The Courtesan (15 page)

After all, Gabrielle had beguiled Remy into forgetting his duty for the length of a summer and she hadn’t even been trying. And as for Navarre, well . . . Remy recollected a young prince who could be brave in battle, who even showed signs of being an astute ruler for the Huguenot people except for one fatal weakness.

Women. From the tender age of fourteen, Navarre had found the charms of the ladies as irresistible as they seemed to find him. His fascination with the fair sex had often rendered him lax about more important duties such as pursuing his studies and paying heed to matters of state.

Had the indolent young prince changed at all since he had become a king? Remy could only hope so or Navarre would never be any match for Gabrielle’s charms. She’d slay him with but one dazzling smile.

Remy nestled his head deeper into the bolster, reflecting that the sooner he got Navarre out of Paris, the better. He needed to have his wits about him, get some sleep. But even as weariness tugged at him, Remy felt the old sinking dread, knowing that as soon as he closed his eyes, they would come for him, the ghosts of his past. All those enemies that he had slain, the men that he had lost in battle, returning to stare at him with bitter and accusing eyes.

Right beyond them would be those other poor souls from St. Bartholomew’s Eve, stretching out wraithlike hands to pluck at him with their desperate cries. His fellow countrymen, the men, women, and children he had sworn to protect and failed. And if it were a truly bad night,
he
would come, the demon man, his heavy battle sword drenched with blood, his lips pulled back in a death’s-head grimace of savage joy at the slaughter.

Remy stirred on the pallet, his brow beading with cold sweat, his thoughts flying instinctively toward Gabrielle. But she was gone, his maiden of the island, his enchantress, his protecting angel. A dream, no more. That was all she had ever been and now she was lost to him forever. Remy closed his eyes, surrendering to the inevitable.

His demons would have him this night.

Gabrielle whimpered and tossed on her bed, trying to fight against the nightmare, struggle back to wakefulness. But it was of no use. The silken sheets beneath her body vanished, transforming into dried straw prickling against her skin. She was back in the hayloft of the barn, stifling, all but crushed under the weight of Etienne Danton.

“N-no, Etienne,” she protested, twisting, trying to turn away from his greedy mouth pressing against her neck. She shivered in revulsion at the flicker of his tongue against her skin.

“P-please stop. I—I don’t want to—”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Danton panted, his breath hot against her face. “You want it right well enough, you hot little witch. Why else have you so been tempting me?”

“No. I didn’t want—didn’t mean—” Gabrielle choked on a cry of protest as Etienne pawed at her breast, his fingers clamping down hard.

“Stop! You are hurting me.”

But Danton ignored her, his fingers hooking in the neckline of her bodice, the sound of ripping fabric assaulting her ears.

“I said, stop!” Gabrielle shrilled fiercely. Doubling up her fists, she struck out wildly at his face, her heart pounding with a mixture of anger and mounting fear. But Danton seized her wrists, roughly pinning them over her head. This man she had believed she had loved, her knight, her champion using his brutal strength against her.

Etienne leered down at her, his lean handsome features contorting into an ugly mask of lust, transforming before her very eyes into a devil, a monster. Gabrielle felt her gown being shoved up, her legs being forced apart.

“No!” she cried, bucking to get away, straining to free herself, but it was useless. Danton’s heavy weight bore down upon her. She panted. She could scarce breathe. She felt something hard thrust at her woman’s core, followed by a hot, searing pain.

“No!” But this time her cry came much fainter, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Danton’s body pounded into her, driving Gabrielle mercilessly against the rough straw, the hard planking of the loft floor.

The punishment seemed to go on and on as though it would never end. Gabrielle lay broken beneath Danton, just praying for it all to be over soon.

“Sweet Jesu, help me,” she whispered. “Somebody help me.”

Then past Danton’s shoulder she caught a glimpse of something that dazzled her eyes. Sunlight glinted off a full suit of shining armor. Gabrielle blinked, slowly bringing into focus the shadowy figure of a man, a tall proud warrior with dark gold hair, trim beard, and eyes the tender shade of night.

“R-remy,” Gabrielle breathed, her heart lifting with a surge of desperate hope. “Ah, Remy. Help me, please.”

To her horror, Remy merely gazed down at her dispassionately, then his lips curled with scorn, his eyes going cold and hard. He turned away from her in disgust, melting into the sunlight.

“No, Remy. C-come back. Please, come back—”

Gabrielle’s ragged sobs woke her at last. Her eyes flew open and she stared wildly about the room, trying to regain her bearings, convince herself she truly was safe here in her bedchamber in Paris, not trapped on the floor of that barn.

Heart thudding, she drew sharp quick breaths, willing the nightmare back to the shadows of her mind from whence it had come. But the dream clung to her like a gritty layer of silt.

Gabrielle sat up, realizing that both her nightgown and the sheets were soaked in sweat. The feel of her own clammy skin revolted her and she fought aside the covers, stumbling in her haste to scramble out of the bed.

She tugged and yanked at her fine lawn nightgown, nearly tearing the damp, clinging fabric as she wrenched it off over her head. Gabrielle staggered over to the washstand and splashed water from the blue-trimmed enamel ewer into the bowl. Snatching up a piece of scented soap and a sponge, she proceeded to scrub herself as vigorously as she had that day after Danton had finished with her.

Her fingers trembled so badly the soap slipped from her grasp, plopping back into the washbowl. She could scarce keep a grip on the sponge either and let it go, bracing her hands along the sides of the washstand, breathing hard in an effort to steady herself.

She had not had that horrid dream for such a long time, Gabrielle had finally hoped she was done with it. The nightmare had always been far too vivid, forcing her to relive every dreadful moment of that day in the barn. But it wasn’t what Danton had done to her that left Gabrielle so shaken this time. No, it was Remy’s intrusion into the dream, Remy refusing to help her, Remy turning his back on her in disgust.

“Oh, God!” Gabrielle groaned, biting down hard on her lip to still its trembling, hot tears leaking from her eyes, splashing down her cheeks. She sniffed hard, taking a shuddering breath.

“Get hold of yourself, girl,” she admonished herself. “It was only a dream, only a bloody dream.”

But it wasn’t, her heart whispered back. Remy did regard her with disgust. He did despise her now and he likely would not ever lift one finger to come to her aid. Gabrielle swallowed hard to stifle a wrenching sob. All the hurt she had refused to let herself feel over Remy’s rejection welled up inside her in such an aching flood, it threatened to bring her to her knees.

She felt chilled to the bone, shaking so hard that her teeth chattered. Gabrielle stumbled about the room until she managed to locate her dressing gown. Somehow she got it on, wrapping the silk folds tightly around her naked body, but still she trembled.

Her gaze lit upon an object left on the window seat, the moonlight pouring through the glass panes glinting off the steely length of the sword, the same one Gabrielle had dropped in the courtyard earlier . . . Remy’s sword.

When Bette had come upstairs to clean up the debris of shattered bottles, she must have left the sword for Gabrielle to find. Gabrielle lurched across the room and snatched up the weapon, her fingers gripping the hilt as though it was the last possession of any value left to her.

She clutched it desperately, hoping to feel some of the old protective strength she’d always sensed from Remy’s sword. Remy who now hated her, who regarded her with such contempt. Ah, that was because he had finally seen the terrible flaw in her, Gabrielle thought, tears streaming down her cheeks. All the shameful stains on her soul left by her degradation at Danton’s hands.

But it had all been her own fault. She remembered sitting there on the rough floor, clutching her torn bodice over her bruised skin. She had confronted Danton with a hurt and dazed look. “How—how could you do this to me, Etienne? I thought you were a man of honor.”

“I
am
a man of honor,” he’d muttered, avoiding her eyes as he hitched up his trunk hose. “Whatever I did, you made me do. You bewitched me past all bearing.”

It had been then that Gabrielle had realized the harsh truth about herself. Beyond the artistry of her deft fingers, her skills with paint and brush, she possessed a far darker magic, the ability to drive a man out of his senses with desire, even to the point of committing unspeakable acts.

And in that moment, Gabrielle had felt that the part of her that could see beauty in every leaf, every blade of glass, the part that could breathe life into unicorns or put fairy lights in a little girl’s eyes . . . that part of her had withered and died.

As the hot tears blurred her vision, Gabrielle blinked hard and lifted her head, catching a glimpse of her own reflection in the windowpanes. She saw a wild-eyed woman clutching a sword, her damp hair hanging lusterless about her shoulders, the set of her mouth looking bitter and old.

Lord, Gabrielle sighed. She truly was ugly. She wondered why Remy hadn’t seen it sooner. Rubbing the tears from her eyes, she stared down at the sword she had clasped by her side, wondering what she should do with the thing.

She should find out where Remy was staying and have it returned to him, but something inside her rebelled at the thought. No, damn it, why should she return the sword? Remy had obviously wasted no time in acquiring another and Gabrielle might well have need of this one. Considering how Remy had threatened her . . .

Gabrielle raised the blade of the sword before her and laughed, to think of herself proposing to cross swords with the mighty Scourge. But the sound was a little shrill, unable to lighten the heavy ache in her heart.

She had realized that she and Remy could no longer be friends, but never in her worst nightmares had she ever thought they could become bitter enemies. But what else had she imagined would happen, Gabrielle chided herself. After she had so foolishly announced her intentions of seducing Navarre and keeping him in Paris. The king that Remy considered it his duty to rescue. And heaven knows nothing ever came between Nicolas Remy and his duty.

Gabrielle lowered the sword and propped it in the corner. Nothing would ever come between Gabrielle Cheney and her ambition either, she thought, squaring her shoulders. No matter how hard Remy might seek to prevent it, Gabrielle would have Navarre. Had not the great Nostradamus himself predicted it?

Gabrielle sat down on the window seat, and drawing her knees up to her chin, she hugged them close and peered out the glass panes. The sky that had been so misty earlier in the evening was now sharp and clear, the stars themselves seeming to chart the way to Gabrielle’s future.

Oh, she knew very well what her mother would have said to such a notion. Evangeline Cheney had been skeptical of Nostradamus’s predictions even when the seer was alive. Maman had had even less faith in astrology.

“Your fate is not writ in some distant stars, my dear heart,”
Maman had once told her.
“It rests entirely in your own choices.”

Gabrielle had made her choice that long-ago day when she had left Remy standing alone on the riverbank. Even before that, she reflected sadly, when she had let Etienne Danton take her by the hand and lead her into that barn.

Once she had accepted the dark magic inside herself, Gabrielle had learned to use her charms and outward beauty, honing her very body into a weapon capable of ensnaring any man, even a king. Never again would she feel so weak and helpless as she had been that day she’d lost her innocence.

She would be powerful and strong, as formidable as the Dark Queen. At least she would tomorrow. But as she stared up at that vast cold sky, tonight all Gabrielle felt was very small and alone.

She ached desperately for someone’s strong arms to steal around her, comfort her, hold her close. But those would never be Remy’s arms. He would never want to touch her again.

Instead, Gabrielle felt herself longing for Ariane. Her older sister had often driven Gabrielle to distraction with her attempts to mother, to teach and protect. But now Gabrielle wanted nothing more than to be back on Faire Isle, to bury her face in Ariane’s lap and pour out her woes while Ariane stroked her hair.

But her older sister despised her as much as Remy did, Gabrielle thought bleakly. As the Lady of Faire Isle, full of a great healing magic, wise, gentle, and good, Ariane was the sort of woman who inspired love in men, not lust. She had the respect of the people on the island and beyond, the admiration of all other daughters of the earth and the adoration of her Comte de Renard.