The Courtesan Read online

  Ariane wrapped her arms across her bare breasts, feeling chilled and exposed. She would bathe and dress after Renard had left, but for now she retrieved the shift from the pile of clothes she had discarded in her eagerness to get Renard into bed. As Ariane tugged the light linen fabric over her head, she was aware of Renard dressing at the opposite end of the room, the distance of a few floorboards and scattered carpets seeming to yawn like a chasm between them.

  She watched as Renard yanked on his breeches, quickly doing up the buttons as though he could not wait to be gone.

  “I am sorry you find your duty so irksome,” she said. “But I thought you wanted a child as much as I do.”

  Renard paused. “I want whatever will make you happy, ma chère,” Renard muttered, digging through the aumbry for a fresh shirt.

  “That is an annoyingly evasive reply,” Ariane snapped.

  Renard pulled out a shirt and slammed the cupboard door closed. “Nothing would please me more than to have a child with you, but you are going at it too blasted hard, Ariane. You will wear us both out, woman.”

  “You never used to complain of such a thing before. You had much more stamina than that.”

  Renard paused in the act of unfolding his shirt to glower at her. “So I did. I could make love to you the livelong day. But that is not what we have been doing of late. We have merely been joining our bodies to make a child. Sometimes you seem so far away from me, I wonder if you even remember that I am there, if any other man would serve your purpose.”

  “That is not true!” Ariane cried hotly. “What a dreadful thing to say.”

  Renard compressed his lips, then said curtly, “You are right. I apologize.”

  He attempted to wrench his shirt over his head, but his skin was still damp. The light cotton bunched up around his shoulders where he could not reach to yank it down.

  “Damn!” Renard snarled. In another moment he would have the shirt torn in his impatient struggles. Sternly ordering him to hold still, Ariane worked at the knotted fabric until she managed to ease the shirt past Renard’s shoulders and down his back.

  “Merci, madame,” he muttered. As he glanced down at her, the harsh cast of Renard’s face softened. Both his eyes and his voice were gentler, more patient as he caressed her cheek.

  “I am sorry for behaving like a wounded beast, ma chère. But we have plenty of time for children. We have only been married three years.”

  His warm touch and coaxing smile eased some of Ariane’s tension, but she had to suppress a quiver in her voice as she said, “Most women my age are already mothers several times over. I am going to be twenty-four come next Michaelmas.”

  “A mere babe.” Renard dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Did you not deliver a child only last week to the miller’s wife? And she is forty-two, if she is a day.”

  “But Hortense has already had ten children.” Ariane’s throat constricted. She had to swallow hard before she could finish. “And I have already failed twice.”

  Renard caught her face between his huge hands and regarded her fiercely. “Do not talk like that, Ariane. What happened was no fault of yours. You are a wise woman. You should know better. It is often simply the way of nature for a woman to miscarry.”

  “Miscarry,” Ariane echoed bitterly, pushing his hands away. “How I hate that word. It makes it sound as though I lost nothing more precious than a bucket of water I dropped on the way from the well. The first time was disappointing, but I scarce realized I had conceived before it was ended. But the last time—”

  Ariane closed her eyes and pressed her hand over the region of her womb. “Oh, the last time, Justice, I could feel the first flutter of life from our babe, like a tiny bird flexing its wings.

  “I did not miscarry,” she said in a voice tight with anguish. “I lost our child.”

  “And I nearly lost you!” Renard replied tersely.

  “Don’t exaggerate, Justice. I admit the pain was bad and I lost some blood—”

  “You nearly died, Ariane.” Renard grasped her by the shoulders and peered sternly at her as though he would force her to acknowledge the truth of his words.

  Ariane tipped her chin to a stubborn angle. “I did not! And even if I had come close to perishing, childbearing always carries a certain amount of risk. But to have such a precious prize, our own babe, does that not make it worth it?”

  “No! Not to me it doesn’t.” The set of Renard’s jaw was so implacable, a muscle throbbed in his cheek.

  “But you are the Comte de Renard. Surely you must want an heir?”

  Renard expelled an impatient breath. “Ariane, you know right well I never particularly cared about inheriting all of this.” He gave an impatient jerk of his head in the direction of the castle window, toward the sprawling estate beyond. “And I could care even less who has it after I am gone. All I care about is you.”

  Renard’s eyes seethed with a mingling of love and frustration. He flexed his fingers, trying to massage some of the tension from her shoulder blades. “God’s truth, woman! My own mother died giving birth to me. Is that what you want? To leave me with a child who will never see his mother’s face?”

  “No! I am sure everything will go better the next time. That—that is—” The fear that had dogged Ariane so relentlessly of late caused her lip to tremble. “If there is a next time,” she whispered.

  “Ah, chérie,” Renard groaned. Drawing her into his arms, he held her close and buried his face against her hair. “You will have your babe one day. But you must be patient and wait. Your body has not even had enough time to heal.”

  Ariane nestled against his chest, drawing some comfort from the warm strength of his arms and the steady beat of his heart. But she quavered, “It has been over a year, Justice, since I lost our babe.”

  “No, only nine months,” Renard corrected her gently.

  Only? Ariane thought forlornly. It felt like a lifetime to her of raised hopes every time her courses were a little late, followed by crushing disappointment when her monthly flow began. Her despair was only deepened by the realization that she was alone in her grief. Each time she failed to conceive, she suspected that Renard was more than a little relieved.

  But to tax her husband with that would only provoke another quarrel and she feared they had been doing too much of that lately. So Ariane rallied her spirits and lifted her head to offer Renard a misty smile.

  “Never mind. I am certain you will feel differently about all of this when I place your son or daughter in your arms. And that may be sooner than we both think.” Ariane stole a wistful glance toward the bed. “Perhaps we were lucky this afternoon.”

  “Perhaps,” Renard agreed, but his own smile was forced. He brushed a kiss against her forehead and then released her.

  Retrieving his boots and his hose, Renard sank down on one of the stools by the hearth to finish dressing. Without his arms around her, Ariane felt strangely bereft. She hugged herself tightly and studied his averted face with a dull pain in her heart. Renard seldom spoke about the way his mother had died, but Ariane knew he was haunted by the fear his wife might meet the same fate.

  She understood Renard’s apprehensions for her. Truly she did. She just wished he could make more effort to understand the fierce ache of her longing for a child. He was usually not even willing to talk about her desperate desire to conceive, which left her abandoned in a very lonely place. To wish and hurt, to grieve and dream all by herself.

  As Renard yanked on his boots, he abruptly changed the subject. “When do you leave for Faire Isle?”

  Ariane sighed, moving to pick up the rest of the clothing she had dropped on the floor. In truth, she had given little thought to her impending journey or the council meeting of the daughters of the earth that awaited her.

  “Tomorrow morning, early, I suppose—” she began, then stopped as the full import of Renard’s question struck her. She regarded him with a tiny frown. “Will you not be accompanying me?”

 
“No, not this time. I have pressing business of my own to attend.” Renard stood up to ram his heel the rest of the way into his second boot.

  “Oh,” Ariane said, quietly concealing her disappointment. She carried her soiled gown over to place it in the woven straw laundry basket.

  “But I will send a retinue of men to accompany you,” Renard added.

  “Faire Isle is not that many leagues away,” Ariane protested. “I will be traveling across our own lands, to my own home. I don’t need to be escorted by an army.”

  “Six of my very best men,” Renard said in a tone that brooked no argument. He stepped behind her and caught her by the elbow, pulling her around to face him. He stroked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear.

  “I would do anything to protect you, to keep you safe. Anything. You do understand that, don’t you, Ariane?”

  “Why—why, yes,” she stammered, a little taken aback by the intensity of his tone, the fierce glitter in his green eyes.

  “Good!” Renard pressed a hard kiss to her lips, then strode away from her. In another second he was gone, the bedchamber door closing sharply behind him.

  Ariane ran her fingers over her mouth, which felt a little bruised from the force of her husband’s parting embrace. When she had first met Renard, he had often seemed intimidating, a stranger who hid many secrets behind his cool smile.

  Ariane had always prided herself on her own ability to read eyes, but she had been frustratingly unable to penetrate the thoughts Renard concealed beneath his heavy lids. As she had fallen deeply in love with him, she had finally been able to read his mind as easily as he did hers. But there were still times when Renard’s thoughts eluded her and those times were growing more disturbingly frequent.

  Ariane brushed her hand back through her hair and cast a despondent glance around the empty bedchamber. She should bathe, get dressed, and start making some preparations for her journey. But Renard’s abrupt departure and their ongoing disagreement about the babe left her feeling unsettled and restless.

  Ariane drifted listlessly toward one of the open windows. The height of this chamber afforded her an excellent view of the estate beyond the curtain wall of the castle. She could make out the mysterious shadows of the thick wood nearby, the wheat field that was slowly being harvested by a hive of workers wielding their scythes. Off to the left was a meadow dotted with daisies where the foal from Renard’s prized mare was gamboling about on spindly legs.

  So many times Ariane had imagined herself wandering that same sweet meadow, small chubby fingers clinging to her hand. She would bend down to point out some plant or flower, teaching her daughter all the lore her own mother had taught her. Her child would nod eagerly, absorbing all Ariane said, a little girl with Renard’s keen green eyes and sun-streaked hair. Or perhaps a shade more golden like her father’s had been.

  Or like Gabrielle’s.

  The thought of her sister only served to further lower Ariane’s spirits. Gabrielle was never far from her mind, her fears for her headstrong sister having cost Ariane many a sleepless night. If she had not managed to plant Bette in Gabrielle’s household to send back regular reports, Ariane thought she might have run mad with worry.

  When Gabrielle had run off, Renard had offered to go to Paris, haul her back by force if necessary. As tempted as Ariane had been by the notion, she had refused. She could hardly hold her sister prisoner and she feared she had already made enough mistakes with Gabrielle.

  The brightness of the day dimmed as Ariane was flooded with painful recollections of the last time she’d seen her sister, their bitter quarrel. Ariane had always understood the nature of the injury that had been inflicted upon Gabrielle by Etienne Danton and how much her sister had grieved over the death of Nicolas Remy, although Gabrielle would never admit to either.

  As a healer by nature, it had hurt and frustrated Ariane that she was unable to ease her sister’s pain. That last afternoon her patience had worn thin. Although she had not confided the fact to anyone as yet, Ariane had suspected she was pregnant with her first child and it was not going well. She had spotted blood only that morning and the sight of Gabrielle stubbornly packing her trunk had caused something to snap inside Ariane.

  “You are not going to Paris, Gabrielle.” Ariane yanked out the gowns and petticoats from the trunk as fast as her sister was packing them and flung them back on the bed. “And that is the end of the matter.”

  Gabrielle glared at her. “No, it isn’t. You might be prepared to let a perfectly fine house go to waste, a house that our father paid for, but—”

  “A house for his mistress! Will you insult our mother by accepting such a gift from the vile woman who broke her heart?”

  Although Gabrielle swallowed thickly, she replied, “Maman is no longer here to care.”

  “And do you think she wouldn’t care that her daughter is prepared to embark on a career as—as a whore?”

  “That is what I already am,” Gabrielle said, doggedly refolding a gown.

  Ariane seized hold of her wrist to stop her. “No, you aren’t. What happened with Danton was not your fault.”

  Gabrielle’s cheeks flamed as she wrenched herself free. “You know nothing about what happened and I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “No, you never do, do you? Or your grief over Remy, either.”

  At the mention of Remy, Gabrielle clutched the gown she was holding almost protectively in front of her, her mouth setting in that thin line Ariane knew all too well, the expression a mingling of suppressed pain and sheer stubbornness.

  Frustrated by her inability to reach her sister, to reason with her, Ariane paced about the bedchamber. “Do you think I don’t know what you have in mind? You believe if you seduce enough great men, you’ll become rich and powerful enough to take your place at court. And that somehow you’ll find a way to take your revenge on the Dark Queen for what she did to Remy.

  “But it won’t work, Gabrielle. You’ll never be any match for Catherine. And even if you did succeed in destroying her, you’ll destroy yourself as well. Your heart, your very soul will become as black as hers and none of that will bring Remy back.”

  “I don’t have a heart,” Gabrielle said, stuffing the gown into the trunk. “And this has nothing to do with Remy, only my own ambitions.”

  She jumped back when Ariane slammed the lid down to prevent her packing anything more.

  “You can forget your cursed ambitions,” Ariane said, losing all patience. “You are not going anywhere. I absolutely forbid it.”

  “You forbid it?” Gabrielle cried. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Your older sister and the Lady of Faire Isle.”

  “Oh, yes, the great healer who thinks she can fix anything. Well, you can’t fix me, Ariane. When are you ever going to understand that? I am not perfect like you and Maman. And maybe if Maman hadn’t been quite so saintly, she’d never have lost Papa to that trollop—”

  Ariane’s hand shot out before she could stop herself, connecting sharply with Gabrielle’s cheek. She and Gabrielle regarded each other in stunned silence for a moment, Gabrielle clutching her face.

  Ariane had never struck either of her sisters before. She felt sick as she saw the tears well in Gabrielle’s eyes.

  “Gabrielle, I am sorry. I—”

  But Gabrielle blinked fiercely and turned away . . .

  Ariane rested her head wearily against the window frame. Gabrielle had vanished from the castle the very next day and they had not seen or spoken to each other for the past two years. She was as much to blame for that as Gabrielle. Hurt that Gabrielle would run off that way, angry that she was now living in that cursed woman’s house, overwhelmed by her own problems, Ariane had made no effort to heal the breach.

  If she had sent word to Gabrielle when she had had either of her miscarriages, Ariane knew that Gabrielle would have returned to be with her at once. But Ariane had been too proud to do so.

  She was acclaimed far and wide as the most learned
of wise women. She had helped scores of mothers through difficult conceptions and births, safely delivered countless babes. But instead of a child, the only thing that grew inside her was her fear. That despite all her cleverness, all her learning, all her magic, she might prove barren.

  If only Renard could be brought to comprehend how empty, how desolate that made her feel. But perhaps no man could. Perhaps she asked far too much of her husband. The making of a child was supposed to be a joyous, almost sacred thing, drawing a man and wife closer together, Ariane reflected bleakly. Instead her deep longing was driving her and Renard further apart.

  A fine mist curled across the pasture, the grass damp with dew, the sun barely poking its head over the horizon. The early morning stillness was only broken by the twittering of some sparrows and the steady thud of Renard’s hammer as he sought to repair a break in the pasture fence.

  He hunkered down, one nail held firmly between his lips, while he drove another into the replacement board with hard, precise strokes. Mending fences was scarcely a befitting task for the Comte de Renard.

  But Renard feared that the peasant blood had always been stronger in him than whatever thin strain he had inherited from the mighty Deauvilles. He liked the feel of an axe or scythe in his hand, far preferring good honest labor to hunting, hawking, or sipping wine with some fop of a nobleman who reeked of scent like a Parisian whore.

  Renard had always felt far closer to his kinsman, Toussaint, a distant cousin of his peasant mother’s. The redoubtable old warrior had gone to meet his Maker two springs ago. A peaceful death, a dignified end to what had been a long and full life. Renard still missed the old man who had been like both a father and conscience to him. Especially now that this trouble had arisen with Ariane.

  Renard plucked the second nail from his mouth and pounded it into place. At the distant winding of a horn, Renard straightened and shaded his eyes, squinting in the direction of the road that led away from the castle. He could make out the mounted troop of some half dozen of his retainers, clad in the black-and-gold livery of the house of Deauville. Riding in their midst, perched sidesaddle on a richly caparisoned palfrey, was his Ariane. A scarlet wool mantle hung off her shoulders, her chestnut hair falling down her back in a thick braid.