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to change.”
    He looked a question at me.
    I busied myself with my food, refusing to respond.
    “I hope I made myself clear earlier.”
    “Quite.”
    “ Bon. You must see there are things that need to be arranged. For posterity’s sake…” As he tried to delicately refer to the spawn my stepmother was breeding, a high color sprouted on his cheeks. How endearing. He cleared his throat. “…some things are necessary.”
    •••
    As I waited for Remy to return from his hunt, I decided to take a turn in my stepmother’s garden. The air had chilled with autumn’s coming, but there were still blooms bursting forth everywhere. Over on the bench beneath the shade of a tree was Gabrielle herself. She looked like some overfed cow. And she was trying, without success, to stand.
    I walked over and offered her my arm.
    She nearly pulled me down on top of her with the heft of her extra weight. “ Merci , Julien.”
    “It is my very great honor, ma biche , to be counted upon to assist you.”
    “You see, it’s for this reason exactly you should find the taking of a wife so easy!” How grand she must seem to herself: married and a marquise at the age of twenty. And how generously she bestowed the wisdom gained from all of her life’s experience upon one who’d already seen nearly twice her years. She dimpled. “You could charm a nun from her convent.”
    “If I had to charm anyone into my bed, don’t you think a monastery more suitable to my tastes?”
    She laughed. That was something my father would never have done.
    “Why does no one ever believe me when I speak the truth?”
    “Because we want so much to believe the state of your soul matches your angelic looks.” She frowned as she stood there, trying to regain her breath. “You must know I have nothing to do with this plan to disinherit you.”
    “He wasn’t serious.” He couldn’t be serious. If he were serious, then I might as well kill myself now to save my many creditors the trouble. Though my debts were great, everyone at court knew my eventual inheritance would be greater still.
    If I were but there!
    Nothing could be gained here in the countryside but a virulent cough. For all my father waxed rhapsodic about them, there was nothing noble about our peasant countrymen. About their cows and their hayseed. I would give all the fresh air in Orléanais for Madame Sainctot’s salon in Paris, though it be fogged with tobacco smoke, soaked with the scents of a dozen different perfumes, and underscored by a mad melody played on a relentless harpsichord. Give me a place where every word was calibrated for amusement and spoken with wit…instead of this moldering château where words were wasted on topics as mundane as the latest calvings and the rising level of the miller’s stream.
    I yearned for my gaming tables.
    Draughts, hoc , or hasard . I wasn’t as particular as some. To risk all on the roll of a die or the turn of a card. God! That took true courage. That was an exercise in daring! These country bourgeoisie didn’t understand. If you had to gamble with the wringing of hands or the constant wiping of the brow, then why gamble at all?
    It had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with the nature of the man. To stare Fate in the eye and dare her to slap you? That took nerve. To respond as stoically in the winning as one did in losing? That required true nobility. My father had earned his on the battlefield. I had found mine in the tumble of dice and the dealing of cards.
    Unfortunately, noblesse required that eventually one repay his debts…or at least not leave that possibility in doubt. If my father spoke too loudly of his desire to change heirs, then I, too, might be reduced to the wringing of hands.
    I took a turn around the path with Gabrielle. She needed exercise; I needed not to be in the vicinity of my father. It was difficult to hide from him, out here in the country, if one was not impassioned, as was Remy, by falcons or riding