Milady Read online

  “A devious, delectable historical spy confection in which an icing of lavish-court intrigue slyly masks heady doses of ripe feminism and lethal social commentary. Milady snared me in its web from the first pages, and I’ll be first in line for the film premiere.”

  —Lyndsay Faye, author of Jane Steele and The Paragon Hotel

  “A woman’s place is no longer in the subplot and Milady de Winter is a seventeenth-century heroine destined for the twenty-first century. With bold, witty writing, and a narrative that rips along, Laura L. Sullivan crafts a compelling novel for a character deserving of her own story. I loved it!”

  —Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter

  “As sharp and merciless as a Musketeer’s blade, Milady is the historical adventure I’ve been waiting for, one that will leave you gasping to the very last page. Adventuress, assassin, and provocatrix, Milady de Winter is an unforgettable heroine, more than a match for any adversary. This is the story Dumas should have told.”

  —Deanna Raybourn, New York Times bestselling author of A Dangerous Collaboration

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

  Copyright © 2019 by Laura L. Sullivan

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Sullivan, Laura L., 1974– author.

  Title: Milady / Laura L. Sullivan.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018023852 | ISBN 9780451489982 (trade pbk.) |ISBN 9780451489999 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3619.U4357 M55 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023852

  First Edition: July 2019

  Cover art: Woman with knife by Lee Avison / Trevillion Images; Buildings by Liubomir Paut-Fluerasu / Arcangel

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Buster and Luis

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Milady

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part 2Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part 3Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part 4Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Prologue

  1628

  The things a woman has to do to make her way in this world . . .

  Mrs. Fox’s whorehouse attracts a peculiar clientele. Oh, to most women, any man who will pay for heartless amours must be a little bit peculiar. We women, you see, are polar creatures, careening wildly from one extreme to another, either wholly romantic or entirely practical. Lovemaking, for us, must either be about devotion or commerce. Never both. We don’t mix the two, although myopic men believe we do.

  I have known many prostitutes, and not one of them has ever fallen in love with a client. Few indeed harbor anything but dislike for them, though occasionally a twinge of pity might creep into the most sensitive houri’s heart. Which is not to say that whores don’t fall in love. They do, harder than most. Just not with the men who pay them, no more than a blacksmith will fall in love with his bellows.

  Somehow, though, men always believe that their whores secretly love them. They cannot be content simply to pay for pleasure, as they might pay a chef to prepare a sumptuous meal. No, they insist that the woman they rent must feel something. That, they think, is their right, and they feel cheated if their money cannot buy more than physical release. The best of the customers hope their gold will buy affection. These men are at least harmless, if deluded.

  Others, however, insist on sharper feelings.

  The marquis enjoys what his confreres call le vice anglais. Here, on the outskirts of Paris, the English Mrs. Fox is happy to provide all variations of vice. The English and French are in a constant state of agitation with each other, their royalty alternately bickering and intermarrying, their religious sects quibbling about minutiae they are willing to die over. And yet through peace and war (and war was threatening now at the Huguenot fortress city of La Rochelle), Mrs. Fox found that national relations were always cordial enough to keep her in business. Here, Frenchmen can conquer their traditional English enemy on comfortable feather beds rather than on the battlefield. Or, more often, yield.

  For most of her customers like to be on the receiving end, whipped by a beautiful English wanton. Not the marquis. Few of the high-end girls will take him on, and he does not care for the ladies of the street, poxed and desperate. So you can imagine his glee when he spies me among Mrs. Fox’s bevy, an innocent young widow fresh from the English countryside, with hair as golden as ripe wheat at sunset and eyes like English bluebells.

  Forewarned of his presence, I hide behind the more experienced girls, but this only serves to attract his attention. My fear acts like oysters and Spanish fly to him. Even through downturned lashes, I can see his breath quicken in excitement.

  “Step forward, Charlotte,” the procuress says in her silky voice. “Let the gentleman see you.” I hang back, and she gestures to two of the other whores to guide me forward. “A new girl, not a virgin, true, but fresh to the trade. Her only lover was her husband, mangled in a mill, alas.”

  I feel a tear tickle my cheek, but when one of the girls nudges me in the ribs, I look into the marquis’s eyes and manage to twitch a smile at him before dropping a curtsy. “Milord.”

  “Yes,” he says ravenously. “Look at that skin. Your husband was a prosperous man, eh? You never had to work, I can tell.” He nods to Mrs. Fox. “She will do. She will do to a nicety.”

  When the girl beside me whispers into my ear exactly what he intends to do, though, I balk and pull away from his reaching hand. Behind him, I catch a glimpse of Roger, who sails under the flag of “nephew” but is Mrs. Fox’s young lover and bully boy. He keeps the customers in line . . . and also the girls, if necessary. The marquis follows my terrified eyes, and we both watch as Roger clenches and unclenches his meaty hands, conveying a multitude of meanings. If the marquis gets too rough, that gesture tells me, I’ll st
ep in. But if you refuse to please your first client, these hands will make you hurt in ways the marquis never dreamed of.

  And so, I accept my fate. What else can a poor English widow do?

  Feigning courage through my trembling, I lead him to a room that smells of, well, the sort of things a brothel is known for. But this isn’t an ordinary pleasure den. There is a propped ladder, a sturdy wooden X, a bench, and the sort of stand usually used to hold saddles. On the wall are paddles, short and thick, and long and slender. A sweating bucket full of birch rods waits in one corner, and a braided cat huddles in another, tossed aside by someone in the throes and forgotten. The walls are painted in roses and peonies, and the other furniture could be found in any middle-class English merchant’s parlor. The floor is oft-scrubbed wood, and the rugs are red.

  He gestures to the crossed beams, and I know he means for me to pliantly place my hands in the thongs affixed to their capitals. He is a large man, a soldier and an expert swordsman who could easily move me into whatever position he chose, force the most abject submission. But that I would meekly thread my hands into the restraints myself excites him.

  My will is the first thing he will break. After that, my skin.

  I move to the X, then pause. “Will you take wine, sir?” I mumble.

  “What?” he demands.

  “W . . . wine, milord. Mrs. Fox said I . . . should offer you wine.” He laughs as I seek to delay the inevitable by shuffling up to a low table. While I pour a single cup of wine, he smirks, and turns to examine the birch rods.

  I don’t spill a drop.

  “Thank you, my dear,” he says as he takes the cup, just exactly as if I were a lady worthy of respect and not an English whore he means to thrash bloody. Down it goes, and he wipes his lips on the lace at his sleeve, then gestures me to bondage.

  I face the X and slip my hands in. The leather is rough on the tendons of my wrists.

  “The other way,” he says.

  Slowly, I turn all my softest parts back toward him, and he secures my hands high above my head, spread wide. I assume he’ll buckle them to the tightest hole, but no. I can’t escape, but my hands are held loosely. I can wiggle and struggle. The pulling will chafe my tender wrists raw. Oh, he has done this before!

  I’m still clothed. The marquis takes a knife from his belt. Mrs. Fox has factored the cost of my gown into my price, along with the inevitable doctor’s fees.

  “Milord, I beg of you, wait a moment.” He pauses. There is no script for this—Mrs. Fox left it to my natural instincts—but if there were, I’m sure I commenced begging exactly on cue. “I am a widow, alone in the world. For the love of God, have mercy on me.”

  His weapon is erect as he advances on me. “Alone,” he says. “Helpless. Will you scream, my pretty? If you don’t, I’ll give you ten livres for yourself. We won’t tell Mrs. Fox, eh?” He smiles at me, then a shadow crosses his face as he doubles over. In a moment, he has collected himself. The marquis wouldn’t let a pang of the guts interrupt his pleasure.

  The blade touches my throat, just above my high bodice. Other harlots reveal their charms, but I know the thrill for him is that they are hidden, that he is the one who can unveil them. Down the knife presses to cut through my costly fabric, and I feel the honed edge kiss my skin beneath the layers. Did he cut me? I can’t tell, for the knife is so sharp I can’t distinguish pressure from pain. He will not be the first man to mark me.

  I hear the breath of parting silk as he slices my gown further open . . . and he staggers back. His hands clench in a spasm, then open uncontrollably. The knife clatters.

  Now? No, too soon. But it will not be long.

  “Milord!” I cry out. Whore that he thinks me, he won’t believe I care about his well being. The creature he has tied up only fears anything that might keep the madame from getting her coin. This day will be taken out in my skin one way or another—if he does not pay to flog me, the bawd will flog me for his lack of payment.

  He tries to straighten, but then vomits over the red rug.

  No matter. The poison in the wine is already deeply into his system. He can purge all he likes; his doom is still clear.

  My frightened visage fades, and I stand calmly with my buckled arms widespread high over my head. I am bound and he is free, but only one of us is afraid now.

  “You shouldn’t have defied the cardinal,” I say in my low purring voice. “Once, perhaps. Audacity amuses him. But never twice.”

  “Gar!” he chokes out, looking at me in confusion.

  “Is it a novelty to you, milord, having no control over your own body? I imagine so. You enjoy taking away others’ control. How do you like being helpless and in pain?”

  He topples to his side in his own vomit.

  “Can you hear me, milord?” I wish he were near enough to kick to attention, because I would particularly like him to hear this last part before he expires. “Cardinal Richelieu sent me to kill you for matters of state, but I have reason enough of my own to be glad to see you wiped from the earth. Your wife did me a kindness once. She was too good for the likes of you. I know the world believes she drowned, and pities you for your tragic loss. But I once saw her swim past the end of the pier at Nice in high waves. She would not perish in a horsepond. Admit that you drowned her, and I will give you the antidote.”

  With the last of his strength, he rolls to his fallen knife and makes a pathetic lunge at me. Then with a guttural groan of agony, he stiffens in one last convulsion, and his eyes stare, forever unblinking, at the nothing that is his due.

  I sigh. A confession would have been nice, if only so I could laugh as he begged for the antidote to the poison. But no matter.

  A bit of simple acrobatics brings my ankle up to my bound hand, where I retrieve a knife—one of many; vital systems must have redundancies—and cut myself free.

  Mrs. Fox peeks in the door. “Done already? That was fast.”

  “My poisons always are. I would have liked him to linger a bit longer, but his heart was in such palpitations at the thought of violating me that the poison spread more swiftly through his veins than I’d anticipated.” I rub my wrists. Good, there are no welts this time. Other times men have tied me up, I have not been so lucky.

  Mrs. Fox looks with distaste at the marquis. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what you used. It could come in handy one day.”

  “If you ever tire of Roger?”

  She throws her head back and laughs. “When I tire of him, I’ll pension him off like I have the others. No, killing is not for me. You keep your poisons, Milady. I’ll keep men under control with my own methods.”

  “They’ve worked well for you so far. Business seems to be going splendidly.”

  She nods. “Thanks to your timely loan.”

  “What would Paris be without Mrs. Fox?” I ask. “I couldn’t have you going back to England.”

  She sighs. “Ah, the fog, the sunless skies. I miss it, times. Do you?”

  I narrow my eyes at her. “Being a born Frenchwoman, I am happiest in my mother country.”

  She chuckles again. “Of course, of course.”

  Damn, but she’s a shrewd woman.

  “Care for a cup of wine after your exertions?”

  I glance at the emptied cup on the table. “I don’t care much for strong drink. It hides a multitude of sins. Shall I send someone to take care of that?” I gesture to the thing that was the wicked marquis.

  “No, Roger will dump him in the river after moonset. You rest easy. No one will even know he was here tonight. So”—her eyes even craftier— “does this sufficiently repay the loan?”

  “Hmm . . . How about some of your raspberry tarts? For the road. I won’t overstay my welcome. Then we’ll be square.”

  “No, love, stay a bit. It isn’t often I get to talk with someone as witty as you.” She takes my hand
, and we walk downstairs to her private parlor, gossiping about her girls, the local magistrate, the price of butter.

  Women, you see, can combine affection and commerce with each other, if not in their relations with men.

  * * *

  • • •

  I might say that my opinion of men is low. But then, my opinion of mankind is fairly poor to begin with. It is only that men generally have more scope for mischief and malice.

  At home—the home only four people know about—I strip off clothes that carry the faint stench of brothel and splash my face in the basin. Ah, to wash the world away in a cold cascade! Off comes the kohl from my eyes, the cinnabar from my cheeks, the false flags that give whatever face I want to the wide world. I always have a mask on.

  Everywhere except here.

  I hear a step behind me and whirl with the instinct of long training. Water beading on my lashes blurs my vision, and I only vaguely make out a large masculine form bearing down on me. In an instant I’m overpowered, my arms pinned, helpless.

  Helpless beneath his kisses.

  I can hardly breathe. My heart is wild. When at last he releases me, I blink my eyes to clarity and gasp, “Darling!” and wiggle free enough to throw my arms around his neck. Pulling him close, I unbalance us both, and we go down on the carpet in a tangle of limbs and laughter. There’s a quick, violent tussle, and I end up on top, straddling his chest, my hands on the tender pulse of his throat.

  I kiss that pulse, his blood thrumming against my lips.

  Here, in this house, are all the things those who think they know Milady would say I don’t deserve. A prison cell, the torments of hell are more fitting for one such as me, many believe. My name—my title, rather, for no one knows who I truly am, and even in Paris I have many guises—is whispered in the dark as furtively as some speak of the devil, as if to breathe my name would conjure me up in the flesh. And oh, what flesh! My beauty is part of my legend. Deadly beauty.