At Souboscq, I had been miserable among those I loved. Here, I had no such comfort. The entire household was waiting for the birth of the child, but that wait had become interminable. The marquise was no longer attentive to anyone's condition but her own. The merriment had left her, and only impatience and irritation had come to replace it. The marquis had taken himself to hiding away in his chambers. Remy stalked me relentlessly, and the count never ceased to watch me.

I had but two hopes: that the expected boy child would miraculously turn himself into a girl and that the Count of Montreau would die. The first hope was new; the second, ever burning, born from that first encounter with the count ten years before.

Eventually the marquise was confined to her chambers by the family physician. Without the protection of her presence, I did not dare to walk in the gardens, day or night. The count pushed me into a servant's hallway one evening as I ascended the stair from dinner.

He reached out and took hold of my hair with a jerk.

"Ow!" I raised my hands to his wrist.

"Your father still has sent no word. You cannot think he intends to rescue you with the lace."

I felt tears pool at the corners of my eyes.

"You're going to have to rescue yourself. Do you understand? I can make your life here pleasant, or I can make it an unendurable hell."

"Please...!"

"Here's what I want you to do...there is one thing yet I must ask of you."

What more could I do for him? "I have done everything you have asked of me." I could do little more than whisper from the pain his hold was causing.

"And to no avail. I can expect only provisions. Without that lace, I am left with only one choice. If I cannot influence my father's decision, then I must be assured there is no heir."

"Who can say whether it will be a boy child or a girl?"

"I can say. I will say. A girl may live...a boy must die."

Die?

"You can't mean-!"

"My father is not going to let me anywhere near the cursed thing. He may be old and decrepit, but he's smart. You're the one who is going to have to do it."

He...Did he want me to kill a baby? "I can't. I won't!"

He released my hair, though he did not move to let me pass. "'Show me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find therein reason enough to hang him.' Does that statement in any way resemble the predicament of your father?"

My shoulders dropped with the weight of the threat.

"Do you know who once said that?"

I knew. Everyone knew.

"I believe it was Cardinal Richelieu himself...the King's chief minister. And I doubt very much your father is the most honest man in the world."

I backed away from him in horror. "If you want...I mean, if you intend that I..." I felt as if I were going to retch. "I cannot do such a thing."

He advanced upon me. "Neither can I. I abhor the sight of blood. Always have."

"I can't-"

He gripped me about my arm. "There are a thousand ways to kill someone. If you cannot take a knife to the babe, then smother it. Or leave it out in the garden for the weasels to find."

"I won't."

"Oh, yes, I think you will." He would not let me escape, but lifted my chin with his other hand so I had no choice but to meet his eyes. "Come now. We're both the same, you and I. Nobody really loves us. And why should they? I'm the son of a hard-hearted old bastard and his bitch. You're the contemptible daughter who led to her father's downfall. I would have given my inheritance ten times over to be told, just once, someone liked me for what I was. But fathers will yell, and mothers will, well...in the end, none of it really matters anyway. We're alive still, the both of us, and we ought to get something for our pain."

Something for our pain...and there was so much of it. There was so much pain in living.

"We understand each other, don't we?"

There was too much truth in his words and too much desolation in his eyes for me to look away. His beauty, in spite of all of his malice, was alluring. It was a beauty that made one want to believe him. He was right: we did understand each other. He might have been the only one in the kingdom who comprehended what I had had to endure. The only other person who knew what guilt will do to a soul.

I felt something inside me crumple against the smoldering rage in his eyes. What did it matter anyway? It was too late. Father was too late. Alexandre was too late. There were no other choices left me. Not if my father's life was to be saved.

His hand slipped from my chin to my throat. As his fingers closed tight about my neck, he kissed me.

Hate gave way to fear, and fear to dread. I despaired that nothing was left for me, that there was no soul but this depraved and depleted man, who could possibly understand me. And so I found myself seeking refuge, begging comfort from him. But there was no warmth to be found in his kisses, no shelter in his embrace. I wanted empathy, I craved absolution, but even those eluded me.

He slammed me into the wall, and I pushed back as his hand contracted about my throat. But his kisses were bleak and desolate. The more I begged for empathy, the more I sought myself in him, the more he retreated, until I found myself as I had always been. Completely and utterly alone. My mortification was complete.

I pushed him away with a cry.

He laughed at me. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at me with such contempt I felt the last of my dignity fall away. The corner of his lip lifted in a sneer.

I could not keep myself from trembling. Self-loathing seized me. If I'd had a knife, I would have cut off my lips and thrown them into the nearest fire.

"You're just like my mother. I was never good enough for her, either." He turned and walked away.

I pushed past him and continued on my way to the marquise's chambers, taking up a chair beside hers. Though I was quaking, I tried my best to hide it. The man was evil. I closed my eyes, trying to rid my mind of the memory of his touch, of the hiss of his words. But I could not. They rang through my head.

A girl may live; a boy must die.

He wanted me to kill the child!

I didn't know how I could do it. But then I did not know how I could not. In giving myself to the count that day at Souboscq, I had aligned myself with a devil.

The impressions of his fingers about my neck, the feel of his lips against my own threatened to leach through my skin. Even in his absence, he seemed to reach inside me for my soul. I had made mistakes, I had caused those I loved much grief, but he had asked me to do something more terrible, still.

Was he right? That no one loved me?

If no one loved me, then what did it matter? And why should I care?

I closed my eyes against a world gone mad. There, in that deep and awful darkness, Alexandre's eyes stared back at me. His hand reached out across that chasm of time and space to touch me.

Me.

Could it truly be as he had said? Could he want me?

A thousand times I had teased him as a child. A thousand times I had seen his shoulders relax and his lips lift in a smile from my presence. If I closed my eyes tighter, I could hear him shout as the count's carriage trundled me away from Souboscq.

"No!"

He had not wanted me to go.

He had tried to stop me, hadn't he?

He had tried to save me.

What I would give to feel the brush of his fingers against my cheek once more! I would give almost anything, but I would not destroy a child. I would not do it. I could not do it. I had thought I would have to, to save my father. I had thought there remained no other choice but obeying the count's commands. But I did have a choice.

I could refuse.

Though he may betray my father to the King, and though he threatened to turn me over to Remy, still, I would not do it. I would rather have my own head cleaved from my body than harm a child.

Chapter 27.

The Count of Montreau Chateau of Eronville

The province of Orleanais, France

I slammed into my chambers, startling Remy. He turned from the window and, spying me, dismissed my manservant. Then he went to the table and poured a glass of cognac brandy. I slumped into a chair, staring into the depths of the fire. Fire and damnation. That's what hell was supposed to be. To my mind, even those would be better than the pain of living.

Remy handed me the glass. Such kind solicitation, such a pleasing and genial companion. He deserved more attention than I could give him, and I increasingly suspected he was finding it somewhere else. He walked around behind me, placing a hand on the back of my neck. It paused for a moment before sliding around front, and down the neck of my shirt.

I stopped him with a hand on his. "I think...I'd prefer...not."

"You'd prefer not..."

In the past year, I'd preferred not more times than I cared to remember.

He took his hand away from my chest, but he ran it through my curls, humming a child's tune as he did it.

Tell me yes, tell me no, Tell me if you love me so, Tell me yes, tell me no, Tell me yes or no.

If you love me, there's hope, If it's a no, there's suffering.

Tell me yes, tell me no, Tell me if you love me so, Tell me yes, tell me no, Tell me yes or no.

He raked my scalp with his fingers as he finished.

I drew his hand away and held it over my shoulder as I sang a tune of my own.

Ah! Will I tell you, Mommy What is tormenting me?

Daddy wants me to reason Like a grown-up person...

When my tune petered out, he finished with the remaining words.

Me, I say that sweets Are worth more than reason.

Sweets worth more than reason. I wished they were. His hand released mine. "So you would rather not."

What did it matter what I would rather? I couldn't have done anything had I wanted to. I'd only ever been taught to be ashamed of myself. Whatever life I'd once had down there had long been snuffed out. Nothing could provoke it into being. Even that, the essence of myself, disdained to obey me.

"Then you won't mind if I go out for a while?"

Why shouldn't he? I couldn't keep him closeted in my chambers when I had nothing left to offer him. I waved him toward the door.

He bowed and then left, whistling his tune as he went. Tell me yes, tell me no, tell me if you love me so. He didn't seem as upset as I would have been.

I threw my glass into the fire after he'd gone. Felt a grim satisfaction as it shattered, and the flames danced blue for a moment.

I stood from the chair and took up my looking glass, regarding the image that stared back at me. Eyes firmly set, just the right distance apart, peering out from a finely molded brow. A nose protruding just so much as to be noble. Lips so ripe and delectable they had once been called red plums. And a chin ever so minutely tipped at its end. A head full of dark, thick, shining curls that fell past my shoulders like a curtain of the finest brocade. A face so finely featured and well-proportioned, there had only ever been one word to describe me: beautiful.

Then why did no one want me?

I cursed as I turned and threw the mirror into the fire.