Aghast, I drew back. “Forgive me, but I feel suddenly unwell.”
My instinctive horrified reaction seemed to give him the greatest amusement, and he put his hand atop mine, holding fast. “A word of advice, poppet—take care not to be too saintly. Your husband is already an object of mockery at court, and you should not like to join him.”
How dizzied I suddenly felt by the musicians and the dancers swirling in lace and brocade. “What has Lafayette done to merit mockery?”
“You’re an angel to pretend you don’t know your father saddled you with an oaf from the mountains who can’t even drink without his knees wobbling.”
He laughed at my husband’s expense as if he expected me to join in. Then he gestured to where my husband gazed out the window. “Look at him standing at the edge of the dance floor like a dunce. I doubt Lafayette’s name is on a single dance card. Perhaps he devotes himself to you. Perhaps to God. Either way he courts resentment, and makes you both seem like children.”
Truly, I felt like a child trying to fend Philippe off. “Please release me.”
His grip tightened. “Only if you promise to be sweeter to me next time we meet. A dull husband need not keep you from blossoming; with my help you could bloom into a rare flower indeed.”
I did not promise, but pulled away knowing I could not share this conversation with anyone, lest my husband be humiliated and my father enraged. What’s more, there was no escape from my unease in fragrant moonlit gardens, with fireworks overhead, or even watching the card games that went late into the night, for this was a world filled with men just like Chartres. We could be wary of the decadence and corruption of Versailles, but every day, we became more a part of it. And all the while, my husband seemed to lapse more into silence, both at court . . . and at home.
“Is the Lafayette boy mute?” Grand-mère asked at breakfast, tapping her ear trumpet.
“Grand-mère,” I said, trying to distract her with a buttered roll, “Monsieur de Lafayette is not yet accustomed to such garrulous society as ours.”
We were, after all, an imposing family. But I startled to see my new husband slip marzipan into his pocket like a beggar. Did he grow up hungry as a boy at Chavaniac? “Gilbert,” I whispered over the porcelain tea service. “You may call upon servants for marzipan whenever you wish.”
He colored. “It’s for my horse. An experiment.”
This attracted the notice of the duc d’Ayen from the far end of the table, for in addition to his duties at court, my father was an avid scientist, with a laboratory in Paris and a deep interest in chemistry. “What manner of experiment?”
Gilbert’s color deepened, as if he feared mockery, and several long moments passed in silence.
“The boy is mute!” Grand-mère crossed herself. “Why weren’t we informed of this during the wedding negotiations?”
Goaded, Gilbert explained, “At school I was once told to describe a perfect horse. One so well disciplined it would obey at the sight of the whip. I wrote that a perfect horse would throw his rider at the sight of a whip. This I still believe.”
“Impudence!” cried my aunt, Madame de Tessé, but she grinned, for she read Rousseau and Voltaire and fancied herself quite a philosopher.
Gilbert seemed to fancy himself one too. “No creature should yield easily to cruelty.”
My father rolled his eyes heavenward. “You mean to coddle your mount and see how he behaves? You’ll ruin a stallion that way.”
Gilbert lowered his gaze in apparent deference, but before he did, I saw a storm of defiance in his eyes—a storm that both thrilled and worried me. Later, in the quiet of the bedchamber, where my husband and I shared sweet and gentle intimacies, I broached the subject. “Gilbert, why shy away from conversation at court?”
“Because no one there talks of anything worthy of discussion.”
Perhaps this was true, and I could scarcely blame him for disdaining the games of gossip both light and fatal. Still, it seemed unpardonably prideful to hold ourselves above our social betters. “You might raise interesting subjects. You speak to me so knowledgeably about Voltaire and the old Romans . . . about whether God exists, and if he does, in what form . . .”
“That is because you are sincerely interested. Whereas everyone else only wishes to seize upon what I say to ridicule. To them I will always be a nobody from Chavaniac.”
He was wrong; his marriage to me, his association with the Noailles, made him a somebody. And we were invited to every royal function. By winter my brother-in-law, Marc, had been welcomed into the ranks of the Society of the Wooden Sword, and he obtained an invitation for Gilbert—an invitation my father said he must accept. Gilbert joined, but soon vexed my father for participating in their antics. “What could he have been thinking?”