The General's Mistress by Jo Graham Page A

side. Her lips were bright red, and her eyes were cool and calculating. “No, I haven’t really. I understand he likes whips and chains.”
    “Bah,” said Joséphine. “And where you heard that, I can’t imagine.”
    Thérèse’s eyes lingered on my collar. Then she raised her eyes to mine, a little smile playing around her lips. I felt myself blushing. “You can be so naïve, Joséphine. You think every man plays one note, like that little Corsican of yours. We should ask our new friend if what they whisper about Moreau is true. Do you have a first name?”
    “Ida,” I said. “And please be free with it. But I would not dream of discussing Victor in that way. He is the kindest and most gallant of protectors.”
    “Of course he is,” Joséphine said firmly. “I must go help Paul greet the foreigners before the music starts. Behave yourself, Thérèse.”
    “I always do,” she said.
    The music began, but she did not move, only stood at my side. Couples were taking to the floor in the most scandalous dance I had ever seen, dancing nearly in an embrace, with his left arm about her waist.
    “The waltz,” Thérèse said. “I don’t dance.” Her beauty was almost too polished. There was something about her that reminded me of Victor. Something of her reserve, something in the way she looked at me knowingly.
    “Oh,” I said. I looked about for Victor, but he was already on his way to claim me.
    Moments later, he led me onto the floor. I did not know the dance, but he led well. He leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I see Thérèse wasted no time.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked. I was trying not to trip. This dance involved a lot of being propelled backward.
    He laughed softly. “You must let her seduce you. But not too quickly. That will take all the fun out of it for her. And it will please her to think she has won something from me.”
    I felt myself flushing to the roots of my hair. “She is . . . like you?” I asked.
    “In some ways,” he said. “And in others, not at all. She plays for vanity.”
    And you play for power, I thought. Power, and perhaps solace.

Winter in Paris

    I was certainly not bored over the winter. While Victor did not spend every night with me, several times a week we went out somewhere and ended the evening at the house in Rue de Saint-Dominique. Sometimes it was parties and balls. All of the Directors and the leaders of government seemed to feel it was necessary to hold constant entertainments to make up for the austerities of the last few years, so the year’s end was filled with a round of one after the other.
    We also went to the theater. I had never been before, and I was utterly entranced. I ignored the intrigues among the spectators and the running from one box to another to sit speechless, my fan clasped between my hands, watching the action on the stage. Victor thought this very amusing.
    One evening, after we had returned from an evening of Racine, I was trying to remember all the lines I had heard, to capture them. I had a quick memory, and some of the better parts did stick with me. I turned to Moreau as he came in removing his cravat and pointed my fan at him coquettishly.
    “ ‘He had your way of standing, your body, your face. That same noble blush colored his face when to our Crete he traversed the seas to find the daughters of Minos.’ ” I said the last words walking around him, as though considering the effect of my words on a young Hippolyte.
    Victor caught my wrists as I came around. “You would makea lovely Phèdre, my dear. But you do know she copulated with animals, don’t you?”
    “I think that’s Pasiphaë,” I said.
    He pulled me rather roughly against him, and I gasped. His cravat twisted around my hands, and he dragged them over my head—which had the effect of raising my breasts almost out of the top of my gown. Victor laughed. The color was rising in my face. “You know, it takes almost nothing to arouse you, my dear.