Indignation rose in my breast. “I have spread no such rumor. How can you believe it of me?”
“How, indeed?” Her cheeks splotched with temper. “Your husband believes you are a veritable angel. A perfect saint, without a speck of sin or jealousy in your heart, but we know better, don’t we?”
My heart was, in fact, so black with jealousy I felt the need to say, “I am sorry for these rumors, but they are not my doing. Your husband—”
“You sent your father to poison my husband against me!”
I was so stunned by the accusation that I wanted to deny it at once. Yet the possibility my father had done this for my sake—and the fear Gilbert might suspect as much—mortified me into silence.
“No one will receive me until I reconcile with my husband,” Aglaé continued. “Yet your father has made reconciliation impossible. He has my husband doubting even if our children belong to him. And now my family plans to shut me away in a nunnery.”
I stared at her agonized painted face and a new and sudden pain throbbed beneath my breast. Despite my distaste for this woman, despite the offenses she had done me, I knew there was, in all this, something unjust. Aglaé was suffering not only for her own actions, but also because of Gilbert’s fame. Whilst my husband was away at war, I had played the faithful Penelope to his Odysseus—but the song needed a Circe, a seductress, and Aglaé had foolishly taken the role. “I did not send my father, but I am sorry nevertheless.”
All traces of hubris gone, she asked, “Do I deserve to be locked away for the crime of loving Lafayette? You have everything, Adrienne. You have Lafayette. He is yours for life. His kisses were mine only for a few moments that have cost me everything. I beg your mercy.”
To have her beg my mercy was too much. I was not the angel Gilbert supposed. I wanted to scratch her eyes out. I wanted to throw her out of the carriage and see her land in the mud . . . but I did not wish for her to be locked away for the rest of her life, and even more so, I did not want her children to be deprived of a mother’s love. Thus I found myself asking, “What is it you think I can do to help?”
“Call off your father. Prevail upon Lafayette. If he will not give me written proof the affair is over, my husband will never take me back.”
Under no circumstances could I bring myself to confront my father, if only because the duc d’Ayen, through this ill-conceived gesture, had finally demonstrated the love for me I had so hungered for when I was a girl. It had been humiliating enough to sob into my father’s handkerchief; I could not now tell him I wished to be of service to the very woman who had occasioned those tears.
Gilbert was another matter.
That night I found my husband laboring over his “Observations on Commerce between France and the United States.” He wanted to establish free trade with American merchants now, before peace could be concluded with Britain, giving us competition. Taking a breath for courage, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and adopted a teasing tone. “I have caught you begging favors for your mistress. Fortunately, Mademoiselle America is such a worthy lady I have never resented her!”
Gilbert stopped writing. His eyes met mine, apprehensive.
The sadness he must have seen there made him wince. Yet that is all I gave him in that moment. Only a glimpse of my sadness, because I would never lower myself to start a quarrel with him over a woman. And because I was too proud to allow him to see any petty impulse, I merely said, “I remember when you left me for America, I resolved never to show discontent—”
“Adrienne,” he rasped.
For a moment I feared that he might bring a jealous quarrel into the open. I would not allow him that salve for his conscience either. I would allow no open discussion of this affair, and he would simply have to bear it. As if I did not hear the strained regret in his voice, I went on breezily, forcing a little laugh. “Even if America were not a worthy rival, I could always take pride in your decency in courting her. After all, you have defended her honor, and always done by her what is right, no matter the cost to your pride . . . even when it meant stepping aside. You are far too honorable a man to allow any lady to suffer.”
Gilbert put down his pen and reached a trembling hand for mine. He tried to say something, but no words came. They did not need to. He would break with his mistress, this I knew. What I did not suspect was that he would go to Chavaniac to do it.
The next morning his trunks were packed. “I have been gone too long from the place that made me. I have somehow lost my way.”