Her warnings only increased my zest for the adventure. My skin tingled; my pulse drummed in my ears. Twisted motives, madness, danger-none of it mattered. A moment's pleasure s.n.a.t.c.hed with the handsomest man in Paris made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. I loved that feeling. I cared about nothing else.

My equipage rattled past the flickering lamps of the Marais and onward, then plunged into the maze of narrow, unlighted streets near l'eglise de la Merci, a district of all-night gambling dens, flashy bordellos, and home of every vice for a price. Here the members of the Shadow Queen's philanthropic society plied their trades without hindrance. Here also, the silent partners of great financiers and n.o.bles operated money-making establishments in a totally discreet fashion. Lamotte, who understood almost nothing of this world, had made arrangements for our meeting in one of the private upper rooms of Mademoiselle la Boissiere's fashionable establishment at the corner of the rue de Braque and the rue du Chaume. Here, in what the police so unkindly called "un lieu de debauche," out-of-town dandies, businessmen and officers on the prowl, and the slumming sprigs of the aristocracy could find music, women, and cards at any hour of the day or night. And among all the mysterious, beautiful women, I felt myself the most beautiful and mysterious of all. It was intoxicating.

"My love," the man in the black silk mask whispered, as he helped me from the carriage and sent it on its way, his hand never far from his sword hilt. Lamotte's voice resonating softly in the dark, the rough feel of the wool of his heavy cape, the unmistakable scent and feel of his presence in the dark made my pulse speed. The light of hundreds of flickering candles gleamed through the closed shutters enough to guide us to the secret entrance, and the shouts and din within covered the sound of our footsteps in the alley behind the rue du Chaume. Forbidden music, sounding in the depths of a winter's night. Even now the memory of it sears me. Fleshly l.u.s.t has been entirely underrated by the sentimental devotees of the Carte de Tendre, that old-fashioned map of the stages of gallantry that was once so popular in the salons. And Andre was the high priest of pure carnality. I never even asked him how many other women he had led to the secret room-I didn't care. This moment was mine.

"A little wine?" he whispered, indicating the decanter that stood on the little round table by the bed.

"I want only one kind of wine tonight," I whispered back.

"The wine of Venus," he said, and, his soft voice oozing over me like syrup, he recited the celebrated couplets he had dedicated to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s as he reached beneath my stays. He buried his face in my newly freed bosom; his hand pushed up my skirts to search out the pale flesh beneath my tumbled petticoats. His lovemaking was slow, refined. He seemed to touch every nerve in my body. And I, at long last, felt beautiful-so beautiful I could hardly bear it. The letters, the love poetry, the months of adoration beneath the window, they seemed as if they were all mine now. The treasure had never been thrown away. I had caught it, the wasted dream. Now I was the beloved of the window. It felt just right.

"Oh, d.a.m.nation, I've turned over the decanter," he exclaimed as he reached lazily out of bed toward the cup. Was it imagination, or was there something annoying about Andre when he was s.e.xually sated? Then he rolled over to look at me again. "Never mind. I will drink only from your lips tonight." He kissed me, his kisses progressing up my face and around my ear. What is it about a woman's ear that connects it so intimately to the body? The warm, soft feel of his breath made my skin feel like quicksilver, molten and trembling around every limb. But at the same time that I shivered with the sensation, a tiny voice inside said to me, My, he certainly is practiced, isn't he? How many other women's ears has he breathed on? Do we all behave in exactly the same way? Yet even as my mind was becoming vaguely annoyed with his professionalism, my body, which had no judgment at all, adored it. Ah, Lord, even when I think back on it, I can see the usefulness of being all body and no mind. But the mind insisted on interfering during the second encounter. Even while the body was thrilling with each new touch, the mind said, Goodness, he takes you through all these stages of ecstasy like a horseman over the jumps; how much does it really mean to him? Troublesome mind. It quite took the edge off. That is the problem with women, I guess. Something in the mind, not just the body, has to touch when one is lovemaking. And, what was more irritating, for some reason I couldn't help thinking of d'Urbec's sarcastic eyes as Lamotte rolled off me with that conceited self-satisfied look of his. His eyes heavy lidded, his voice low and contrivedly thrilling, he looked at me and said, "My precious, even the most perfect moments must end, and this is not a place where it would be wise to spend the night."

"You are a man of the world, Andre," I agreed. For I knew even better than he did that to sleep in such a spot might lead to permanent rest, stripped and unidentifiable, in the river.

"Let me help you dress," he offered gallantly. "I love the feel of ladies' clothes-the little b.u.t.tons, the delicious pressure of the stays, the scented silk..." He knelt to put on my stockings as if he had done it for hundreds of other women, pa.s.sing his fingers up my thighs so nonchalantly it appeared almost accidental. Then I felt him hesitate. His eyes, which had fallen on my deformed foot, were averted.

"Never mind," I said, "I can do that." He looked relieved and rose to put on his own breeches as I finished fastening my garters and laced on the padded, built-up shoe.

"Have you seen d'Urbec recently?" he remarked in an offhand way. How curious. He'd been thinking of d'Urbec, too. "He appears to be fabulously wealthy these days. A while back I ran into him at my tailor's, ordering a suit of cut velvet. Imagine! D'Urbec in velvet! 'No matter how much you comb the dog, he's still a dog, eh?' I said to him. He had the effrontery to ask me whether the rumor that the d.u.c.h.ess has a mole on her behind was accurate. d.a.m.ned embarra.s.sing, in front of my good friend, Pradon."

"Monsieur d'Urbec is not generally praised for his tact," I answered. But what had Lamotte expected? Of course d'Urbec would mock Lamotte for making a career as a lover of aristocratic women. D'Urbec made his living in the salons. He didn't dare have an affair with any respectable woman, for fear of revealing the galley brand that could get him barred from polite society. Lamotte ought to hire a dray cart to carry his vanity around in.

"Ah, but enough of these things...let us talk only of us. We have been too furtive, my love. And when I am with you, I feel I must proclaim our pa.s.sion from the housetops! Ours is a love that laughs at conventions. We must defy the world! Yes, we must appear in public; we must tantalize the gossips!"

"Andre, think of your career-we can't appear in public. Your patroness..." But even as I spoke, I reflected that his tone sounded contrived. What did he have in mind?

"A flash, a hint-a tidbit for the libellistes-it can only enhance my reputation. What better way to keep my name on every tongue in preparation for the reception of my Theodora? Incognito in a box at the theatre on my dear friend Pradon's opening night. A mystery woman in the party of the Chevalier de la Motte-could it be she, the inspiration, or some other? It will be an occasion." Ah. That was it. Who could recognize me, masked and out of my widow's weeds, except d'Urbec? And d'Urbec never missed an opening night. Lamotte plans to return d'Urbec's insult by flaunting me, I thought. I would have felt mean about hurting d'Urbec, except that I knew that he had left town. Perfect. I'll have a lovely time being a glamorous woman of mystery and watching the look on Lamotte's face as he scans the theatre, looking for d'Urbec.

Is it so wrong to have wanted so desperately to be beautiful, to be like other women? It was having Andre that proved to me that I was not the lost, ugly little monster of the rue des Marmousets. His lovemaking made me feel the equal of the beautiful, aristocratic women who advanced his career and paid him handsomely for his services. And I never gave him a sou. So didn't that make me even better than they? Why should I care about his motives? And yet, even while I was enjoying the ridiculous extravagance of his lovemaking, I felt that I had somehow betrayed myself. And d'Urbec, too, though I was not his, nor he mine.

When we were at last ready to leave, I leaned over to pick up the decanter. It was only then that I noticed the curious bubbles that the spilled wine was making as it ate its way through the finish on the floorboards and deep into the wood.

"Now, Madame, admit the new makeup is very effective."

"Not bad at all, Sylvie. I look like a well-preserved corpse." For once, I was pleased with the effect. Good-bye, telltale flushed cheeks and bright eyes. I would have been even more pleased if I could have worn a sack with eye holes over my head. Shivering with the cold, I had risen before dawn to prepare for the d.u.c.h.esse de Bouillon's levee. I'd never want to be a courtier, I thought. They do this every day. The candles still flickered on my dressing table, competing with the first faint light of dawn. Somehow, on a cold winter's morning, the idea of defying the world with one's pa.s.sion did not exercise the same magnetism as on a wine-scented evening spent in antic.i.p.ation of a splendid s.e.xual encounter. The question that haunted me was this: had she known with whom Lamotte's rendezvous was? Did he know she knew, and had his carelessness in knocking over the decanter been feigned-or was he ignorant? And yet there was a certain fascination with the idea of perishing in the midst of an affair, having excited the envy of half the women of Paris, immortalized, as it were, at the very moment when everyone would remember me as a fatal beauty. It was the sort of idea that appeals to a plain girl. After all, Lamotte's interest couldn't last. And nothing like this might ever happen again.

But cold dawn was different. It reminded me of Lamotte's shallow motives and of the pleasures of much smaller things: breakfast, slippers, chocolate, warmth. It made me want to live as a plain, comfortable girl rather than dying as an Aphrodite.

"More shadow under my eyes, Sylvie. I want to look more haggard." Sylvie finished up the job and added a dusting of faintly green face powder, before taking the cloth from my shoulders and fastening the antique ruff around my neck.

"You look dreadful," she announced cheerfully, "just like some horrid sorceress."

"Perfect," I responded, as I rose and let her put my heaviest cloak over my shoulders.

I took a certain pleasure in the frisson of horror that went round the d.u.c.h.esse's bedchamber as I was shown in. The flute player's breath lapsed for a fragment of a moment, but the two violinists covered the bad patch in the music. The ladies-in-waiting cast glances at each other. The gentlemen pet.i.tioners moved uneasily. Pradon, who was reciting from his latest work, stopped dead to stare. The maid's hand stopped midway in the air, still holding the hairbrush above her mistress's dark, tumbled hair. Only the d.u.c.h.esse's eyes, black stones at the bottom of a black pond, those cold Mancini eyes, remained unchanged as she turned her face toward me, then turned again to the tall mirror on her dressing table. Among the perfume bottles on the table, Madame Carcan, her favorite cat, contentedly preened her long white fur, deigning to look at me only briefly with her enigmatic yellow eyes.

"Very good, Pradon; you may continue," said the d.u.c.h.esse. He looked confused. The ma.n.u.script from which he had been reading rattled in his hand. "You had just finished Phedre's response," the d.u.c.h.esse prompted. Pradon continued reading his verses in a hesitating tone. They seemed well-enough rhymed but somehow mediocre, elegant without substance and power. But the play-how curious-it was the very subject on which the Sieur Racine was known to be composing his long-awaited masterwork.

"Pradon, it is the very thing. You must read at my salon tomorrow so that all Paris can acclaim your talent. Admit now, I was right to suggest this topic to you. I myself am a better judge of Pradon's mastery than Pradon himself." Pradon bowed deeply, humbly.

"Madame has a perception that is more than human. She can see into the soul."

Madame's hairdresser had now replaced the maid. With the singeing smell of curling irons, he was creating a symmetrical array of curls, set off at intervals with tiny diamond-studded combs. The pet.i.tioners began to advance, but Madame, seeing their movement in the mirror, waved them back.

"First," she said, "I will have a fortune told. Madame de Morville, I have need of your celebrated skill. Someone has annoyed me; someone who dreams she can be a rival to me. I wish to know who her lover is." Her gaze did not move from the mirror.

"Madame, a true image in the water does not arise unless the person whose fortune is to be read puts his or her hands on the gla.s.s. I would not have your patronage on a falsehood." The d.u.c.h.esse laughed-a high, cold tinkling laugh.

"Why, how unusual! Surely, Madame, you do not set yourself above the rest of humankind? Tell me, could you attempt it with an article belonging to the person?"

"I could try, Madame," I announced in a somber tone. She opened a drawer in her dressing table and took out a man's glove. Then she turned to me. "I have been offended by the man who wore this glove. Tell me what you see in the gla.s.s." As she spoke, a lady-in-waiting took the glove from her hand to hand it to me, and two lackeys brought a low stool and little table for my equipment. She did not ask for a screen, or to have the room cleared. She wants everyone in the room to carry the tale, I thought. It is her way of sending a warning.

I put Andre's glove across the narrow opening at the top of my round gla.s.s vase. I chanted. I removed the glove. It still bore the shape of his hand. I longed to pick it up and tuck it into my bosom, but I kept my face unchanging and set down the glove beside the gla.s.s as if it were a dead frog.

An image was forming. Water, grayish green. Above it an endless horizon, gray and cold. A face. With a shock, I recognized it. The image I had first seen in La Voisin's black parlor, all those years ago. The woman at the ship's rail, staring out to sea. I gasped. This time, I recognized the stranger's face. It was my own. I peered closely; tears ran down the woman's face. What was going on? Was I dreaming, or was fate changing before my very eyes?

"Well, what is it? What do you see?" The d.u.c.h.esse's voice broke into my thoughts. I looked up to see that everyone in the room was waiting, silent and breathless, for the reading.

"Madame, I saw a crowd of courtiers leaving Madame de Montespan's apartment at Versailles. Among them is a beautiful young woman, short, with dark hair. She is flirting with several men. The owner of the glove approaches her as the crowd thins, stepping before her waiting woman to hand her a folded piece of paper. She laughs, takes her fan from her waist, and taps his wrist with it to show her displeasure at his rudeness. But she keeps the paper."

"Mademoiselle de Thianges," I could hear a voice whisper behind me. The d.u.c.h.esse looked straight at me.

"Yes, it appears to be Mademoiselle de Thianges," I answered her unspoken question.

"And the gentleman?"

"The gentleman appears to be the playwright, the Chevalier de la Motte," I said. The d.u.c.h.esse's face never changed.

"Then you have read truly. I would have been displeased at a deception," said the d.u.c.h.esse. She may be a Mancini, I thought silently, but I have a few tricks left myself.

"So," she asked, almost nonchalantly, "did the woman go to an a.s.signation incognito?"

"That, Madame, the gla.s.s does not say. For all I could tell, the folded paper might simply be a verse of admiration."

"If that is the case, then there are two..." she mused to herself. I could feel my heart pounding. "Never mind," she said aloud. "It does not take much to bring a little poet to heel. You may go, Madame de Morville." She made an almost imperceptible gesture, and a lackey showed me to the door, pressing a brocade silk purse heavy with coins into my hand. Just so it's not thirty pieces of silver, I thought. I have betrayed Andre, fool that he is.

Outside, a light snow was falling, dusting the carriage, the coachman's hat and cloak, and the horses' backs with white powder. No, I haven't betrayed Andre, I thought, as I huddled under the fur carriage robe, staring at the tall, white-powdered houses that lined the street. She already knew about him. Then I remembered the way he averted his eyes from my foot. All this whole seduction-he had only done it to hurt a friend for mocking his play, Osmin, in the Parna.s.se Satyrique. He must have thought d'Urbec and I were secretly affianced after what happened there at my house. But I couldn't really blame d'Urbec for insulting him. After all, I might call somebody a few things too, if he'd managed to waste my burial fund. Besides, if a person isn't very bright, he shouldn't be insulted if someone tells him the truth. For example, the death scene in Lamotte's Osmin was indeed rather overwritten, and there were times his verse was rather feeble. He should be pleased to receive honest criticism. And anyway, Lamotte didn't ever really care about me. I was just a symbol of the big house he couldn't get into long ago, the house of Osmin. He had used me. It was fair, then; he had earned whatever he would get.

But I had wanted to be used. I had adored his lies, his amazing charm that he could turn off and on like a spigot, his easy tears, his romantic posturing. What did that make me? Never mind; he would get what he deserved. But then, I thought, what was it that I deserved? The fast-falling veil of white seemed to hide all the answers from me.