Chapter 18: Violating Male Virtue

Anne had secured the necessary funds to sway Sister Helena, but Corneille himself still needed to procure an invitation to the charity gala. More importantly, he had to cultivate as much goodwill from the good Sister as he possibly could.

However, before Corneille could even begin to formulate a plan, Dias, with an unexpected alacrity, had already helped resolve the matter.

On April 15th, the usual academic rhythms of Merida Academy of General Studies were disrupted. A prominent, high-ranking personage from the Federation was paying an official visit. To demonstrate the profound gravity and importance of the occasion, the Dean had seen fit to put the entire faculty and student body through a considerable, and rather tiresome, series of exertions and preparations.

A witch from Dias’s assigned study group, her brow furrowed with curiosity, inquired, "Monsieur de Toledo, we are, alas, not well versed in the intricate affairs of the Federation. This Count de Marsay… is he a man of great power and influence?"

Dias, drawing upon the information Corneille had so meticulously compiled, offered a rough, yet comprehensive, account: The Count de Marsay, he explained, was the illegitimate son of a great and powerful nobleman and a foreign woman with whom the nobleman had… dallied. This great nobleman, faced with the rather inconvenient consequences of his amorous indiscretion, had adopted the prevailing, and rather cynical, solution for such… delicate situations… at the time. He had found an elderly, yet suitably titled, widower, and had arranged for his mistress to marry the old man. As a further inducement, he had gifted the aging widower a substantial lifetime annuity. The crucial, unspoken condition of this arrangement was that upon the old widower’s eventual demise, the remainder of the annuity would pass directly to the mistress, and, more significantly, the hereditary title itself would be inherited by his own, conveniently legitimized, illegitimate son.

Marsay, Dias continued, was the surname of the elderly widower so carefully selected by the great nobleman for this purpose. The elder Marsay, it was said, was a man of profound erudition and scholarly pursuits. Furthermore, the young Marsay’s mother, a woman of considerable charm and attentiveness, had served him with such devotion and care that he, in turn, had ensured the boy received an education of the highest caliber, fit for a true prodigy.

However, it seemed that the old man, in his dotage, had also seen fit to incorporate rather too many colorful, and perhaps inappropriate, tales of his own past romantic escapades and amorous conquests into the boy’s otherwise classical lessons. The unfortunate result of this… unorthodox… pedagogical approach was that the young Marsay, upon reaching the full flower of manhood, had blossomed into quite the renowned man of pleasure, a connoisseur of feminine charms, himself.

In the year 1223, at the remarkably tender age of sixteen, he had achieved sudden, almost scandalous, fame throughout the literary circles of the Federation with the publication of a long, epic poem. This poem, it was whispered, depicted, with a startling and rather intimate candor, the complex and undeniably scandalous love life of his own mother.

Unfortunately for the ambitious young Marsay, his primary patron, the one whose favor had launched his meteoric rise, was none other than the enigmatic Irinan Trastámara. Thus, Marsay’s glittering stardom in the poetic sphere proved to be lamentably brief, lasting but a single, fleeting year. For with Irinan’s… dramatic… transformation, and the subsequent, and increasingly bitter, internal conflicts that erupted within the fractured Trastámara family, he had been unceremoniously and rather publicly expelled from court by the newly ascendant, and deeply resentful, Alfonso.

Marsay had then vanished from public view for a considerable, and largely unremarked upon, period of time. When he next resurfaced, it was to create a major and rather shocking societal sensation: in the year 1230, he had married the grieving widow of the late and legendary preternatural warrior of the Holy State, Don Roderick. This widow, as it happened, was a woman of considerable independent wealth and far-reaching societal influence.

Money, as the old adage so aptly states, makes even the most recalcitrant of ghosts turn millstones with eager enthusiasm. Marsay, having thus, and rather conveniently, regained his fortune and societal standing, had then employed the considerable sum of two hundred thousand dinars to persuade the powerful Duke de Berry – Speaker of the Hathor Federation’s National Assembly, and, indeed, the very same biological father who had once so callously abandoned him – to formally and publicly acknowledge him as his legitimate son. He thereby, with a stroke of a pen and a substantial transfer of gold, became the "Count de Marsay."

The newly minted Count de Marsay then, with a flourish, returned to his old and now considerably more lucrative pursuit of poetry. Leveraging his undeniably handsome appearance, his carefully cultivated air of romantic melancholy, and his now legendary, almost mythical, life story, he proceeded to develop a series of discreet yet passionate illicit relationships with several influential, and conveniently married, duchesses.

Through their collective and no doubt enthusiastic assistance, in the preceding year, at the remarkably young age of twenty-six, he had been "elected" – the quotation marks almost palpable in Dias’s recounting – as the youngest member of the National Assembly.

Clearly, Dias concluded, this was far more than just a titillating, romantic tale of "behind every successful man are several equally, if not more, successful women."

The National Assembly, he explained, served as the primary gathering place, the political crucible, for the nascent third force within the Hathor Federation. These individuals, often idealists, sometimes pragmatists, opposed the entrenched regionalism of the powerful Tri-State Alliance, and also, with equal fervor, disapproved of the centralized, authoritarian tendencies of the Royalist faction. They hoped, instead, to forge a new, more equitable, republican path for the Federation. Both the Tri-State Alliance and the Royalists, recognizing the potential power of this emerging bloc, assiduously and often unscrupulously, courted the favor of the Republicans. The Republicans themselves, however, with a shrewdness that belied their often idealistic pronouncements, pursued a delicate and often perilous strategy of maintaining a careful balance of power between the two dominant factions.

The Duke de Berry, the Count’s newly acknowledged father, traditionally leaned towards the Trastámara family, making an almost ritualistic annual pilgrimage to Waite for a formal audience with Isabella. Simultaneously, however, the Duke, a master of political maneuvering, understood the necessity of placing an equivalent, counterbalancing weight on the scales of the Tri-State Alliance. Thus, he had, with a stroke of pragmatic genius, legitimized his long-ignored illegitimate son, the Count de Marsay, who, through his wife’s connections, possessed close and influential ties to the Holy State, a key member of the Alliance.

The Duke de Berry’s allies and vassals, while undoubtedly enjoying the many pleasures of this dashingly handsome and remarkably accommodating young Count’s company, had also, through a series of cold, precise, and entirely self-serving calculations of political advantage, successfully maneuvered the newly ennobled Count into a seat within the National Assembly.

The National Assembly of course boasted many members. But a member who had attained such a position at the remarkably young age of twenty-six signified something far more profound: it meant he possessed a very high probability of ascending rapidly through the established ranks of power – from Member of Assembly, to influential Secretary of State, then to Provincial Governor, onward to Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, then to the coveted post of Minister of a powerful, key government department, and finally, perhaps, to the very pinnacle of political power, the esteemed position of Speaker of the Assembly itself.

The unforeseen, and potentially game-changing, variable in this carefully constructed equation had occurred in January of the current year. After attending the rather somber funeral of the late Duke of Alva, the Duke de Berry had unexpectedly and quite seriously fallen ill. He had subsequently resigned all his official posts and had returned to his ancestral estates to recuperate, leaving a power vacuum in his wake. The Duke de Berry’s designated heir, alas, lacked both the competence and the political acumen of his father, causing the ducal family’s meticulously and often ruthlessly balanced scales of influence to tip precariously.

This, Dias concluded, was the essential background information that Corneille had so diligently compiled for him. Dias had committed every detail to memory, and his intelligent, politically astute classmates, he noted, had already, with a few whispered words and knowing glances, grasped the profound underlying significance of the Count de Marsay’s current and rather timely visit to Waite.

"So," Anne de Longueville surmised, "to re-establish a semblance of equilibrium, to rebalance the shifting political scales, the Count de Marsay is now visiting Waite, and has, furthermore, scheduled a formal audience with Her Imperial Highness Isabella. His objective, clearly, is to mend fences, to improve relations, thereby ensuring that the considerable weights so carefully placed on both sides of the political divide by the Duke de Berry’s faction are once again, and as swiftly as possible, rendered equal. Is that a correct assessment, Monsieur de Toledo?"

"...That," Dias confirmed, his voice barely audible, "is indeed so."

Since their somewhat… strained… reunion on the preceding Monday, Dias’s attitude towards Anne had been… undeniably subtle, almost unreadable. Anne, with her usual sharp intuition, had initially surmised that Dias, in his newfound and rather bewildering femininity, disliked her interacting with other men, perhaps feeling a pang of some nascent, possessive jealousy. Now, however… a different, and far more amusing, suspicion began to take root in her cunning mind.

She found a discreet opportunity, a fleeting moment when they were unobserved, and whispered to Dias, her voice a silken caress, "Monsieur de Toledo, regardless of what… interesting… relationship may, or may not, develop between us in the fullness of time, I give you my solemn vow: I shall not, under any circumstances, endeavor to steal the estimable Monsieur Corneille from you."

"?!" Dias’s face instantly flushed a brilliant, almost painful, crimson. "Wha-what… what manner of outrageous pronouncement is that, Mademoiselle Longueville?" he stammered, his voice a mixture of shock and flustered indignation. "Pierre and I… we are merely… merely good friends! Nothing more!"

Watching Dias, his face aflame, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and embarrassment as he stammered out his flustered, and entirely unconvincing, explanation, a slow, knowing, and exquisitely amused smile curved Anne’s perfectly shaped lips. A Longueville witch, she reflected with a flicker of inward satisfaction, might not, perhaps, fully comprehend the delicate and often irrational intricacies of true love. But she always, without fail, knew precisely how to find her own… unique… and rather wicked… amusement.

……

To be able, with such effortless grace, to live off the generosity of wealthy and influential women, the Count de Marsay naturally possessed certain… indispensable… talents. In physical appearance, he was a masterpiece of masculine beauty: well-proportioned, with skin as smooth and pale as alabaster, a cascade of golden hair that seemed to capture the very light of the sun, and eyes the precise shade of a summer sky, as clear and startlingly blue as freshly cut jade. He was, by any measure, as handsome as a fallen angel. Diligent, almost obsessive, exercise had kept his physique remarkably firm, lean, and undeniably powerful. His every gesture, his every movement, struck a perfect, almost breathtaking, balance between effortless, aristocratic elegance and raw, masculine power.

His eyes, those captivating pools of azure, shone with a keen, almost unnerving, intelligence, and his eloquence was such that he could, with a few well-chosen words, make even the most jaded of dowagers feel as if they were bathed in the warm, life-giving glow of a spring breeze. He was, in short, a consummate master of facial expression, of subtle, non-verbal communication. His entire demeanor, his very aura, could shift with an almost chameleon-like fluidity between gentle, scholarly refinement and wild, untamed, almost dangerous, abandon, thereby, with an almost unerring precision, satisfying the diverse and often contradictory fantasies that different women, at different stages of their lives, harbored for the ideal man.

The Count de Marsay also, it was whispered, possessed a wealth of… practical, hands-on experience… in the art of pleasing women. He had, furthermore, taken the trouble to acquire a basic yet serviceable understanding of Waite’s peculiar customs and societal norms, and had, he believed, made certain… necessary… mental preparations for the unique challenges that lay ahead. Despite all this, however, the sheer, unbridled frenzy of Waite’s women, their almost terrifyingly direct and unapologetic desires, proved to be almost too much even for his considerable and well-practiced sangfroid.

Along his journey, and indeed, even within the supposedly hallowed halls of the ducal manor, he had lost count of the number of times his… rather well-formed… backside had been surreptitiously, yet firmly, pinched, or the number of whispered, shockingly explicit endearments, laced with a raw and almost desperate unveiled desire, that had been directed his way by women whose social standing should have dictated a far greater degree of decorum.

Even upon his arrival at the esteemed academy, those unruly  and apparently entirely ungovernable young witches still, with a brazenness that astonished him, attempted to take outrageous liberties with his person. This constant, unwelcome attention caused the normally unflappable Marsay to break out in a cold, undignified sweat as he struggled with a desperation that was almost comical to simultaneously maintain his carefully cultivated persona of effortless, aristocratic elegance while simultaneously, and with an increasing lack of success, dodging their relentlessly wandering and alarmingly predatory hands.

Thus, in a moment of quick thinking born of sheer, unadulterated desperation, the beleaguered Count de Marsay decided, with a stroke of what he hoped was strategic genius, to pay an impromptu and hopefully distracting visit to the son of his own father’s old, and conveniently deceased, acquaintance – Dias de Toledo, the Third and currently rather bewildered Duke of Alva.

Dias, understandably, hadn't expected the visiting Count to specifically and so publicly request his presence. A fresh wave of panic, cold and sharp, washed over him. Anne, ever observant, noted his distress and said, "It is quite alright, Monsieur de Toledo. Do not be alarmed. I shall remain… discreetly… nearby."

Because of the recent and rather unsettling incident involving Corneille and the Longueville ring, Dias didn’t entirely or comfortably trust Anne. Yet, when faced with the daunting prospect of interacting with powerful and potentially predatory outsiders, Dias found Anne’s calm, confident presence strangely, almost inexplicably, reassuring. He was, for the moment at least, utterly unsure how to define, or indeed, how to feel about this enigmatic and undeniably alluring young woman.

"Greetings, Monsieur de Toledo," the Count de Marsay began, his voice a rich, melodious baritone, his smile a masterpiece of warm, yet respectful, cordiality. "I have, for a considerable time, most eagerly wished to make your acquaintance. Alas, my pressing and often tedious duties to the state have, until this very moment, most regrettably prevented me from fulfilling that long-held desire."

The Count de Marsay greeted Dias with an almost overwhelming, effusive warmth. After only a few carefully chosen yet seemingly casual sentences, however, having astutely, and with a practiced eye, gauged Dias’s inherent social inclinations, his natural reticence, he subtly and almost imperceptibly tempered his initial enthusiasm. He created a slight, yet respectful, physical distance between them, and then, his expression shifting to one of calm, almost profound, sincerity, he continued their conversation in a more measured, more thoughtful, tone.

Soon, with a skill honed in a thousand drawing-rooms and boudoirs, he had deftly identified Dias’s preferred, and indeed, almost sole, topic of comfortable conversation. And so, with an air of genuine admiration, he began to speak at length and with great eloquence of the formidable Pierre Corneille.

"Monsieur Corneille’s legendary strength, his unwavering loyalty, his almost mythical martial prowess," the Count declared, his voice resonating with a carefully calibrated sincerity, "are, as you well know, Monsieur de Toledo, the subject of much admiring, and often envious, talk in all the most influential social circles. I myself," he confessed, with a charmingly self-deprecating smile, "have, on more than one occasion, even considered composing a heroic ode, a grand epic poem, in his honor. However," he sighed, a shadow of feigned regret touching his handsome features, "I dare not put pen to parchment too readily, lest my own humble efforts inadvertently tarnish, or in some small way diminish, his already luminous and truly formidable reputation."

The Count de Marsay paused, as if lost in thoughtful contemplation for a moment, then, with a sudden, almost impulsive, gesture, he produced an elegant, embossed calling card from within the silken lining of his exquisitely tailored coat. "I wonder, Monsieur de Toledo," he said, his voice a hopeful, almost boyish, inquiry, "if you, and indeed, the estimable Monsieur Corneille, might perhaps be free this coming weekend? I would be most profoundly honored if you would consent to join me as my personal guests at the grand charity banquet Her Imperial Highness Isabella is so generously and so tirelessly organizing."

This, Dias knew instantly, was precisely the opportunity Corneille had been so desperately seeking. And so, with an inward sigh of relief, he graciously accepted the Count’s invitation and, for a few more minutes, engaged in the requisite, if somewhat strained, polite conversation with the charming and undeniably predatory Count de Marsay.

Before finally taking his leave, the Count de Marsay leaned closer, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur, his jade-green eyes glinting with a strange, almost unholy, light. "You and I, Monsieur de Toledo," he said, his words laden with a heavy, unspoken meaning, "are, without a shadow of a doubt, among the most… outstanding… and indeed, most promising… young men of this rather… tumultuous… era. Let us, then, you and I, together, endeavor to give Her Imperial Highness Isabella a… surprise… a revelation… that she will not soon, if ever, forget. That day, Monsieur de Toledo, that glorious day of reckoning, will come. Upon that, I give you my most solemn, and unwavering, assurance."

Dias, his mind still reeling from the whirlwind of social complexities and veiled innuendos, did not, in truth, fully comprehend the Count’s cryptic and rather unsettling parting words. Upon returning to the relative sanity of the ducal manor, he soon, with a sigh of profound relief, transformed back into "her." Without even bothering to change out of the confining male school uniform, the young woman, still clad in breeches and coat, her face flushed with a mixture of triumph and exhaustion, proudly, almost like a child seeking praise for a well-executed trick, produced the Count’s embossed calling card and, with a flourish, placed it reverently into Corneille’s waiting palm.

Corneille was nonetheless unstinting in his praise. "Well done, Dias!" he declared, his voice resonating with a genuine warmth that made Dias’s heart swell. "Excellently done, indeed!"

"Mm," Dias murmured, a shy, pleased smile gracing her lips, "as long as I can be of some small help to Pierre, that is all that matters." She stood for a moment, her hands clasped loosely behind her back, her face alight with a simple, almost foolish, grin of pure happiness. After a moment, however, feeling that she had perhaps been a trifle too… unrestrained… in her display of emotion, she smoothed her now-lengthened hair with a self-conscious gesture and, muttering something about needing to "change her attire," hastily, and with a sudden, inexplicable blush, excused herself from the room.

Mélusine, observing this poignant and rather revealing little scene from the shadowed doorway of her own chamber, retreated silently into her room, a sharp, unexpected pang of something she could only identify as… envy… for Dias stirring within her usually cool, detached breast. She, Mélusine, the powerful, independent witch of the 'Lover' domain, had no desire, no inclination whatsoever, for the mundane, restrictive bonds of marriage. Yet, she yearned, with a fierceness that surprised even herself, for a genuine, an ardent, an all-consuming affection… an affection, alas, that seemed to exist only in the pages of forbidden romance novels. For it was a sad and undeniable truth that in her own glittering yet ultimately shallow social circle, there was no "Corneille." There were no men of such quiet strength, such unwavering loyalty, such… devastating, if entirely unintentional, charm.

When one is single for too prolonged a period, Mélusine reflected with a sigh, one’s thoughts, like untended vines, tend to wander, to twist, to grow in strange and often unproductive directions. She reclined upon her plush velvet sofa, her mind a chaotic whirlwind of confused and increasingly unsettling thoughts. After an hour or more spent in this fruitless and rather melancholic contemplation, she decided, with a sudden surge of restless energy, to take a solitary stroll in the moonlit courtyard. As she stepped out from her chamber, however, her eyes fell upon the open door of the bathing chamber down the corridor. A cloud of hot, fragrant, and undeniably masculine-scented steam billowed out into the cool evening air.

Corneille, his broad, powerful shoulders gleaming with moisture, stood bare-chested before the misted surface of a large, ornate mirror, casually, almost absently, toweling his thick, dark hair. The powerful, sculpted contours of his arms, honed by years of relentless training and brutal warfare, were like those of some ancient, forgotten warrior-statue, brought to breathtaking, vibrant life. The network of pale, silvery scars that crisscrossed his sun-bronzed flesh, far from detracting from his physical perfection, lent his magnificent physique a brutal, almost savage, yet strangely poignant, and undeniably compelling, beauty.

Corneille’s firm, exquisitely molded pectoral muscles glistened with the lingering, iridescent droplets of warm water. As a single, errant bead of moisture, dislodged by the movement of the towel, traced a slow, tantalizing path down the shallow, well-defined groove of his flat, corded abdomen, Mélusine felt her own gaze, with a will entirely its own, helplessly almost hypnotically following its deliberate, mesmerizing descent.

"A pleasant evening to you, Mademoiselle Mélusine," Corneille said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate in the very air around her. He turned, his eyes, the color of a stormy sea, meeting hers with a casual, unselfconscious directness. "Are you, perhaps, venturing out for a stroll? The wind, I have noted, has picked up considerably since sunset. I would most strongly advise you to wear something a trifle… warmer."

The outlander, this magnificent, infuriating barbarian, so blatantly, so gloriously, disregarding the most sacred tenets of "male virtue," actually smiled at her – a slow, lazy, and utterly devastating smile. It struck the unsuspecting and undeniably love-starved witch with the force of a physical blow, like a stone cannonball fired at point-blank range. A roaring, deafening sound, like the crashing of a thousand storm-tossed waves, filled her head, and her entire body, in that instant, seemed to turn to ice, to stone, frozen, immobile, in place.

Fortunately, or perhaps, unfortunately, a small, scurrying, and entirely oblivious, foraging mouse chose that precise moment to provide a timely, if somewhat ignoble, distraction. Corneille, his smile vanishing, replaced by a frown of masculine annoyance, muttered something under his breath about the pressing and apparently long-overdue, "need to acquire a suitable cat for this drafty old mausoleum," and, with a surprising agility for a man of his size, went in swift and presumably lethal pursuit of the offending rodent. Mélusine, her limbs suddenly and blessedly her own again, stumbled back to the sanctuary of her room, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, and slammed the heavy oak door shut with a force that rattled its ancient iron hinges.

She pressed her trembling hands to her burning face. Time, that great healer, that relentless leveler, eventually allowed her racing heartbeat to return to something approaching a normal rhythm, allowed the fiery, tell-tale flush to recede from her fevered cheeks. She even, with a supreme effort of will, managed to almost, but not quite, entirely forget the devastating, heart-stopping impact of Corneille’s casual, unthinking smile. But the image of that magnificent, unapologetically masculine body, so gloriously, so flagrantly, defiant of every sacred, cherished tenet of "male virtue," was now, she knew with a sinking and strangely exhilarating certainty, deeply and irrevocably seared into the very fabric of her mind, into the deepest, most secret, core of her soul.