The English Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page B

portions destined for the prisoners and taken the good food from his own table. He could not do it often, he whispered apologetically. Someone would notice or his own family would starve.
    Later, when they believed in him, he offered to take Leonie out for “exercise”. He could not take the others, he said. No one would question him or look to see the face of a young girl with whom he chose to walk, but an older man or woman or a young boy would cause comment. Once, the first time, they actually did walk a little way while Louis explained what he wanted. He gilded it finely with hints of the desperate danger he courted to give Leonie’s family the little ease he could. He veneered with talk of self-sacrifice the ugly fact that he was demanding that Leonie pay with her body for the favors of clean water and an occasional mouthful of unspoiled food for her mother and brother.
    Louis had been clever, but he underestimated Leonie. She knew what love was—the giving without thought of recompense. She knew what honor was also. She knew a man worthy of love did not ask nor expect payment for dangers voluntarily undertaken out of sympathy or justice, more especially when those favors were bestowed on someone utterly helpless, utterly within one’s power. Nonetheless, she agreed without much argument to what Louis wanted, fearing if she did not that her parents and young brother would suffer for her resistance. Leonie knew she had neither maidenhead nor reputation to protect, and she had no feeling of “wrong” attached to sexual promiscuity. Her cooperation was a matter of survival.
    Later, Leonie came to realize that she had benefited from Louis’ selfish desire for a cost-free and delicate bedmate. Simply to be out of the fetid atmosphere of her family’s cell had helped her resist the soul-killing despair that destroyed her mother and brother. In addition, coupling with Louis had removed from the act itself the taint of torture it had held after she had been raped. Louis was not a good lover. He was far too indifferent to his partner’s needs. However, he liked comfort. He had no intention of forcing or frightening his bedmate so that she would be stiff and inflexible or would struggle against him. Thus, he was gentle if not considerate. He did not bother to try to wake Leonie’s desire, and he never brought her to climax. Yet he made intercourse simple and acceptable, a thing not to be feared or avoided.
    Leonie could not help smiling. Louis had explained how and what to do to arouse a man. Leonie enjoyed that part so much that she invented new devices that produced quite dramatic results. The pleasure she derived came from reducing so self-possessed and calculating a creature as Louis to a sighing, moaning mass of quivering flesh. More importantly, instructed by Louis’ total selfishness as well as by his lust, Leonie had learned that her body could be a valuable trading device and weapon.
    Not that she tried to trade with Louis for anything beyond what she knew he was willing to give anyway. Not even lust could divert Louis from his own purposes. However, Leonie knew that most other men were different. Louis had taught her that too, laughing about the weaknesses of others, at the gifts his companions gave their women, at the things they did for them. Leonie listened with downcast eyes, a model of dullness and docility, smiling inside herself at the weakness Louis displayed. Because he needed to boast of his own powers, of his own growing influence and importance, he had told her a very great deal.
    Jean-Paul’s grip on Saulieu was no longer as strong as it had been when he first seized power. There was serious unrest in the town that was being repressed with fiercer and fiercer measures. So far no one had been executed, but it was only a matter of time. Louis had grinned when he told Leonie that the previous night, and that grin had given her serious food for thought. Although he still retained only his position of