Free Triumph in Arms by Jennifer Blake

in the early morning hours, making every effort not to disturb the house?
    What was he about? A woman more vivacious and accommodating than she had been, perhaps? Cards, drinking, laughing and talking with his swordsmen friends?
    Desolation seeped through Reine’s veins. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the curtain folds that were pulled tight in her hand. So it began again, the lies, the desertions, the betrayals. The aching loneliness. She had expected better of Christien Lenoir, though why she could not have said. Perhaps she had only hoped.
    Could she bear it all again? Could she accept glib explanations instead of the truth? Could she smile and pretend everything was as it should be? Could she stand being made to feel again that she was lacking because her husband preferred more amusing company?
    It was the fate of women, or so she had been told. Men were men, n’est-ce pas? They must have outletsfor their terrible male energy. Whatever excitement they might find elsewhere, they must always return to their wives, yes? It was a woman’s duty to wait on that moment. A wise one took pleasure and comfort in her children and learned to enjoy her occasional freedom from the demands of the bedchamber.
    The answer to that, Reine had always thought, was almost childishly simple. If marriage was supposed to be passed in such solitary waiting, then why take a husband at all? And in fact, life had been much more peaceful with Theodore gone. No demands that she come to bed at once, no disparaging remarks about her failure to follow the current modes, no teasing and tickling Marguerite until she was in tears, no wrestling with Paul until he was red-faced with anger over unkind jeers from a man ten years his senior and half again his size.
    No sneering at her Américain mother, and no curses if she dared question where Theodore had been, suggested he limit the glasses of cognac he drank after dinner or asked that he refrain from leading her father into the most infamous of the Vieux Carré’s gambling dens.
    Much more peaceful, yes.
    Now it would begin again.
    Releasing the curtain she held, she smoothed the brocade folds with trembling fingers and turned to make her way back to her bed. She didn’t sleep, however. The first breezes of dawn, drifting into the room, stirred the ghostlike folds of her mosquito baire, seeped inside its white tent to cool the tears on her face.

Chapter Six
    P ale lamplight shone from the balcony doors, which stood open to the hot night air. Vinot was still up, Christien thought, or more likely had never gone to bed. He bracketed his lips with his hands and whistled in a soft signal. The old fencing master’s shadow shifted, a gray ghost of movement against the salon’s high ceiling as he picked up the lamp and left the room. A few minutes later, the street door swung open on oiled hinges.
    “You’re back, my son,” Lucien Vinot said, his voice as gentle as his eyes were sharp. “I had not expected you so soon.”
    Christien stepped inside, took the door and closed it behind him.
    “The first part is accomplished. More than that, I’ve been given a bedchamber at River’s Edge.”
    “So you are established there. Excellent.” The maître turned and shuffled back down the long hallway that led under the upper floor of the house, ending at a set of stairs that curved their way upward. Over his shoulder, he said, “You had no difficulty with Cassard?”
    “None at all. He was expecting me, of course.”
    “And his daughter, she was agreeable?”
    Christien followed after his onetime mentor, reaching around to take the lamp as the older man grasped the banister to pull himself up the stairs. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but she allowed herself to be persuaded.”
    “I’ll warrant she did. You have a convincing way about you.”
    “She was more taken by the fact that her daughter likes me. It’s a damnable business. I could almost wish it undone.”
    The maîre