“You are arrogant, sir.”
“I have told you that I am. I have reason to be. I possess a title of the sword, the title of the companions of Charlemagne, a title already ancient when these upstart dukes and marquises were created. I enjoy the trust of the King. I’m heir to vast lands and great wealth —”
“I don’t care about that!” Marie-Josèphe said. “If you weren’t Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien, I’d feel the same.”
“Ah. If I were a starving peasant, beaten because I couldn’t pay my taxes, my hovel pillaged by the soldiers of my own King — you’d love me?”
“You’re an atheist, and I love you.”
Lucien’s sense of the ridiculous evaporated his anger. He laughed. When he regained control of himself, he said, “Mlle de la Croix, if I were a peasant, I’d have been sold to gypsies in my cradle... or drowned, like the child in Sherzad’s story.”
“Surely, no, not now. Not you.”
“Mlle de la Croix, you want a husband.”
“Yes, Count Lucien,” she said softly.
“I’ll never marry. I’ll never bring a child into this life.”
“But your life is wonderful. The King loves you, everyone respects you —”
“Pain torments me,” he said, telling her what he never admitted to anyone, except a lover.
“Every life bears pain.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” he said, irritated by her ignorant assurance.
“I am in pain every moment of my existence. Except when I love a woman —” He hesitated, then began again. “When I love a woman, especially if I loved a woman, how could I pass my affliction to her children? You want a husband, you want children. I will never marry, and I will never father a child.”
“God gives us little choice in that matter,” she said. “If we choose love.”
He laughed at her. “No god has anything to do with it. Even the most unimaginative lover can trouble to wrap his member in a baudruche. We have one way to make a child, a thousand ways to love.” He said again, “I will never marry,”
“Why are you saying this to me?” she cried. “Why not say, I have no affection for you, I cannot return your love?”
“Because I promised to tell you the truth, if I knew it.”
She fell silent with hope and confusion.
“Do you still want me?” Lucien asked. “As your lover?”
“I... It isn’t right, Count Lucien, I can’t —” She blushed and stammered; she spread her hands in supplication. “The Church says — My brother wouldn’t —”
“I’m perfectly indifferent to the wishes of the church or to the demands of your brother. What do you want?”
She answered his question, if obscurely. “If you marry, your children might be —they might not —”
“My father is a dwarf. He retired, crippled —”
His father had ridden beside Louis XIII; valiant, renowned, he had ridden in the service of the child-King Louis XIV during the civil war.
Lucien’s father no longer rode.
“I am my father’s image,” Lucien said.
“Rumor says —”
“Rumor lies.”
“Many people believe it.”
“Louis has enough misshapen children without counting me among his brood.
Besides, he acknowledges his bastards.”
She sank down before him and grasped his hands.
“I didn’t make up Sherzad’s story, I didn’t conspire with her to hurt you. I heard the story as you did, as she sang it. If I’d known what she planned, I would have made up a story. I’d never willingly cause you pain. I beg you, please believe me.”
“I believe you,” he said gently. “But I can’t give you what you wish for. If you love me, I’ll break your heart. If you defy His Majesty for the sea woman’s sake, the King will break your heart. Or worse.”
“But Sherzad is human. As human as you or I.”
“Yes,” Lucien said. “Yes, I believe it. Only a human could be so cruel.”
“I’m so sorry...”
“Not cruel to me,” he said. “Cruel to you.”
oOo
Footsteps drew Yves from his fugue, the footsteps and the fear they struck in him. Few members of the court of Versailles visited the chapel unless His Majesty was in attendance. Yves could not face His Majesty. He raised himself on his elbow, stiff from the chill of the marble.
“There you are.” Marie-Josèphe’s voice chilled him.
Yves noticed what he should have seen long before: her exhaustion, her despair, her love for him, her disappointment.
“I was worried.” She sat on the confessional bench. “Forgive me.”
He opened his mouth to reply, to chastise her —
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Yves climbed to his feet. “It isn’t proper for you — for me —”
“You promised to hear confession. You promised His Holiness.”