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

thirteen and come into his majority, and the duc’s reign as regent will end. Surely then the lettre de cachet will be revoked.” She sighed and rubbed her slender hands together for warmth. “But that seems like a long time.”
    She noticed the middle-aged woman, who continued to paint her face each morning, lower her lids, seeming to concentrate on chewing the cold salmis.
    “What is it?” Natalie asked her.
    The courtesan shrugged her shoulders and took a sip of the sparkling wine. “The time will pass quickly enough—with the comforts of home to sustain you.”
    Natalie laid down her fork. Her appetite had dwindled such that she had to force herself to eat for the sake of the unborn child. “If I’m careful, I think I can stretch the money I’ve received for my jewelry.”
    “Expenditures here can eat up the money rapidly, ma petite . More rapidly than you realize.”
    “How have you managed after four years in this—this place?” Natalie looked about her. Despair choked at her throat. “Fou r years!” she whispered. “ Ma  foi !”
    Madame Remoneaux’s eyes twinkled, and she smiled. Her teeth were terrible. “I write pornography.”
    “What?”
    “ Oui . When I realized that I might be here for many years— and that the little money I had wouldn’t keep me in the style to which I was accustomed, I bought pen and ink and paper. I sell my stories to a press in Amsterdam.”
    A smile wormed its way onto Natalie’s tightly pressed lips, then she laughed merrily. “If I could, I would, but I fear my imagination is sadly lacking.”
    “Ah,” the older woman said, “you’ve only had one man?”
    Natalie blushed. “ Ou i.”
    The woman looked pointedly in the direction of Natalie’s midsection, which was gently straining the limits of the satin-covered buttons. “You are enceinte ?”
    Natalie nodded.
    The woman set down her wine glass. “Do you know what happens to the bebés born at La Salpêtriére?”
    The tone in the courtesan’s voice, the pity . . . Natalie couldn’t force herself to ask. The cbocolat à triple à vanille she had just consumed suddenly weighed heavily in her stomach. Eyes wide with dread, she simply waited for the revelation.
    “The child is taken from you and reared in the portion of the prison reserved for indigents—the Great Prison.”
    A mother’s protective instinct came to life in Natalie with a mighty force. She was an awakened feline, ready to defend her cub. She sprang to her feet. “Then I will go with my child.” Madeleine shook her head, her orange-red curls quivering with the movement, and looked up at the bow-taut woman. “You do not know what you are saying. The Great Prison is a living nightmare. The habitual women criminals are also kept there: prostitutes infected with disease, poisoners, thieves, counterfeiters, the insane. You would be one against many. Your child— should it survive infancy—will become a plaything for the more depraved.”
    Slowly, Natalie sank into her chair. For the first time since her arrest, she buried her face in her hands and truly cried, great, heaving sobs that wracked her body. “Dear God, dear God, what am I to do?”
    Madeleine rose and, coming to the younger woman’s side, knelt and put her arm about Natalie’s shoulder. “I have no words of comfort—except that life is better than death. Always. You must try to fortify yourself to withstand whatever happens.”
    Natalie gritted her teeth. The chocolate dessert threatened to thrust its way up past her esophagus. “I will find a way before I let them take Philippe’s child from me. This baby is all we have left of each other.”
    As the weeks passed and Natalie’s condition became more obvious, no solution to her predicament presented itself. The apparent laxity of surveillance in that part of the prison was an illusion. Should she make her way past the heavy patrols to the large courtyard, where the females held under royal order were permitted to