"It's indeed a girl, my lord." And may God forgive me for the lie. It was better, in my opinion, than the alternative.

Looking at me through narrowed eyes, he closed the distance between us. "Let's have a look, shall we?" He pushed me aside and reached for the child.

I fell onto the bed, hand splayed toward the child. "Don't, my lord! You'll wake it."

A cough sounded by the door.

He spun from the bed.

I rose. When I saw it was the marquis, I curtsied.

He nodded. "The marquise says she's given you charge of the babe."

The count went toward his father, all smiles. "Congratulations. In spite of your schemes with Cardinal St. Florent, you find yourself, once again, without a proper heir."

The marquis ignored the count and walked toward me. I moved to offer the bundle up to him, but he shook his head and only looked down upon it, smiling sadly into that small, peaceful face. He put out a finger to stroke one of the babe's plump cheeks. "I suppose one must be thankful for what is. We must not be ungrateful for God's gifts."

"Indeed not." Triumph rang in the count's voice.

The marquis gave the babe a pat on the head and then turned, taking the count with him as he left my chambers.

Thank God!

I left the babe on the bed and stood a bit away from him, considering how I should proceed. I always seemed to harm those I loved. But this child's life depended on me. I had to keep him safe. At least he could not appeal to my affections; that offered him the best chance of protection.

In spite of all my best intentions, I fell in love with him at some point between that first day and the third. Between the comings and goings of that chaff-brained, buxom wet nurse. At some time during those long, interminable nights, when the child would coo away the hours, he wormed his way into my affections. With the babe beside me, I was no longer alone. I had found someone more vulnerable than I.

Someone who depended upon me completely.

I could not harm this child. I wouldn't.

Indifference became our best protection. The marquise never called for it. The marquis never asked after it. The count never visited.

'Twas only the wet nurse I had to be on guard for.

I was the child's sole guardian and arbiter. When he came down with a sniffle, it was I who discovered he had managed to kick loose of his cloths. When he began to wail long before it was time for the wet nurse to come, it was I who taught him how to be content with the sucking of my littlest finger.

The count seemed to have lost all interest in me once the babe was declared a girl. And yet, I could not leave. The child's life depended upon my presence. If I could keep my secret until the family returned to court, then I could reveal to the marquis the child's true sex. At court, there would be safety among the crowds of people. The count would not dare to harm the child with an audience in attendance. We just had to survive, he and I, until then.

Chapter 34.

The Count of Montreau Chateau of Eronville

The province of Orleanais, France

In spite of my father's best-laid plans, I was still his heir. The irony is that for the first seven years of my life, my father did not even realize he had one. Not until the day he walked in on me as I was using a chamber pot.

"She's a...a boy!"

"Of course she's not." My mother had taken me by the hand and tried to pull me off down the hall with her.

But Father had followed. "But she's a-he's a boy." He said it with more certainty that time. And something within me cheered to hear him. He wouldn't mock the way I walked. He wouldn't constantly examine my face for signs of "wickedness" or pull the smallest of hairs from my neck. And maybe he wouldn't keep measuring me and then binding me around the waist.

"He's a boy."

Mother dropped my hand and whirled on him. "What if she is? You took everything else from me. All I wanted was a girl. A girl who wouldn't betray me, who wouldn't hurt me."

"Took? What did I ever take from you? You practically threw yourself at me from the moment we first met!"

"We were just children!"

"You weren't a child. You were a temptress. A seductress."

"I was just a girl doing what my mother told me to!"

"You bewitched me."

"I despised you. You hurt me! After that, I prayed for God to give me a girl. I prayed and prayed and prayed, because I didn't want my baby to grow up and ruin someone else's daughter. And you know what?" Her face was contorted. She was panting with rage. "She never will!"

"Because you've spoiled him. You've completely destroyed him!"

"I've saved her."

"Him! It isn't natural, what you've done to him."

"But now he'll never grow up and turn into you!" Perhaps she was a witch, just as everyone had always said, for her words had come true. I never had turned into him. She had exacted the ultimate in revenge.

She had turned me into her.

I'd burst into tears at that point.

"Look at him-he's blubbering like a girl!" Scorn and contempt dripped from the marquis's words.

"He is a girl."

"He's not."

"He is. I've made him into one."

"Enough of this! Come, boy. Shed that gown." He stripped me right there in the hall. "There, now. Isn't that better? Don't you feel like a man?"

I nodded simply because I knew that's what he wanted me to do. But I was lying. It wasn't better. I didn't feel like a man. I only felt naked. Stripped and exposed.

And here I was again.

Exposed. Alone. Stripped bare.

My father despised me, and my lover had deserted me. In truth, I was not much surprised. I had always known the former, and the latter had simply been a matter of time.

But as long as I was my father's heir, there was no reason for me to care. There would be other men. I would find another man just as soon as we left this godforsaken place for court. My father's inheritance would ensure it. And once I had the lace, all would come right.

I needed everything to come right, but increasingly I had the feeling something had gone wrong. As if something had eluded me. But what? The outcome of the birth had been much better than I had feared. We gathered for the baptism of the child, though not a week had passed since her birth and though it seemed I was the only one inclined to celebrate. I had worn my best embroidered satin doublet, and I carried my court sword instead of my pistol for the occasion.

Cardinal St. Florent was there to preside, resplendent in his scarlet-colored robe. Though my inheritance was safe for the moment, who knew when my father would try for another babe. As soon as the girl's father returned with the lace, I would ensure it was safe forever.

Gabrielle was standing up in front by the altar, wearing a balloon-sleeved gown fashioned from yellow satin. New jewels sparkled at her neck and around her wrists. She was dreadfully pale, and she held onto the marquis's arm with a white-knuckled grip. The marquis stood beside her in his best suit of clothes, the medal he'd been awarded for saving King Henri gleaming at his throat. They were pathetic, the pair of them, trying to disinherit me. At least their plans had ended in a disaster.

A girl child!

The child I had always wished to be.

They stood before me: the cardinal, my stepmother, the marquis, and the girl with the babe in her arms. Such a detestably endearing family tableau. Everything looked gallingly perfect, but the feeling nagged that something was not right.

What was it?

As I stepped into the chapel, the girl looked at me. The color drained from her face as she clasped the babe closer to her chest. I supposed she would be named the child's godmother; the babe had been with the girl ever since the morning of its birth.

I mounted the steps to the altar and stood beside the marquis. In the girl's arms, the babe kicked out at the confines of its gown, filling it with air. As the material settled, the babe kicked out at it again.

I knew what it felt like, that space beneath a gown. I knew what freedom could be found beneath a skirt. I knew what it was to spin and spin and spin again, skirts and petticoats flying out around me.

I too used to be free of all constraints.

That babe was destined for everything I was not; she was everything I ought to have been. It didn't matter that the child wasn't a boy. Still, it mocked me. It threw a fist up and cuffed the girl on the chin. She only smiled at it and kissed the top of its downy head. Eyeing me, she leaned over toward the marquise and whispered something in her ear. Glancing back at me once more, she tightened her grip on the babe.

My stepmother's brow folded for a moment, but then she gave a small lift of her shoulder, nodding.

Why was it the girl had been given charge of the babe? Why hadn't it been placed into the care of a nurse?

I leaned over and asked the marquis.

He frowned. "Because the girl asked for it. Hush now. The cardinal is to begin."

She had asked for it? But...that was odd. Why would she beg to care for a babe that wasn't her own? Normally a nurse would have taken charge of an infant. My gaze swung to the marquise. I looked at her, considering. Surely she wouldn't have wanted to care for the babe herself. If I knew anything about her at all, it was that she would have had a nurse already chosen. Why, then, the change in plans?

The cardinal pronounced his incantations, waving his arms this way and that. "What name do you give your child?"

My father opened his mouth to speak.

It made no sense unless...unless...as I looked from the child to the girl, she seemed to cower before me. There was only one case in which her actions made any sense. I shoved the cardinal aside, drew my blade, and then lunged toward the girl.

"Give me the child!"

Darting behind the cardinal, she shouted at the marquis. "It's a boy, my lord!" Her voice rang out, trembling but determined.

Gabrielle gasped.

"A boy, my lord!" I wished the girl would shut up her mouth. It was a boy I would destroy.

The marquis, fool that he was, did nothing but stand there gaping like some overfed goose.

I stalked the girl, chasing her from the cardinal back toward a steeply winding staircase tucked into the back of the chapel. It was built into a tower, with tall, open arches carved into its walls. With the babe clutched to her breast, the girl bolted up the stairs toward a balcony perched high beneath the vaulted ceiling. Meant for a singer or musician, the balcony was hardly bigger than a coffin. The stairs provided the only access.

"You run from me!" Enraged at her temerity, I dove for the skirts that were disappearing around the spiral of the stair.

She cried out as she stumbled. With another pull, she began to slide toward me.

"Julien! Enough!" My father was standing at the bottom of the stairs, wrath darkening his face.

I caught a flurried movement from the corner of my eye. The girl. With a gnashing of teeth, I darted upward again.

Her slippered foot kicked out and struck me on the chin.

The chit! I caught hold of her ankle and twisted, wrenching it. I felt my lips curl as she cried out in pain.

She fell on her back as I pulled her down the stairs toward me.

The babe squalled in the girl's arms as her head struck the stone steps. I would shut him up! Dropping her ankle, I raised my sword.

Before I could silence him forever and make certain my future, the girl turned onto her stomach, hiding the child beneath her. As I retreated to avoid the churning of her feet, she scrambled back up the stairs. In an instant she had already vanished around the turn.

"I want that babe!" I shouted.

My only answer was the child's cry. And a bellow from my father.

I charged up the steps, but she was standing there above me, blocking the way. I swung the sword at her. The broad side of the blade struck her on the head, but though she staggered, she did not yield. What had she done with the child? As I looked beyond her, straining to see up the stairs, she grasped my sword with both her hands and wrested it from me. She gasped as the blade ripped through her flesh. Blood dripped from her palms as she tore it from me and heaved it through one of the arches.

It clattered to the floor somewhere far beneath us.