Angelique - Part 2. Marriage in Toulouse Chapter 11 - Read online

THE HORSE SLOWLY FOLLOWED THE RIVER BANK, raising the sand from the small, winding path. Three armed lackeys escorted their lord from a distance, but Angelique was not aware of their presence. It seemed to her that she was completely alone under the starry sky, alone in the arms of Joffrey de Peyrac, who had thrown her across his saddle and was now carrying her away to the pavilion on the Garonne for their first night of love.
At the pavilion, the servants, well-trained by a strict master, remained invisible. The chamber was ready. On the terrace an assortment of fruit had been placed near the couch, and flagons of wine were cooling in bronze basins, but the room seemed empty.
Angelique and her husband did not speak. The hour was meant for silence. Yet when he drew her towards him with brooding impatience, she murmured:
“Why don’t you smile? Arc you still cross? I assure you I did not encourage this incident.”
“I know, darling.”
He took a deep breath and said in a muffled voice:
“I cannot smile for I have waited too long for this moment, and it grips me so that it hurts. I have never loved any woman as I do you, Angelique, and it seems to me I loved you even before I knew you. And when I saw you . . . It was yowl had been waiting for. But you passed haughtily by, within reach of my hand, like a fairy of the marshes, unattainable. So I made amusing conversation, for fear of mockery or a gesture of horror. Never have I waited for a woman so long nor displayed so much patience. And yet you were mine. Twenty times I was on the verge of using violence, but I wanted not only your body, I wanted your love. So when I see you here, mine at last, I can’t forgive you all the torments you inflicted upon me. I can’t forgive you,” he repeated with a burning passion.
Bravely she met the look on his face, which no longer frightened her, and smiled.
“Take your vengeance,” she murmured.
He quivered, smiled in his turn.
“You are more of a woman than I thought. Ah, don’t provoke me! You will beg for mercy, beautiful enemy!”
From that moment onward, Angelique stopped belonging to herself. As she found again the lips that had already intoxicated her once, she also recaptured the whirlwind of unknown sensations, whose memory had left a dim yearning deep in her flesh. Everything came alive within her. With the promise of a fulfilment which nothing would hinder, her pleasure rose gradually to such a height that she was frightened by it.
She threw herself back, gasping, trying to escape from those hands whose every gesture brought to her new springs of rapture, and then, as if emerging from a well of oppressive sweetness, she saw the starry sky and the mist-veiled plain, through which the Garonne was weaving its silver ribbon, swirl around her.
Sound of body and glowing with health, Angelique was made for love. But the abrupt revelation she had of her own body overwhelmed her, and she felt buffeted and jostled by a violent assault, which came more from within her than from without. Only later, when her experience had grown, was she able to judge how very much Joffrey de Peyrac had restrained the violence of his own desire in order to completely assure his conquest.
Almost without her being aware of it he undressed her and laid her on the couch. With untiring patience he would bring her back to him, each time more yielding, warm and moaning, with fever-bright eyes. She struggled and surrendered in turn, but when the emotion she could not control had reached its peak, she felt utterly relaxed. It seemed to her that a sudden feeling of well-being, mingled with a delicious, throbbing excite¬ment, permeated her body. All prudery discarded, she of fered herself of her own accord to the most daring caresses; with closed eyes she let herself flow, unresisting, along the stream of voluptuousness. She did not rail against the pain, for every particle of her body was furiously calling for domination by her master. When he took her, she did not cry out, but her green eyes opened wide and reflected the stars of the spring sky.
“So soon!” murmured Angelique.
Stretched out on the couch, she was coming to life again. A soft Indian shawl protected her perspiring body from the gentle breeze of the night. She looked at Joffrey de Peyrac, who, standing very black against the moonlight, was pouring cool wine into the cups. He began to laugh.
“Gently, my sweet. You are too new to allow me to pursue the lesson farther. The time will come for long delights. Meanwhile, let’s drink! For we have both laboured tonight and our work deserves a reward.”
Her enchanting face raised towards him, she gave him a smile which possessed a seductiveness of which she was not yet aware, for a new Angelique had been bom in a matter of minutes, a free, fulfilled Angelique. He closed his eyes, as if dazzled. When he opened them again, he saw an anxious expression on the exquisite face.
“The Chevalier de Germontaz,” murmured Angelique. “Oh, Joffrey! I had forgotten. You’ve killed the Archbishop’s nephew!”
He soothed her with a caress.
“Think no more of it. There were witnesses to the provocation. To have overlooked it would have exposed me to blame. The Archbishop himself, being of noble blood, cannot do otherwise than bow before the fact. Oh, darling,” he whispered, “your body is even more perfect than I guessed.”
With one finger he followed the firm, white curve of the youthful body. She smiled and breathed a long sigh of contentment. She had always been told that men, after love, were brutal or indifferent. . . .
But Joffrey would certainly never resemble any other man.
He came and nestled close to her on the couch and she heard him chuckle softly.
“When I think that the Archbishop is this minute looking down from the high tower of his bishopric on the Palace of Gay Learning and damning my licentious life to hell! If he knew that I was at this very hour savouring those ‘guilty delights’ with my own wife, whom he has joined to me himself with his own blessing! ...”
“You are incorrigible. He is not wrong to regard you with suspicion, for when there arc two ways of doing a thing, you always think up a third. You could either commit adultery or else perform your conjugal duties soberly and sensibly. But no! You surround your wedding-night with such violent circumstances that I practically experience a feeling of guilt in your arms.”
“A very pleasant feeling, is it not?”
“Be quiet! You are devilish! Admit, Joffrey, that though you yoursclt have adroitly by-passed sin, most of your guests tonight are not in the same position! How skilfully you have flung them into what Monseigneur calls disorderliness. ... I am not quite sure that you are not a . . . dangerous man! . . .”
“And you, Angelique, are an adorable stark-naked canoncss! And 1 have no doubt that my soul will obtain forgiveness in your hands. But let us not frown on the sweet joys of life. So many other peoples live according to other customs, and are none the less generous or happy for it.. Faced with the coarseness of heart and senses that we hide under our fine clothes, I have dreamed of women and men becoming more refined and bestowing more grace on the name of France. I rejoice in it, for I love women, as 1 do all things of beauty. No, Angelique, my jewel, I am with¬out remorse and I shall not go to confession! . . .”
Angelique could be completely herself only now that she had become a woman. Before, she was but a rose-bud, cramped within a body which a drop of Moorish blood had spiced with a longing for carnal ardour.
In the days that followed, she felt as if she had been transplanted into a new world, in which everything was ripeness and enchanted discoveries. It seemed to her as if the rest of her life had faded away, as if time had suspended its flight. She became more and more amorous. Her com¬plexion had a rosy flush, her laughter a new boldness. Every night Joffrey de Peyrac found her more eager, more avid, and even when, like a young Diana, she would brusquely refuse to submit to his new fancies, she would as quickly give way to a rapt abandon.
Their guests seemed to live in the same relaxed and buoyant climate. They owed it partly to a miracle of organisation, for the genius of the Comte de Peyrac never overlooked a detail when it was a question of the comfort and enjoyment of his guests. He was everywhere, to all appear¬ances airily detached, yet Angelique felt that he thought only of her and sang for her alone. Sometimes a twinge of jealousy would come over her when she saw his black eyes plunge into the bold ones of a coquette who begged his advice on some subtle point of the lover’s art. She pricked up her ears, but she had to acknowledge that her husband always extricated himself loyally by some pointed sally disguised as a compliment.
With a mixture of relief and disappointment, she saw at the end of a week the heavy crested carriages turn in the palace courtyard and set out on their way back to distant country houses, while beautiful, lace-cuffed hands waved through the carriage-windows. The gentlemen saluted with a flourish of their plumed hats. Angelique, at her balcony, waved them a gay farewell.
She was not sorry to recover some calm and to have her husband all to herself for a while. But secretly she was sad to see the end of those exquisite days. Never—Angelique suddenly felt it with foreboding— never would those rapturous times return. . . .
On the very first evening after his guests’ departure, Joffrey de Peyrac shut himself up in his laboratory, where he had not set foot since the beginning of the Court of Love. This infuriated Ang$ique, who kept tossing with rage in the big bed where she waited for him in vain.
‘That’s men!’ she said to herself bitterly. ‘They deign to grant you a little time in passing, but nothing can hold them back when their own pet obsessions are involved. For some it’s duels, for others it’s war. Joffrey’s mania is retorts. I used to like him to tell me about it, but now I detest his laboratory!’
She sulked, but eventually she fell asleep.
She awoke in the flickering light of a candle and saw Joffrey at her bed¬side. She sat up with a start and folded her arms around her knees.
“Is it really worth while?*’ she inquired. “I hear the birds already wakening in the garden. Don’t you think you’d do better to finish the night, so well begun, in your apartment, hugging a nice, plump glass retort in your arms?”
He laughed without any sign of contrition.
“I am so sorry, darling, but I was in the middle of an experiment I could not drop. Do you know that our terrible Archbishop is to blame for it? Yet he took his nephew’s death in a very dignified way. But this is the point: duels are forbidden. It’s one more trump up his sleeve. I’ve received an ultimatum to reveal to that fool of a friar the secret of gold¬making. And as I cannot in decency explain to him my Spanish traffic, I have decided to take him along with me to Salsigne, where I’ll let him be present at the extraction and the transformation of the gold-bearing rock. I shall recall the Saxon Fritz Hauer and also send a courier to Geneva. Bemalli longed to witness these experiments, and I am sure he’ll come.”
^‘All this doesn’t interest me,” interrupted Angelique, moodily. “I’m sleepy.”
With her hair veiling half her face and her little chemise, whose lacy frills were slipping over her naked arm, she was aware that her appearance somewhat belied her stern words.
He caressed the soft, white shoulder, but with a sudden movement she dug her pointed teeth into his hand. He slapped her lightly and with feigned anger flung her back across the bed. They grappled for a moment. Very soon Angelique succumbed to Joffrey de Peyrac’s strength. Her mood, however, remained rebellious, and she struggled in his embrace. Then her blood began to course more quickly through her veins. A spark of desire flashed deep within her and spread through her whole being. She kept on fussing, but sought with breathless curiosity the surprising sensation she had just experienced. Her body tingled with fire. Waves of pleasure swept her from summit to summit in an ecstasy she had never kno^m before. Her head thrown back over the edge of the bed, with half¬open lips, Ang£lique recalled the shadows of an alcove in the golden light of a lamp. She heard again the soft, plaintive moan, she thought she heard it with extraordinary sharpness. She suddenly recognised her own voice. Above her, in the grey light of dawn, she saw the sparkling, half-dosed eyes and faun-like face that smiled and listened to the chant it had aroused.
“Oh, Joffrey,” sighed Angelique, “I feel as if I were going to die Why is it more wonderful each time?”
“Because love is an art in which one progresses towards perfection, my little beauty, and because you are a wonderful pupil. . . .”
Sated, she now sought sleep, snuggling against him. How brown Joffrey’s torso seemed against the laces of his night-gown! . . . And how intoxicating was this scent of tobacco!