The Courtesan Read Online Free PDF

filled a goblet with liquid from an amber-colored bottle. Her fingers curled round the rim of her glass as a way of measuring, preventing the vessel from overflowing.
    Gabrielle caught the reek of very strong spirits, some form of cheap brandy most likely. She fretted her lower lip as Cass drained the large glass as though it was nothing more potent than a goblet of water.
    “Ah,” Cass breathed. “I needed that.” Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she said, “All right. Suppose we begin by you telling me all about this man that you want raised from the dead.”
    Gabrielle started. “Man? How do you know it is a man? I never said so.”
    Cass gave a throaty laugh. Carrying her bottle and glass, she found her way over to the table and eased down into the nearest chair. “You are a beautiful, intelligent woman who has been pushed to the brink of desperation. Of course there must be a man involved. So who was he? Some long-lost lover?”
    “No!” Gabrielle winced, fearing that her denial sounded too quick. But there had never been any question of anything like that between her and Remy. At least not on her part. She had never granted the man as much as a kiss.
    She paced the confines of the small chamber, hard-pressed to sort through her own tangled emotions about Remy and define exactly what their relationship had been.
    “He was a friend,” Gabrielle said at last. “Only a friend.”
    Cass’s eyebrows arched upward in skeptical fashion, but she made no comment as she refilled her glass. “And what was the name of this friend? ”
    Gabrielle had to moisten her lips before she was able to speak the name she had scarce allowed herself to utter these past three years.
    “Remy. Captain Nicolas Remy.”
    Cass paused in the act of settling the brandy bottle back on the table. “Nicolas Remy. The great Huguenot hero? The one they called the Scourge?”
    “Yes, but how do you know of him?”
    “I am not a complete recluse. I have Finette to bring me tidings of the world.” Cass took a swallow of her brandy, taking a little more time to savor her second drink.
    “You intrigue me,” she said to Gabrielle. “Your father, the Chevalier Cheney, was also acclaimed a great hero. What does the daughter of a celebrated Catholic knight want with a Protestant soldier?”
    “On Faire Isle, we tended to ignore the religious wars. One summer, Remy came to the island, a fugitive and badly wounded. Ariane brought him to our home and nursed him back to health. We kept him safe, hidden from the—”
    The Dark Queen.
    Gabrielle paused, reluctant to speak of how and why Nicolas Remy had made himself such a powerful enemy, Catherine de Medici, the Dowager Queen of France, but far better known by other names. The Italian Woman, the Sorceress, the Dark Queen. A daughter of the earth herself, Catherine was the most skillful practitioner of black magic in all of France, perhaps the world.
    Most wise women shrank from challenging Catherine’s power and shied away from any witch foolish enough to do so. Gabrielle didn’t want to frighten Cass off by revealing the enmity that existed between the Cheney women and the Dark Queen, a grim history that had begun long before they had snatched Remy from Catherine’s clutches.
    Gabrielle hesitated so long that Cassandra demanded impatiently. “You hid Remy from whom?”
    Gabrielle stripped off her cloak, hanging it on a peg near the empty hearth, the action giving her time to think. “From—from the Catholic soldiers who were persecuting him.”
    Cass was silent for so long Gabrielle did not know if she had been fooled by Gabrielle’s evasive answer. To her relief, Cass did not press her for more details of Remy’s desperate flight to the Faire Isle.
    Cass took another gulp of her drink and murmured, “So this Remy arrived on your doorstep, a wounded and tormented hero. I can conceive of nothing more romantic. And yet you deny that he won your heart?”
    “Yes, I do,” Gabrielle