L.

[1.] If You Go Now, I Will Ruin You

[Turn of the 18th century, Paris.]

"Here, ma bichette, it's for you. Stay with me tonight."

My little doe. I have been called many things. My little cat. My mouse. My heart. My little bread. "My little doe." I have never liked it. 

He was only a merchant, and near the court only because of his cash, and because of that there was in his hand a mighty pearl crowned round about with emeralds. It was a small piece of a former necklace converted into a brooch. It had been likely stripped of a diamond collar, more expensive than its pendants. 

"Green does not look well upon my breast,"I told him.

Crestfallen, he hid the brooch in his palm and tucked it behind his back, as if he had presented me with a kidney stone.

I had come to his house to meet my chiefest paramour, a Marquess without land holdings who yet managed, being an accountant of high regard, to retain far greater sums than possible from rents alone. I shall never taint my honor to be "bichette" to hangers-on who cannot even wear a sword. The merchant would not dare to stain my name in any case, wanting, as he did, to lick my heel.

The Marquess and I met there in order to maintain our secrets. It thrilled him. He would find me there and wrap me in a cloak of long-haired sable, to warm my skin and impress me. He, thickly-shouldered and with intelligent eyes, would take me in a closed carriage to the gambling house outside the city walls where he kept rooms. He would have me there, and contort himself out of speaking words of love, awkwardly, for weaker men are often loose-lipped in bed. I intended to pull on his short hairs and make him laugh. 

I had bathed and put on tinctures of orange blossoms to make him mad, like Louis XIV lasciviously perfuming the reception hall for nightly entrance. My hair was lightly powdered and piled, only enough for him to think me very white and clean. I had worn my best white shirt, freshly laundered, and the black coat he had given me -- like a Florentine. I cannot like to stand out too far in public, being a "no one" of the shadow court standing in plain sight. I save shining for being a secret star of naughty salons. If he had not brushed his hair, I determined, I would not go with him. If he did not cover his pockmarks with pretty spots, I would not go with him. That is only fair. 

The merchant left me alone to look out of his windows, waiting for the carriage to come. The summer had been so polluted by miasmas from the Seine that the Marquess would not allow me to wait outside for him. 

But when the Marquess arrived, he came only with a horse. I watched him tie his mare to the hitching post, distorted by the window glass.

His entrance came endowed with the smell of horses and manure. His thick boots on the hardwood floor caused me to turn about, away from him. No red heel!

"Do not be cold to me. Oh, is that how you will be? Suivez-moi en silence," he ordered, speaking to me like a mistress. Follow me silently. "Keep your pretty mouth shut."

"You brat," I told him, taking his arm. "You wouldn't dare."

He would. Outside, he put me up on the horse roughly, rocking my lungs up into my throat, and causing the mare to exhale noisily with irritation. The Marquess got up behind me. 

"You've gone absolutely mad. You've gone absolutely mad. I absolutely will not ride like this, like a catamite on parade through the city. Let me off and get out of my sight. Completely quit me! You're insane!" 

"Put on your hat and shut up," he said. "We are not going along the river."

He held me still with one arm around my waist. I know he felt the hilt of my dagger, hidden in my waistcoat.