?" He led the way into ...

A wonderland. Avignon stepped into a vast long hall and the candles in his holder seemed to multiply. Floor -to-ceiling mirrors along one side faced windows equally large on the other. Just now those windows were black, only hinting at the waves of rain outside. Francoise stood and stared, imagining dancers whirling in panniered dresses and skirted coats of magenta and yellow under the glittering chandeliers whose light was cast back by the mirrors. Golden statues held crystal lights which would have echoed the chandeliers in a long line.

Avignon set down his burdens in the center of the room then spread his cloak on the parquet floor. "Voila," he announced. "We picnic in the wild wasteland of Versailles."

She smiled. He took off his coat and knelt on the cloak in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat to begin digging through the hamper. She shrugged off her own cloak, still damp, and sat on his, tucking her feet under her. He produced a bottle of wine and cut -crystal gla.s.ses, knives to carve a cold duck with cherry sauce on a platter. The dishes kept emerging. He served her, talking lightly of life at Versailles and telling tales of the outrages the kings of France had perpetrated on their unruly and possibly subversive followers.

Whenever she laughed she was rewarded with that elusive smile. The circle of candlelight created an intimate s.p.a.ce inside that grand hall. The wine was a marvelous burgundy. He cut her meat and poured her wine. She felt ... cared for, perhaps for the first time in many years.

With a start she realized she was utterly comfortable with him.

No, no, no. One shouldn't be comfortable with the devil. Panic seeped in. She should never have come. At the least she should keep him at arm's length rather than laughing at his ridiculous stories. The intensity of that feeling was more overwhelming than the Hall of Mirrors.

That must be the girl surfacing that Lady Toumoult had warned and frightened into believing that experience was dangerous.

She'd already made her choice tonight. She wanted to come to Versailles. She even wanted Avignon to kiss her. She watched him pack up the hamper.

"Anything else you'd like to see?"

She swallowed. "The king's apartments? Or the queen's. I'd like to see how they lived, where they slept."

He examined her face, her eyes. He wanted to know what she meant by that. She felt a slow flush creep from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her throat and into her cheeks. Unfortunately, that would tell him exactly what she meant.