Was he mad? What did he mean? He was squeezing her so tightly that she could almost hear her ribs cracking, and yet at the same time the softness of his lips upon her quivering flesh was almost unbearable. Marianne was conscious of a sudden lump in her throat and she knew, even in the midst of her anger and her shame, that she no longer had the will to fight. It was so long since she too had known the sweetness of love and of a man's touch caressing her body. Not since that unknown lover—some Greek fisherman, had he been?—had taken her in the recesses of a cave so dark that she had never even seen his face. He had been no more than a vague form in the night, a kind of phantom, yet he had given her the most exquisite pleasure.
The soft touch of his mouth was on her cheek, had found her lips, which parted of themselves. Her heart was thudding like a hammer in her chest and when a hand crept up to her breast and imprisoned it, she felt as if her legs were giving way beneath her. It was a simple matter for the duke to lower her gently on to the velvet-covered sofa which stood close by the desk.
He took his lips from hers as he laid her down and turned briefly to extinguish the candles. The room was plunged into darkness. Her head swimming and her limbs on fire, Marianne thought for an instant that she was back again in that glorious cave in Corfu. She was at the heart of an impenetrable darkness in which there was nothing, only a warm, tobacco-scented breath and two hands that divested her skillfully of her dress and began a passionate exploration of her body.
He was quite silent now, and his only contact with her was through those roving hands, caressing her breasts, belly and thighs, lingering over each new revelation, before resuming their exquisitely titillating voyage of discovery, until it seemed to Marianne that she must go mad. Her whole body was on fire and crying out for the satisfaction of its primitive desires. So that it was she, at last, who drew him down to her.
She reached up and linked her arms about the duke's neck, seeking his lips, and they fell back together on to the cushions, she giving a little gasp of pleasure as she felt his weight upon her and sensed the pent-up passion in his body. In her eagerness to satisfy a hunger which had been too long denied and was now brutally awakened, she was already offering herself, but she waited in vain.
Silence fell, thick and frightening. The weight removed itself from her body and then, quite suddenly, out of the enveloping darkness, as thick and black as the tomb, there came the sound of a sob.
Marianne got up quickly and felt her way to the desk. Her trembling fingers found flint and tinder, and she struck a light and first one and then another candle came to life, revealing the room with its heavy furniture, its thick curtains and its oppressively businesslike atmosphere, as far removed as it was possible to be from the delirium of love.
The first thing to catch Marianne's eye was her dress, lying in a snowy heap of satin on the end of the sofa. She snatched at it in a kind of fury to cover her shivering nakedness, still striving to control her breathing and calm the frenzied beating of her heart. It was only then she saw the duke.
He was sitting on the edge of a chair, his head in his hands and crying like a child whom Santa Claus had forgotten. His shoulders were shaking with sobs and he was shivering so wretchedly that all Marianne's feelings of bitter frustration were swallowed up in pity for him. At that moment, the powerful governor of new Russia looked more wretched and broken than the least of the Armenian beggars that crowded the port of Odessa.
Hurriedly, she slipped into her dress and did what she could to tidy her hair. She could not bring herself to break the silence, preferring rather to wait for his misery to subside, for she sensed in some confused fashion that it sprang from a deep and private hurt. But when, after a little while, his sobs showed no sign of abating, she went to him and laid one hand timidly on his shoulder.
"Please," she said gently, "don't cry. It is not worth it. You—you were unlucky. It happens sometimes. You must not upset yourself like this over such a little thing."
He lifted his head abruptly from his hands, revealing a face so ravaged with tears that Marianne's heart was touched.
"Not simply unlucky," he said miserably. "It is the curse I spoke of—earlier. I thought—oh, how I thought that you had banished it. That it was lifted from me at last! But it was not to be. I have it still. I shall always have it. It will be with me all my life and because of it my family will die with me."
He had risen and was pacing the room agitatedly. To her horror, Marianne saw him pick up the heavy bronze inkstand from his desk and hurl it with the full force of his arm against one of the bookcases, the front of which shattered in a crash of broken glass.
"Cursed! I am cursed!" he raged. "You can't know what it is to be unable to love, to love as other men love. I had forgotten it, but just now, when I touched you, I felt—oh, the wonder, the miracle of it—I felt that my power of feeling was not dead, that I could still desire a woman, that perhaps my life could begin again. But no, it could not! Ever since that dreadful day, it is all over—all over! Forever!"
He was shaken by a fresh bout of sobbing so violent that Marianne was afraid. The poor man seemed so close to the depths of despair that she cast about in her mind for some way to help him. On a small table by a window she saw a silver tray with a jug of water, some glasses and a decanter filled with a dark-colored liquid that was evidently some kind of wine. Going quickly to the table, she filled a glass with water and then, just as she was about to take it to Richelieu, who had slumped down again on the end of the sofa, an idea came to her. She felt in the pocket of her dress and brought out a small sachet containing a grayish powder.
Earlier that evening, setting out to keep this dinner engagement which had filled her with such apprehensions, she had brought the sachet with her from her room. In it was a preparation with a base of opium which Turhan Bey's Persian physician had made up for her during the last weeks of her pregnancy, when she was finding it difficult to sleep. It had the power of inducing a swift and pleasant slumber and it had occurred to Marianne that it might prove a useful weapon if Richelieu's attentions should become too pressing.
Smiling a little ironically, she dropped a pinch of the powder into the glass, adding a little wine to take away the taste. The duke's attentions could hardly have been more pressing, and yet she had quite forgotten what only a little while before had seemed such a vital weapon. Or had she simply refused to remember it in her sudden overmastering need for love? And now the helpful drug was to be used for a more charitable purpose, to obtain a little rest and forgetfulness for an unhappy man.
She bent and gently made him raise his head.
"Drink this. You will feel better… Please, drink it and then lie down."
He drank it all down like an obedient child and then stretched himself on the sofa where not long before he had laid Marianne. His eyes, reddened with tears, were full of a gratitude that went to her heart.
"You are very kind," he murmured. "You are looking after me as though I had not just made a fool of myself to you…"
"Please, we'll say no more about it."
She smiled at him and slipped a cushion under his head. Then, so that he might breathe more easily, she unfastened the high cravat and opened the front of his shirt, so drenched with sweat that it stuck to his thin, dark chest. Then she went to draw back the curtains and open a window to let the cool night air into the close atmosphere of the office.
"No," Richelieu said, "no, we must speak of it. You must know… You have the right to know why the grandson of the Maréchal de Richelieu, the greatest womanizer in the whole of the last century, cannot even make love to one woman. Listen, I was sixteen in 1782—sixteen when they married me to Mademoiselle de Rochechouart, and she was twelve! It was a great match, worthy of both our families and, like royal alliances, it was concluded by our parents without consulting either of us. And I married her by proxy. I was told that she was considered too young to consummate the marriage, although it was necessary for family reasons that it should take place."