She straightened up, took a deep breath, shuddered it out, and hiccuped. She must look red-faced and perfectly ridiculous; this she knew. She must look as if she hadn’t aged a day, in body or mind, since her first encounter with Pasha. This made her wince a little bit; for on that day, she had lost her mother forever; and now, all of a sudden, here she was with a bigger, older, richer and stronger woman, who had materialized just as suddenly and inexplicably as Mum had vanished eleven years ago. This was perilous.
“Say nothing,” said Madame la duchesse d’Oyonnax, “you’re in no condition to, and I don’t desire to know why this horse has such an effect on you. Given who it belongs to, I can only assume it is something unspeakable. The details are probably gross and tedious and in any event they are not important. All that I need to know of you, mademoiselle, I have seen on your face before, during and after dinner: that in general you are strangely fascinated by tales of women in a condition of slavery. That in particular you have found yourself in a like predicament; for you do not love étienne de Lavardac, but will soon be cornered into marrying him. That you loathe his father the Duke. Please do not attempt to deny these things, or I am very much afraid that I shall laugh out loud at you.”
And she paused, to give Eliza the opportunity; but Eliza said nothing.
The Duchess continued: “I understand situations of this type as perfectly as Monsieur Bonaventure Rossignol understands cyphers. I phant’sied my predicament unique in all the world, until I came to Versailles! It did not take me long to understand that no one need put up with such unfair situations. There are ways to arrange it. No one lives forever, mademoiselle, and many do not deserve to live as long as they do.”
“I know what you are talking about,” said Eliza. Her voice sounded quite strange at first, as though it belonged to a different Eliza altogether, one who had just been born screaming out of the old. She cleared her burnt throat and swallowed painfully. She could not keep her eyes from straying over to the shack where the Duchess had her soap made.
“I see that you do,” said the Duchess.
“There is nothing you could say to me that would change my intentions.”
“Of course not, proud girl!”
“My ends are fixed, and have been for many years. But as to means, it is possible that I might benefit from advice. For I do not care what happens to me; but if I pursue my ends through means that are obvious, it could lead to the little one in the orphanage being injured.”
“Then know that you are in the most tasteful and cultivated society the world has ever seen,” said the Duchess, “where there is a refined and subtle way of doing anything that a person could conceive a wish for. And it would be disgraceful for one of your quality to go about it in a rude and obvious style.”
“I would that you know one thing, which is that this is not about succession. It is not a matter of inheritance. It is a question of honor.”
“This is to be expected. You loathe me. I have seen it in the way you look at me. You loathe me because you believe that my late husband’s money was the only thing that I cared about. Now, you want my advice; but first you are careful to stipulate that you are better than I, your motives purer. Now, listen to me, Mademoiselle la comtesse. In this world there are very few who would kill for money. To believe that the Court of France is crowded with such rare specimens is folly. There used to be, at court, many practitioners of the Black Mass. Do you really think that all of these people woke up one morning and said, ‘Today I shall worship and offer sacrifices to the Prince of Evil?’ Of course not. Rather, it was that some girl, desperate to find a husband, so that she would not be sent off to live out the rest of her life in some convent, would hear a rumor that such-and-such person could prepare a love potion. She would save her money and go into Paris and buy a magic powder from some mountebank. Of course it had no effect at all; but she would cozen herself into believing that it had worked a little bit, and so conceive a desperate hope, and a desire for something a little bit stronger: a magic spell, perhaps. One thing would lead to another, and in time she might find herself stealing the consecrated Host from some church, and taking it to a cellar where a Black Mass would be sung over her naked body. Errant foolishness all of it. Foolishness leading to evil. But did she set out to do evil? Did she ever conceive of herself as evil? Of course not.”
“So much for lonely hearts, desperate for love,” said Eliza. “What of those who were married, and whose husbands dropped dead? Did they act out of love?”
“Do you propose to act out of love, mademoiselle? I have not heard the word love escape your pretty mouth. I heard something about honor instead; which tells me that you and I have more in common than you would like to admit. You are not the only woman in the world who is capable of taking offense at a violation of her honor, and who has the steel to respond. Tout le monde knows that étienne de Lavardac seduced you—”
Eliza snorted. “Do you think it’s that? I don’t care about that.”
“Frankly, mademoiselle, I could not care less why it is that you want your marriage to be brief and your widowhood long.”