Neither would I.

Once the physician had gone, I had my servant dress me. I went down to the hall, only to discover the meal was nearly over. I was late. I took my stepmother's hand up in mine as I passed by her chair, and pressed a kiss onto it.

"Good afternoon." She smiled up at me.

"Still in your morning coat?" My father's tone was not benign.

"I was so involved in my affairs I had no time to change."

He looked a question at me.

I busied myself with my food, refusing to respond.

"I hope I made myself clear earlier."

"Quite."

"Bon. You must see there are things that need to be arranged. For posterity's sake..." As he tried to delicately refer to the spawn my stepmother was breeding, a high color sprouted on his cheeks. How endearing. He cleared his throat. "...some things are necessary."

As I waited for Remy to return from his hunt, I decided to take a turn in my stepmother's garden. The air had chilled with autumn's coming, but there were still blooms bursting forth everywhere. Over on the bench beneath the shade of a tree was Gabrielle herself. She looked like some overfed cow. And she was trying, without success, to stand.

I walked over and offered her my arm.

She nearly pulled me down on top of her with the heft of her extra weight. "Merci, Julien."

"It is my very great honor, ma biche, to be counted upon to assist you."

"You see, it's for this reason exactly you should find the taking of a wife so easy!" How grand she must seem to herself: married and a marquise at the age of twenty. And how generously she bestowed the wisdom gained from all of her life's experience upon one who'd already seen nearly twice her years. She dimpled. "You could charm a nun from her convent."

"If I had to charm anyone into my bed, don't you think a monastery more suitable to my tastes?"

She laughed. That was something my father would never have done.

"Why does no one ever believe me when I speak the truth?"

"Because we want so much to believe the state of your soul matches your angelic looks." She frowned as she stood there, trying to regain her breath. "You must know I have nothing to do with this plan to disinherit you."

"He wasn't serious." He couldn't be serious. If he were serious, then I might as well kill myself now to save my many creditors the trouble. Though my debts were great, everyone at court knew my eventual inheritance would be greater still.

If I were but there!

Nothing could be gained here in the countryside but a virulent cough. For all my father waxed rhapsodic about them, there was nothing noble about our peasant countrymen. About their cows and their hayseed. I would give all the fresh air in Orleanais for Madame Sainctot's salon in Paris, though it be fogged with tobacco smoke, soaked with the scents of a dozen different perfumes, and underscored by a mad melody played on a relentless harpsichord. Give me a place where every word was calibrated for amusement and spoken with wit...instead of this moldering chateau where words were wasted on topics as mundane as the latest calvings and the rising level of the miller's stream.

I yearned for my gaming tables.

Draughts, hoc, or hasard. I wasn't as particular as some. To risk all on the roll of a die or the turn of a card. God! That took true courage. That was an exercise in daring! These country bourgeoisie didn't understand. If you had to gamble with the wringing of hands or the constant wiping of the brow, then why gamble at all?

It had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with the nature of the man. To stare Fate in the eye and dare her to slap you? That took nerve. To respond as stoically in the winning as one did in losing? That required true nobility. My father had earned his on the battlefield. I had found mine in the tumble of dice and the dealing of cards.

Unfortunately, noblesse required that eventually one repay his debts...or at least not leave that possibility in doubt. If my father spoke too loudly of his desire to change heirs, then I, too, might be reduced to the wringing of hands.

I took a turn around the path with Gabrielle. She needed exercise; I needed not to be in the vicinity of my father. It was difficult to hide from him, out here in the country, if one was not impassioned, as was Remy, by falcons or riding or the hunt. But at the end of our circuit, as we turned back toward the chateau, I spied a figure watching us from the head of the garden. "There's my father. He's scowling at me. Again."

"He has only your best interests in mind."

"He has his own best interests in mind. He always has."

"He wants so much to be proud of you."

Proud of me? When had he ever been proud of me? He was proud of his hunting dogs; he was pleased with his new wife; he was delighted with the year's harvest. But he had never, not once, entertained any synonymous sentiment regarding me. I bowed at my father's approach. Released my stepmother from my arm.

She moved forward with all the grace of a lumbering ox.

"My dear." He offered her his arm. She took it and walked off without a backward glance.

One could not be particular about companions when there was so little company to be had.

Gabrielle and I were thrown together once more the next day. She was picking at her needlework in the petit salon, while I was pretending to read. I wished she hadn't chosen to work her design in taupe and saffron. Those colors each made the other look more insipid.

A sudden rattling came from outside, followed by howls from the hunting dogs.

I went to the window and peered down into the courtyard. "Who is this come to visit?"

"Hmm?" She lifted her gaze from her work.

"There's a carriage. A man of the church, by the looks of it." The coach was carved from ebony and gleamed with gold. The windows were hung with crimson curtains.

"I expect it's probably Cardinal St. Florent."

What reason would the cardinal have to visit? He generally preferred to perch in grander places than this.

"He's come about the arrangements for the annulment."

I shut up my book with a vehemence that surprised even me. "There will be no more talk of annulments! I already told you he wasn't serious. You wouldn't know this, but he's been spouting threats like that one for years."

She fastened her gaze upon me. "I don't think it's a threat this time."

"You don't know my father."

"Perhaps not as well as you do, but he did make a special request for the babe's baptism..." She held up her needlework, and before my eyes appeared the coat of arms of the Marquis of Eronville. A shield upon which ten blazing suns, reflecting the presumed glory of our King, surrounded a lion rampant. It was a coat of arms reserved for the Marquis of Eronville alone. And that was my title. At least, it should be.

I lingered in the salon until I heard the cardinal leave my father's chambers. I caught him as he was descending the front steps toward his carriage. When he offered up a plump, gout-swollen hand, I kissed his ring.

"You must know, Your Eminence, that age has begun to show itself in my father's mind. You must not think he's serious about these plans of his."

He pursed his lips as he withdrew his hand from mine. "What plans?"

"Come now." The man had never liked me. A sentiment perhaps born of the fascination that glittered in his eyes whenever he looked at me. I tried out a smile, just to see what might happen. Many times, in my experience, a throw of dice could change everything. "You cannot take his demands for an annulment seriously..."

He cleared his throat as he continued down the steps. "Everyone knows he and your mother were unsuited. The match was doomed from the start. It's a simple case of consanguinity."

"And yet nobody stopped it at the time."

His harrumph was dampened by the sheer magnitude of his collar. It was made from the finest linen and edged with a band of exquisite lace. Lace in the style I once had. But lace had been deemed illegal. No lace could be worn in the kingdom of France. Of course, in Cardinal Richelieu's eyes, there were the common sort of nobles and clergy, and then there were the favored few. Those who could break the rules and keep their fortunes, and their heads, intact. Cardinal St. Florent clearly wanted to be one of those... though I suspected he had not yet climbed quite as high as he hoped.

"You can see how it might be an inconvenience for me to be denied my inheritance at this point in my life."

"Yes." His gaze took my measure from tip to toe. "I've seen a thing or two."

"Considering how much the Marquis of Eronville will leave to his heir, and considering this new babe of his will never know how great a debt of gratitude he owes you... might it not be wise to side with one who does?"

"Wise?"

"Profitable, even...?"

"I've never had anything against profit...which is why I'm so inclined to agree with your father's point of view." His smile was perfunctory as he moved to step into the carriage.

Apparently, my father had thought of everything. "So he's offered you money, then."

The cardinal turned, his brow raised.

My gaze fell once more upon that splendid collar, and then shifted to the avaricious gleam in his eyes. I made another gamble. "What does a man like you need with money? What you need is power. Influence. You need something that will let all the court know you are a man to be reckoned with."

"Well...I like to think that..." He proffered a modest shrug.

I leaned close. "What you need, Your Eminence, is more lace."

"Lace?" His gaze narrowed as he looked at me. "Lace is forbidden."

"Tut, tut. As are all manner of things one can confess to a priest and then receive an indulgence for." I leaned even closer. "Indulgence." I whispered the word. "A privilege only the pious can hope to obtain. And lace is an indulgence only a very privileged few can even find anymore." I reached out to touch the lace that trimmed his collar. "I can get you what you want. I can find you something better than this."

His gaze touched my lips and then crept up to my eyes. "You disgust me."

"Tell God whatever you think he will believe, but between the two of us, let there be nothing but truth. The truth is that if you deny my father's request, I will get you the finest length of lace you have ever seen. Courtiers will envy you, and Richelieu himself will wonder why he hasn't thought to take you into his council before. Think of it. You could be the owner of the finest length of lace in France. And all you have to do is agree with God himself, with me as supporting evidence in favor of your decision. My father was married to my mother. It's so simple, Your Eminence. How could you be expected to rule in any other way?"

He pulled his gloves onto his hands. Squinted up into his waiting carriage. "I hear the nuns up in Lendelmolen make the finest lace in Flanders."

I took his gloved hand in mine and pressed it to my lips. "I've heard that very same thing."

Chapter 7.

Alexandre Lefort Chateau of Souboscq

The province of Gascogne, France

Accursed, damnable lace!

How was it a flimsy confection of thread could have turned into such a weighty burden?

I stood behind a parapet on the roof of the chateau, surveying the fields of Souboscq, a great rage building within me. All I saw before me, all that grew in the fields that rolled beyond my sight, down into the valley, enriched the Leforts no longer. All of our care and worries, all of the peasants' hard labor would fill not our own coffers, but those of the Count of Montreau. It had been thus for ten years. There was little solace that there was not very much in those fields to be seen. The crops, again, had mostly withered and died before the harvest.

Damn the count and his pernicious lace!

We hadn't wanted him to lodge with us, Lisette's father and I, those many years ago. His reputation as a libertine had preceded him, even so far as our small corner of the kingdom. But we hadn't the grounds to refuse him. He was from a family both old and noble, and his father was one of the King's most loyal supporters. He ought to have been no different from the dozens of nobles who had stopped at Souboscq on their way through the countryside. It would have been the very definition of ungraciousness to have turned him away.

And so we had suffered his airs and his affectations. We had suffered the attentions he paid to the companion he had brought along with him. We were suffering from him still. As many times as I had told Lisette what had happened was not her fault, she had refused to believe me. As many times as her father had tried to draw her close, she had refused him the solace of her touch.

But she had been right in her claims of culpability.

And she was also dreadfully wrong.

She had destroyed the lace, but she had not been responsible for the count's extortion. And it was not she who had persuaded her father to take part in the Marquis of Chalais's conspiracy to assassinate the King's chief minister, Richelieu. In our great naivete of ten years before, the plot had seemed destined to succeed.

If only it had not failed!

If it had worked, then nobles like my cousin the viscount, Lisette's father, would have maintained some control within the kingdom. As it was, the failure of the plot had allowed Richelieu to strip all power from the nobility and then tax them for his trouble. And the cardinal had spies everywhere. Had we known of them then as we knew of them now, my cousin would never have been tempted to join such folly.

He was neither noble enough nor powerful enough to depend upon the King's mercy. The Queen and the King's own brother had been privy to Chalais's plans...and yet they had been able to reconcile with both the King and the cardinal. 'Twas only those without power and influence who had been executed for their part in the plot. If Richelieu ever discovered my cousin's involvement, there was no doubt he would share the unlucky conspirators' fate: a dishonorable death in prison or the horror of an executioner's block.

It was not safe even to think an untoward thought about the cardinal.

Yet not all of the estate's woes were the fault of the count. These poor harvests had taken a toll, as had the King's policies of taxation and my cousin's unwillingness to let the peasants suffer from the King's levies. Though the Count of Montreau came every year for payment on his lace, and though he seemed to squeeze it from us one hard-won coin at a time, as long as we were not required to forfeit the land, there was hope that one day we would reap harvests sufficient to pay the debt.

As my cousin's heir, I clung to that hope.

I was not, by birth, a Lefort. I was a Girard. I would not inherit my cousin's title, but as his closest kin, I was inheritor of the estate. In taking his name as my own, in becoming Alexandre Lefort, I guaranteed I would never again be known as the son of one of the King's most celebrated warriors. At one time, that might have been a boon, but my father had been struck down in his prime by leprosy. A disease so terrible and shameful no one could avoid being tainted by proximity. The Viscount of Souboscq's heir had every opportunity open to him; the leprous warrior's son had none.