Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Heiress
    The Heiress
    The Heiress
    Ebook321 pages5 hours

    The Heiress

    By Evelyn Anthony

    2.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Charles Macdonald and his parents, exiled Scots, take refuge at the splendid and decadent eighteenth-century Versailles court of Louis XV. Charles, a ruthless and degenerate young man, is soon forced by his gambling debts into an arranged marriage with his cousin, Anne. Anne is beautiful and wealthy—and in love with Charles. But none of this prevents him from carrying on with his mistress, the Baroness de Vitale, who in turn inflicts cruelties and humiliations upon Anne.
     
    When Anne finds that her life is in danger, Charles must decide what sort of man he wants to be, and which woman he truly cares for.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 10, 2016
    ISBN9781504032551
    The Heiress
    Author

    Evelyn Anthony

    Evelyn Anthony is the pen name of Evelyn Ward-Thomas (1926–2108), a female British author who began writing in 1949. She gained considerable success with her historical novels—two of which were selected for the American Literary Guild—before winning huge acclaim for her espionage thrillers. Her book, The Occupying Power, won the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize, and her 1971 novel, The Tamarind Seed, was made into a film starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif. Anthony’s books have been translated into nineteen languages.

    Read more from Evelyn Anthony

    Related to The Heiress

    Related ebooks

    Historical Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Clues To ROMANCE

      May 4, 2021

      The Clues To ROMANCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Nest Of VIPERS

      Jan 25, 2023

      A Nest Of VIPERS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Hello, Grim Reaper

      Dec 15, 2021

      She was a babe. A fully paid-up, card-carrying babe. There was absolutely no doubt about it, and she was heading straight for me. She was almost sprinting towards me across the recently reimagined lobby of Claridge’s. She looked up, her scarlet-anoin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Return Of The Bores

      Mar 9, 2022

      All bores are boring but not all boring people are bores. There are plenty of innocent folk who like nothing more than to share their anxieties about the village fête with you – and they’ll do it for 20 minutes you’ll never get back. Yet these are ju

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘I Know Who All Of You Are’: The Bizarreness Of The King’s Repair Shop Cameo

      Oct 26, 2022

      The Repair Shop is a truly extraordinary television programme; a series so absolutely guaranteed to make me cry, to send a depth charge to every single one of my emotional trigger points, that I find myself having to ration out episodes to fend off m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Stranger Than Fiction

      Apr 12, 2024

      Stranger Than Fiction
      5 min read

    • Article

      A summons FROM AUNTIE

      Jan 25, 2023

      ‘I know a fat old policeman, he’s always on our street,’ sang Mr Dear at the top of what I suppose we must call his voice. ‘A large and jolly red-faced man, he really is a treat.’ Then, suddenly, the only sounds were the gentle hum of the engine, th

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Song For A Princess

      Jan 21, 2019

      A Song For A Princess
      7 min read

    • Article

      Scoundrel’s Lair

      Jul 9, 2023

      Scoundrel’s Lair
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Sands of TREGANLLAW

      May 5, 2022

      England, 1497. Henry VII, the first Tudor king, reigns, having vanquished Richard III, the last monarch of the House of York, at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. A young man calling himself Richard, Duke of York has spent years striving for recogniti

      5 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      My Cuppa With The Krays

      Sep 22, 2021

      My Cuppa With The Krays
      5 min read

    • Article

      Customer SATISFACTION

      Jun 20, 2023

      Customer SATISFACTION
      6 min read

    • Article

      Left To Lose

      Jul 10, 2022

      Around the time she gives up her name, it starts to feel like this entire revolution isn’t worth it anymore. The world is probably lucky that Kelian—she still remembers Kelian, in spite of everything—is there to pick up the pieces, the way he always

      11 min read

    • Article

      King of Cool

      May 5, 2019

      King of Cool
      9 min read

    • Article

      Customer Satisfaction

      Jul 13, 2021

      Customer Satisfaction
      6 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “Events at Drimaghleen”

      Jun 6, 2023

      This might actually win the award for the bleakest story in the 'Collected.' The post The William Trevor Reader: “Events at Drimaghleen” appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Last Orders

      Jul 28, 2021

      Last Orders
      5 min read

    • Article

      Crusader Kinks

      Sep 6, 2021

      Crusader Kinks
      7 min read

    • Article

      The real THING

      Jul 28, 2021

      The real THING
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Heiress

    2.5/5

    17 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      How tastes differ! Like the other reviewer, I was an Evelyn Anthony fan back around 1970. Unlike the other reviewer, I loathed this one even then. Except for the terribly put upon heroine, most of the characters (including the heroine's beloved) are really, really nasty people. Ms. Anthony isn't usually Little Ms. Sunshine, but this one has no redeeming glints of suspense, interest, etc.
    • 5/5
      Incredibly moving book. I decided to not keep this book because I knew I would never be able to reread it - one of the most sad books I have ever read. Evelyn Anthony was a favorite author of mine in the late 1960s and into the '70s. A very fine author.

    Book preview

    The Heiress - Evelyn Anthony

    One

    ‘My hand, I think!’

    The Marquis de Charlot threw his cards down on the table and looked in triumph at the man sitting opposite to him. The game had begun in noisy banter, but as it progressed and the Marquis’s winnings mounted, silence grew between the players and the spectators, because the Marquis was a rich man and his opponent could not afford to lose as he had been doing. Everyone gambled at Versailles, following the example of the King Louis XV and his mistress Madame Dubarry, and it was nothing for men to be ruined after a night’s play. But it was quite another thing to take ten thousand louis from a man like Charles Macdonald. De Charlot had been drinking heavily, and the wine had made him reckless. He leant across the table and tapped his cards.

    ‘You owe me ten thousand louis, Monsieur,’ he said.

    The young man sitting opposite to him sipped his wine before answering. His expression was rather bored, but the pale green eyes glinted dangerously.

    ‘So it seems,’ he said. ‘It’s been a good night’s play, my dear Marquis. I congratulate you.’

    ‘I warned you to stop two hours ago.’ The Vicomte de Renouille was one of the few friends that Charles Macdonald had at Versailles, principally because he was too stupid and good-natured to quarrel with him. He tapped Charles’s shoulder. ‘Never go on when the luck’s against you,’ he said. Macdonald brushed his hand away.

    ‘Be a good fellow and keep your opinions to yourself,’ he said softly. Ten thousand louis. He did not possess a quarter of that sum. He looked into the flushed face of de Charlot and smiled, a slow, lazy smile that made his thin, handsome face look strangely cat-like. The smile did not reach his eyes.

    ‘I congratulate you,’ he said. ‘But you appreciate that you will have to wait—’

    ‘Wait! Are you saying that you can’t pay?’ the Marquis demanded. He stood up and the table rocked.

    ‘Steady,’ Charles Macdonald said. ‘You’ll knock the table over. I knew fortune favoured fools, but it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile on a drunkard too.’

    ‘Ah,’ de Charlot sneered, ‘I know what you’re about, Monsieur. You’re hoping to provoke me so you won’t have to pay. But not this time, my friend. We played fair and you lost. I want my winnings!’

    ‘And I’ve told you, you’ll have to wait. I’ll pay in due course. That will have to satisfy you.’

    ‘You’ll pay within three days at the latest,’ de Charlot shouted, and now both men were standing, glaring at each other. ‘I know your reputation, Monsieur. You run up debts and then kill the man you owe them to—but you won’t play your tricks with me. I’ll go to the King; my father’s well in favour, you know. He’ll have a word in His Majesty’s ear about these Scottish exiles who live at Court, and how they could do with a lesson …’

    ‘Are you threatening me?’ Charles asked him quietly. ‘Be careful, I warn you.’

    ‘And I warn you,’ de Charlot said. ‘You’ll pay this debt within three days or by God I’ll use my influence to have you sent to the Bastille until it’s settled.’

    ‘Make one complaint against me to anyone outside this room,’ Charles Macdonald said, ‘and I promise you I’ll kill you. As I think of it, I’ll kill you if you dare even mention the matter again! Is that clear, Monsieur? Annoy me and I’ll cut your throat!’

    The Comte stared at him and his flushed face began to turn pale. He addressed himself to the others in the room.

    ‘Gentlemen! I call on you to witness this: Monsieur Macdonald owes me ten thousand louis. He has refused to pay and threatened to murder me! By God,’ he spat at Charles, ‘by God you’ll hear more of this!’

    He pushed his way past them and went out; some of his steadiness deserted him and he stumbled at the door. De Renouille turned to Charles. ‘You shouldn’t have threatened him,’ he said. ‘He’s a vindictive swine and a coward as well, but his family’s got the King’s ear. He’ll have you arrested if you don’t produce the money. I only wish I could oblige you, my dear friend, but my own debts are as much as I can manage.… Is there anywhere you can borrow?’

    Charles looked at him and smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is, but I’m damned if I’ll ask them.’ He bowed to the captain of cavalry who was the last spectator left, and he and de Renouille began the long walk down the corridors of Versailles Palace towards their quarters. These quarters, in common with most of the space available in the enormous Palace, were no better than a corner in some attic; among the most privileged in the thronging Court were Charles’s own parents, Sir James and Lady Katharine Macdonald of Dundrenan, who actually enjoyed the privacy of one small room. The Marquis de Charlot’s jibe about the Scottish exiles was true indeed of most of the families living in France nearly thirty years after the last Highland rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie. Many were mercenaries and adventurers, living on their wits and on the charity of any rich nobleman who could be persuaded to take an interest in them. But the Macdonalds had found favour with the mean and capricious Louis XV; Sir James had fought in the armies of France and distinguished himself in the Seven Years War against England, and his wife had treated Madame Dubarry with courtesy in the days when she was no more than a new recruit to the King’s collection of casual mistresses and no one imagined her sway would last more than a few weeks. That mistake cost many their fortunes and their favour at Court; there was no more powerful person in the whole of France than the vulgar little courtesan who was Queen in all but name.

    ‘What are you going to do?’ de Renouille asked Charles.

    ‘Wait,’ was the answer. ‘I’ll certainly kill him if he goes sniffing round the King. As for the money—I’ll come by it somehow. Don’t concern yourself, my friend; I’ll survive this little awkwardness.’

    ‘Why not go to your parents?’ de Renouille asked. ‘Surely in this case you can forget your pride.… The Bastille is a damned uncomfortable place. And damned difficult to get out of once you’re inside.’

    ‘I’ve never asked my parents for anything,’ Charles retorted. ‘And I’ll see myself in hell before I do. They’ve paid debts for me before, but never because I asked their help or wanted it. They can’t have me jeopardizing their position. They’ve told me so over and over again. And I’ve told them, let me settle my own affairs in my own way.’

    ‘You came very close when you killed that fellow Augustin last year. Your parents are right, Charles. If you fight de Charlot and kill him, even your family won’t survive the scandal.’

    ‘Oh yes, they will.’ He paused and looked at the Vicomte, and laughed mockingly.

    ‘They’ll survive anything, even having me as their only son. But I must admit it’s tried them. By God, it’s really tried them to the limit! Good night, my dear fellow. I see my miserable hole in the wall is near.’

    ‘Good night.’ De Renouille hesitated awkwardly. They enjoyed a spasmodic friendship, of which the feeling was all on the younger, slower man’s side, for the ruthless, reckless Scot of whom he was even a little afraid in his heart. He tried once more.

    ‘You’re sure you won’t reconsider?… You won’t go to your father?’

    ‘I won’t,’ Charles said softly. ‘And unless you want a sudden end to our association, my dear Vicomte, you won’t refer to it again. Good night!’

    Charles Macdonald slept soundly that night, far less troubled in mind than the Marquis de Charlot, who woke sweating after a nightmare in which he had met the Macdonald coming at him with a drawn sword. Charles’s reputation as a duellist was only equalled by his prowess as a seducer. He was generally disliked by men, who treated him with caution, and pursued by women, all of whom imagined themselves capable of arousing his love, and not one of whom had survived the encounter without suffering pain and humiliation in the end. His enemies said that he hated women; a very few observers of the microcosm of Court life said that it was because his mother hated him.

    Twenty-four hours after the game ended in the little card-room the story of de Charlot’s threat was all over the Palace, and by the end of the day Charles received a message to go to his parents’ apartment immediately.

    ‘Monsiuer le Chevalier, your son!’ Sir James Macdonald of Dundrenan, Chevalier of France and assistant to the Minister of War, took his wife’s hand in his and pressed it gently. He looked up at her, into the lovely face which had changed so little after nearly thirty years of marriage, and said quietly: ‘Try to be patient with him, Katharine. He’ll agree.’

    ‘I don’t want to speak to him at all; this last episode is too much to forgive!’

    ‘Remember,’ her husband said, ‘we have an object in view!’ He turned to the lackey.

    ‘Admit Monsieur Charles.’

    Their only son had been waiting in the ante-room for nearly twenty minutes while his parents discussed his latest indiscretion. They were used to women; he could remember the disgust and anger on his mother’s face when she discovered that two of her little chambermaids were pregnant by him at the same time, and he was only just sixteen himself. He had accepted her reproaches in the same mood in which he waited for them now: bored, impenitent and mocking.

    He took out his watch and swore. Twenty minutes; it was his mother, of course, who kept him waiting as if he were a lackey. It was just another way of showing how she hated him. It almost made him laugh when he thought of how angry she would be when she knew the exact amount of money that he owed de Charlot.… They had paid his debts before, grudgingly and angrily comparing his extravagance with the probity of other people’s sons, and he had taken their help and shrugged off their reproaches. He had never asked for money, it was always his father who stepped in and paid his losses rather than let Charles settle the debt by picking a quarrel with his creditor and risking his life in a duel. They were still exiles, dependent upon the favour of the French monarch for their existence; they could not afford the scandal of their reprobate son killing some high-born gambling companion whose family would complain to the King.

    ‘Monsieur Charles, will you go in please, Monsieur and Madame will see you now.’

    Charles walked past the servant without looking at him; he never looked at servants; even when he kicked his own valet for some fault, he hardly bothered to glance at him.

    ‘My dear father; Madame my mother.’ He bowed low to both his parents. They were standing side by side and, as usual, his mother was holding his father’s arm. Their fidelity to each other bored their son; he was only more bored by people who asked him if the story of their escape and marriage were really true … Had all members of his mother’s family perished in the attack the Macdonalds led upon their castle and had his father actually come on her with a drawn sword and then eloped with her instead?…

    Dear God, he thought, how smug and virtuous they were. He met his mother’s eye, that blue cold eye which had never once looked on him with maternal feeling. He rather admired her for that. Whatever she was, his mother was no fool. It was his father who spoke to him.

    ‘I suppose you know why we’ve sent for you?’

    ‘I can guess. You’ve heard the rumours about that miserable de Charlot and myself, and not unnaturally you want to know how much?’

    Sir James’s very dark eyes narrowed angrily.

    ‘No, my son,’ he said. ‘We know how much you owe the Marquis de Charlot. I have spoken to him. He also informed me today that you had refused to pay him. Is that correct?’

    ‘It is,’ Charles answered coolly. ‘Since I had no money to my credit, and other—er—rather pressing bills, I couldn’t do anything else. I did ask him to wait, though.’

    ‘Not according to Monsieur de Charlot,’ his father cut in. ‘I understood from him that you had threatened to kill him if he pressed you for the money. He came to me in some alarm.’

    Charles laughed. ‘The miserable little cur! I daresay he was alarmed when he was sober. I told him if he pestered me for a few paltry thousands I’d take him out and cut his throat!’ There was no grin on his face now; his father appreciated only too well why the Marquis de Charlot had sought him out, stuttering with fright and indignation, and ended the interview by repeating his threat to complain to the King.

    ‘Did he tell you how much I owed him?’

    ‘Ten thousand louis!’ Lady Katharine spoke for the first time. ‘Ten thousand louis lost in a night at faro. Do you know how much your father and I possessed to live on in our first years here? Less than half that! And when you lose it you behave like some common cut-throat and threaten the man. James, tell him what we’ve decided and let’s get the business over before I lose my temper with him.’

    ‘My dear mother,’ Charles said calmly, ‘you are always losing your temper with me. If you don’t tonight I shall be quite disappointed. I played cards, I lost the money. I also lost my temper as a result of being dunned. Other nights I usually win, but no one mentions that. Did he also tell you he was going to the King?’

    ‘He did,’ Katharine retorted. ‘That’s why we sent for you. Six months ago your father and I swore we’d never pay another gambling loss for you whatever the consequences. But things have changed since then. James, you tell him.’

    She turned away and walked to the other end of the room. She was so agitated that she couldn’t trust herself. Her son, the child of their consuming love, the result of a passion which had survived the hazards of war, of clan feuds, even of murder itself, and still bound them indivisibly after twenty-seven years; their son, and now their heir to the impounded estates in the Highlands, seemed to be the reincarnation of one of the most evil men that she had ever known, the cruel and pitiless Hugh Macdonald who had killed her own brother and once tried to murder her. Her joy at his birth had changed to loathing when she saw the resemblance in the child she held in her arms. All she had hoped for was a son to reflect the qualities of the man she loved; instead of that the boy was like a changeling. There was no sign of his father’s honour, only his uncle’s pride; none of James’s splendid courage, only the fierce love of fighting for its own sake. In her eyes the boy was callous and defiant and the man had become a heartless profligate.

    He gambled, he fought, he seduced without mercy or moral considerations of any kind; at the age of nineteen he had killed three men in duels over women and cards, and one unhappy creature who had allowed herself to be involved with him committed suicide when he told her to go back to the husband who had turned her out.

    Thank God, Katharine thought, thank God we have Jeanne. They both loved their daughter, happily married to a gentle, scholarly French nobleman and the mother of three small children. Thank God, she thought again, that we have Jeanne.

    ‘As your mother said,’ Sir James began, ‘we told you last time we would never settle another debt for you. As far as we are concerned, de Charlot could go to the King and you could learn a very salutary lesson in the Bastille for a while. I wouldn’t lift a hand to interfere except for just one thing. The English Government have agreed to restore our estates in Scotland. Not to me, unfortunately, they’ve got long memories; but to you, my son.’

    ‘Really?’ The light eyes gleamed, and then he half closed them as if he were a little bored; it was a trick which had once brought his father’s hand down on the side of his head with such force that he sprawled on the floor. He had been a youth then; not even James would dare to strike him now.

    ‘You mean that I am the heir to Dundrenan and Clandara?’

    ‘You are, or at least you will be as soon as I accept the terms and surrender my own claims and your mother’s. You are the future chief of the Macdonalds of Dundrenan and the closest blood heir of the Frasers of Clandara. You can bring the two clans together and give them the leadership they’ve lacked for twenty-seven years. That means more to me than your miserable debts; that’s why I shan’t let de Charlot go to the King and accuse you, and your mother feels the same.’

    ‘I’m very grateful,’ Charles said. ‘I can’t see myself as a chief in the Highlands, but if the lands are good and the property … I daresay I’ll pay a visit and see what can be done with it.’

    ‘There’s a condition.’ Katharine came back and put her arm around her husband. ‘No debt will be paid and no inheritance accepted otherwise, Charles. Refuse, and you can take your debts and your difficulties out of this room and never enter it again.’

    ‘What is the condition?’ Charles asked softly.

    His father answered. ‘That you marry your cousin Anne de Bernard, and settle down to a reasonable life. And that a year after the marriage you undertake to live at least six months of every year in the Highlands and have your sons educated and brought up there as befits Macdonalds. Believe me, your mother and I will not allow our peoples to be cheated. Do this, and your debt will be paid by tomorrow. Refuse, and I feel certain that de Charlot and his family will persuade the King to throw you into prison until it is. It’s up to you.’

    ‘How much time have?’ he asked them. He was adept at hiding his feelings; no flicker of emotion crossed the handsome face; he looked as bored and unconcerned as ever, and they would never know the fierce excitement which was growing in him. Inherit Clandara and Dundrenan. All his life those two names of places he had never seen had held a magic for him which came from the blood in his veins, from centuries of ancient breeding. He was Scots to his marrow, but exiled, rootless, with nothing but names and old traditions to feed upon and give him background in a foreign land. Though he had been born there, Charles had never instinctively accepted France as his home, and he had never known if the interedict on the families of those who had taken part in the last Stuart rebellion would ever be lifted by the Government of England, to let him and those like him see the country of their forefathers. And now it had come. He could go back to the Highlands, walk on the purple moors, feel in his face the cold clean mountain winds of which he’d heard his parents talk so wistfully. He was not condemned for ever to a useless exile, or to the service of France. He was being offered the chance to leave it all, to answer the restless call of his blood for freedom and meaning in the ravaged lands of his own country, among the scattered oppressed peoples of his race. He would have died before he gave his father or his mother the satisfaction of seeing that what they had told him meant anything to him at all. As for their condition … Marry. Marry Anne de Bernard. He could hardly remember her, it was years since they had met. His mind flashed ahead; he would need a wife and a rich one if he were really going back. He would need as much money as he could lay hands on if he were going to restore his lands and people to their old condition.

    ‘You have no time at all,’ his father answered the question. ‘You decide now.’

    Charles smiled his mocking smile at both of them.

    ‘Marry my rich little cousin and inherit eighty thousand acres and two chieftainships—or else go to prison. My dear father and Madame, my mother, I don’t see much alternative, do you? I accept your conditions, unconditionally. Now if you’ll excuse me I have an appointment and I’m already late.’

    ‘I can imagine with whom,’ Katharine answered. ‘Of all the women at Versailles you have to choose the most vicious and depraved. That will stop too, after you are married.’

    He did not answer her, but she saw the mocking defiance in his face, and she could not pretend that it was not a very handsome face. Even if he had been ugly he would still have possessed the same dangerous charm.

    ‘You will settle the debt?’ He addressed his father, and Sir James nodded.

    ‘By tomorrow, I told you. I am going to ask the King’s permission for the marriage; it’s only a formality and we’ll announce it as soon as we’ve been down to Charantaise.’

    He remembered the splendid Château; he used to go there as a child and stay with his mother’s relations, the de Bernards. There used to be a little Marquise, very talkative and overdressed, painted up like a little Parisian whore, with the mincing manners of an age that reflected the King’s last great mistress, Madame de Pompadour. The little Marquise, with her passion for scandal and mischief, was dead now, and only her daughter Anne and an old uncle who was her guardian remained. He hadn’t seen his cousin since she was a child and all he knew about her was that she was immensely rich. He bowed to his parents.

    ‘I wish you both good night. Excuse me; I know you wouldn’t want me to keep the lady waiting.’ As he went out of the room he laughed.

    Katharine turned to her husband.

    ‘James, James, all I can think of is that poor child Anne. How can we marry her to him?… even for the sake of Dundrenan and Clandara—it’s twenty-seven years since the Rebellion; how do we know what state the clans are in or if there’s anyone left in the glens at all?’

    ‘The two houses are in ruins but our people are still there,’ he answered. ‘They need a leader; they need Anne de Bernard’s money to rebuild and replenish the land. She’ll fare well enough. How do you know marriage won’t change him … it changed me.’

    ‘My darling,’ she said gently, ‘if he were anything like you I’d love him with all my heart and she’d be the luckiest woman in the world to marry him. But there’s none of you in him, and none of me either. Only the very worst of both families—that’s all I see in him. You are determined on this marriage, aren’t you?’

    ‘Absolutely,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t ask me to change my mind because I can’t. I’m Scots to my bones in spite of living here. I must do what is best for my people.’

    ‘So be it, then,’ she said. ‘At least I can try and protect her from him when they’re married.’

    ‘When they’re married,’ James answered slowly, ‘we both can. Come, my darling, I’m going to seek an audience of the King.’

    Louise de Vitale was a very beautiful woman even in a Court where beautiful women were in abundance and pretty women too numerous to be counted. At twenty-three she was a widow; her husband, the Baron de Vitale, was already an old man when she married him, and, having lived a life of excess, his constitution did not survive the strain of being married to his young and lovely wife for more than two years. When he died he left everything in his possession to the woman whom he described as the most perfect compagnon de nuit any man could wish for. By the time she was twenty Louise was rich, well connected and very bored with living in the country on her husband’s estates and carrying on intrigues with the husbands of her neighbours. She had exhausted them all during her year’s mourning and she left her estates in the hands of a bailiff and set out for Versailles. Almost at once she attracted the attention of the Duc de Richelieu; it was not only advisable but a pleasure for Louise to become his mistress. He was attractive and charming and he enjoyed intrigue as much as she did. Also he was an intimate of the King’s new mistress, the Comtesse Dubarry, and that opened the door to many things.

    In a Court where everyone powdered, two women were conspicuous for wearing their hair naturally. One was the Royal mistress, whose hair was a ravishing golden-red, as fine as silk, and the other the Baroness de Vitale, whose beautiful hair was so dark that in some lights it seemed touched with blue. With this sable hair, her complexion was as pale and smooth as milk, and the skin on her body was of the same texture and colour as her face. Her eyes were very large and black with heavily painted lids above them, and a mouth which was full and red. She was beautiful and she dressed superbly, and she had been Charles Macdonald’s mistress for over a year. He was the first man to whom she had ever been faithful, and while she waited for him that night she was so restless that she walked up and down like an animal in a cage. She had a maid who had been in her service since she married, a sharp-eyed little Breton who shared all her secrets.

    ‘Don’t worry, Madame. Monsieur Charles will come.’

    ‘What time is it?’ Louise demanded. ‘He’s never as late as this!’

    That was another oddity, Marie thought, taking out her watch. He often kept the Baroness waiting, whereas all the other gentlemen had been sitting outside her door an hour before. Marie did not like Charles Macdonald. He was a foreigner for all that he was born and bred in France; there was an arrogance about him, a brutality which she had seen in his quarrels with her mistress, that was definitely not French. Once he had come to the Baroness’s apartments drunk, and when she reproached him he struck her and dragged her into the bedroom and locked the door. When he left the next morning her mistress was more abjectly in love with him than ever. Marie had a lover of her own; he worked as a footman for the Duchesse de Gramont and together they were saving every sou to get married and open a small shop in Paris.

    ‘It is nearly eleven o’clock, Madame. Perhaps he isn’t coming this time?’

    ‘He would have sent a note, some word,’ her mistress said. ‘He’ll come, he’s been detained by something, that’s all it is.’ Louise went to the glass on the wall and examined herself in it. Charles was the only man she had ever met who made her unsure of her beauty; she stared at herself anxiously. Her dress was pale yellow and made of the soft thin silk which

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1