Mistress of the Revolution Read Online Free

twelve leagues away. The nobility there is far less respectable than here in Carladez. No one would dare compare the Count de Morangis to My Lord the Marquis de Castel, who is so kind.”
     

3
     
    I reached five feet six inches by the age of twelve. “Look at her!” my mother would complain to the Marquis. “No man in his right mind will want a giantess. Heaven help us, I cannot imagine what we are going to do with her.”
    My breasts and hips soon began to fill out. I stopped growing. Much to my embarrassment, a red down appeared between my thighs. In my bedroom I would stare at my new body, all astonishment at the changes a few months had worked. One night I felt the Colonel’s eye following me while I was undressing. I climbed on a chair to cover his portrait with a piece of fabric from the sewing table. I knew that I was being silly but still found it unnerving to disrobe before him. As I reached for the top of the gilded frame, I felt a trickle of warm liquid running down my legs. Horrified, I noticed that it was blood and would not stop. I stuck a remnant of fabric between my thighs. I was, no doubt, dying of some shameful disease. The catastrophe had stricken me because I had done something wrong that would soon be revealed to the entire world. Worse, my brother would learn of it.
    The next day Joséphine raised her eyebrow when she saw me. “What have you done now? You look so shamefaced that it must be pretty bad. Tell me, child, I won’t say a word to your mother.”
    I whispered my secret in her ear.
    She kissed me. “Poor little dear, I should’ve known your time had come. Don’t fret, it’s one of the curses, along with childbirth, set aside as a punishment for us females. It’ll come back every moon and won’t stop until you’re pregnant or become an old woman like me. Yes, from now on, you’ll be able to bear children, so you must be careful not to be alone with any man.”
    I gasped. “What about the Marquis? Should I stop riding with him? How can I tell him of such a thing?”
    “No, silly, I wasn’t talking about My Lord.” She shrugged. “He’s your brother, for Heaven’s sake. But be mindful of all other men. There’ll only be one thing on their minds, pretty as you are. You know what I mean?”
    I did not and looked at her blankly.
    She sighed. “All right. You’ve seen what happens when mares are brought here to be covered by My Lord’s stallion, haven’t you?”
    Puzzled, I nodded at her. Indeed, those proceedings took place in a paddock behind the château, under my bedroom window. My brother attended while grooms held the horses’ reins. The stallion, upon smelling the mare, threw his head backwards and curled his lips. He raised himself to his full height, his front legs whipping the air, and let out a chilling cry, almost a roar, before beginning his approaches. It was an impressive sight.
    “Good,” said Joséphine. “Then you must’ve observed the state of things under the stallion’s stomach. The private parts of a man look the same, only less large of course, when he wants to have his way with a girl. Beware of any scoundrel who’ll talk tender to you. When you least expect it, he’ll unbutton his breeches, and then he’ll raise your skirts and he’ll do to you what you’ve seen done to the mares.”
    My eyes shut tight, I was trying to banish from my mind the horrific visions evoked by Joséphine’s words. I had never considered the fact that men might behave or look like my brother’s horse.
    “If you let that happen,” Joséphine continued, “chances are you’ll bear a little bastard nine months later. And even if you weren’t with child, you’d still be disgraced. You see, when a girl lets a man meddle with her, it tears something in her nether parts. That’s called her maidenhead. It hurts when it rips, and it bleeds quite a bit. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that afterwards a girl never looks the same down