The Chevalier (Châteaux and Shadows) Read Online Free

Maman has you instead of one of her own children. Don’t get too attached, Mademoiselle de Fouet. When she dies, she will still have nothing to leave to any of us. It all rolls back into the estate and goes to my oldest brother. Even the land he said he would leave to Jean-Louis he is talking about giving to Cédric’s second son. Nothing for me, nothing for you.”
    Mademoiselle de Fouet looked like she had been slapped, but only for a moment. “Is that the problem? She has no property to give you? Is that why you are distant? And why you haven’t seen her in three years, Monsieur Emmanuel? Do you love your family only for what they can give you when they die?”
    Emmanuel felt that punch right in the belly. He stepped toward Mademoiselle de Fouet and growled, “My sister is a better mother than the one who bore me. It took her years to have her own son, but she never stopped treating me like I was hers even after he came, even when I was unkind. My brother Jean-Louis is my landlord in Poitou and charges me less than the going rate. My brother-in-law gave me the seed money and a prize mare—a beautiful chestnut Ardennais, daughter of a stallion Jean-Louis rode on campaigns. My mother ordered me whipped when I did not perform up to her standard. My father has promised me a dowry when I marry. A dowry. As if I were a little girl with stars in her eyes, dreaming of a handsome husband.”
    Mademoiselle de Fouet looked like she might cry.
    “What happened to you, Mademoiselle? Did your father promise you a dowry that never materialized? And a handsome husband?” Emmanuel felt his conscience twinge. It was unkind to rub an old maid’s face in her status.
    “My fiancé died a week before my parents,” she hissed. “There were debts.”
    His stomach fell. He had known Mademoiselle de Fouet was impoverished, but nothing else about her.
    She turned away, her shoulders high and tight. She grabbed the door handle before her and glared at him. “Find a maid for me. I am waiting.”
    She went into her room and shut the door gently behind her.
    Manu’s ears buzzed from his anger. He decided it would be petty to not help, so he stumped down the stairs and shouted for a servant.

Chapter Two
    Emmanuel sat as far as he could from Mademoiselle de Fouet in the old stone church in his father’s village. He stood and knelt and stood and sat by rote, muttering in Latin in the right places, the words coming back to him from the thousands of masses he’d attended before he went to live on his own. He stayed in his seat when the others got up to take the host from the priest.
    Afterward, he held back until most of the other people were gone, as he didn’t like being jostled, but he found himself trapped next to her in the crowd of peasants filing out of the church. He had never felt he deserved the polite bows of his father’s farm workers and servants, having never spent much time in la Brosse, but he nodded politely in return. He clenched his jaw and looked everywhere but at Mademoiselle de Fouet.
    “I saw you didn’t take the Eucharist, Monsieur de Cantière.” Her expression was bland, but her eyes didn’t quite meet his.
    “I have been traveling all week and prefer to confess to my own priest.” Back in Poitou, he rarely went to mass and was rather lax about the confessional. It weighed heavily on his soul from time to time, though not heavily enough for him to spend the time saying the rosary and praying in penance. He received the sacrament no more than three or four times a year on important feast days. But the subject of his soul was a private conversation between him and the priests.
    He cleared his throat. “I saw you came early with those who still needed to confess. I can’t imagine a lady such as you having many sins.”
    “The state of my soul is between me, the priest, the saints, and Dieu .” Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but she finally looked at him, which he liked more than he should.
    “Wrath,