The Indispensable Wife Read online

  “And my wife? What news of my countess?” Dominique finally shrugged off Paul’s hand and sat up. His head spun for his efforts.

  “There is no news. She was inside, asleep like the rest of the household. The two who rode here told our man to continue home and find out what he could.”

  “Mon dieu. Mon dieu. My wife!” Dominique sank back against the pillows Paul hastily set behind his back.

  Just as his eyes were closing, he said, “Pâques? How is he?”

  At Paul’s silence, Dom knew the news was bad. Paul clucked his tongue. “They had to remove his arm, Monsieur. We had one of the court doctors look at him, but he agreed that the bone was shattered beyond repair.”

  “Bring him here. Set a guard on both of us. Watch our food, don’t give anyone anything except from our own servants’ hands,” said Dominique, his eyes closed.

  “But surely, Monsieur…” said Paul.

  But Dominique interrupted, his voice echoing like in a deep well, knowing he had only seconds before he fainted again. “We all know it wasn’t a stray bolt or two. Pâques told me there was a rumor of treason. Someone wants me dead. Send another rider to the château. I must have news.” Dom’s voice echoed in his own ears as the room went dark.

  ****

  1653, The de Bures château-fort, France

  “Cédric! Cédric! I saw Michel! I did! He was surprised to see me, but he is here with his mother. Why didn’t anyone tell me? I was so sad when you left, and I cried, and then I went to the kitchens and Michel was gone, too, and they only told me he had gone to his mother, and I thought that his mother was dead, though now that I think of it, I don’t know if anyone ever said that, but I guess I only believed it because I didn’t see her, I don’t remember, anyway, and so I cried and cried. But he’s here, and why didn’t you tell me? And surely Papa knew as well, didn’t he? Because he brought him here when he brought you, right?”

  Dominique spun on the bench when little Aurore shouted shrilly to her brother from the doorway of the small sitting room they used for their lessons. She danced her way across the stone floor, in and out of the sunbeams from the arrow slits, words spilling without interruption. Cédric rolled his eyes before turning away from the letter he was reluctantly writing to his mother. The two boys were twelve and were studying with a tutor and training in the soldier’s arts at Dominique’s father’s secondary residence, which was a real medieval château-fort with heavy gates and watchtowers and even a moldy dungeon and secret passageways.

  Cédric accepted Dominique’s friendship almost nonchalantly, having two brothers and a sister, but Dominique remained eager to please his friend. He hadn’t had anyone of his own station to play with since he had been sent home from court nearly two years before. Not that they were playing when they were learning Latin and German and astronomy, of course, nor when they practiced jousting, fencing, and shooting. Dominique had never realized how lonely he was until Cédric came. Even when he was at court among the other noble boys selected to be friends with King Louis XIV, Dom had never felt as though he could be anything but on his guard. Even when the boys weren’t jockeying for position, their fathers and mothers were. Dom had fallen out of favor because Cardinal Mazarin had taken a dislike to his father. Or so his father said. Since his father loathed Mazarin, the king’s chief minister, it wouldn’t be surprising.

  At midday, Cédric’s family had descended with no warning other than a messenger a scant half hour before them. Suddenly, the castle was overrun with Cédric’s two brothers, sister, and father, and a contingent of guards and servants. No one had explained why the sudden arrival and why the baronesse had not come. If his mother had survived his own birth or if his stepmother had survived the fever that took her, he might not have been so fascinated with their mother. He had fallen in love with the baronesse when she passed through the château-fort on her way to serve Queen Anne d’Autriche at court the year before. Cédric didn’t seem to miss her at all. All of the siblings were remarkably blasé about their mother’s absence, and Dominique wanted to argue against their disinterest.

  Cédric rolled his eyes at his sister’s chatter. “Of course Michel is here. He couldn’t stay playing dolls with you forever, could he?”

  Dom wondered who Michel was. Probably the little bastard boy in the village who had been delivered like a parcel when Cédric arrived a few months before. That boy’s mother was well-born but lived near the château on sufferance, supporting herself as a seamstress. The servants had speculated about who the boy’s father was. Dom’s father had denied it was him, but that didn’t stop the gossip. Dom wished he knew how to fight gossip.

  Aurore paused for only a moment, her lips pursed in thought. “Well, no one told me he was leaving with you, and it was only a few days before he did that Maman returned from court and found me playing with him in the kitchens and screamed and had a maid search me for lice, and then Maman had me punished for days and days, and I didn’t even get to come out and give you a kiss goodbye, do you remember? You could have at least written to me since you got here, non?”

  Cédric rolled his eyes again as Aurore squeezed herself onto the bench, in between the two boys, and Cédric jerked away from her.

  “Ow, Aurore! Aïe! Don’t pinch,” grunted Cédric.

  “Are you writing to Maman? She is as big as a house, you know, she said so herself. The baby is enormous. She was in her room when we left and didn’t come down to say goodbye to us. Papa said that she was tired from carrying the baby, but he was very cross. He was so cross all the way here that he rode outside the carriage, and Henri was very rude to me. Have you seen him? He’s been cross for a long time. Papa, I mean. Henri is always cross. I hope that it will be a little girl this time, because I don’t much like brothers. Though any little baby will be nice, as long as I can play with her like I used to do with my Michel.” Aurore sighed, smiling blissfully at a spot on the opposite wall.

  Dominique guessed she was about seven or eight years old. He admired not so much the way she pinched her brother but the way she rubbed away the sting afterward and left her hand on his arm—and Cédric found it natural.

  “Is she already that big?” Cédric frowned. “I have been here seven months, and she should not be…” He glanced at Dominique, who realized that this was a much too sensitive subject to discuss in front of a little girl. “What about Michel?”

  “Oh, he only remembered me a little, because he is only six, though he was still five when he left, but when I told his mother who I am, she let me play with him and told me that he had cried for his Aurore for a long time when he came here, just as I cried for him. I so want to have my own babies, don’t you?” She smiled dreamily at Dominique, who gave in to the urge to smile back, though he could feel himself blush.

  “You are Vicomte Dumouton. I remember you a little from when you came to visit us last year. Isn’t that a funny name, Dumouton?” she said. “Like sheep?”

  He pursed his lips and thought about his father’s small property in Poitou, where they wouldn’t think anything of it. “You may call me Dominique, if you’d like. Cédric is like a brother to me, and so you are like a sister.”

  She grimaced theatrically and made a choking noise. “I have three brothers. All of them as horrible as Cédric. Please, please, promise me you will not be a brother to me, for that is unthinkable. But I will call you Dominique and you will call me Aurore.”

  “I would like that, Mademoiselle,” said Dominique, and she giggled.

  This tiny, chubby girl was flirting with him, he realized. She set her other hand on his arm and patted it. He looked at his arm and thought it was nice to be touched like that, in a friendly way, by a girl. Even though she was just a baby, practically.

  Then she suddenly yanked him off balance to pull herself up and clamber back over the bench. “I must go tell Papa I have seen Michel, and complain that he never told me where my little Michel had gone. I might never forgive any of you, do you know? I suppose that Papa c
annot be blamed, since he did not know that I would cry and cry. I was nearly done with the crying, and so happy to see him when he came back, for he went to court after he left with you and Michel, so I had a long time already to stop crying.”

  She went a few steps away and turned back. She smiled at Dominique, and he gave a half smile back. “I don’t want another brother, but you could be my husband!”

  With that, she scampered off as Dominique’s mouth dropped open. He stared after her until she disappeared up the spiral stone stairs, and then he glared at Cédric, who snorted and pinched his nose shut. Cédric gasped, “Don’t laugh out loud. She will hear it, and it will encourage her.”

  Chapter Two

  Aurore was weak from a miscarriage, weak from the burns on her forehead and thigh and the scabbed gash on her face that pulled her left eye halfway shut. Mostly, Aurore was weak from despair. It had been a week—or was it two weeks? She no longer knew, since she had spent most of that time drifting in and out of consciousness—since she had been taken hostage.

  Saint-Ange and Poudrain were deeply disappointed when news came from Paris that Dom was not dead, though he had lost an arm in the attack and was now dying from a fever. Saint-Ange said that if he survived, they were going to poison him. If he recovered, the king was sure to arrest him and execute him. Her husband was not coming to her rescue.

  Michel had been released from his cell when he swore loyalty to the usurpers. Michel’s defection hurt the worst. This was the boy whom she had played with when he was a baby, had rejoiced with when he secured a place in the de Bures military training school, and whom she supported when he married her companion Mathilde, who was several rungs above him on the social ladder. Michel was not coming to her rescue.

  After the first two days, Mathilde, who was heavily pregnant with Michel’s baby, had not returned to Aurore’s room except when dragged there by Poudrain to tend her injuries. Aurore had begged for them to let Mathilde rest, for the health of her baby. Other than tending to Aurore, she said she had not been bothered or assaulted or forced to work, but she had not seen Michel. Mathilde seemed to have abandoned her, as Aurore hadn’t seen her for two days. Her lady-in-waiting was not coming to her rescue.

  Aurore glanced around the peaceful, deserted kitchen garden, noting the sunbeams playing through a pear tree’s branches over the neat rows of herbs. Most of the servants seemed to have left the château entirely, the halls already getting dusty and dirty, and weeds twining among the beans and turnips. The guardsmen had either defected to the other side, escaped, or were locked in the cells below the fourteenth-century north tower.

  No one was coming to her rescue.

  Her legs wobbled as she forced herself to stand. The wound on her face stung, the burns had faded to a dull ache, and the miscarriage was nearly complete, she knew from long, unfortunate experience.

  She would rescue herself.

  She stumbled.

  She would rescue herself in a few days.

  Aurore dragged her feet, her head full of wool and ears ringing, to the main courtyard and turned her head slowly, hoping to see a friendly face, hoping there was someone she could trust to help her. The mercenary guards looked her over with a leer but did nothing as she stumbled, exaggerating her weakness. When she approached the main gate with a fuzzy plan of seeing how heavily it was guarded, the man there drew his sword halfway.

  “Turn around, Madame,” he ordered. “You are not allowed out.”

  He had hardly said it, though, when a man, face hidden by a helmet, stepped up behind him and bashed him on the head. Another man ran forward and swung Aurore up into his arms. The two turned and ran out the gate and a few yards down the dusty lane, their breath rasping and chain mail rattling. One swung himself into the saddle of a huge horse, the other tossed Aurore up to him and then leapt into his own saddle.

  Aurore struggled feebly. Her foggy brain told her that outside the castle might be safer than within. Sideways on the horse, she gripped the pommel of the saddle between her thighs, even though it made the burn on her hip flare, and turned her head to confront the helmeted man whose arms encircled her. Her old friend Michel grinned behind the face plate. She wrapped her arms around his waist, a relieved sob rising inside her. She wept with the immense relief of finding herself not only riding at great speed away from the horrors of the recent days but in safety with her friend, who had not abandoned her after all. The euphoria was quickly dispersed by the shouts behind them.

  “Where are we going? And will we be fast enough?” she asked.

  “We will go to your father. When we get a little further, you will have to ride behind Le Petit, though, as he is smaller. The two of you together would still not weigh as much as me,” said Michel in her ear, over the pounding of hooves. After a few minutes of headlong racing, they slowed to a canter, and Michel said, “I sent Mathilde and my mother to your parents’ castle late last night, along with Petit’s wife, Marie-France. We will join them there. We might even catch up to them on the road, since they’re in a mule cart.”

  They rode in silence, Aurore leaning against her young friend’s chest, weeping for her husband and herself.

  ****

  “Cédric writes that Aurore is safe.” Henri swept off his large, black hat and bowed to his nightshirt-clad brother-in-law, Dominique de Bures. “He didn’t write you because I told him how you weren’t getting your letters. But you can read mine.”

  Dom’s pale face flooded with color for just a moment as he struggled to sit up in his bed. “Where is she?”

  “She’s with our father in la Brosse.”

  “Is she in health? What happened to her? How did she escape?” Dom swung his legs off the side, then clutched at his sheets to keep from toppling over. Henri hid a smile, even as he lurched to hold Dominique upright. He knew it was naughty of him and the situation was deadly serious, but Perfect Dom never showed weakness, even when it would gain him an advantage. Henri suspected whoever was behind this travesty was as tired of the aura of invincibility as he was.

  “That is all I know. Cédric dashed off a note and sent a rider to the inn where I’m staying.” Henri glanced around to be sure no servants were listening. “Le Petit’s son and Michel brought her out.”

  “Michel? The bastard?” Dom scowled, his dark eyebrows crowding together. “I’ve never liked him.”

  Henri shrugged. He didn’t like Michel either, but he hardly liked anyone. “He likes Aurore, and that is all that counts in the end.”

  “I must leave here. I must get to la Brosse.” Dom surged to his feet and shouted for his valet. His knees wobbled, and he sat hard on the edge of his bed, face paler than before, panting. “I will assure myself of her safety and get revenge.”

  Henri sighed. “You’re too weak even to stand, much less travel or avenge Aurore. And though you have not seen them, surely your servants have mentioned that the musketeers, while not barging in here to arrest you, seem to be clustering around the exits.”

  “Merde.” Dom’s voice was a raspy whisper. “You’re sneaky, Henri. Help me get out.”

  Henri rubbed his temples, his headache intensifying. Sneaky. He kept his own counsel, held his secrets close, relied on himself, didn’t trust anyone but his valet. But sneaky? “Sneakier than the man who stands like a statue no matter what people say of him?”

  Dom frowned.

  Henri grimaced in distaste. “I have so wished to be arrested. It would do wonders for my career with the Ministry of Finance. Maybe you could make sure I am tortured for information about your activities. Trumped up charges of treason would be a beautiful reason to die.”

  Dom sat up straighter, brows again jammed together. “There is no treason except for what has been done against me.”

  Henri rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “All rumors, of course. If it were more—say, if you were to sneak away from the guards and not answer questions—then the rumors would have more power.”

  Dom waved the con
cerns away. “I have to check on Aurore and consult with your family. Then I will come back.”

  “They would rather find an excuse to arrest you right now, de Bures.”

  Dominique shrugged, winced, and brought his right hand to his left shoulder. A sign of weakness.

  Henri tensed. Dom was hurt. He was in danger. His brother-in-law. His spoiled sister’s perfect husband. He sighed dramatically and gave in to the inevitable. “If you’re caught, I had nothing to do with this.”

  ****

  After two weeks in his rooms with no news except that which the servants could glean through gossip and the little that came with the surly lip curls of Henri, who seemed to know nothing, Dom was ready to leave, no matter the cost.

  Once Henri had finished sighing in disgust, he proposed a simple, perfect plan. Devious, full of misdirection and disdain for authority. And yet with confidence in Dom’s strength. Dom wasn’t confident in his own strength, but Aurore’s brother sneered at his misgivings and said he was malingering.

  Dom lay back on the litter that his guards carried out through a side entrance, a thick mass of bandages bulging under his left shirtsleeve, his arm draped across his torso in a sling.

  Two musketeers looked him over and pulled his guard Le Fèvre to the side. He heard snatches of their conversation about fresh air and thin blood and infection. He closed his eyes and tried to look weaker than he felt. Since he felt immensely weak, it didn’t take much pretense.

  Le Fèvre muttered encouraging words as he helped Dom sit up, swing his legs off the litter, and then stand with his right arm over Le Fèvre’s shoulder. His knees buckled, and Le Fèvre muttered, “Well done,” so Dom let him continue thinking he was pretending. Another guard crouched in the carriage and held out a hand to pull Dom up and in. Once he had been manhandled and flopped into a forward-facing seat, he slumped to one side, breathing heavily, his entire left side throbbing.