Two Novellas by Bertrice Small: (The Awakening Zuleika and the Barbarian) Read online

  The Awakening

  by Bertrice Small

  Copyright © Bertrice Small 2015

  Kindle Edition

  Published by Butterfly Kisses Press

  Originally published in Delighted, copyright © 2002

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Paris—October 1793

  His eager passage impeded, the governor of the Île de Cité prison said, "You did not tell me you were a virgin, Citizeness de Thierry." There was a pleased smile upon his face.

  "I feared you would not want me inexperienced," the girl half whispered. It was difficult to speak bent over the table as she was, her nose just touching its rough top. "I do want to please you, monsieur, and you did promise me a favor for a favor. Would your pleasure have been as great had this road been frequently traveled?" Sacrebleu! She had never realized that a man's penis would feel as if she were being skewered like a piece of meat.

  "You honor me, Citizeness de Thierry," the governor said, complimenting her as if he had been raised at court. "I assure you I am not in the least displeased. Continue to please me, and you shall certainly have your favor." Then drawing himself back just slightly, he thrust hard into the girl.

  Renée de Thierry cried out, unable to help herself. The old whore in their cell had told her that the deflowering would hurt, but then the pain would go quickly.

  "If you would please the citizen governor, citizeness," the toothless crone had said, "wiggle your hips, and make sounds of enjoyment. Even if a man gives no pleasure, you must pretend that he does."

  Renée sighed, moaning low, thrusting her hips back into the governor's fat belly. "Oh! Oh!" she cried out. "Ohhhh!"

  The governor laughed, delighted. "By God, my pretty citizeness, I believe that you are a born whore, but then I have been told so many of you aristos are. We'll have a great deal of joy from one another, I promise you." He pushed himself forward again, and again, and yet again into her, his breath coming now in short, excited pants. "You shall not be mistreated, ma petite," he groaned, pleasure washing over him as his hard cock probed her hot, tight depths.

  His weight pressed her full breasts flat against the tabletop. The pain, as the old whore had promised, was almost immediately gone. This wasn't really as bad as she had anticipated, Renée thought. If she could not save Jules, and Marie-Agnes, at least she would save their child. "Yes!" she hissed. "Oh, yesss!" She could sense the arousal in his very movements, yet she seemed to have detached herself entirely from what was happening to her.

  "You like it, do you, Citizeness de Thierry?" the governor chuckled, even more pleased now than he had been before. "You like having my love lance filling your tight little hole? Well, my fine aristo wench, I'll be happy to oblige you. If I hadn't popped your cherry myself a moment ago, I should not have believed such enthusiasm could be engendered by a virgin. Virgins are supposed to be retiring." He grunted low as his climax approached. Then he exploded his juices into the girl, half collapsing atop her.

  "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" Renée cried, genuinely surprised as she felt the hot spurts of his lust filling her, and overflowing down the insides of her milky, trembling thighs.

  "Mon Dieu indeed, citizeness," the governor replied heartily. He drew his shrunken, and flaccid, member out of her juicy nest. Pulling her up, he turned her about to face him, thinking as he did that she was a pretty creature despite her dirty face, marked with the evidence of her tears. Almost tenderly the governor ran his finger down the wet runnel on her face. "Very well, citizeness, you have been honest with me. Now, what do you want? Do not ask for your brother, or his wife. I cannot give you their lives."

  "Their baby," Renée said softly. "It is only three months old, monsieur, and surely no threat to the revolution. It is a little girl, born on the fourteenth day of July, monsieur! Is that not fortuitous? Born on the same day the revolution was born. Please, monsieur!" Renée de Thierry's cornflower blue eyes now overflowed with the tears she had tried so heroically to hold back. "Please! I will do whatever you want, monsieur!"

  "If I spare the child, citizeness, must I also spare you revolutionary justice?" the governor asked, wondering if the girl was really worth the difficulties he would incur if he was found out.

  "Send my niece to the convent of St. Anne, which is near the Cathedral of Notre Dame, monsieur," Renée answered him calmly. "I will go to my death gladly knowing that our little Marguerite has been saved!"

  She had given him her virginity, a most precious gift indeed, in her effort to save the infant. And now she was willing to die for the child as well. François de la Pont found that he was genuinely moved. They lived in a cruel world where few were willing to sacrifice themselves for another life. Yet this girl, a hated aristocrat, was willing to give all she had left for an innocent. No one would miss a baby, the governor decided to himself. The de Thierry family were hardly notables. He pulled the girl against him roughly. "Very well, ma petite," he told her.

  Renée, to her deep mortification, burst into fulsome tears, quite soaking the governor's shirt as she clung to him. "Oh, thank you, monsieur!" she wept.

  He stroked her hair. "And no one will miss you either," he said. "I will see that your name is kept off of the execution lists. I will repay my debt to you in full." In all of this madness, François de la Pont, a fishmonger's son, educated by some miracle, and a soldier, remembered that he was an honorable man.

  Renée looked up at him. "Debt?" Her young voice was confused. "You owe me no debt, monsieur; rather it is I who owe you."

  "You gave me your virtue, citizeness. In return I shall give you your life. As for the infant, they are too difficult to guillotine." He did not bother to tell her that infants were usually bashed against the guillotine posts while their horrified relations looked on in agony, prior to going to their own deaths. "Go back to your cell, and return with the child. Then I shall have it sent to St. Anne's. If you are to spend your time pleasing me, you will have no time to expend in the care of your niece." He smiled down at her, and Renée de Thierry, because she knew it was expected of her, smiled back shyly.

  "Merci, monsieur," she replied once again.

  "Merci, citizen," he gently corrected her, untangling her from the embrace.

  Renée caught her lower lip with her top teeth in a charming gesture of contriteness. "Merci, citizen," she said softly, and she curtsied to him prettily.

  "I cannot wait to see you naked," he said boldly as he caught a glimpse of her pretty breasts. "Tonight, little one, I shall begin to teach you all the things you will need to know about pleasing me, or any other man." Turning her about, he smacked her bottom, chuckling once more as she squealed with surprise.

  Renée de Thierry followed the guard from the governor's apartment, back through the dank prison corridors to the half-lit cell where her brother and his wife, and a dozen others, were incarcerated. Along the way the guard stopped, pushing her up against the stone walls of the prison, fumbling for his male member as he tried to raise her skirts.

  Renée slapped him hard. "Are you a fool that you would touch me knowing what you know?" she demanded. "I belong to Governor de la Pont now."

  "You won't always belong to the old goat," the guard muttered, disappointed, jamming his hand down her bodice and squeezing her breast.

  "No, I won't," Renée agreed, pulling his
rough hand away. "When I do not, we will discuss this matter again. For now I shall not tell the governor that you tried to assault me." It was at that moment she decided if she must whore to survive, she would do so only for the high and mighty of this new order. Never for lowlifes like this creature!

  "All right," the guard grumbled. "But you don't know what you're missing, wench. I'm much more lively than your ancient lover." He led her out of the alcove where he had pushed her and back to her cell, shoving her inside. "You have five minutes. Then I'll be back for you, citizeness."

  "Give me Marguerite," Renée said immediately to her sister-in-law.

  "What have you done, Renée?" her brother demanded angrily.

  "I have saved your daughter's life," Renée answered him fiercely. Jules could be such a pompous fool sometimes, even if he was her brother. "She will be taken to safety to be raised by the nuns at St. Anne's near the cathedral. I would have bargained for your life, and Marie-Agnes, but he told me not to even consider it. What have I done? I have done what I had to do, Jules!"

  "Who is he?" her brother wanted to know.

  "Governor de la Pont," Renée answered him.

  "That traitor?"

  "I do not care what he is, Jules. I only care that Marguerite is saved from this horror. She is an innocent."

  "But you no longer are," her brother snarled, and then he slapped her across her defiant face. "Whore! You have given yourself away. Now no decent man will have you!"

  Renée de Thierry burst out laughing, the sound echoing eerily in the dim light of the cell. "All those men you deem decent, brother, have been murdered by this revolution, or they have fled France. Our world has been turned upside down, and you still cannot face it! I have done what I had to do to save your child. I ask no thanks of you. Sooner than later I, too, shall go to visit Madame la Guillotine, but for now I amuse Citizen de la Pont, and my niece will be saved."

  "My father always said you were too willful, Renée," was the cold reply. "My daughter will remain with her parents. You have squandered your virtue for naught."

  "Jules!" Marie-Agnes's voice was pleading and strained. She understood far better than her spouse the sacrifice her young sister-in-law had made to save Marguerite.

  "My sister has behaved like a whore, wife. She has become a stranger to us. De Thierrys do not accept favors from strangers," the comte said stonily, his handsome face set, his blue eyes cold.

  "You would allow your child to die a needless death?" Renée demanded furiously of her brother, not quite able to believe what she was hearing.

  "Our family descends from the lords of the Gauls, and the Roman conquerors," the comte began loftily. "Better our line ends here and now, rather than accept disgrace, and defeat."

  The cell door was opened again; Renée's guard was there in the light of his flickering lantern. "Your time is up, citizeness," he said.

  "Give me Marguerite," Renée said quietly.

  "No," her brother replied implacably.

  But then Marie-Agnes, Comtesse de Thierry, quickly thrust her daughter into the arms of her sister-in-law. "Keep her safe! Tell her of us if you survive," she said. "God bless you, Renée, for what you have done!" Unashamed tears ran down her pale, thin face.

  Clutching the baby, Renée turned swiftly before her brother might stop her and snatch the infant back. She hurried from the cell, never once turning. She heard the door clang shut behind her with the finality of death.

  "Whore!" her brother shouted after her. "God damn you for the disgrace you have brought upon our name. Whore!"

  Tears running down her cheeks, Renée ran from the sound of his angry voice. She would never forget this moment even if she lived to be an old woman, which seemed unlikely.

  "Come on," the guard said. "The governor said we're to take the brat to the nuns. Then you are to be brought back here. The old goat is practically chomping at the bit to get you into his bed again, citizeness." He laughed rudely.

  Renée heard her brother's curse. Her heart was heavy despite her victory in saving her niece. She stepped out into the Paris streets for the first time in six weeks, blinking in the afternoon sunlight. It was autumn. The air was cleaner than any she had smelled in days. Marguerite stirred in her arms, whimpering softly. Renée looked down at the infant. "Your papa is a fool, mignon," she told the baby, "but I am not. We will survive, you and I. We will survive!"

  Chapter One

  Paris—1821

  "You will leave this house immediately, madame, taking nothing with you but the clothes on your back," Lord William Abbott said to his stepmother. "After all, you brought nothing to my father but your insatiable greed for his possessions, you damnable French whore!"

  Lady Marguerite Abbott stared shocked at the man before her. Finally she spoke. "You are wrong, William, and you know you are wrong. Your father and I loved one another. We sought to make you a part of our family, but you would not have it."

  "You made my father leave me. Leave England," Lord Abbott accused her.

  "Your father brought me home to France because he believed your jealousy of our children could only be relieved if we were not living at Abbottsford. If we left it to you, even before it was legally yours, Charles felt that perhaps you would feel more secure as his heir. Our children could not change that. After what happened to Henry . . . " Her voice trailed off.

  "Too bad you couldn't prove that I killed the little brat," William Abbott mocked her. "But you couldn't, could you?" He laughed meanly. "Don't you ever wonder how I did it?"

  Lady Abbott grew pale. She knew that if there'd been a weapon at hand—any weapon—she would have used it on him. He had killed her infant son. She knew it. Charles had known it, but there had been no way to prove the heinous crime. After that, she had been frightened living at Abbottsford, especially when she became enceinte with Emilie. "This is my house," she said, attempting to turn the subject away from her murdered infant son.

  "No, it isn't," Lord Abbott replied. "When my father died, everything he possessed came to me under the law, madame."

  "Your father had a will," Marguerite said.

  Reaching into his coat's inside pocket, Lord Abbott drew out a thin document. "Do you mean this, madame?" He smiled nastily as he unfolded the parchment. "Let me see now, what it says. Ahh, yes. Here is the part that will be of interest to you. I bequeath my home in the village of Vertterre to my beloved wife, Marguerite Abbott, née de Thierry; and order that my estate pay her a stipend of two thousand pounds annually for her support, and that of our daughter, Emilie. To my daughter, Emilie, I leave a dowry of one thousand pounds." Lord Abbott tore the document into several pieces, slowly, and quite deliberately fed them to the fire in the hearth. "I expect this is the only copy," he noted. "Now, it would appear that under the laws of both France and England I am my father's only legitimate heir, madame."

  Marguerite Abbott was no fool. "There is always the widow's mite under the law, William," she told him.

  "But by the time you have found the means to obtain and pay for a lawyer, madame, I shall be safely back in England. Whatever my dear sire has possessed here in France will belong to other owners, or I will have taken with me. You will have a very difficult time unraveling the muddle I make. How will you support yourself and your brat while you do?" He laughed. "Of course I can take Emilie off of your hands, if you wish, madame. I know an Arab prince in London who is quite fond of small girls. He would pay a fortune for a little blue-eyed blond maid. It might even reimburse me for the monies my father expended on you, madame. How old is my half-sister now? Six? Such a delicious age, is it not? The prince will see that Emilie lacks for nothing, in exchange, of course, for certain liberties." He laughed.

  "You are vile!" Lady Abbott said angrily. "That you would even suggest such a thing but bespeaks your monstrous nature, William! Do you not feel the least modicum of guilt in falsely disinheriting your sister and me? I was your father's wife for ten years. Your own mother, God bless her, was not married to Charles
for so long."

  "Why should I feel guilt?" he demanded of her. "My father was much too old to remarry when you enticed him, and then seduced him into marrying you. He was forty-four to your seventeen! I was a year your senior! Do you know how foolish you made him look? An old man panting, and drooling after a chit, just out of the schoolroom, damnit!"

  Marguerite shook her head sadly. "You never understood, did you, William? You father and I loved one another. The years between us meant nothing. They were meaningless. Please, I beg you, if you choose not to honor your father's wishes, keep your monies, but do not take my home from me. Emilie and I must have a place to live. All of our memories are here. Your father is even buried in the village churchyard, William. Take whatever else you wish, but leave us this house," she pleaded with him.

  "The house is sold," he told her coldly. "The new owners will arrive tomorrow to take possession of it."

  "But my things!" she cried.

  "You have nothing, madame," he insisted. "The house was sold furnished. I have turned the servants off. The new owners may want to hire some of them back, but I do not intend paying further wages."

  "Your father—" she began.

  Lord William Abbott slammed his fist onto a table by his side. "My father! I am sick unto death of hearing your praises for and laments about my father, madame! What did he have that I do not, pray? I have been told my entire life that I am his mirror image, yet you never noticed me that season in London. No! You only noticed Charles Abbott, but not William. Why? I will tell you why. It is the plain truth that he had the money, and I did not. You never saw either of us. You only saw what my father could give you. You did not see that I wanted you. You only saw my father's wealth." William Abbott's face was beet red with his anger, and his frustration.

  "That isn't so, and you are horrible to say so!" Lady Abbott cried, astounded by his revelation. "Loving your father had nothing to do with his wealth, or his features, William. I loved him because he was loving, and kind, and gentle, and amusing; but how could you understand that? Your whole life has been driven by your self-interest!"