Read Online BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis by Parris Afton Bonds - Free Book Online Page B

doubling the Marchesseau fortune.
    Philippe caught her chin and tilted it upward. “Come, you must not worry, chérie ,” he said, searching her face, his eyes tender.
    How could she be annoyed when he looked at her like that? After the first blush of romance had worn off, she found to her surprise that she still loved her gentle and tender husband. He possessed the absorption in the moment without the tiresome prudence that always has to be looking ahead. She was constantly caught up in his spurts of joyous enthusiasm, his contentment with life.
    “Will you dance with me now, my love, before your horde of admirers descends on us?” he asked, teasing her out of her pensive mood.
    He led her out to join the gavotte that was forming. For a while, she enjoyed herself in the lively dance, was even able to ignore the lascivious leers of the male guests and the visually thrown daggers of les femmes débauchés . By midnight, the two sexes would be pairing off in search of the nearest unoccupied rooms— some even uncaring if the room was already inhabited.
    The Palais Royal—indeed, all of Paris—was a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah. Natalie would no t have been surprised had lightning struck and the entire city sent up in fiery smoke. The city of Paris had more mistresses than wives, and the Prince Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, was the Prince of Libertines.
    Born bored, and accustomed to debauchery, the fat, myopic Duc d’Orléans, nearing forty-seven, worked conscientiously enough during the day, but night meant retirement to more diverting tasks. When the doors of his rose-silk-upholstered private apartment were closed, he was no longer a regent, not even if Paris were on fire.
    That did not mean that one ever underestimated the duc. The great-grandson of Louis XIV was not quite eleven, and until the good-looking boy reached his legal majority, the duc ruled France as regent. He was highly intelligent and very subtle.
    However, he was seduced more by pleasure than by power. He consorted with ladies of quality and ladies of the street. His intimates or companions he called his roués , men ordinarily broken on the roué , or wheel, for their blasphemous behavior. He was more an onlooker than a participant as life leaked away, and night after night repeated itself. Nothing was sacred, especially love.
    Now he was annoyed at being drawn away from the gaming tables, but the shrewd old man who awaited him in the rear cabinet was usually a worthwhile diversion. The old knight had procured for him quite a few of the mo st delectable teenage danseurs of the opera. The duc’s late father, Monsieur, had had a hand in giving the reins of attorney general to Fabreville. As such, Fabreville had the power to cut off parliamentary investigations of a financial nature that the duc might find embarrassing.
    In the arrière-cabinet , the regent retired to write his instructions to his secret agents abroad or to study their reports. Here, his private diplomacy was carried out without anyone else’s knowledge. Fabreville waited beside a gilded, thin-legged, rolltop writing desk. The old knight laid a paper on the desk where a candle was kept burning for the sealing of documents with wax.
    “Your grace, I find I must pr eserve the honor of the Marchesseau name. Unfortunately, I have discovered that my late cousin’s son, Philippe du Plessis, is guilty of fraud involving black-market wheat. A lettre de cachet will be necessary.”
    With only a passing glance at the paper, the du c dipped the quill in the inkwell. “You are a cunning one, Claude.”
    Watching the regent affix his name, Fabreville’s mouth slitted into a sneering smile. A husband might obtain a lettre de cachet , or sealed letter, to imprison a suspected wife; a father, to prevent the marriage of a daughter to someone beneath her station; or, in this case, a concerned relative, to prevent the succession of an estate to an as yet unborn child. The accused would never be tried;