CHAPTER ELEVEN
Misbeguilings
Sunday morning was a grey affair with overcast skies and breezeless air. Ghislaine took her breakfast, but a single buttered bun and coffee, early on the en plein air veranda where she wrapped herself in a busy patterned shawl, curled her feet up underneath her slight torso, and took her turn at escaping to the Tyrolean Alps. Maria's impassioned efforts to rescue the imprisoned Frederick did not toll out like alpine church bells to summon Ghislaine’s soul, or more so her attentions. What cared she for soldiers separating true lovers or perilous paths beset by avalanches? Her hero loved her, Maria knew. That is what gave her the strength - the will to overcome each obstacle. It was all so trite. It was all so simple for the girl from the flowered meadows.
In that dull light the page was off-white and the letters seemed to fade away. Dry, chill fingers dragged across each rough page and the bone of Ghislaine's elbow ever poked her too-twisted waist. She was on the point of loading up for another deep sigh, when she caught the eye of Montaigne watching her from the dining room. She held the breath and shied a smile, only to have the darkly bearded artist sharply turn away. He held himself there, long enough to think a thought unknown, and then stepped along and hid his form in some darker corner of the room. It was a modulated and measured sigh that Ghislaine next breathed.
Then Madeleine cast her eye onto the porch and lobbed all manner of easy morning pleasantries at the schoolgirl there. They were returned gracefully enough. Ghislaine answered each enquiry with precise and prompt propriety. When it was right to do so, Ghislaine acknowledged the charm of Madame de Grenville's morning dress, but could imagine the motives of the hostess in so well adorning herself. Was that rouge powder padded upon her cheeks or was she so entirely happy that her blood was dancing under her skin? Her hair, wild without care, was bound back behind by one azure ribbon and somehow the very abandonment of those tresses was perfectly en suite with her demeanour. Casting down her gaze, Ghislaine silently appraised the slippers that Madeleine then wore and dwelled one moment on that moment when her naked toes slid out from rumpled sheets to find them there, upon the floor, beside whatever other boots her lover might have borne unto her bedside.
When the slightest pause in banalities gave her the opportunity, Ghislaine plunged herself into the depths of Tyrolean ravines, heedless of what rock falls might then follow after. It was footfalls and they brought Madame de Grenville to the side of Mademoiselle.
"Is something troubling you, dear Ghislaine?"
What answer might be given? What truth or lie could divert the course of conversation to something - anything but the inevitable? No good could come of honesty. Only misfortune would come from frankness. The course of events could not be diverted by a lie. This was no time for pleasantries. She must negotiate for compromise.
"Something seems the matter with M. Montaigne. Is he angry with me?"
Madeleine knelt beside the youth and said, "How could anyone be angry with you?" This was followed by one bar of that perfect little laugh of hers.
Ghislaine marked her place before slamming the book closed. She would try the game. "Perhaps he saw me walking out with M. Roy, and is jealous." As soon as it was said, Ghislaine clenched her jaw and knew that if Madeleine dared to laugh, she would scratch her rosy cheek red.
Madeleine did neither laugh nor take too long to answer. "Charles is a wildman. He does not own his thoughts or his passions, nor does he cling to them. If he seems out of sorts this morning, he may be a merry soul by after lunch." Her laugh now reflected no ill will. "Well, perhaps never quite a merry soul," she said and when Madeleine was done, Ghislaine could share her smile.
There was that same reassuring pat upon the arm as Madeleine decided, "You have too much joy in your heart, Ghislaine, to allow the moods of Charles to darken it." The lashes of Madeleine's grey eyes shaded them to slate. "Be cheerful. Be joyful about his unguided grumps and you will make him likewise happy. Be a beacon for his floundering passions and save him from drowning in sulks. Go to him. Be his happiness. Maybe he will be yours." Ghislaine, for her part, could see, she believed, the way in which Madeleine was leading and she could likewise imagine her motives. But Madeleine, it seemed, knew precisely what song to sing.
"No man will ever love as deeply, as completely, as Charles." Thus was the doom of Ghislaine pronounced.
And she left the maiden there. Following one more pat upon the Ghislaine's arm, Madeleine rose gracefully to make her exit on hurried slippered feet. At the entrance to the house, she squeezed past Madame Ferland and that lady's husband, dropping salutations in the passing.
"Good morning, Ghislaine," announced Jacqueline from the dining room. Ambrose echoed and Ghislaine replied, but she looked past her parents, and past the back of the disappearing hostess, and sought with no certain success to find the glowering form of Montaigne somewhere in the shadowed gloom. Adele was there, puttering purposefully, and Ghislaine felt no urge to aid her today. Was that dark mass on the distant wall Montaigne? Adele might be talking to him. No, it was the china cabinet. As she answered each of her parent's pleasantries, Ghislaine fumbled to take up her novel once more. Between the elder pair, phrases were whispered and something was said that somehow prevented their approach to the porch. They turned back in to gain their porridge and Ghislaine turned to her bookmark but did not read.
'Charles' seemed such a dignified name. It had no pretense. It was of the earth, but when she whispered it, that word did not fall. It was like a soap bubble blown. In her wandering imagination, Ghislaine clothed the brooding painter in garments of soul and passion, art and power. Whenever, for an instant, her mind's eye began to find faults, she turned instead to virtues of truth and gravitas, dignity and bearing. He was, she knew, a true artist. She did not dwell long upon this distinction, except to note that the soul of Charles had not been made to wither in the hands of her artless mother.
He entered singing, "Trala la le la, Tralla la la," and wore the whitest suit of Roland's wardrobe. He shone, Apollonian, through the glass windows, illuminating the dining room, and bowed low before Madame Ferland as though inviting her to dance a Pavan. Ghislaine slid one pink finger between the grey writings of Auguste Orden and pressed the tome slowly closed. Over her shoulder, somewhere distant, a robin sang, seeming in response. He flitted, did Boniface, from Ferland to Ferland but not to Ghislaine. He flirted with Adele, it seemed sure, and then pranced merrily before the china cabinet. If only an affectation, his joy appeared true and he dispensed it as handfuls of bonbons, though they would clatter unclaimed to the floor. He was persistent in his performance despite the glowering crowd. An exception, as ever, Madeleine made sure signs of appreciation, singing an answer in one moment, but he wagged a finger in the air before her laughing grin, and turned away instead to play with the scowling of Montaigne. Uncertain, she maintained her pleasing smile but arched one single slender brow, while she puzzled out his present game. And on the porch, Ghislaine watched, of course.
Yesterday, that pair had kissed. The embrace - the clasp, had been so amorous that there could have been no mistaking it. It was love, and yet, today Boniface pranced about with something like playful aversion for Madeleine. If game it was, then with whom did he play it? It was a show. Boniface was always on stage and here she was, Ghislaine, the audience for this act. If he had yet glanced her way, it was only something fleeting. She was reading too much into it, for certain, she thought, as she watched Madeleine shake her head ruefully and then push through to the kitchen. Boniface had removed his jacket and, with crisp shirt and buttoned vest, sat himself down at the head of the table to beckon for his breakfast. At her outside place, Ghislaine could only see the back of Boniface's blond locks and she took that moment to admire their rhyming fall. From somewhere, Charles Montaigne emerged with purposed strides and just as quickly disappeared into the kitchen left. And then it was only Adele, attending to the gentleman's needs, and laughing at his jests, and blushing at his brushes with impropriety. Ghislaine did not need to hear a single word to know what sorts of sweets he would half-whisper to the maid, and she caught with glee every candy tossed.
Frederick was still idly fretting in his cell and Maria was bravely passing letters to his priest. Ghislaine had drained her cup and not even crumbs remained of her once well-buttered bun. There was every excuse to stand and cross the threshold. It would be perfectly natural. To do otherwise would be rude. The open palm of Boniface brushed with certain purpose against the skirted thigh of the serving girl, but it was brief and it was well disguised. No witness within that room would have seen the pat, only eyes outside, watching through the glass.
Ghislaine twisted, turning in her seat, and even pushed the chair with determined feet. She would remove him from her periphery, and her. She would escape to alpine escapades and not watch how that interior dialogue played out. Despite the call of crows amid the cherry tree, the silence from the dining room hovered buzzing behind her ear. Their unseen actions still pestered her.
The kitchen's side door, the one that never closed right, banged and bounced to bang again. Ghislaine looked up, glad for the distraction, to see Charles carve certain strides across the too-long grass. Ever purposeful, he drove with no sidelong glance toward the distant lower fields. Ghislaine, not an instant later, was running across the lawn, splashing dew. Shoes and cup and the entirety of the Tyrol were now forgotten as she hurried to pursue her prey. She would bring the bear to bay just beyond the line of olive trees. Only a little out-of-breath, she was glad for his halt. She circled to his front (though he sought at first to turn aside) and chided him for his manners, saying, "You are a difficult man to get a 'good morning' from, Monsieur."
The beast shook his dark-muzzled maw. Trapped, he cast one glance over his shoulder to see what other hunters might be in the party, and seeing none answered, "Good morning, Mademoiselle."
Her laugh was gay and she hopped back ballon en arriere to give a curtsey so deep as to sweep her naked knee free of white skirts before the man. She held the pose, with downcast eyes, and Montaigne too did not move. There was a rumble from deep and low before he flashed misshapen teeth for a lively roar of laughter. His answering bow was rough and hurried but the girl still raised her eyes in time to see it - in time to smile upon it. When her knee had once more disappeared and she was, on balls of feet, erect before him, Charles sobered and shook his head once more emphatically.
"We should not be alone. We should not be alone together."
"If we are together then we are not alone, are we?" Her quip caught him off guard and that triumphant grin was hard to resist.
"What I mean is... you don't understand."
"Exactly." She took his hand and would not release it. The little fingers had great power, lost within that giant fist. Ghislaine pulled Charles along down the gentle hill and he followed in obedience. Leading, the young lady did not see how often Charles flashed almost frightened looks back up to the house where each of his accusers dwelled.
"I've been told," Charles began, but caught the sentence incomplete. He could not tell the tale. Yesterday's scene in the sitting room was not something she could know of. It was not wholly from shame that Charles refrained from that account, but he had to think of Ambrose and what a daughter ought to hear and not. What was said was for the confidence of men. He tried again. "There has been talk," he began vaguely,” and I do not wish to see you talked about."
That little paw maintained its hold. Ghislaine led him to the cover of a tall shrubbery where once Boniface and she had found refuge from the veranda observatory.
Still playing with determination, "Charles, it is a small rogue's gallery. Who has been slandering us? ... and what have they said!" Ghislaine was so seldom the subject of gossip that she could still find delight in it.
Montaigne was thunderstruck by the use of the word 'us'.
Ghislaine guessed Madeleine and once again Montaigne was shaking his beard. "Then Boniface!" She narrowed her eyes and tried to adopt the guise of some sort of sleuth. "He seeks to throw them off his scent."
With that, Charles unclasped her hand from his and violently waved his fingers in the air between the pair. "Let it be. Forget that I said anything. No one said anything about you."
Ghislaine's suspicions were bulwarks against disappointment. She chose to not sally out and so gave one diminutive shrug to colour her answer, "It is forgotten then. There is nothing to any of it. Come, you and I, let us walk out." And she reached once again for his handy leash but he would not comply.
"No," he said and was now alert that from this hiding place he could not spy approaches from the estates and they might be found there unaware. Keeping his hands vaguely moving, Charles peeked out from the side of the hedge to confirm their continued solitude.
"Are we safe?" she teased and tried once more to catch his hands, but Charles suddenly grew large and dark and dangerous. He seized her wrists.
Charles snapped, "This is serious. Do not play about. We... I have been told, clearly... clearly, that I am not to be alone with you. We must not be intimate. It simply cannot happen. We are watched. Do you understand?" He held her helpless in his grasp. She was too small, too frail, to resist this pinion but it did not matter, for she surrendered to his strength. The face of Charles, looming close, was aglow with heat and carved to deep crevasses as from red marble, glistening. His eyes bore black with resolution and Ghislaine could clearly see her own wide gaze reflected there, a captive behind glass. She knew no word for the tempest of fear and desire that swirled about her heart.
"But," she began vaguely, "I am your Leda. You must paint me." Will flushed her. "Your art needs me!" The pulse of Ghislaine beat strong beneath the thumbs of Montaigne.
"No." Charles unclasped those thin, pale wrists and he pushed his shirted shoulders back against the thirsty, olive-coloured hedge.
But Ghislaine caught his wrists. She declared, "Yes," before he broke her feeble hold with less than a thought. His thickly muscled arms were raised above his black-haired head and mighty fists the size of Ghislaine's skull were sculpted there.
The girl drew back, smaller yet, and made her plea, "Do not strike..."
Charles was horrified. Now conscious of his appearance, he dropped his arms quickly - too quickly, for Ghislaine flinched again before the movement. He grasped for her shoulders, to comfort, but she cringed away. "I would never strike you," he begged her to understand. "I could never... I could not. Please, do not..." Charles fell to his knees as she drew back, staring at his face, and he looked to the grass and her feet to say, "I am no monster." The big man's hands clutched at burnt grass blades. Broken fingernails scratched at the dry earth, and clods of dirt shattered to powder in his palms.
Ghislaine fled from him on little naked feet.
At the same moment that young Ghislaine was running across the sloping grass, Madeleine de Grenville was settling her layered skirts about her legs in the chair opposite that of Boniface Roy. When her train was well aligned, she made certain of straight posture to drink from a pale-blue patterned china cup. Boniface was silent now but kept his smile and creaseless brow centered upon the hostess. Adele had sense enough to reduce her own presence and at first opportunity, she seized the residue bedecked plate of Boniface and hustled through the kitchen door.
Alone then with M. Roy, Madeleine watched her companion with open eyes, assessing him by her silence. There he sat in her husband's chair, in her husband's suit, in her husband's house. More than merely allowing it all to pass, she had played a part: laying out the costume in his bedchamber last eve, as he worked in earnest on the image of her nudity in the sitting room studio. She might have sent Adele on the errand, but Madeleine had desire to personally perform this certain task. She had lingered there, beside his clean, kempt bed, and let her fingers run over the objets de toilette: his cologne, his comb, and his folded razor and, on opening that, Madeleine had drawn the steel edge slow across her own forearm to watch the blade cut away tiny white hairs from there. Before the wardrobe, Madeleine was not surprised. She had guessed how shallow it might be and her inspection of shirt tails had proven them to be tattered indeed. A drawer search showed more underclothes than outer. But Madeleine, last night, had not been spying to discover deceits or faults. She had not sought out reasons to think less of Boniface, but only to know more. She wished for more of him, as any woman would, she was sure.
He sat there now, silent in his summer whites, surrounded by fine things that were not his, and grinned across at Madeleine as though this lion boasted a mouth of pale and yellow feathers. He seemed, she thought, so certain of his conquest. There were, from time to time as he smiled at her, tiny twitches in the corner of his mouth, like little winks and once or twice, one eyebrow arched as if for no reason, but to give her some hidden signal. It was play and Madeleine, once more, confessed silently that she could not resist his childish charms. Madame made sure to lift her saucer up to cup and so make a more musical chime from the collision.
"You are not yourself this morning," she said without accusation.
By way of answer, Boniface swept a circle about his torso with a graceful hand and said, "I thank him for the loan. He is generous."
"Isn't he though." There was a delay of but one breath before both of them laughed at Roland's expense. Madeleine came half-heartedly to her husband's defense, saying, "He is a good man, Roland is, and I am grateful for his virtues."
But Boniface played on and exaggerated a sigh, "While I am virtueless."
She chided, "We were not speaking of you. It is not always about you."
His riposte was quick. "I am not myself this morning."
"Charles is also changed. Ghislaine and I both noted your metamorphosis. Adele and Madame Ferland too, to be sure, were struck by your misdirections. I know you well enough, now, to see at least the distractions if not fully how the trick is done. What illusion are you performing this morning, Monsieur?"
"This!" The gesture was ambiguous.
"You pretend to be my husband? You have some nerve, Monsieur. I did not intend..."
But he cut her off sharply "No. I do not pretend. That is - no. I did not intend..."
"What, dear sir, are your intentions?"
That sunlit man lifted a finger to buy himself time. Madeleine acquiesced with polite pleasantry. She had no anger for Boniface but he was sometimes like a butterfly that needed to be pinned.
"We are," he said, "forbid. Ambrose and Charles will go to Roland, or worse, if you and I are seen to cross lines of impropriety."
"Or worse?"
"Or worse," he said.
"Charles?"
"Ambrose, really. Charles was incidental, and brought up on charges of his own. He has been told that he will not ... We are both told to not undertake a capture of Ghislaine."
At this last, Madeleine's face took on a cloud. She did not question the right of Ambrose to stand against their conduct. She did not challenge the justice of the charge. She could neither call him snoop nor gossip. She had not taken precautions. She had been careless, it was true. To campaign against a seduction of Ghislaine was, of course, her father’s right and Madeleine herself might have been more prudent – more sisterly there. Nonetheless, this was a nuisance of no little consequence. The old man was threatening to ruin the summer's experiment, to ruin her marriage, perhaps to ruin her life. There was, she knew, no threat against Boniface. Such a scandal would elevate him as much as it would destroy her. What motives moved Ambrose to act, Madeleine knew, did not matter. He was acting in the right. It was she, and it was Boniface who was entirely in the wrong, and yet more, Boniface was likewise above blame. His was but the masculine nature. There was only one person who had allowed this to happen. Madeleine was entirely empowered to have prevented this. Though she might be to blame, in Madeleine's heart there was no shame and there was no desire to refrain from enjoying the company of Boniface.
With pursed lips, Madeleine calculated the merits of the man opposite her. Aware perhaps of her arithmetic, Boniface put forth a smile of such embellishments as would hopefully treble his score. It is just a grin, thought Madeleine. Idiots can make them, and do. So what if he is a pretty thing? One does not commit mortal sins for such things. His words, also pretty, too often too pretty, are frippery phrases and for all his whispered words of souls and beauty, eyes and promises, there is no substance to them. She and he both were entirely aware that those words said nothing. They are just a part of his charming costume, as much as any of Madeleine's ball gowns. It was a display of a wealth of wit, and a desire to delight. His is the art of saying what a woman wished to hear and in that there demonstrated an interest, an empathy, an understanding of his audience. That, reflected Madeleine, was what made the simple smile of Boniface so enchanting: it was a smile crafted entirely for her pleasure. His happy eyes looked nowhere but at her.
The lady did not follow the line to find arguments of selfishness and arrogance. She did not light upon whatever hunger she had for attention. For her, there was no question of vanity. It was enough that he cared about her and her happiness.
In the beginning, Roland had striven to please Madeleine, to devote himself to her. He had offered pretty words and expensive presents. There had been moonlight carriage rides through the Bois du Boulogne and a quintet had played in the adjoining room one night. Never, not once, had her husband ever sat in that chair in the morning light and simply smiled at her as though her presence alone might buoy his heart forever. No! That too was different. In the gaze of Boniface was a joy in the instant - the now. Behind that elegant curve of eyebrow, there was nothing beyond the immediate hour.
His words cast Madeleine from her thoughts, "I will be taking church this morning, with the Ferlands. You should come."
"I..." She had no answer. Since the start of summer, not once had Boniface gone to service. It had always only been the elder artist and his family, and she and Roland. She had thought herself liberated today, but now this. She had no answer, except, "Of course."
Boniface then rose from his place at the head of the table. "I shall see if good Samuel requires assistance in the stable."