Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“The Prince is bringing someone.”

The words hang in the air between them, as heavy as five limp bodies at Place de Gréve, forcing Louis’ attention from the parchment atop his desk to where Armand lingers, just inside the closed doorway of his cabinet. Louis sits up a little straighter as he arches an eyebrow back at the other man, deciding which of those words to address first.

Not that it could be called a hard decision, of course.

“Oh, are we calling him Prince now?” he asks, and he can hear it. A dangerous note of disdain in his own voice, so he’s sure Armand hears it too which - - a mistake, probably, with the way Armand hoards slights, both perceived and real, to wield later in the halls of Versailles. Still, right now, the other man makes little acknowledgement of it beyond a tilt of his elegant head.

“And here I thought you would be impressed that he’d found his way back to such a title,” he says smoothly, crossing Louis’ cabinet to drop gracefully to the red velvet chaise beneath the window, leaving Louis to turn in his seat to look at him. Light spills across the other man’s form, illuminating his delicate features and the finery of his slim gold-embroidered waistcoat in the quiet dark of the room where Louis works, and for a moment, it stirs something low in him. A heat, perhaps, an aimless, ephemeral sort of desire, but more than that, an intimate understanding of why the Duke has indulged in this particular courtesan for as long as he has. “A path freshly tread to Versailles could offer you one to follow, could it not?”

Unlikely, of course, with the vast differences in their lineage, and they both know it, but Louis can hear the suggestion of something of value in Armand’s words. After all, gossip has always been Versailles’ preferred currency, and it’s worth something to any bourgeois Parisian hoping to buy his way in. Louis rises from his desk, his ornate-buckled, black leather court shoes clacking on the polished floorboards as he moves not to sit on the chaise beside Armand, where the other man would inevitably have him if he could, but to lean against the dark wood bookshelf opposite it. It’s generally best to keep Armand in his sights when he’s scheming, Louis has learnt that many a time over since their occasional trysts became something of a plotting partnership.

“Go on then,” he says, the question of how and when, exactly, Monsieur Magnus de Capetian once again became a Prince unspoken.

Armand grins, a small, secretive thing as he leans back into the chaise, crossing one white-stockinged leg across the other.

“That’s the thing of it,” Armand says. “It’s become quite the mystery. Everyone knows that Magnus has appealed to the court about his title since his return to Paris, but he never got anywhere with it, and his attendance at the events of the season have not been particularly consistent to have insinuated such intimacy with the King. It’s got the palace rather perplexed, I believe, particularly as most of the aristocrats in Versailles have tended to find the man rather…unappealing.”

Louis snorts.

“But the Thursday before last, the King announced he’d be re-anointing him, and had the man bending the knee before sundown. The Prince attended him on Friday, but then had disappeared until this very morning when he called on the Duke requesting tonight’s festivities with the provincial aristocrats be shifted in respect to his newly reclaimed position, which is, of course, what brings me to your door.”

What brings him to his door is, Louis suspects, no such singular thing, given the predictable change to the evening’s arrangements now that Magnus is wanting to center himself and whichever someone he intends to bring could be passed on simply by a messenger, but still. Louis appreciates Armand’s eagerness to share the recent news. He turns it over in his head, sucking lightly on his teeth.

“He has the King’s ear then.”

“To everyone’s surprise, it would seem so. Of course, the title is in ceremony only, not in power. A decorative rank for a man who needs all the trimmings he can get, but it does allow him his family colors again, and an apartment in Versailles to bed his boys.”

Somewhere in the rooms beyond this one, Louis hears the rustle of the servants, a heavy door opened and shut, the voices of his mother and his sister as they attend to the flurry of new activity, his mother no doubt rattled at two unexpected guests in such quick succession, especially when one is as unwelcome as Armand. She cared little for him after all, only allowing him entry to their home for his status as what she called the Duke’s préposé, despite knowing good and well that he was a courtesan of high regard. His attendance to Louis always left her in ill-humor, and Louis had tried in the years that he’d known the man to have him come only to The Azaelia or his father’s print shop, but Armand seemed to take a perverse pleasure in sullying the home Louis’ money had bought his mother.

Now though, Louis watches the other man lounge back with a cat-like grace on his chaise, seduction coming as naturally to him as breathing, and Louis’ not immune, but he at least feels inoculated these days, having had the boy plenty (and free of charge at that). He leans back, feeling the engraved edge of the bookshelf press into his shoulder blade even through the close-fitting hold of his emerald green waistcoat as a thought strikes him.

“No power, and yet your Duke de Romanus would change the entertainment for the evening to appease him?”

He’d be lying if he said that Armand’s tight-lipped smile didn’t give him a thrill – evidence enough that Louis’ correct in his deduction that the Duke’s pandering to the newly-retitled Prince is more than simply a welcome back to high society. Marius is off-balance, Louis suspects, always is when the King goes rogue, and while Louis does suspect the Duke likes keeping Armand more in the dark than Armand realizes – a move to keep his courtesan exactly that – Marius also rarely cedes ground in Versailles unless he's genuinely trying to navigate new territory. Which means that Marius likely didn’t know to what extent Magnus had the King’s ear, and given he is now, once more, Prince – even if it is just in title – he assuredly does.

Honestly, Louis almost respects the machinations of it. It can’t have been easy for Magnus to get that close to the King given the history, particularly without the gossiping nobility picking up on it. As it were, Magnus de Capetian had been pushed from his ivory tower as practically an infant, losing his place in line for the throne after his father had been knifed and his mother poisoned, a bloody coup that had seen a new monarch atop the gilded throne of France. Divested of his title, Magnus had spent the long years of his youth in exile, where, Louis had no idea (and neither, it seemed, did anyone else), but he’d returned to cast his shadow in court in this late decade of his life. Reedy and sunken eyed and ugly, yet silver tongued and somehow dripping with gold, and it was the latter that had the aristocrats of Versailles opening their doors and – politically speaking, of course – their legs, no matter how ‘unappealing’ they may have found him.

“My Maître would simply like the evening’s plans to go ahead without the reveal of a seam,” Armand simpers from his draped position on red velvet. “There’s much to discuss with the visiting provincial nobility he intends to host, as I’m sure you can imagine. Besides, at least the Prince is fairly predictable unlike some of our esteemed society fixtures. Even in these last years in titular exile, he has always been particular in his choice of accessory, has he not?”

And, well.

Louis would be hard pressed to deny that.

“Always has liked himself a blue-eyed blond,” he allows, because he’s ended up with some of them on his books over the years after Magnus had been through with them. Not all have gone the distance – more than one has been found bloated and bobbing in the Seine – and some have managed to climb free of the role Magnus had cast them in – one at least he knows worked only to earn enough to flee the city with a lady in waiting from the Queen’s Court – but he still has two in his employ. Wild-eyed things, the pair of them, one a meek little waif prone to playing dead (which, Louis knows, works for a certain clientele), another a spitfire in the sack who’s only request of Louis is that he work exclusively with women, a stipulation Louis has and will continue to honor, no matter the sum offered for the boy’s ass.  

Now though, Armand just hums in agreement.

“How he finds himself so many little golden trinkets in all the mud and piss of Paris is the true mystery of the man,” he says, picking at a loose thread on the lace of his sleeve. “The Duke would have you remove the boys from the evening’s entertainment though and make their numbers up with more girls.”

Which is to be expected, Louis thinks, turning to grab the book he’d written the Duke’s order in from the shelf behind him, before moving to stand over his desk. He flicks through the pages for the carefully scrawled list of girls and boys he’d arranged for Marius and his guests at tonight’s salon, a heady mix of cunts and cocks to titillate the visiting provincial aristocrats who rarely got a taste of the city’s more stimulating indulgences. Any so inclined to hard lines and tight breeches would find themselves wanting tonight now though. When Magnus presents a new pet to Versailles, he seeks to dominate and impress in equal measure, and as a result, wants all eyes on his most recent selection. As if the discovery of beauty makes up for the lack of his own, and the claiming of it so publicly cements him in society more as the Prince than any re-titling by the King of France ever could.

Dipping his quill in his little pot of iron gall ink, Louis draws a clean line through the names of the five boys he’d organized for Marius – not a blond in the original bunch anyway, and to Louis at least, five he’d found personally more appealing than any boy Magnus had ever brought to ball or banquet, although he could admit that that could be more a reflection of his own inclinations than anything else – before letting his gaze dart back to Armand on the chaise behind him.

The other man remains sprawled, although he has uncrossed his legs, leaving them delicately parted in a way that suggests an invitation. The morning light shifts through the window behind him, setting fire to the amber flecks in his dark eyes, coaxing out the warmth in his skin and the jut of his high, sharp cheekbones, unrouged for the day, yet slightly flushed all the same. A familiar stream of heat pools low in him again, and Louis wets his lips, ears chasing the distant sounds of his mother and sister. A muffled squeal, a soft thud of a jump safely landed, the rattle of fine china. The drawing room, he thinks, far enough away to speak without being overheard.

“If your Duke is playing host to the Prince and his new companion tonight, will you be seeking company of your own?”

The question is enough to have Armand’s gaze darken, his fingers drifting languidly down the back of the chaise, deepening his recline, and Louis may have had him plenty, but they don’t do this often. Not really, since Louis may sell sex, but he don’t buy it, and Armand is often reluctant to risk the opulence of the life that the prize between his legs has secured him (although Marius has never seemed all that bothered about sharing him). Still, they have let their shadows entangle on the nights the fancy has taken them, and if Louis is to spend the evening overseeing his girls be fondled by bejeweled hands while the Prince parades a boy he’ll dispose of in a week, he may as well have something to slip away to.

“I could be,” Armand says now, sitting up a little straighter, as if remembering himself. “My duties have not yet been decided. We are all at the King’s whims, I fear, even my Maître, and tonight the King wishes for his new Prince to have everything that he wants.” 

Louis hums, but he can feel his arousal wavering at his words. Armand’s reluctance to entertain a fantasy, let alone a proposition, without the Duke’s explicit approval is always quick to leave him cold. He sits back down at his desk, grabbing his roster of girls from the top of it, scanning for potential replacements (the girls he sends to Versailles require a certain charm if he is to stay the Palace’s preferred supplier of them), as Armand shifts his weight behind him.

“But I am in no hurry now,” Armand says slowly. “To get back to Versailles.”

The words are enough to have Louis’ gaze flick back to him, Armand demure even as his slender fingers reach for the glass buttons of his waistcoat, and oh, the promise of that deceptively strong body beneath his has a heat traveling low and saliva pooling behind his molars even as his mind ticks. When they’ve done this before, they’ve kept it casual in the way that Louis likes and it’s never been twisted up in business like this, not with Armand on official duty, so - - a gift from the Duke, that much is suddenly clear. One happily offered by Armand given their history, but a gift for what purpose?

Louis wets his lips, about to ask, when suddenly the door to his cabinet is flung open with a bang, and Louis jerks upright as Grace bounds clean through in a blur of heather silk and plum ribbons.

“Louis! Louis! You were right, it’s here, the invitation!”

A slip of gold-trimmed paper waves through the air as Louis quickly rises, heart thumping in his chest at the prospect of what his baby sister almost saw, and he glances back at Armand. Tilts his head to gesture him out, but Armand needs no instruction. He moves quickly, up and off the chaise as he rounds them both with a smooth and graceful haste. Louis takes a breath, trying to get ahold of the slip of paper – something to re-anchor himself with – but can’t for Grace’s waving it, yet the family crest at the top tells him all he needs. He grins somethin’ wide.

“Told you, didn’t I?” he says, voice bright, the Creole in him creepin’ out before he can help it. “You’re gonna be the Baroness Frenier before the year’s out.”

Grace peers up at him, bright eyed and beautiful and so damned young in her ribbons and lace, even at four and twenty. She exhales, breathless with it, pressing the invitation to her chest like not ten years ago, she would her dolls.

“Do you really think he means to court me?”

“Wouldn’t have invited you otherwise,” he tells her earnestly, smile softening when he hears her squeak in some giddy, girlish excitement, and he means it, because he wouldn’t. Titled man like Baron Levi Frenier wouldn’t let some bourgeois, nothin’-named girl onto the family dance floor if he didn’t have an intention, no matter how fine the silk slippers Louis buys her are.

The honeyed scent of Armand lingers in Louis’ nose, hooking his attention again, and he glances up to see him cross through the now-open door behind Grace, his stride long as he walks across the library floor, heading for the stairs. There’ll be a servant at the bottom to meet him with his coat, and Louis knows he won’t see him again now until tonight at Versailles, and he purses his lips. A curiosity left to niggle at the Duke’s unexpected gift, even as Grace dances past him to collapse back against the chaise Armand was just inviting him to fuck him on.

“You’ll chaperone me, won’t you, Louis?”

The question is enough to bring him back to the moment, back to his head, and he turns to face her, lookin’ every bit a François Boucher painting with her rosy cheeks and soft silks and frills. He moves nearer, holding a hand out in gesture for the invitation, and Grace finally passes it over, expression innocent and open, and it’s there, true as anything, Louis thinks, a smile finding his own face again as he moves to sit back against the edge of his desk. Her name in the finest inked cursive.

The Baron Frenier presents his compliments and requests the attendance of Mademoiselle Grace de Pointe du Lac and chaperone to a Ball on Thursday the 13^th July, 1787 at Hôtel de Beauvais. 

And oh, the words drag something like a thrill through him, an easy pride yawning in his chest, because this invitation is more than just a gesture to his sister. It’s the start of the harvest, for the seeds Louis’ sowed and the crops he’s tended these last ten years since their father’s failures, hidden until his sudden death, have taken long to grow. It’s deep, the feeling in his chest as his thumb brushes against the delicately drawn letters of the name they share, written out on the sort of invitation it always should’ve been on.

“That ain’t even a question,” he tells her, because it ain’t. He’ll have her on his arm for the Baron’s ball, pretty as a picture and safe in his escort, and he’ll also have the ear of every noble looking for any of the many and varied services Louis’ spent the better part of a decade establishing.

Across from him, Grace giggles, the sound musical to his ears, and Louis passes the invitation back, their fingers briefly brushing as he hands it over, and the contact seems to shock her back to herself.

“Oh!” she gasps, sitting up straighter and looking around the room, eyes searching out who Louis can only suspect is Armand. “I’m sorry, you were meeting, I should’ve knocked, the - - where’d the Duke’s préposé go?”

With that, Louis just shrugs, pushing off the desk to turn and close the books on the surface of it, stacking one atop the other before moving to fetch his case from the shelf across the room. He should’ve left an hour ago – Armand’s visit really had been a surprise – and he’d intended when he’d risen to go straight to his father’s old print shop and ensure that Daniel had the re-print of the Rousseau in hand, leaving The Azaelia for later, but with the change to tonight’s order, the respectable front to Louis’ less respectable ventures would have to wait.

“We were finishin’ up anyway,” Louis tells her, sliding the books into his case and readying himself to go. “He had to get back to Versailles, he just came to talk about tonight.”

“You’ll miss supper again?” she asks, crestfallen, and Louis glances up at her, a little amused as he pushes his desk chair in and moves to close the curtains at his arched windows.

“The workin’ day’s long, and I got to get that dowry ready, don’t I?”

The words have her quick to bite her lip, coquettish, and Louis tilts his head, gesturing for her to walk with him. Her lavender-slippered feet find the floor behind him with a soft thud, and she follows Louis out of his cabinet and into their tidy little library where the tawny light from flickering candles is the only thing to guide their way.

“If me and the Baron do get married, I want a big to-do, okay?”

Adjusting the strap of his case over his shoulder, Louis glances back at her as they walk, unable to curb the affection on his face.

“I want music and the finest gown and the biggest croquembouche outside of Versailles.”

“You’ll get it,” he promises her, soft as they pass through the library and start down the stairs, the bleed of light growing bright through the window over them, and he feels Grace’s sudden hesitation enough to know what’s coming before she says it.

“And I want Paul there.”

Louis stops, a new (old) tension pulling taut between his shoulders as his gaze darts sideways to see one of the servants in the reception downstairs, gaze blank and forwards like he ain’t listening in, like all the gossip bought and sold like livres in this city aren’t first minted by the help, and Louis takes a quick, rough breath. Turns to properly face his sister, who grips the heavy oak railing behind her, jaw set in a sudden tentative defiance, chin up and doe eyes a little wet, and it’s the latter that loosens the hold between his shoulders and has him letting out that too-harsh, too-fast inhale.

“We’ll do somethin’ just us, yeah?” he offers gently. “Away from the society ceremony. Let the Baron meet him proper.”

“No, Louis, I want both my brothers at my weddin’.”

And it’s a picture then that finds him, a memory seared too hot to ever heal, of Grace a girl not yet seen five summers, weeping night after night in her lace-trimmed sheets, the sound loud through the halls after their father had disappeared Paul to the Bicêtre Hospital, and Louis had promised her every one of those damned nights that he’d get him back. That he’d bring him home as soon as he was old enough, as soon as he could, and he had, he had, but - -

His gaze drifts briefly up to the ceiling above them, to the floor of the upper level where he knows Paul ever convalesces in the company of their mother and the good nurse, as comfortable, as safe as Louis can make him. He wets his lips, looks back at Grace, to where her big, brown eyes stare straight back at him.

“You don’t want to scare him off.”

“If Baron Frenier’s scared off by my big brothers, I don’t want to marry him.”

Down in the kitchens, he can hear the cook at work, the smell of sweet bread fresh made curling its way up the stairs, dispersed by the clang of pots and water already set to boil. Preparation for the feasts of the day Louis ensures his sister will never have to make herself, that the Baron will ensure too, so long as he don’t hear word of Paul and wonder what children Louis’ sister might one day give him, and does she understand that, Louis wonders, forehead creasing as Grace shifts her weight on the stairs. Does she know how precariously all of this hangs for people like them?

He leans a little closer, dropping two fingers and a thumb to pinch at the invitation still in her hand.

“It’s too soon for this,” he tells her softly, battin’ this particular problem down the days and holding her gaze even as he tugs a little on the invitation. “This is promisin’, but it’s not a promise, you hear?”

A spoonful of reality ain’t one he likes to give her often, and he knows she don’t like the taste, her lips pursing and her gaze dropping, a loose, black curl spilling down her clavicle as she nods, and he nods back. Drops his head to try and catch her gaze again, aiming for a smile and Grace tries for one back. 

“You know, mama thinks you might have something promisin’ too,” she says suddenly, deftly changing the focus from her own potential courtship to his, and Louis’ throat tightens. “She swears the Comtesse de Perier made eyes at you last promenade.”

And - -

Right.

With that, Louis turns on his heel, starting back down the stairs, two at a time, the nauseating reality of his mother’s own machinations too much for the morning he’s had.

“We ain’t noble, we don’t promenade,” he calls behind him, and Grace huffs, picking up her dress to scurry down the stairs behind him.

“She’s beautiful,” she says. “Think I hear music every time her skirts catch the breeze. You could be a Comte.”

His feet land on the tiled floors of the reception, and he shifts his case into the servant’s hands as the other helps him into his dark green coat before passing him his cane, turning back to look at his sister, unimpressed.

“Or a Comtesse’s husband.”

“Would that be so bad?”

The question is enough to make Louis’ nostrils flare, an age-old frustration bubbling low in his belly, but he won’t let it to the surface. No, instead he lolls his head to the side just to close the distance between them and peck her cheek as he grabs his case back from the servant.

“Tell mama to go to the good modiste to get you dressed for the Baron’s ball, the one on Rue Saint-Honoré,” he tells her, and Grace huffs, but he can see the flush to her cheeks at the prospect as he grabs his hat and slips out into the street.

With summer’s humid hand comes the thickened smell of sweat, piss and horse shit, carrying on the city’s breeze and dripping off the stone walls of shops and parishes alike. It lingers in the nose as Louis strides through the city’s heaving markets, through stalls of hanging hares and bursting buckets of fresh picked roses and hydrangeas, petals pinker than a cat’s tongue, through displays of lemony macarons and fresh-made chocolate, blue-spotted cheese and bundles of berries plump enough to stain any man’s cravat. Louis pays it all little mind, head on the task at hand as he dodges passerbys and the bustle of begging street vendors, the day opening up before him until the endlessly blue sky kisses the crest of the creamy-colored city.

Soon, it’s down a street, peeling off from the market sprawl and past the shop fronts of weavers and fabric printers, modistes and perruquiers, milliners and cobblers, then the workshops of the carriage makers and the carpenters and the men who lay stone and good marble, and it’s the valets calling in for their maîtres or the mother’s fitting their debutante daughters in wigs strung with pearls, and Louis moves like he was born to this city in every way he wasn’t.

Ain’t long until it has him ducking down an alley, then another one, finding his way to rougher fare in dispersing taverns, a few men still hanging out windows, lush with liquor from the night before, and weaving his way through the stragglers at the opium dens slipped deep into the bowels of better buildings. He passes it all as he makes his way to the heavy, oak wood door of The Azaelia, it’s red light burning bright ahead of the daylight’s closing hours. 

And it’s something, always, to slip inside and swap the sound of Paris life for the slap of skin on skin and the higher calls to God and devil alike, the sweet and pungent oils Bricktop ever burns to cover the heathen smell of long and good fucking doing little to disguise a thing.

“You’re here early,” Finn grunts, heaving his considerable bulk from his station at the top of the turquoise-tiled reception – security against the rabble – to meet him.  

“Any business needin’ attention overnight?”

“Plenty, but nothing you need to be concerned with,” Finn says, and at Louis’ questioning look, he shrugs, adds: “A few boys just needed taking in hand. Thought they might get away with paying for half of what they bought.”

As they usually did, Louis thinks, nodding as he picks up his step, glancing over Finn’s shoulder to the arched doorway behind him, entry to the brothel itself, but there’s little to meet his gaze beyond the yawning staircase, left exactly as he saw it last night.

“I trust they paid in full?”

“And a little extra for the trouble.”

“Good. Let the men finish, then snuff the red lantern,” he tells him as he moves around the other man and heads through the arch for the stairs, his hand reaching for the dark, ornately engraved railing as Finn calls out behind him:

“Everything ‘right?”

Humming something of an affirmation, Louis walks quickly, his black court shoes muffled against the long trailing rugs that line the staircase as he climbs deeper into the brothel.

There are some thirty rooms here at The Azaelia, leaving it not the biggest whorehouse this side of the Seine, but hardly the smallest, and Louis prides himself on a quality stable of girls and boys of varied type and skill. A diverse folio of assets, he supposes, stepping across the first floor, to cater to any carnal need, in an elegant establishment for both the local and visiting nobility. The walls are adorned with the finest of wallpapers – a visage of hand-painted greenery that gives the feeling of grazing in The Bois de Boulogne – and the sprawling woven rugs are made by la Manufacture Royale D’aubusson themselves in the style to which the aristocrats are accustomed.

Candles light the way to an airy hallway of which room after room springs off, and given the instruction that during business hours, doors stay open unless a client presents a reason to close them, he sees two of his newer girls – Estelle and Madeleine, redheads, a novelty in Paris – before he’s even halfway to his desired destination, chatting in the latter’s room. He pauses, stopping at their doorway and glancing over Estelle in her chemise and Madeleine lounged atop her bed, hair loose, in little more than a petticoat and a ruby stay, a vivid contrast to her porcelain skin, and he - - considers.

“Upstairs,” he says after a beat. “Since you ain’t on your backs.”

It’s enough to make Madeleine curl her lip, but Estelle reaches to pin her soft ginger hair up, shimmying a little as Louis moves up towards the second set of stairs, ignoring the impassioned grunts and high-pitched moans escaping from Vita’s room as he heads up towards the third floor.

Ducking down the halls – these ones a mirror of the ones below except for the wallpaper, painted instead a heady indigo like a sky at night, offering the illusion of cover for the whores catering to those nobles with a more acquired taste – Estelle and Madeleine a few feet behind him, he steals into the hidden room down the side where his workers rest.

“Monsieur?” Bricktop asks, surprise thick in her voice as Louis glances across the place. There are only a few of them here, Eglee reading some papers on the blue silk chaise and Laurent fixin’ his long, blond hair in the vanity with a brown velvet ribbon, while Valentin tinkers with the piano he can barely play, but it was Bricktop he’d truly sought anyway. One of his finest, as she was, but also someone who often operates as a Madame among the rest, her position one of comfort and council but also discipline, for when Louis ain’t got the time. They’d been supposed to meet later, before they left for Versailles, so her surprise at his arrival so close to closing ain’t unexpected.

“There’s been an adjustment to the order tonight,” he tells her. “No boys.”

And it’s instant then, the loud, distinct yell of putain!

Louis’ arches an eyebrow, focus jerking sideways from Bricktop to Valentin, who has spun around on the piano stool to stare at him with dark and defiant eyes. He’s handsome, Valentin, Louis wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t, his black hair short and quiffed, and it shines like a crow’s finest feathers, framing his sharp chin and high cheekbones, already rouged for the evening he expected to work, his tanned skin warm, like no winter’s kiss could ever touch him.

“Why?” Valentin demands, like he has any damned right to, and Louis bristles at the disrespect as he hears the door crack open behind him and Estelle and Madeleine slip quietly in.

Handsome, Louis reminds himself, but impudent.

“Try that tone again, boy, and you’ll be takin’ all the half-rot cock down the ports for shillings you ain’t gonna be able to use this side of la Manche.”

It’s offered firm, all pimp in the way he can get when he has to, but it’s still enough to have Eglee bray out a laugh even as Valentin reddens to the tips of his ears at the reprimand, and if Louis were honest, he don’t blame him for being mad. Way he sucks and fucks, he always makes a killing in Versailles – a killing for Louis too, given his cut, so he can’t say he ain’t sorry to have to stand him down either. Still, Louis waits until the boy mutters out an apology before he continues.

“Our new Prince doesn’t want any boy available there prettier than the one he’s bringing,” Louis says smoothly in something like a consolation, although the fact of it remains. Magnus has always wanted every so inclined eye lustily turned to his prize, and the offer of other male bodies perhaps more tempting is something he seems to take a personal affront to.

“New Prince?”

And oh, it’s sudden.

The stab of regret at those quiet, quivering two words.

As one, the room seems to shift its attention from Valentin to Laurent.

Still seated there at the vanity, the boy has grown rigid, his pale skin somehow bled grey and his blue eyes, visible in the mirror, suddenly rimmed red and wet, and Louis’ never taken Laurent to Versailles – doesn’t think his way of playing dead would appeal to the rowdy fuckery the Palace publicly prefers anyway – but he had made something of an internal promise that he never would so long as Magnus’ attendance remained unpredictable. Right now though, the fact that he was never to attend seems a faraway reality, and Louis finds himself wishing he’d told this boy once so used and discarded by the man to leave before he’d told the others at all.

He works his mouth, adjusts his grip on his cane, but it’s Bricktop in the end, who offers a kindness.

“Why don’t you go to your room, hon? And leave your door shut tonight. I’ll make sure Finn knows you ain’t on the menu. You ain’t been looking too well these last couple of nights anyway.”

It takes a moment for Laurent to nod, the motion short, sharp, his Adam’s apple bobbing above his white cravat as he stands up, hands trembling as he gives up on the twist he was attempting with his hair, leaving it awkwardly kinked and the brown velvet ribbon crushed in his fist, and Louis looks away. Discomfort twisting in his belly as the boy quietly slips out of the room to his quarters downstairs, and it’s a relief perhaps, at least not to have to see his shaking hands. Louis swallows, the silence from the other whores suddenly thick, and he gives it a moment, maybe two, before he tilts his head towards Bricktop and says:

“I’ll send for Fareed to see to him,” and it’s an offer of little value, he knows it even as he makes it. Ain’t like the boy’s actually taken ill with anything but the new knowledge that the man who took him and too many others now gets to do it with a crown, but still. It seems to ease something, at least settling the girls, if not Valentin, who observes him with a scowl as Estelle and Madeleine move properly into the room, the former dropping onto the chaise beside Eglee and the latter moving to lean against the fireplace, red hair and redder stay vibrant against the soft yellow of the floral wallpaper. Bricktop nods, working her own mouth, considering.

“It’s him though, ain’t it?” she says, the Creole in her own accent slipping out. “De Capetian?”

And what’s there left to say to that? Louis nods, a short, sharp jerk of his chin.

“Got his title back,” he tells her, and Bricktop raises a brow.

“Who’s dick he suck for that?”

“Who’d have his mouth?” Louis replies before he can stop himself, and while Bricktop hollers on a laugh, Eglee gasps and a delighted, breathless giggle explodes from Estelle, the latter of which makes Louis blink and glance sideways at her. He hadn’t gotten the impression these last weeks with her in his employ she’d had much of a head for court politics (or much of anything outside the plays he sometimes sees her and Eglee rehearsing in the off hours), but that sort of response implies she knows the man. His eyes narrow a little, taking her in, and Estelle clears her throat, smoothing her hands down the belly of her chemise, collecting herself, and when she offers nothing else, Louis turns back to Bricktop and the reason for his early visit.

She was already booked to go, of course, as were Eglee and Doris, Faustine and Odille, all well-favored entertainers in Versailles, but a lot of the girls available tonight are newer to The Azaelia and virgins to the Palace, which, of course, would inevitably have its own appeal. He drops his case to the floor at his feet, pulling out his book and moving over to the vanity Laurent had just departed, passing Bricktop his cane as he goes. He tosses the book down on the vanity, knocking over pots of powder and paint, flicking to the page he’d started writing in not two hours ago with Armand, feeling too many eyes on him as he pulls together a plan.

“The Duke’s requested the full order still, just all girls now, so talk to Vita after she’s done downstairs, she can go, and Émilie, Hortense and Estelle,” he says, gaze only tearing from his book of notes to turn back to the latter, the woman perking up on the chaise as behind her Madeleine folds her arms over her chest. “Madeleine too. You’re goin’ to Versailles tonight.”

At that, Valentin groans, lurching to his feet and striding out of the room, thunderous with it all, but Louis pays him no mind. No, he’s fixed on the task at hand, the knowledge that Vita, Émilie and Hortense have been to Versailles before, but Estelle and Madeleine are new to it, and his gaze flicks back to the former as he speaks.

“Need you dressed, powdered and perfumed before the carriages arrive at three. Weather’s lookin’ good, so we should be at the Palace ‘round six if we’re lucky, and we’ll leave once the night’s done. You’ll get a base overnight fee, even though we ain’t stayin’, but every cock you take and cunt you eat will get you extra, yeah? I’ll be there to keep count of what you do with who, but you should too, in case I miss a bit of face. Could be a good earner for you tonight if you play your cards right, plus you get to see what most like you ain’t ever get to dream of.”

And he sees it on her, Estelle, the sudden breathlessness. The pink cheeks, the parted lips, that bright-sparking look in her eyes that any of the ordinary get at the chance to see the extraordinary, the mere taste of social ascension as tantalizing as any tincture of opium dripped on a tongue. Beneath the white chiffon of her chemise, her chest heaves, and Eglee suddenly leans sideways, knocking into the other woman with an easy intimacy.

“It is a marvel beyond comprehension, cherie. More, beyond imagination,” she breathes, and Louis exhales, turning to close his book at the vanity to hide the grin twitching at his lips, because damned, if she ain’t right. The Palace ever feels like the promise of eternal splendor, a gilded throne for France’s most prominent, most prolific, most powerful - -

“Who is he?”

The words cut through the excitement, and Louis blinks, standing back up to his full height and turning to find the source of the question and he finds her by the fireplace, arms still folded and shoulders pressed into the wall. Madeleine stares back at him with an unflinching focus, her mouth set in a tight cut line.

“Who?”

She squints a little at that, pushes up off the wall, but makes no move towards him, just shifts her weight, an edge to her that has Louis sucking on his teeth and a sudden tension tightening low in him. She’s as stubborn, as prone to impertinence as Valentin half the time, and Louis finds himself firming his jaw.

“This apparent new Prince de Capetian that changed the evenings plans on a whim and had Laurent looking as if he’d seen a ghost.”

And she makes a picture, Louis thinks, all pale skin and blood red hair, moony bosom protruding from her crimson stay, white petticoats still pressed, like she ain’t worked the night at all, defiance clear on her face and in the set of her delicate shoulders, and he’s never had a taste for soft curves or wet cunts, no matter how many he’d made himself try in his youth, but he looks at her and he thinks - -

Well.

He thinks she’ll do well tonight.

He licks his teeth, opens his mouth to reply, but he doesn’t get the chance to when Eglee suddenly lets loose a loud, long groan.

“That walking corpse,” she says, and something in Louis starts, his attention flicking quickly back to her. “He sits in a box at Renaud’s and it’s like holding audience with a resident of the Catacombs.”

“He comes for Lestat, you know, and Renaud lets him because he fills his pockets with jewels to do it,” Estelle tells her suddenly, voice low, but hardly private, and Louis stares, surprised, because it’s something. To receive gossip not slipped covertly into a palm but offered so freely it’s as if a purse has split and the owner cares little about losing the livres. The ever-rapid tempo of his pulse quickens and his mind races - - Renaud’s - - the ramshackle little theatre in Temple du Boulevard? Vaguely, he remembers Eglee and Estelle perform there, not as whores but as actors (although there is little difference in the eyes of France), and is this where the Prince disappeared to in the week and a half after his retitling? But - - why would the Prince be attending a place so beneath the station he’s been aspiring to? Surely not just for a boy?

Louis works his mouth, taking the women in, and loosely, he’s aware he’s being watched. That his sudden silence has been noted by both Madeleine and Bricktop, but its hard to care when they know as well as he does that this is currency.

“I heard the Prince had him in the dressing rooms last week.”

“Nicki was in a state,” Eglee agrees, and Louis’ gaze flicks back to her. “But Lestat is talented and doesn’t have two livres to rub together himself, so for him to have a patron…”

And it’s instant, the way Estelle waves her off, almost affronted at the suggestion.

“But at what cost? You’ve seen what he’s done to that boy downstairs.”

At that, Eglee holds up her hands as if in surrender, and Louis’ mind whirs with the question of whether this is to be Magnus’ someone tonight. His new and golden trinket, and he thinks to even ask it – and to ask just how long the Prince has been attending Renaud’s – when suddenly Louis’ vision is full of red hair and dark eyes, Madeleine having crossed the room to push into his line of vision, forcing his attention.

“Should we be preparing ourselves for more than just an evening of fucking, monsieur?” she asks, her tone low and loaded, and Louis’ head jerks towards her, torn from the pull of gossip, of information, and back to the moment. His eyes skim across Madeleine’s expression of grim determination, and it’s a surprise, maybe, that she’s the one so oblivious to the reputation of the newly retitled Prince. It’s enough to make him huff out something like a laugh, to let his focus dart from her eyes to her toes and right back up again. He tilts his head, shrugs, as he tells her:

“He doesn’t like pussy.”

“Thank fuck,” Bricktop says behind him, and Madeleine looks over at her only to quickly refocus her attention back on him, as if trying to figure out whether he’s lying, and she reads it on him, clear as a day, the truth of it all.

“Well,” she says, the tension between them pulling tighter somehow instead of releasing, and Louis knew she’d be trouble the second Vita had referred her, the other woman only even knowing her from where she’d been fired from her job sewin’ dresses at some second rate modiste across the city. “So to Versailles we—”

BANG!

Louis flinches at the booming sound of a body being tossed up against a door downstairs, and Eglee and Estelle both gasp, Madeleine’s throat constricting opposite him as Louis swivels on the spot to see Bricktop staring back at him, mouth set in a tight line as the hand holding Louis’ cane stretches out towards him, and he’s already moving towards her when Finn’s voice ricochets up the stairs.

“Louis!!” Finn yells. “The young pastor is here!”

The words drop a weight on him, pushing his heart down to his belly just to feed it to the acids there, and he exhales a sharp breath, glancing back to where Bricktop returns his look, the expression on her face sitting somewhere between pity and exasperation.

“We’ll see you for the carriages at three, monsieur,” she offers smoothly, as she passes him his cane.

And he hears him too, even before he sees him, down in the reception of The Azaelia, voice righteous with conviction and dripping with sanctimony, but it’s Finn’s tone that has him picking up his step. Harsher than it needs be, tired, no doubt, after a long night playing the immovable hand to the nobles too used to twisting arms to get their way, and he knows it won’t take much for the other man to have Paul on the floor. The thought is enough to have the acids low simmering in his belly start to bubble and pop, and he bursts down through the arched doorway to the reception with more fanfare than he’d usually allow himself.

“You try that with me again, I’ll - -”

“Paul,” Louis barks, voice loud, terse, and Finn’s head whips around in relief, and in giving way to Louis, the man echoes the very words Bricktop had not long ago uttered in thank fuck. Still, it’s only when Finn steps aside that Louis gets a good look at his brother.

He’s mostly dressed at the very least, unruffled from where Finn had likely manhandled him in his brown silk suit and white stockings, buttons slightly askew on his day coat as if he’d torn out of the house in a hurry, which Louis has no doubt that he did, but his eyes are bright, and they lock onto him the second they see him.

“Louis,” he breathes, darting in quick and close, almost conspiratorial as his gaze flicks back to Finn. A heady wave of pungent hellebore finds Louis’ nose with the motion, the flower prescribed by the good doctor, Fareed, for the days and nights the madness takes his brother. “That man you keep in this spot, that agent of Hell and damnation, he snuffed the red light when he saw me coming, as if he could hide the devil’s invitation to this house of sin that the holy father commands me to.”

Which - - okay, Louis thinks, exhaling, chest hollow and belly tight, hand as gentle as he can make it as he drops it to grip Paul’s boney elbow.

“He snuffed the red light because we’re closin’ for the morning, Paul, ain’t nothing more than that.”

“I tried to tell him,” Finn says behind him, and Louis gestures for him to keep out of it.

“That is the devil in your ear, Louis,” Paul insists, voice thin, reedy, breathless in its earnestness. “He uses you to feed the carnal masses, to indulge Paris in the sins of her flesh, he sullies your good soul to sully one hundred more, our father’s death left you weak, and - - ”

And that snaps something hard in Louis, the flicker of his temper catching as he holds Paul’s arm a little tighter, a little rougher, other hand adjusting on his cane, and he starts to push him back towards the door, moving him out of this cornerstone of the life Louis’ built for them all.

“Our father’s death left us broke,” Louis bites, tilting his head back to Finn, a look of firm instruction on his face for the man to organize the horse and carriage – he ain’t walkin’ him home like this – before he turns his attention back to his brother. “Nothing more or less than that.”

“- - and in that weakness, Hell has tried to cast her claim on you, but the Holy Father says salvation is in reach for you, brother, that the day these doors close is the day Heaven’s may open - - ”

Locked in then, Louis thinks, and the realization softens the smoke of his anger, even as he continues to push him back, gaze darting over his brother’s shoulder to where Finn ducks out the front to hail down the coachman. So fuckin’ slow, Louis thinks, sucking on his teeth as Paul keeps calling out his sermon, insistent, desperate, but his eyes ain’t wild, not the way they can get sometimes. No, he’s focused, and Louis at least knows his brother well enough to know his focus is something that can be broken.

“Paul,” he says, voice hard and louder than he intends, and Paul suddenly starts, eyes wide on him, lips still parted, but no longer speaking, and maybe the hellebore is finally fuckin’ working in the way Fareed said that it could. Louis takes a breath, softens his voice like he would when they first got him home, tries to be the brother over the businessman now that Finn ain’t listening. “I usually go to father’s shop first. How’d you know I’d be here?”

Whether it’s the words or the tone or some combination of both, it’s enough to have a bashful look crossing Paul’s face, to have him shuffle a little, pulled from his holy purpose, his rapturous madness, and he tugs his arm lightly from Louis’ grip until Louis lets him go.

“Mama and Grace went to talk,” he says quietly, and it’s relief that loosens Louis’ chest, as the pastor gives way to the brother in Paul’s voice too. “I followed you.”

Of course he did, Louis thinks, fisting his hips as he shakes his head, staring briefly at the green-tiled floor before looking back up at his brother right as Finn pulls open the door from the other side. The chatter and buzz of the street briefly overwhelms them, ricochets through Louis’ ear and leaves Paul’s eyes clenched shut, and it’s in the brief cacophony of sound that Louis gets Paul out through the door. Gets him back out of The Azaelia and into the city, back into the open hand of the morning, and oh, Paul looks sweeter again. Boyish, his brown eyes wide to the daylight as the horse hooves clop down the cobblestones towards them.

 “Wish you wouldn’t do that,” Louis tells him, hooking his cane under his arm as he tugs Paul to face him. It’s too easy then to droop his hands between them, reaching out to fix the delicate, askew buttons on Paul’s day coat, the worry he hadn’t let himself yet feel finding his lips: “It ain’t safe for you on your own out here.”

“The holy father keeps me safe.”

Which - -

“You think you spend all that time in Bicêtre if he did?” Louis asks, exasperated, and Paul’s shoulders curve as he curls in. Damn near ten years in that place, his boyhood lost to stone walls and shackles, and still he thinks any God watches over him. Over any of them, Louis thinks, licking his teeth, fingers fixing his brother’s buttons, and it’s the readings of the Enlightenment that rest heavy in Louis’ mind, not the Bible as he treads his path in this godless world, but Paul ain’t ever got the chance to read anything that wasn’t psalms and scripture, not at least in Bicêtre where the priests were the only ones to offer any kindness at all.

“The trials of a prophet,” Paul whispers, and Louis exhales, gestures down the carriage and piles them in, hoping no one of worth sees as he takes his brother home.

There’s no way around the servants seeing though, that much Louis knows as he strides back through the door of their house with Paul in tow, his mouth tightening as he clocks the carefully blank faces of the help, and he rolls his shoulders back. Setting his spine to keep his chest up, his head, because it’s there. The thought that this too will pass from valet to cook to handmaid right back to the Baron Frenier’s hôtels attendants before the day is through.

“Maman!” he calls, voice firm and ricocheting around the reception as Paul bumps into his shoulder, eyes searching out the high ceilings of their home as the servants come to take their coats. Louis turns out his hand in decline – he ain’t plannin’ on sticking around, and Paul has never liked being helped with his clothes by someone who ain’t him or their mother, not since Bicêtre. Then on second thought, he flicks his fingers out, dismissing them from the reception all together, and they’re obedient at least. The two servants shuffling out and down towards the kitchens as the sound of feet drum across the floor above them. It’s only seconds then before their mother is tearing down the stairs, her face flushed and her cream linen gown brocaded with sprigs of lace beautyberry – a reminder of the bayou she once left behind her – arms outstretched for her favored son.

“You said you were watchin’ him,” Louis hisses as she reaches them, gathering Paul into her arms and pressing his head to her bosom like she some patron saint of lost causes, and Louis exhales. Fists his hips as he watches Paul’s lashes flutter shut against their mother’s chest, peaceful in her arms in a way Louis’ don’t ever remember being, even as a child, and it’s like she’s plucked the thought straight from his head with the way her gaze snaps back up to him. His pulse stutters with it, hard, as it is, to shake the boy under his mother’s attention, no matter how much she’s the one needin’ him now. He firms his jaw. Holds to the point. “He can’t be followin’ me across Paris to The Azaelia.”

“Your sister needed me. This invitation from the Baron got her in a state,” she replies, voice as harsh as his and the Creole in her accent thick. “The modiste has to be arranged, the coiffeuse - - she needs it done right if the Baron’s father is to allow this sort of match --”

“They ain’t long to the title, it’s why we picked him!”

Because it was. While Levi and his father both had been born to be Baron, his grandfather hadn’t. Had come to it only the way Louis would intend it for himself – through being offered office by the King after proving himself of indispensable use, aristocratically well-regarded and, of course, of deep pocket to pay for said office – and they’d known Levi’s interest in Grace could lay the way for more of the second. Still, his mother shakes her head, clutching Paul in all the tighter, who mumbles out somethin’ like a prayer. 

“These Parisian aristocrats are quick to forget how they came to their titles,” she insists. “This boy was born to silk and fine lace, Louis.”

“Blasphemy when Christ himself was born to straw and stable,” Paul mutters, lifting his head, but Florence quickly pulls him back down.

“Grace was born to a finer cradle than him,” Louis reminds her, ignoring Paul’s interruption. His father’s print shop had been doin’ well back then after all, and the first-born Baron Frenier had proven not to have the head for business of the man who’d so elevated their family name. Besides, that didn’t matter now, not when Louis had more than tripled the value of the de Pointe du Lac name in the last decade, not just in livres, but – slowly (too slowly, he thinks bitterly) – in land and status too. Grace’s dowry would be more than enough for the Baron’s dusty coffers, Louis had made sure of that.

Still, his mother inhales, shifts the hem of her linen gown against the tiled floor of their reception, her silver hair shining bright in the flood of light through the tall windows, Paul’s face lax but still attentive at her chest, and she opens her mouth to say something when suddenly the nurse scurries in through the arched doorway the servants had just left through, still tying her apron to her chest.

“I’m so sorry, monsieur, it was my fault. Doctor Bhansali had suggested some opium poppy to take alongside the hellebore, and I was still adjusting the new dose. I was distracted, here, let me take him back upstairs.”

And as she moves to take Paul’s elbow, Louis can smell it on her – not the poppy, which carries no scent, but the silvery tang of the equipment she uses to prepare what Fareed prescribes, and ever the dogged odor of the hellebore, stuck as much to her as it is his brother half the time. He takes a breath, tastes it musky in the air on his tongue, but he nods, and she’s gentle with Paul, the nurse – Louis had found someone he knew would be – and it takes little for Paul to slip out from beneath their mother’s arms and find his way into hers. Takes even less for her to guide him up the stairs, even as Paul casts a big-eyed look at Louis, searching, almost, for something Louis can’t give him, as she takes him back to his room.

He wets his lips, tastes the salty tang of sweat, his chest oddly tight in his green waistcoat as he glances back down towards the tiled floor of their reception instead of back at his mother, the balmy summer air leaving his legs sticking in his stockings.

“I saw the Duke’s - - préposé came by.”

The words are offered curtly and with the expectation of an answer, and Louis feels the low simmer of annoyance bubble again in his belly, but it’s always been like this. Her desire to be a partner to him in this work and her refusal to see any of it for what it is ever at odds, and he almost corrects her. Almost says the word courtesan, almost says worse, says whore, but he knows the thin-lipped look and turned head and silence that will inspire. He exhales, tries to release some of the frustration as he looks back up at her and tilts his head for her to follow him back to his cabinet upstairs, and, after a moment, she does.

His father had never let her into his own cabinet back when he’d been alive, and unlike Grace, his mother at least is always sure to wait for the invitation to it even now with Louis. It leaves her ever stiff in the space though, reluctant to drape on the chaise or sit in the chair at his desk as his sister would, and so she stays standing close to the wall instead as Louis closes the door behind her, a parlor palm leaning it’s fronds against her shoulder, the green like a lizard’s tail against her creamy gown.

“Magnus de Capetian has been re-titled,” he says once he’s sure they won’t be overheard, and he can see her ticking it over, eyes flicking as her mind takes in the news of the man’s re-ascent.

“That’s good?” she decides, although there’s a question in her voice that makes Louis shrug as he moves towards his desk, resting against it in a way that makes the hard edge of it press into his lower back through his breeches.

“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know the man, not personally. He ain’t ever booked a service.”

“But if the King is willing to retitle an exiled prince, surely it shows a willingness to offer a title to such a friend of Versailles as yourself?”

And truthfully, if he’d heard the news any other way, he may have been inclined to agree, but to hear it through Armand – and for the Duke to have offered Armand in the way that he did – leaves a stranger sense of doubt in him. If it was known about Paris, Louis would’ve heard it first from Daniel or Rashid, which means the fact of it all is still held tight to Versailles, but why? And why the fuck would the Prince take that title he spent so long working for not to court or to reclaim some of his family’s land and estates, but to some third-rate theatre down Boulevard du Temple? No boy could be worth slumming it so low after climbing so high.

Louis licks his teeth, hands dropping to fist the edge of the desk either side of his hips, his shoulders tight in his green silk coat as he takes in the dark wood floor at their feet.

“Guess we’ll see,” he says, and he can feel his mother’s gaze on him. Her attention unwavering. Can hear her swallow, smell the gentle jasmine of her perfume, and for a moment, he wonders what it is about her that puts Paul to rest and lets Grace in, what it is about them that makes her gentle instead of - -

“I saw the Comtesse again yesterday.”

And oh, Louis’ eyes flutter shut.

“Maman.”

He says it low, an edge of vexation to his voice which would soften Grace and have Paul retreating, but his mother only stands taller, eyes hard and hands stiff at her sides.

“You have earnt back the fortune your father squandered and then some. That is worth something to more than the handful of nobles you’d debase yourself pleasing,” she tells him, her own voice steady in the quiet of his cabinet, and Louis’ mouth opens to interrupt, but she doesn’t let him. “I know you believe that to be the only path to a title, that you believe yourself capable of elevating your father’s name through the offer of an office, and maybe you are, but maybe you’re not. Maybe the Duke still sees you only as a pimp for the procurement of entertainment, or some new world boy he lets enjoy one of his concubines, because I don’t know. I guess he likes the picture of it.”

At that, Louis’ jaw clicks shut, and his mother takes a step closer, starting to close the distance between them.

“There are ways around him,” she insists. “The Comtesse Lily de Perier has no capital dowry, but she has the title and a sizeable estate in Burgandy that will be any man’s who marries her. They need money, and a way to make it now her daddy’s gone, and her mother has assured me that they will overlook the way you’ve earned yours if you end your affairs at The Azaelia and your other irreputable businesses, and have her wed, bed and bred before the year is through. She likes you, and she knows enough of your - - proclivities, since apparently you do little to hide them that no sudden scandal could usurp her interest.”

Louis finally lifts his head to stare at her, and it’s anger that roils in his chest, but exhaustion that tugs at his shoulders, pulling him back, holding him down. He feels his nostrils flare, his heart hammer, his skin flush with the knowledge that somewhere in all of this, his mother’s right. The X on this map has always had its many ways to get there, this one though - -

This one - -

“Baroness Frenier is a good title for your sister, but it won’t secure your brother’s safety or our family name,” she tells him, then, slowly, another step forward, gaze still fixed on him: “Comte de Pointe du Lac. No, it’s not a title bestowed, but it’s one taken.”

And it’s that that has him shaking his head, a righteous feeling cutting through the exhaustion as he pushes up off the desk, standing back to his full height, towering over his mother, and it chafes. That she’d have him be the cuckoo. Take a title and replace a name with his own, live in another’s man’s house, another man’s place instead of build this thing for them on his own.

“I want to earn it, not marry it,” he tells her, and his mother stops, stares up at him, her dark eyes set like stones in her soft face.

“Marriage will see our security faster.”

And it ain’t fair, it’s not, but the words tear out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“Yeah? How’d it work out for you?”

It’s instant, the way his mother’s expression shutters, the wound of how vulnerable her own marriage had made her, how frivolously Louis’ father had treated the family’s financial security, one he doubts will ever heal for any of them, but he had felt it on her in those months after his death. The powerlessness of her position, and he had given her what he could, he had, but this - - he won’t give her this.

“You say that the Comtesse’s mother would have me sell The Azaelia to secure the match,” he says, softening his voice. “The Azaelia ain’t a business, it’s a key, you hear? It’s what gets me into Versailles every week, what sees us talkin’ to Dukes and Marquis’ instead of tailors and bakers, it’s why we got enough to give Grace the dowry she deserves - - ” and he hears it, the crack in his own voice at that. He shakes his head, recentering himself as his mother finally meets his gaze again. “The Baron will propose by the fall, we both know he will, and the Duke’s told me that her titling won’t go unnoticed by the King, especially when he knows already what the de Pointe du Lac name does for the Palace. It’ll put us in a good place, maman, and I won’t give that up for an estate failin’ enough to have a Comtesse so desperate she’d slum it with some new world bourgeois boy with full coffers.”

“You could turn their affairs around for them,” his mother insists. “It’s what you’re good at, ain’t it? Why your père spent all that money on you at Sorbonne? And we’ll have the Baron’s business then too.”

And she ain’t listening. Louis gestures wide, lips dropped into a scoff as he points out towards the library, out in the vague, unknowable direction of Grace.

“You hear yourself? You think he’s any better?” Louis snaps, temper flaring again. “That Baron and Comtesse you talkin’ about should be courting each other, there’s a reason they sniffin’ at our door instead.”

The words or the tone are enough to make Florence’s lip curl, affronted as she always is when Louis raises his voice with her, and he almost thinks to push past her. That this is wasting away the hours he should be seeing to business, but there’s something to her narrowing eyes and her carefully considering look that makes him suddenly uneasy.

“You can’t put it off forever,” she says, and Louis blinks, forehead furrowing in confusion.

“What?”

His mother sways slightly forwards, peering up into his face, the smell of her jasmine perfume filling his nose as she lets her look drag down his body before her, derisive in her discernment.

 “All this work and time devoted to elevating our family name, and yet you do everything in your power not to continue it,” she tells him, her voice cold but firmer now than he’s heard it today, and Louis feels sweat pool at his lower back as the blood rushes loud between his ears. “The boys you bed won’t give you an heir, yet you’d waste your time between their legs anyway. All your best laid plans, but still here you are, planting seeds where nothing will grow.”

Somewhere outside, a wood pigeon coos and a carrion crow brays, wind rustling the leaves of the evergreen oak trees that separate their hôtel from the next. Horses trot down the cobblestoned path, the rolling crunch of wheels loud even in the quiet of his cabinet, because the grounds Louis’ bought them aren’t ever quite big enough, and he swallows as he looks at his mother, fury and shame and the truth of it all roiling in his gut and it takes everything in him to say it quietly when he speaks next.

“Go see to Paul. My business don’t concern you.”

The thing about his father’s print shop is that he’d never been able to give it up.

Sentimental, maybe, foolish, certainly, at least for a time, for Louis remembers too well the discovery upon his father’s death that the business the man hung his pride on, their family name to, had emptied the coffers of their meagre fortune and left debtors rattling the windows and sharpening their swords. It had been an honesty offered only by Daniel Molly, his father’s new world friend and business partner, who’d shown him in those grief struck months where the books had been altered and the orders lost, his father’s failures writ large across decades of parchment.

A crushing reality, as it had been then. He had been just 22, only months out of the hallowed halls of Sorbonne’s prestigious law school, and suddenly left with the charge of his mother and two siblings – none of whom were ever made for work – and the knowledge that the low-waged salary of the clerkship he’d been offered in a Lyon court would leave his family in financial ruin. It had been Daniel’s offer, to sell the print shop he’d helped build with his father, but Louis hadn’t been able to bear the thought, and so he had had to work quickly. Plotting, scheming, calling in favors and negotiating down debts, and it had almost felt like slipping on a coat he’d never known was meant for him when he had figured out how to diversify his income to keep things going. Some enlightened, educated bourgeois boy finding a quick trade in cards and cheap wine and tobacco and streetwalking girls desperate for beds.

And it had helped, his knowledge of the law, and the hunger to fix what his father could not, but he’d had a new education in those early years too. One his father had never meant for him but forced upon him all the same, one in bloodied knuckles and quick steps, in the exchange of more than livres down the ports, and how a hard edge to a voice and the threat of a knife could get you a reputation that made business run a little quicker, a little smoother too.

Soon, he had The Azaelia and the wineries, illicit books and art and a tobacco trade and it had been barely two years before he’d had his father’s print shop up and running again, the presses running hot off the backs of his other businesses until the orders came in regularly enough to at least break even, and it had been Daniel he’d asked to run it with him. His father’s business partner made his own, a reclamation of a legacy Louis wore as proud as he could wear anything.

Not always easy though, Louis thinks, stepping through the doors of the place, trying to force his mother’s voice from his head and hearing the judder of the presses running, tearing off pages of the re-print of Rosseau – a request from a publisher the other side of Paris – when he knows just how small a part of his affairs the print shop makes up. His father’s life’s work now a glorified vanity business, perpetually teetering on the brink of ruin, the only inheritance his father ever left him.

With a quick step, Louis moves between the pressman laying ink across the leather inking balls, then another pulling the devil’s tail down the way, pushing the paper to an already inked sheet, the smell of grease and piss for tanning the leather parts of the press finding his nose as he glances between them.

“Daniel here?” he asks, and the pressman blinks up at him, lost to his work even as he shakes his head, and Louis frowns. Figures. The man’s been out more than he hasn’t been of late, writing more than printing as if he’s still the écrivain he was when he met his father back in the new world. The frayed edge of his frustration pulls a little rougher, and Louis adjusts his grip on his cane as his gaze travels down the floor, searching out the only person who could be running things in his stead, but when he fails to see the other man, he finds himself speaking his name too:  

“Rashid?”

The pressman jerks his head up the way to the small typesetting room at the back, and Louis nods in thanks, crossing the printing floor and slipping through the doorway to be met with the sight of the man bent over the long, wooden bench there.

Quiet, dutiful and steady-handed, Rashid stands in grey breeches and white stockings, coat off in the heat as he pours over the composite, his white sleeves billowing out from beneath his black waistcoat, and his dark hair cropped shorter than Louis’ seen it in a while, kept handsomely close to his face.

“The Rousseau re-print is coming along?” he asks, and he half-expects the other man to startle, the sound of his presence no doubt swallowed up by the sounds of the presses at work, but Rashid doesn’t so much as flinch, like he’d known Louis was there before he’d even crossed into the small, dark room.

“More than coming along,” he replies quietly, voice steady as he drops another letter to the setting stick, preparing it for printing. “We’re ahead of schedule. Should have the full order out by the end of the week.”

For the first time since leaving home this morning, it feels like something’s gone right. A relief found in Rashid’s quiet competence, confidence, that catches the tugging thread of Louis’ tangled emotion and lets him loosen. He rolls his shoulders back, tilts his head sideways, feels the tight tendons of his neck stretch and loosen, as the metallic clack of Rashid setting the letters on the chase for printing echoes, metronomic, in his head.

Still, it’s normally Daniel in here, and Louis finds himself shifting his weight, glancing around the room for any sign that the other man has been here today at all, and he finds them only in the spare set of spectacles left on the bench and some unevenly torn parchment, dotted with his familiar, rabbity scrawl.

“You seen Daniel today?” he asks, despite knowing the answer, and Rashid hums, dropping another letter to the setting stick.

“He opened the shop, but he’s departed to - - investigate a matter.”

In other words, still playin’ écrivain.

It’s enough to make Louis exhale on a laugh, although a part of him is glad the man has rediscovered his verve for his own words, rather than printing (and loudly, constantly, criticizing) the words of others.

Daniel had been a journalist in America when he’d met Louis’ father down in that new metropolitan of New York, and when he’d come to France all those years later, he had attempted to continue his chosen career only to see his work stymied by the government censorship that suffocated the country. It had been the reason he’d joined Louis’ father in the print shop in the first place, although the recent explosion in Paris of illegal pamphlets for local news had seen the man on the street more and more.

Still, it’s enough to make Louis sniff, and Rashid finally turns his head over his shoulder to look at him, his big, dark eyes playful and his lips tugged up into a wry little grin.

“Come see the composite for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s latest revision.”

The invitation is one Louis always finds hard to refuse – drawn to composites for the press as he is to most books or business – something Rashid knows too well, but it’s there too. An offer in the man’s voice that goes beyond the words before him, and it’s not why he came, it’s not, but oh, the suggestion that he might find a release for all of the day’s frustrations in this room beyond Rashid’s professional skill. Louis sucks on his lips, feeling the hot drag of the other man’s gaze on him as he pads towards him, stopping only to peer over the his broad shoulder to the metal chase he’s assembling the letters in.

It's the smell of him that dries Louis’ mouth – ink and iron and the faintest scent of cherry wood. Strong, masculine, honest without perfume.

Louis wets his lips, and isn’t this just what his mother said in his cabinet, a distraction from work, from his ambitions, for isn’t that what this is? And he feels the slow creep of anger and shame, but it’s never as deep in the earth of him as the unbridled want. He inhales deeply the smell of the other man, but tries to make his gaze focus on the words Rashid’s laid out before him, and it’s with a thick voice that he starts to read aloud:

“’Must it ever be thus – that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me,’” Louis quotes, tone rolling deeper than he intends, and he hears Rashid inhale, feels him turn ever so slightly towards him, their hips close enough to brush. “The Sorrows of Young Werther. I read the original print years ago.”

“Did you care for it?”

Did he? Louis turns the question over in his head as Rashid reaches for the divided box of letters, pulling out an a and an r to lace through the setting stick, his long, graceful fingers making elegant work of it, and Louis watches. Louis swallows. Louis tries to remember the book.

“Man falls for a woman already claimed by another man, drives himself to despair over it before he takes his own life,” he says, pulling it from the annals of his memory, gaze still fixed on Rashid’s elegant hands. “Melodramatic, overly romantic, and not exactly original. The structure I found interesting though, the way it’s told through letters.”

“I thought so too,” Rashid concurs, the metal clack of the letters hitting the chase before he turns better to face Louis, gaze flicking down to Louis’ mouth, and something pulses. Something heady and real, and it ain’t the first time they’ve done it. No, he and Rashid have an ease in their understanding, quick hands and wet mouths and parted thighs, the promise of a mutual release that offers no complication, but it presses down like a spring now, tighter than normal, and his mother is right. This is a waste, a delay, a distraction, but oh, how the man in him wants. His hand finds Rashid’s solid waist, and the other man leans back into him.

“You got time for this?” Louis asks, voice a little rough, and Rashid only laughs.

“I told you,” he replies, own tone bright and a little breathless already, inky hand fumbling back for the tie on Louis’ breeches. “We’re ahead of schedule.”

And it’s something easy, something good, Louis thinks, mind clearer than it’s been all day, tilting his head out the carriage window and into the free country air as the coachmen steers his sleek black carriage down the winding roads from Paris to Versailles. To be free, even briefly, of the city of his father’s shadow, of his mother’s. Of the duties that weigh heavy and the work that’s never done, losing himself to the summer meadows and the sea of lilac undulating before him. The country’s lavender farms are in full bloom, and it’s the smell of those too-sweet flowers that finds him on the breeze, along with the sounds of his girls in the carriages behind him, thrumming with anticipation for the night still to come.

“Mon dieu.”

The words are threaded rich with wonder, carrying across the short distance between their carriages, and despite having seen the Palace innumerable times, Louis doesn’t think he’ll ever stop echoing the sentiment Estelle so dizzily puts to words.

Versailles ain’t just a palace, no, but a monument of possibility, an artistic bastion, a spectacle for every sense and a flex of wealth and influence just as the Sun King Louis was named for first intended it. It sprawls, miles long and miles tall, with its marble façade and towering arched windows and its strong and loping pillars, somehow posing both gracious invitation and distinct, articulate warning. Here lies power, she seems to sing, from the moment her gates open to you to the moment you find yourself at her door, and Louis inhales something deep. Desperate, suddenly, to hold the place forever in his lungs.

It's damp, the air, from the city’s own humid summer to the reverberation of fresh water from Apollo’s golden fountain, and it tastes vaguely of the roses from the Queen’s garden, tastes of luxury, of wanting for nothing in this world you can’t imagine, and it’s an easy thing then. To step out of his carriage and into the early evening, to put the day behind him and let the heady beauty of the place fill his senses as the Palace unhinges her jaw, and it’s from out of her open mouth that the music sings – violins and flutes and the ever angelic chords of a harp – the evening’s festivities already begun as a woman steps out to meet him.

Resplendent in a peach silk gown with a detailed blue floral brocade, it takes little to recognize Marius’ other courtesan, Bianca, as delicate in her loveliness as Armand.

“Mademoiselle,” Louis says, bowing as he hears his coachmen flick the reins behind him, directing the horses on, his carriage wheels crunching loud in the gravel as the first holding his girls moves to replace it.

“Monsieur,” she replies with a smile and an easy curtsy, her fair hair glinting something close to white beneath the slow setting sun, and he sees it. When her gaze flits between the two carriages behind him, clocking the girls in both. “I see our Maître’s message found you well.”

“Well, and in good time, so I thank your maître for his consideration,” Louis replies, cloying even to him as he adjusts his sleeve, feeling the cool brush of the dagger hidden within it (a safety precaution, nothing more), and stands a little taller as Bianca’s focus finds him again. There’s no shyness to the girl – can’t be, for a courtesan of her pedigree – and she makes no attempt to pretend otherwise as her oval eyes travel over him now, taking in his polished brown boot atop cream stockings and breeches, before travelling up his torso, and she raises a perfect, pale eyebrow. His vest is one of his finer ones, a gold-tinged cream embroidered with creeping vines beneath a high-collared, brown velvet coat, a shade or two darker than his skin. Its embroidered with a lush brocade of yawning white and gold flowers and plant fronds, suggesting layers of a garden, and as her gaze dips up to his face, he arches an eyebrow because, fuck, he knows he looks good, even as he avoids the saccharine pastels of the aristocrats. Bianca hums in appreciation.

“You flatter him,” she says, amused almost, before she adds more genuinely: “He’ll be glad of you tonight.”

And there’s something there to her tone that gives Louis pause. Has his forehead furrowed and something in his chest tightening, the sound of the fountain suddenly loud in the distance behind him, because it reminds him, oddly, of Armand that morning, but it ain’t the time to ask. Not out here in the open, at least, and when she tilts her head towards the entry, Louis just nods back to the other coachmen to let the girls out, and when Bianca turns on her heel, all that’s left to do is follow her through the ever-daring door of Versailles.

With over 2,000 rooms, Versailles isn’t the sort of place to navigate without an experienced guide, and Bianca proves, as always, a deft one, taking them past the main ballrooms, the galleries and the drawing rooms, past the busy banquet hall where the aristocrats feast ahead of tonight’s events (and Louis can’t stop his gaze from catching, trying to recognize any of the guests that he can even as he’s hurried forwards) and down to a string of private rooms adjacent to the lower servants’ quarters for the girls to primp and powder and perfume after their long ride from Paris.

They’re quick to do it too, Eglee and Estelle and Vita erupting in a flurry of lurid silks and heaving bosoms and high-pitched chatter as they see the lavish mirrored room they’re set to make themselves up in before the evening begs for their bodies, the other women a little quieter behind, and Louis leaves them all to it. Slipping back out into the golden hall with Bianca, who turns immediately to rest a soft hand atop his wrist.

“I shall call on Armand to let him know that you have arrived in good time and spirits,” she says, and it’s enough to make Louis blink. To have his mouth flattening as he turns to face her, because that ain’t how this goes. He clears his throat, gaze darting up the hall to where a few servants linger, ears no doubt attentive.

“Duke de Romanus usually sets the order of the evening with me personally,” he tells her quietly, firmly, chafing a little, but Bianca only smiles, placating.

“He will attend you tonight, monsieur, in fact he has been greatly anticipating your arrival this evening, but between the business with the Prince and so many aristocrats visiting from the outer provinces, I am sure you can appreciate his divided attention.”

Even with the door closed, he can still hear the girls chattering, loud and musical as they ready for the night, can hear further, back towards the banquet hall, the slurring baritones of the already drunk aristocrats, loud even over the strings, can smell the enticing scent of lemon and parsley, broths lighter than air before heavy and salted meat before syrupy, saccharine deserts, the wine free flowing, and his own stomach tightens at the memory of the bread and bouillabaisse he’d wolfed down after he’d left Rashid at the print shop, sated in one way and hungry in too many others, because for every course the men here eat in their leisure, every body he brings them to fondle and fuck, he has to steal in the shadows.

And it’s the doubt then, for had his mother been right?

Was that all Marius saw in him still after years of work – just a pimp and a new world boy to fuck his concubine – had his allusions to assisting Louis on his path to an office been a lie? Was it why he’d gifted Armand this morning? His favorite whore’s body something he thought could ever be worth as much to a man like Louis as the Duke’s ear and attention?    

It - - rankles.

He squints at her, lips parting to say exactly what he feels, but he can feel the servant’s attention, worse, can feel Bianca’s curiosity, like she’s interested in just how he handles this particular relegation of priority, and after a moment, he finds it in himself. The thread of the patience he forces himself to hold. He takes a breath.

There are rules, he reminds himself, and no one like him has ever been the one to write them.

“Of course,” he says, bowing his head a little, chest tight with it, and Bianca hums, almost amused, before directing him down the wide hallway to an arched, engraved doorway bookended by two powdered, white-wigged servants.

“There have been some new additions to the South Gallery since your last visit,” she says smoothly, gesturing through to where Louis knows the King displays many of the illustrious artistic acquisitions his noble circle brings him, along with his spoils of war. “I believe you’ll find some works you’ve sold to the Duke in there. In fact, your name should even be so honored on the placard. It is so important to our Maître to ensure the provenance of the works he buys.”

Provenance.

Louis stares back at her pretty face, biting his tongue, because that word don’t mean what she’s acting like it does when half of what our maître buys ain’t legal. He thins his lips into a tight smile, and she curtseys something dainty and cloying, and at least, he thinks, they’re both performing here now. 

“I will ensure you are seen to before your generously provided entertainment is,” she adds, and Louis knows when he’s being dismissed. Sucking on his teeth, he allows her a short, sharp nod, frustration holding to his bones as he turns on his heel towards the gallery she’d directed him to, and he hears it. Her turning to walk in the opposite direction, her peach silk gown dragging against the oak floorboards, and she promises Marius will see him tonight, but when? He rarely will speak to Louis during the rounds of fuckery, often distracted himself by Armand or Bianca or any one of the countless demands on his attention on the ballroom floor, and he’d wanted Louis here, he had, so was he to wait the night through until Marius allowed him his pouch of jewels and livres?

The thought sticks. The flickering frustration that he deserves better stoked by his mother’s earlier discernment, and it holds. The thought that maybe he should allow the Comtesse her meeting, however cold it leaves him, and it’s sudden, is the thing.

Passing the servants at the doorway of the gallery with their white wigs and grey eyes and stiff posture, but still - -

A quick flicked gaze.

A clear and discriminating assessment.

That loose spark of his tempter spits.

He drops a booted foot a little heavier on the floor as he moves between them, feels the dagger up his sleeve sharp against his wrist, and he should leave it, needs to, but it licks something hotter when one of them doesn’t quite shift his gaze from him.

“Didn’t think you boys were allowed to look,” he says, voice a little taut, but faux light, like any of this can be less than disrespect, and it’s the other one. The one not looking at him, who says it:

“We’re not, monsieur. At least, we’re not to those above us.”

It’s a muscle memory almost. One created down in the ports and back alleys that has him spinning, boot heel squeaking on the floorboards as he bounds forwards. His fingers flick the dagger out from the sleeve of his shirt as he grabs the man’s dropped jaw, shoving him back into the arched doorway and pressing the dagger to the man’s neck. It takes his yelp, his quivering throat, for Louis to even realise how quickly he’d moved, but oh, it feels good, the pressures and every bit of disrespect and impudence directed at him during the day that he’d hoped he’d released with Rashid sated more with this, and a bolt of pleasure strikes through him as he feels the man’s sudden and real fear.

Behind him, he can hear the other servant gasp, flounder, before promptly running off to find someone else, but Louis looks at no one beyond the man he holds. His sunken eyes and flared nostrils and weak chin, held firm now in Louis’ attention, his bobbing Adam’s apple, his shallow chest squirming, and at least this, Louis knows he can do.

“Look again and it’ll be the last thing you ever see, understand?”

It’s all it takes for the man to nod, and Louis holds him just a second longer. Waits until he sees the man’s eyes grow wet and his body tremble before he releases him. The servant stumbles sideways, coughing a little as Louis drops his dagger back into the sleeve of his shirt, but he otherwise makes no acknowledgement of the man as he steps forwards into the gallery, temper at least a little sated, although adrenaline coursing bright.

And - - fuck.

It's all he can do to lap the gallery.

To walk steady, firm, through too many portraits he’s seen before, because it’s an energy that’s suddenly found in him that feels impossible to diffuse, the heavy chandeliers like a pendulum atop his head and the endless glinting gold amidst lavishly framed portraits doing little to ease his sudden hot-sparking mood, and he needs to take a breath. Needs to remember himself, remember that Marius will see him tonight and that his mother don’t know what he does, what he is for the Duke, that his work here is the very key he told her it was, that this is the path not marriage, for reasons beyond where he likes to put his cock, and - - yes.

His pulse slows, his breathing evens, his gaze catching not on the opulence and weight of the room with its blood red walls and circular, yet labyrinthian chambers within the broader space, but the art within it, and it calms something in him now as he walks. The sight of careful brushstrokes and lush visages, honest expressions among the secretive, round-eyed hares among the rippled horse flanks, and ever the rolling landscapes he’s scarce seen in real life, and it helps in the way good art always helps him. Steadies the roaring sea within him, and it’s okay, he reminds himself. He’s still here, in the Palace, a place he never could’ve imagined as a boy nor a young man when he started on this journey, and the thought grounds him as he walks through the gallery, pace slower now, letting himself take in the paintings, the sculptures, only to stop at Jan Mostaert’s Portrait of an African Man.

Thing is, he’s seen it before.

It’s not a new acquisition for the King’s gallery, but it holds him in its thrall all the same. Grounds him. A man not so far removed from his own, chin up, and the figure regal in red, expression somehow both unknowable and ever knowing, and there’s something to him that reminds Louis of his father. Reminds him of the man he loved who failed their family, and it’s not the money, the business, the name, but suddenly the bruises pressed are those long nights with Grace again. The nights he stayed up makin’ promises he never knew if he could keep, ones he never wanted to have to make, because his father didn’t fail him first with the business, but with Paul. Because sending him away would ever render any failing of their family – of Louis – beneath it in its shadow, and maybe it was always that. Maybe Louis knew it was. That everything that drove him to want this power began not with his father’s professional failure but that familial one, that in holding his sister those long nights as she wept, he’d already begun cleaning up for the man he’d once so admired.

And the business had only compounded it.

The knowledge that his father could sit proud on his empire of dirt as he hid what crawled within, and it has left it’s wound in Louis. This stranger thing, the man who let him down, the man he wants to make proud, the name he wants to swallow and enshrine in equal measure, and it’s - -

CLANG.

The sound of something heavy and metal falling to the gallery floor suddenly ricochets through the space, and Louis startles, turns on the spot to search out the chamber, flicking from wall to plinth to sculpted façade, and he spots the knocked-over iron shield – a souvenir from the Battle of Fleurus – still rattling on the floor and then - -

A glimpse of blond hair and a figure svelte in red silk. A man’s figure, he realizes, all long legs and pale hands, and the way his hair is tied back in a brown velvet ribbon which he swears he’s seen today, and then it just - - it catches because - -

“Laurent?” Louis asks, and he hears it. The way his voice echoes in the chamber, and it couldn’t be, but the name spoken aloud has made the boy hasten his step, and if he means to escape the gallery, he’s makin’ a fool’s errand of it. Louis’ been here enough to know that the boy’s only burying himself deeper in the circular labyrinth, and Louis should leave it, he should, but - -

The Prince.

That small and twisting feeling that wriggled deep in his belly this morning at Laurent’s wet-eyed look suddenly wriggles back out, and Louis finds himself moving. Almost hears his own shoes clipping on the floor before he realizes he’s walking at all, but then the boy pivots right and the room seems to shift and Louis picks up his pace. Eyes fixed on the quick-moving body before him, blond hair flicking back and broad shoulders tapering to an impossible waist, and had Laurent always had that? But - - no, he can see the boning of a corset, but then - - he’s never seen that on Laurent before either.

Still - -

“Laurent,” he calls again, and the boy seems to stiffen, to turn suddenly to the left, ducking around a plinth holding an elegant Roman bust, and Louis feels his pulse jump, because it has to be, doesn’t it? Why would anyone else run like this, but then why the fuck would Laurent be here at all? Under the employ of another pimp, maybe, which - - no. Laurent knows he employs exclusively, at least when it comes to the business of sex, but then - -

Louis’ pulse stutters.

He’d said it in front of him this morning, hadn’t he? That the Prince had been retitled, that he’d be here, and he’s seen it before. The ground-down taking the law into their own hands, seen it even with those who seem as vulnerable, as weak as Laurent ever seems, and would the boy be so foolish as to slip in under the guise of whoring to take his vengeance against the man who took him?

And that - - oh. That feels real, Louis thinks, a nervous energy finding him, and he fondles the dagger in his sleeve as he dashes around a false wall, meaning to cut Laurent off wherever he stands by whatever means necessary (and it could be good, perhaps, a way in, to take out such a threat to the King’s prized guest), only he hastens around a portrait wall only to come face to face with - -

Well.

Not Laurent.

No, Louis thinks, briefly dazed, for where Laurent’s pale features are defined by a sharp chin and a too-narrow nose, eyes closer to grey than blue, and lashes near white, this boy’s face - - man’s face - - is square jawed and high cheek boned. His eyes soft, not like a doe, but a dove, big and round and lovely, but still a little wild, his mouth just slightly too big for his face and painted pink, made to look somehow all the wider for the scar that tugs at the corner of it, like something caught and ripped wide by the devil’s dew claw. His soft blond curls hang around his face, darker than Laurent’s, he can see that now, but still golden, and framed somehow to invite fingers through it.

Outside, a voice calls, and another, the music sounding louder, the strings becoming something almost jaunty – a sure signal that the next stage of the festivities are soon to begin – but they’re muffled through the thick walls of the Palace. Held at bay by anything that isn’t the man before him, who’s throat bobs even as his posture loosens, his gaze darting over Louis like he seeks to imprint him to memory.

Louis swallows, blinks, his own gaze dropping, which is all it takes for him to catch the elegance, the expense of his perfectly tailored red suit, detailed with a cravat of silk and lace and pearlescent white stockings and black slippers that have never seen a stone floor, and - - fuck. Ain’t the provincial aristocrats in town? His cheeks heat as he drops to a bow.

“Mon seigneur,” he says, apology thick in his voice, because this man clearly is one. A noble escaping the drunken formalities of the early evening, and one Louis would apparently corner on the floor of the gallery. The thought lands hot somewhere in him, a prickling, festering embarrassment, and he resists the urge to shake his head to knock the thoughts of it all out, adds instead: “I apologize, I thought you were someone else.”

For a second, a moment, the man says nothing. Just lets Louis bow low and hold it, his posture stooped and Louis feels his stomach tighten, the maw of frustration, of shame, of humiliation, sink its teeth back in his tenderest flesh as he keeps his bow for a noble he’s never even damned well seen before, when the man suddenly speaks.

“And this someone would be…” he starts, trailing off, his voice a velvet purr that Louis feels drag down his spine, but the words - -

It takes Louis a moment to decipher his accent. A tangled French. Not just provincial, but regional, he thinks, but Bianca had said that, hadn’t she? That Marius was entertaining guests from further provinces, and the thought leaves Louis’ palms wet.

“A cousin,” the man adds, and Louis’ gaze flicks up to meet his, those impossible blue eyes of his suddenly dancing bright as Louis feels his own eyes darken. “A lover, a maître, or all three perhaps, as seems popular in Versailles?”

And it wedges in him, the word maître, enough for Louis to pull out of his bow, standing up straight, and he realizes vaguely that they’re of a height even as he too suddenly feels it laughable he’d ever think him Laurent at all. This man has the air of one born to a title, and it tells in the set of his shoulders and the polish of his slippers and the tilt of his perfect jaw, and the man at least doesn’t seem offended by Louis chasing him down – if anything, he seems tickled by it now, almost boyishly so, and - - is his jawline deceptive? Is he a boy? – and could there be a deal to be made here? He’s a vision of wealth at the very least in the finery of his suit (although the fact that he’s clearly wearing a corset beneath his vest and coat gives Louis pause), but then again, the provincial aristocrats tend to offer little beyond what their peasants can provide them.

 “That may be the case, but the man I mistook you for is not a one,” Louis offers wanly, and the man – boy? – blinks at him, something between surprise and amusement, and Louis clears his throat. Hopes the Creole in his drawl don’t creep into his perfect Parisian affect as he adds: “So - -”

“So who was he then, monsieur?” the aristocrat asks, jutting a sharp hip in Louis’ direction. “The man you mistook me for?”

It’s a violin then, loud, piercing, that interrupts them, causing the aristocrat to tilt his head suddenly back towards the gallery entrance, his thin, but firm chest heaving beneath red silk and white lace, and Louis’ gaze dips back down to the man’s cinched waist before he can help it. Takes in the dip of it that seems to beg for a hand, more than one, maybe, because how would that little thing look framed between Louis’ palms from behind as he - -

Fuck.

He blinks, forces his attention back up to where the other man’s still looking out towards the entrance, long, elegant neck exposed, the faintest glimpse of a hickey just below the collar of his cravat and - - right.

“Do you need help finding your way back to the ballroom, mon seigneur,” Louis says, ignoring the man’s question with one of his own, and it chafes, of course it chafes, but he knows better than most that this sort of a thing is still a way in.

It’s enough at least to have the man’s full attention back on him, his own gaze dragging hot over Louis again as he says:

“You should never assume I do not know my way to a ballroom, monsieur,” he replies, kittenish almost, as he suddenly sidles in a little closer. “And I fear you have not answered my question. If I am to be mistaken for another tonight, I’d hope you’d be so kind as to tell me something of my double who walks these floors.”

Lavender, he thinks. With elderflower and mint, a unique perfume, but still, perfumed, he thinks, in the way all the nobles are, and he takes in the aristocrat’s powdered face and rouged cheeks and pink lips, his golden lashes dusted with coal dust to darken them, painted up better than his whores, and yet - -

Louis’ throat bobs, gaze darting from the man’s pouting lips to his high cheekbones to his eyes bluer than anything he thinks he’s ever seen, and he huffs out a breath he hopes still veers on respect.

“You have no double, mon seigneur,” he offers finally. “There’s an - - entertainer who wasn’t supposed to be a part of tonight’s events who shares some similarities. That’s all. Now that I can see he’s not here, and that you have no need of assistance, I will bid you farewell. I have duties to attend to, and if you discover you can no longer find your way to this particular ballroom, I’m sure one of the servants at the gallery entrance will be able to - -”

Suddenly, the man claps graceful hands.

“An entertainer!” he exclaims, bright and loud, the sound echoing around the otherwise empty gallery as Louis’ head lolls back in surprise. At the gesture, the man leans in again, forcing Louis to hold his ground amidst the sudden proximity, warmth radiating off the other man’s body like a hearth he could lay before, grin tugging at his lips and blue eyes sparking as his hands lift, curling up in the space between them. “I was not informed there was to be a show! A repertoire work, I’m assuming, for a tour such as this? Perhaps the Arlequin Balourd, or The Triumph of Love? Bah, where is my head, this is Versailles, surely an original work for all of the so decorated visitors?”

And it - - baffles, briefly. Louis’ lips parting, his forehead furrowed, his gaze darting again across the other man’s face, because surely even the most provincial aristocrats know that entertainment means whores. A very rural province then, he’s guessing, between this and whatever fucked dialect of French he’s drivellin’ out in that velvet voice of his. The latter thought has his attention dipping back to the other man’s tightly cinched waist, a heat finding him, and does he even know the night he’s in for? (It flickers like a fantasy then, stealing him here, those blue eyes wide up at him, pink lips parted and cheeks flushed in pleasure as Louis teaches him a thing or two about how they do things in the cities.)

Which - -

Not his place, and - - fuck. He ain’t even his type.  

He clears his throat, ignoring the drag of heat through his belly that won’t quite cool down.

“I don’t believe the Palace is equipped for the sort of theatre you’re talking about, mon seigneur,” he says smoothly. “I do believe the musicians have already started though, which you would see were you in the ballroom.”

Where you’re supposed to be, he thinks, and he hopes the aristocrat hears, but anything of the sort seems to fall on deaf ears. If anything, the man seems reluctant to give up the conversation, and he tilts his head to one side, attention still fixed curiously on Louis.

“And this entertainer you know, he is a musician?”

Briefly, the picture of Valentin playing the piano in the rest room this morning finds him, his hands clumsy on the keys, and he rolls his eyes, a wry smile finding his face as he glances back at the naïve noble staring wide-eyed back at him only to shake his head.

“No, the entertainment I offer is more for, ah,” he lets his gaze meet the blond’s as he says it. “Private shows.”

And he sees it. The dawning look of realization that finally crosses the man’s face, his lips twitching in acknowledgement, his pupils blowing, and in the moment of discovery, he seems to - - reassess Louis. His gaze as good as dragging Louis’ clothes from his body as it slides down his form, a heat, more than heat, a caress in his look that has Louis’ throat tightening and the blood pooling low. It’s somehow sensual, not an urgent fondle or an attempted seduction, something like he’s dragging his perfect fingers down Louis’ chest, his sternum, belly, straight to his suddenly interested - -  

“An entertainer,” the man says, gaze suddenly flicking back up to Louis’ face, and with that he raises a hand, his fingers flicking over Louis in clear question, and just like that, the heat’s washed out in favor of something cold.

“Supplier of the entertainers,” he says curtly, trying to keep the sharpness out of his voice, because it ain’t like this is the first time some aristocratic connard has tried to cast him in the very role he employs. Still, it bristles, especially when the other man just raises an eyebrow, his polished slippers sliding a little closer, and his voice is low, a little husky as he says:

“A beauty such as yourself would surely fetch a high price though, non?”

And there’s something both flirtatious and oddly innocent beneath the insult, something that has Louis’ molars grinding and saliva pooling behind them all at once, and it takes everything in him not to slip the dagger out again as he bites:

“Yeah, I ain’t for sale.”

A look Louis can’t decipher crosses the other man’s face, but it’s quickly swallowed by that too familiar, simpering look that all the damned nobles are prone to.

“Aren’t we all for the right number?” the man asks, voice almost goading, and oh, it works, is the thing. That ever tightening cord of Louis’ temper tugging back to life, and he can feel the dagger hot at his wrist, thumb twisting, ready to flick it up, when suddenly a voice sounds loud across the gallery.

“Monsieur de Pointe du Lac!” it calls, and both Louis’ and the other man’s head jerk sideways to look, and it’s there, not ten feet away, between two ornately framed portraits, that Armand swans into their line of vision. Fitted in a surprisingly understated midnight blue waistcoat – instructed, Louis presumes, to draw less attention to his beauty tonight with Magnus’ list of demands, given he, unlike Louis, does ever remain on offer – and with his dark locks smoothed back from his face, he is still a picture of Versailles elegance, dark lashes thick and small mouth painted the color of Burgandy’s favorite wine. It’s enough to have Louis stand a little straighter, folding his hands behind his back, and finding himself almost relieved for the interruption.

“Bianca informed me you arrived with the requested amendments to the evening’s order,” Armand continues when he reaches them, dark eyes warm on Louis’ own. “My Maître sends his gratitude, and will see you later in the library once the festivities have begun. He’d introduce you to some of the visiting aristocrats from the provinces.”

Which - - okay.

Louis blinks, rolls his shoulders, nods something short, sharp, and it’s a surprise is all. That the Duke means to introduce him in the library and not in one of the lower galleries like this one, and the prospect of standing not in the shadows, keeping count of the work his girls do, but standing by the Duke as he holds court feels like - - something. He bites the inside of his cheek, but then - -

Hasn’t he met one of these provincial aristocrats already?

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees blond hair in something like a wave as the man beside him tosses his head back, staring up at the crystal chandelier above them, and it’s enough to have Louis fix his gaze back on Armand. To look at him pointedly, but Armand acts like the other man isn’t even there at all.

“I also wished to extend you the courtesy of letting you know I will be unable to do as we discussed this morning. The Duke does seek my attendance on him this evening,” he says, and Louis’ forehead furrows as he huffs out something of a laugh, baffled by such a disclosure in front of a Lord, but then - - his gaze narrows, and Armand pops an eyebrow, like he’s surprised it’s taken Louis this long to catch on, before he finally shifts his attention to the man beside Louis. “As the Prince does yours, Monsieur de Valois.”

Monsieur?

Louis raises an eyebrow of his own, turning his attention back to this Valois who shifts in his pretty red suit, a flush sitting high atop his cheekbones even as he squares his shoulders, feigning disinterest in Armand’s words as he fiddles with the lace on his sleeve.

“As he brought you tonight, he would not have you wander,” Armand adds, tone a little cloying as a strange look crosses Valois’ face and Louis takes him in anew, and there was a reason, he thinks. Taking in the blond locks and the svelte figure and that painted-pink mouth, that he’d mistaken him for Laurent.

It lands somewhere strange in him. The pity brushed up against the insult of being taken for a whore by a whore, and he purses his own mouth, attention fixing on the wooden floors as he hears Valois say:

“I sought only the briefest respite.”

An earnest answer. It sits in his voice, something soft, genuine, and Louis blinks as it’s met only with a trivializing look from Armand.

“And you will find that on his arm,” the courtesan says, and there’s something to him right now. His posture firm and his authority absolute in a way Louis’ never seen it, but then, Louis’ never seen him with other courtesans, at least, not like this. “He has expressed a displeasure at your abrupt disappearance to my Maître, and it is not a night for the Prince’s displeasure. Quite the opposite, as I’m sure you know.”

Louis’ gaze flicks up at that, back to where the blond stands not two feet away, posture a little stiff and throat constricting beneath the high neck of his red silk coat. Caught as he is in the trap of the Palace, but Louis sees it. The moment his shoulders suddenly loosen, his weight shifting almost imperceptibly, not quite resigning yet to his fate as his pink lips twist a little meanly.

“And so they send you out to ply me as an equal,” he drawls, flicking two fingers between himself and Armand. “Whore to whore.”

Defiant, Louis notes, a flicker of amusement finding him at the tone, because he might not like it in those in his employ, but he can’t deny a degree of enjoyment in it in those around him, particularly aimed at others.

“I would not assume we are equals, Lestat,” Armand replies smoothly, punctuating his position with the use of the man’s given name, like you would a child in a schoolroom, and Louis snorts, something that has Lestat’s blue eyes flicking back to him, insulted, when it’s Louis who should be. To be so fooled by a courtesan playing at nobility, he works his mouth, giving Lestat an unimpressed look right back.

“Until the Prince has offered you a contract and a bed to keep you in, you are below even the whores in Monsieur de Pointe du Lac’s employ,” Armand continues, dark eyes fixed and face a mask of derision even though Louis has known him long enough to hear the enjoyment of this in his voice. “You’ll be walking the street instead of these halls if you insult your evening’s maître any more than you have already.”

Somewhere outside of the gallery, a door opens and a spill of sound billows out. The loud hoots and hollers of the aristocrats drunkenly finding their way to the ballroom floor, and Louis will need to go soon. Will need to gather his girls to present for the evening, but right now he can’t quite tear his gaze away from Lestat, who doesn’t shrink at Armand’s efforts to lower him, but rather squares his jaw, lips ever so slightly parted, like he’s contemplating taking the street over the Prince, and something in Louis presses in a sudden, unexpected pity. The memory of Laurent’s trembling hands at the vanity this morning too fresh, and it’s enough to make Louis turn back to Armand, who’s watching Lestat squirm with a heat in his eyes Louis knows too well.

“You’d make a good madame, Armand,” Louis says, blunt with the drag of it, and it’s enough to have Armand glare daggers back at him, but more, it’s enough to have Lestat barking on a sudden, too loud laugh. Louis blinks, twisting to look at the other man, not entirely sure what to make of the reaction.

“Such a generous offer of employment from the monsieur, non?” Lestat simpers, taking a step towards Armand, who only curls his lip in reply. “For when your Duke is done with you.”

So more than defiant, Louis thinks, bratty, amusement tugging at his own lips before he can stop it, and he really should be going. Should be making sure the girls are ready and checking the books for the night, he should, means to, maybe even, only suddenly Lestat turns to look at him again, and he finds the air stolen from his lungs.

It’s just - -

Something close to celestial.

The smile that Lestat turns on him, so - - happy to be even so mildly defended. It’s brighter than a string of stars hung in the night sky, his eyes shining with their reflection, open in a way no part of Louis has ever been, and it blinds him briefly, or no, it doesn’t blind him. Rather, it blinds him to anything that ain’t the man before him, this nymph of the night, an impish imposter, courtesan playing court player playing court jester, and Louis can feel his lips part, can taste suddenly lavender again on his tongue, and it’s not perfume that it tastes like now, but the memory of his ride here, and it’s as if they were drawn through the same fields as they came here this night, and Louis ain’t a romantic, never had a poet’s tongue no matter how much he once dreamed of having one’s heart, but this - -

“It’s you who shall be seeking Monsieur de Pointe du Lac’s employment if you do not follow me immediately,” Armand bites, and just like that Louis’ snapped from his reverie, blinking rapidly as Lestat turns his head back to the other man, and it’s like clicked fingers to the hypnotized, the way Louis claws his way back to any sense of himself at all.

He clears his throat, gaze catching on the way Armand moves to place an arm around Lestat’s narrow waist, fingers clenching hard at the dip there (and a feeling then, something tight that he has no right to at all), gentle yet firm in a way that indicates less a friendly hold than a guard chaperoning a prisoner to his execution. 

“The Duke will call on you later,” Armand says to Louis as he starts to drag Lestat out of the gallery, their legs long and graceful in fine silk breeches as they start to walk, and Louis nods, forehead furrowed as he watches them retreat back to the nobles, when suddenly, Lestat tosses his head back to see him again.

“May your performers not so much as smudge their rouge as they fill your pockets tonight, monsieur,” he calls, voice a lyrical drawl that has a grin twitching at Louis’ lips before he can stop it. “I wish them an evening of merry fuckery.”

“And I you, Lestat,” Louis says, the name finding his tongue before he can help it, and it’s not one he’s heard before, but somehow it’s one that feels familiar in his mouth all the same. Ahead of him though, Lestat winces a little, and it’s all the reminder Louis needs to remember exactly who his evening’s maître is, and it holds his chest and roars up through him so suddenly. The need to say something else, because somehow he can’t have that be the last thing he says to the man, but Armand moves quickly when he wants to, and they’re out the door and down the hall before any better parting words can grace Louis’ tongue.

The song of the flute flutters high atop the jaunt of the oboe and the sail of the violin, the King’s chamber musicians setting an easy step for the nobles to dance to in the main ballroom, leaving them a heady sea of pastel silk and piled-up hair, white wigs and pungent perfumes and a cacophony of chatter and laughter to rise to the high, painted ceilings. Louis weaves in and out of the crowd, keeping an eye on the easy way Eglee charms her way onto the floor with a red-nosed Comte in an ill-fitting vest, her own green silk dress low-busted enough to catch attention, while not three steps away, Doris fondles a Marquis in rapidly tightening breeches.

They do keep it somewhat decent on the dancefloor, but there’s no shortage of rooms to slip away to for rowdy fuckery in the wings, and Louis’ gaze catches on Madeleine’s red hair, glinting beneath the candlelight, as she leads one of the prettier Baronesses – for rarely do the noble women like to be left out of the fun – down past the blue velvet curtains to whatever sliver of privacy they might find.

He hasn’t seen Lestat or Armand since he found his way to the ballroom, not that he’s been truly looking for either one of them, of course, but it does leave that uneasy feeling yawning awake in his belly again. With them not on the floor, their maîtres aren’t either, and the knowledge that business is being attended to elsewhere while he distracts the bumbling provincial aristocrats with metropolitan whores chafes in the way that it always does.

Pulling his short quill and parchment from where it’s tucked into the top of his vest, he wets the former with his tongue, just enough to soften the ink and scratches a quick note of the Baroness Madeleine’s attending, when suddenly a hand touches his elbow. Louis turns only to bow his head again at Bianca’s delicate countenance.

“The Duke would like to introduce you to someone, monsieur.”

The words are enough to have Louis’ head raised again, his rapid pulse stuttering, because oh, this? This is what all of this is for.

As a boy, his father had told him stories of the Library of Alexandria.

That house of history, that shrine to story, knowledge kept becoming influence wielded as men began to understand that the latter could not exist without the former, and he’s reminded of it again now as the heavy oak wood doors of Versailles’ own library open and he’s met with shelves and shelves of books.

The room’s lit only with a few standing candles, the arched windows closed to preserve the color of the spines, and it leaves them long shadowed on the wooden floors as Louis follows Bianca, the beacon of the little lantern she holds his only way to the Duke, or, at least, she is until Louis hears the man’s voice boom out through the dark.

“Our supplier for the evening,” Marius says, and Louis peers over Bianca’s shoulder to where the man stands by an elegant, hard topped desk in a dark corner of the library, his craggy, but still handsome face illuminated by the candlelight, and his hair cropped short, silver and soft and free of the wig he often wears on these dancing nights. He stands taller than anyone Louis’ ever met before, near a foot above Bianca, and half one taller than himself, in an elegant cream coat and breeches with a golden trim, more Versailles than the walls that surround him in here. “The Vicomte Thomas de Orleans, I’d have you met Monsieur Louis de Pointe du Lac.”

It's only then that Louis sees the other men: Armand in the shadows behind Marius, and a pale, small man, of a height with Louis, dark haired and, unusually for the trends of the day, moustached around the other side of the desk before him. More unusually, perhaps, but the man claps his hands at the sight of him, as Louis promptly bows.

“The man himself! You sell a quality product, monsieur, it has to be said – I’ve had a sample this very night already – but I’d expected nothing less. The Duke here has spoken rather highly of you.”

No faint praise, Louis knows, although something in him chafes all the same at the need for the Duke’s endorsement at all. His gaze dips up, trying to place him, and - - Doris and Bricktop both, he thinks. He remembers seeing him steel them away through the curtain not an hour ago. Beside him, Bianca curtsies, turning on her heel to head back the way that she came, and Louis watches as the Vicomte’s gaze flicks to follow her, watching the movement of her shapely body as she walks away.

“A testament to Monsieur de Pointe du Lac’s acumen when it comes to business,” Marius says, his deep voice mild as he turns, gesturing Armand to the carafe of wine at the cabinet against the wall behind them, and he goes readily. Pouring a heady glass, before walking around the desk to pass it to Louis, his face carefully neutral in that way it always is when he’s at Marius’ bidding. Louis raises an eyebrow, eyes searching for some sort of hint at what Marius’ plan is, and Armand’s own brows raise in acknowledgement, eyes bright, telling him in his own way that whatever this is will be good. Louis takes the glass, ignoring his jackrabbiting heart. “Although that should not be a surprise, he has the resolute working ethics of the new world. You’re countrymen of a sort, that way.”

Which - -

Louis blinks at that, gaze darting back to the Vicomte de Orleans, and - - right.

“Yes, I spent my earliest years in New Orleans,” Louis replies carefully, having a sip of the wine, the tannins coating his tongue, watching as the other man finally tears his gaze from Bianca’s retreating form to face him again.

“I thought I could hear some creole in you,” he says, cheeks a little flushed whether still in fantasy with Bianca or with the liquor or both, Louis ain’t sure. “Not so common for a man such as yourself to journey between the colony and the motherland, no?”

And no, Louis thinks, it hadn’t been.

He’d told Marius this once in confidence, knowing how those of the New World could be treated by the French, knowing too how easily it could hamper his ambitions for those to know he hadn’t been born to Europe, but Marius only gives him an encouraging look. It’s enough to make Louis close his eyes, that uneasy feeling back in his chest, but then - - Marius has not led him astray yet. He blinks his eyes back open, gaze slipping from Marius back across the desk to the Vicomte.

“My father was a Parisian,” Louis says after a moment. “Had a print shop in the city and dealt in books, but always wanted to travel. New Orleans appealed, he set sail, met my maman, had me and my brother and sister, fell into a good life for a while, but they felt they could have it better here. Had an American friend who ended up following them out here, re-opened the print shop with him, and the rest is history I suppose.”

Mostly true, he thinks. They’d been damn near run out of that city they’d loved so much, free man, woman and children that they were, but that story wasn’t something no man like Vicomte de Orleans would want or deserve to hear. 

“He sounds like quite a character,” the Vicomte says. “A print shop! Remarkable. And you’re now what? A whorer?”

Louis stares. His gaze fixed on the man’s beady little eyes and ill-tended moustache, his pale skin pallid beneath the candlelight, and the dagger in the wrist of Louis’ shirt suddenly feels hot against his skin, begging to be used, and he can feel it. Armand’s attention, more, Marius’ careful observation, like this is a test Louis didn’t know he was going to be sitting.

He sucks on his teeth, tries to calm the hot pulse of his temper as he has another sip of wine.

“I still have my father’s print show,” he says after a moment, voice careful. “I’ve simply diversified our family’s stream of revenue. In fact, The Azaelia makes up only one thread of a tapestry, I suppose you could say.”

Behind him, he feels Armand glance sideways at Marius, and he knows whatever test he was set he’s passed when the Vicomte simply laughs, reaching for his own cup of wine from where it rests on the oakwood desk to have a drink.

“Well, if you print your titles as well as you pick your girls, I may just have to stop by.”

“You’d be more than welcome, mon seigneur,” Louis replies, voice forcibly light even as he makes a note in his head to ensure the man pays double, whether buying prose or pussy.

“Monsieur de Pointe du Lac undersells himself, he has made rather a name for himself in many professions,” Marius interjects smoothly, and both Louis and the Vicomte turn to look at him. “Indeed, I have purchased many services from him for near half a decade.”

And he has, is the thing. While their first encounters had been through the brothel, Marius had liked him well enough to buy both wine and art off him too, and not long after had begun ordering titles through the print shop for both his personal collections and to line the shelves of many a fellow aristocrat. It had been a lucrative partnership for Louis, even without the possibility of social elevation, but when Marius had suggested Louis could be of greater value to him with an office, an ambition Louis had articulated only to Armand, everything had come into a sharper sort of focus.

“And I’m ever grateful for your business,” Louis says now, and Marius just hums in a sort of non-plussed acknowledgement.

“They add, no doubt, to your already full coffers.”

It’s at that the Vicomte perks up, and - - ah. Louis’ gaze flicks sideways to Armand, who offers him a tiny, near predatory grin, his pupils darting back to the Vicomte in a way that has Louis taking him in again, and he sees it then – the cut of his coat elegant, but last season, the lip of his slippers soft from wear, a single ring on his pinky finger, where most Vicomte’s would be wearing more than three across their hands. He exhales, something loosening in his chest as he rolls his shoulders back, playing proudly, smugly modest.

“What can I say, I’ve got an eye for a lucrative venture,” he drawls, and the Vicomte takes a heady swig of his cup of wine as Marius sits back in his chair.

“Well, I may have an offer for you,” the Vicomte says, gaze flicking to the Duke, as if for approval. “I’m - - um. Looking to sell off some land. I’m sure you can appreciate it’s a delicate matter.”

And oh, it’s what he’s been waiting for. This Old World that views landed wealth above anything else, that would view his full coffers as ever less than the miles another could offer, the locked circle of that noble-owned land traded only through marriage or titled dealings, shutting Louis ever out, but for this. The suggestion that there is not just land waiting to be bought, but aristocratic land that brings with it a prestige a bourgeois man can sink his teeth into, no matter how delicately the aristocrat would like it dealt with. Louis works his mouth, tries to keep the thrill off his face as the Vicomte dances around his decision.

“I’m not wanting to sell much, just we all have our trials, as I’m sure you know, monsieur, and I was married recently, you see, and the dowry wasn’t quite as much as was expected.”

He offers the latter in some sort of commiseration, like Louis might possibly relate to expecting a marriage to solve the problems of his estate, and it’s a hard earned pride that has Louis standing a little taller, tilting his wine glass to the other man as his other hand pushes his coat back enough to find his hip in casual gesture.

“Congratulations on your nuptials,” Louis says, letting a hint of condescension find his tone that makes Marius chuckle and the Vicomte echo the sound in self-deprecation. “I keep a cabinet in Paris, you’d be welcome to come by to discuss a sale.”

And the Vicomte pinks a little at that, gaze darting back to Marius as if in silent conversation, and Louis takes a draining gulp of his wine, stepping forwards to lower the cup to Marius’ desk as the Vicomte finally turns his attention back to Louis.

“Discretion at this point would be preferred,” he says, and Louis tilts his head, considering. So nobody knows then, Louis surmises, just how dire the de Orleans situation is. He makes a note in his head to find out the match later, see just what family offered so little dowry as to settle the debts of the estate, but it matters little now. No, what matters is that noble land is on the table for Louis’ taking.

“The Azaelia is one of the most discrete venues in Paris, if you’d prefer to meet there? Since you’ve so enjoyed tonight’s entertainment, I’d be more than happy to let you sample the menu while you’re there too.”

He can see it then too, the flicker of arousal already at the prospect of getting his dick wet even as he loses land, loses claim, and Louis can’t quite keep the derision off his face even as the Vicomte claps his hands together again, turning to face the Duke.

“Well, that’s excellent,” he says, and Marius raises a brow in a sort of wry amusement. “I’ll need to attend to some matters in Orléanais over the coming days, but I’ll send word ahead of my visit in perhaps the week after.”

“I await your notice,” Louis replies easily, and with that Marius’ hand raises, flicking his long fingers forwards for Armand’s attention, and it’s all it takes for his prized courtesan to bow low, moving easily around Louis at the desk and escorting the Vicomte out of the library. Louis means to follow, starts to even, only for Marius to stop him.

“If I could have a moment,” he says, voice deep and somehow ancient, and Louis stops, turning to see the man rise from his desk. He’s imposing at the best of times, tall enough to tower over anyone who comes against him, exuding authority, yet there’s ever an easy charm to the man that seems to put a room at ease too. He nods his head slightly, gesturing for Louis to follow, and after a moment, he does, not in the footsteps of Armand and the Vicomte, but sideways, deeper into the library.

“It won’t be enough for a title,” Marius tells him, and Louis glances up at him, catching the slope of Marius’ sharp jaw. “But land in Orléanais carries value and business, and I will be sure the Vicomte sells access to the Loire, which will carry weight with many on the King’s Counsel. It’ll give you leverage, for when the King chooses to sell new offices.”

When.

Not if.

Louis’ foot stills as his pulse quickens, glancing back up at Marius again.

“You think he will be bestowing titles again soon?” Louis asks, voice low, and Marius doesn’t reply, almost uncertain as he walks forwards, the candlelight licking at his high set cheekbones, darkening his usually pale blue eyes.

“I fear a plan is afoot.”

It’s a confidence Marius rarely offers, his voice low and Louis starts to walk again, hastening his pace to meet the other man’s lengthy gait. The sounds of music grow louder again as they move to whatever destination Marius intends them, the shadows of the library shifting across the pale ceiling above them.

“With the Prince re-acquiring his title and moving into Versailles, the King’s Counsel is becoming…unpredictable,” Marius says. “A steady hand is what is needed.”

“I thought the Prince’s title was just that, a title,” Louis tells him, despite his suspicions otherwise, and Marius frowns.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” he says, then, after a moment, he stops, turning to face Louis as he takes him in again, his unwavering attention, more, consideration, something that Louis raises his gaze and firms his jaw to meet. “Your work has allowed you to see the men of Versailles as they are, they reveal themselves to you and those in your employ. That’s of value to me.”

It’s sudden then – the sounds from outside. Somewhere close by, a woman moans, another yells, a man calls loud for more wine, and Louis vaguely realizes Marius has brought them to a door, one buried deep between the rows of books.  

“I would have you closer to the Palace,” he tells him, voice low and dulcet, and it’s an offer, an invitation, to what, Louis doesn’t entirely know, but he can taste it. Everything he’s been working for – security, landed wealth, title, power – on the tip of his tongue, and he nods before he can think any more of it, relishing in Marius’ slow curling smile, his carefully softening expression, as he adds: “May the Vicomte’s land do your family well.”

With that, he opens the door to reveal one of the back rooms off the ballroom floor and a raucous party brazen in its debauchery. Bodies young and firm and old and flaccid make chase around the room to heady giggles and animal grunts, overturning chairs and rattling the crystal chandeliers. From here he can see Bricktop undulating on a ruddy-cheeked Marquis’ cock and Odile with her tanned hand playing with the sagging balls of another’s, can see torn silk and exposed stays and slipped nipples pinched red and sucked on, and Marius simply turns back to Louis, gesturing him through the door and out, and so he goes.

It's a dismissal as much as Bianca’s was, but one easier to swallow with the possibility of the Vicomte’s land, and Louis soon finds himself striding out into the heaving mass of bodies, mind reeling but staying the course to get himself back out and through onto the ballroom floor again, when suddenly, his gaze catches on a glimpse of spun gold.

He shouldn’t falter, doesn’t, but his head tilts and he sees him – Lestat – on the floor between a seated man’s legs, stripped down now to little more than his long shirt, hem low enough to just about cover his nethers, and the intricately embroidered floral corset he must have been wearing beneath his suit, the bottom laces misshapen, as if someone has recently pulled on them. His long, thin, pale legs are littered with fingerprint bruises and splayed across one of the Palace’s lavish rugs, his make-up smeared, mouth swollen and his cheek pressed to a black-silk clad thigh, and Louis’ gaze fixes on Lestat’s vacant expression, so different to the would-be aristocrat he met in the lower gallery, up to the man on the armchair above him.

Tall, weedy, and he’s not so ugly, for in ugliness the Palace might have found its own eroticism. No, Prince Magnus is desperately plain with his oily brown hair cropped short to his temples and the length of it piled in a drooping quiff, his skin pallid and his mouth small, his hands liver spotted and fingers rendered crooked with age, the latter of which he strokes now through Lestat’s golden locks. He speaks to another man beside him though, someone with a pinched and pale face, long black hair hanging loose, his fingers tapping the carved wooden arms of his own seat. A man he recognises, maybe? Louis squints a little, trying to place the face, trying to make this about work again, but then - -

Before he can help it, his gaze finds Lestat’s once more amidst the dancing bodies around him, only this time, Lestat seems to see him too. He lifts his head slightly from Magnus’ thigh, eyes seeming to brighten when they recognize him, which doesn’t make sense, Louis thinks, something twisting in his chest. Their paths have crossed so briefly, but there’s no mistake that Lestat’s looking at him, for he nods towards his left, Louis’ right, inviting Louis’ gaze to follow, and it does, he does, only to be met with the sight of Estelle against the wall. Her flushed breasts heaving over the top of her pink satin dress, her leg hooked atop the shoulder of the man between her legs, her mouth open and she’s cresting - - cresting - -

And it does nothing for Louis, hopes as much is conveyed in his expression when he dips his gaze back to Lestat, but the other man is just smiling back at him as he mouths merry fuckery in a way that somehow loosens that stranger feeling in Louis’ chest. He exhales something close to a laugh, his gaze flicking back to Estelle who shudders with an open mouth over the cliff of her orgasm, hand dropping low to clutch the man between her legs’ hand. He grips it willingly, happily, face appearing from beneath her skirts with a wet mouth and a grin, and Louis turns back to Lestat’s own smiling face only to shiver himself at the feeling of sudden, unwanted attention.

He furrows his brow, glancing up to where he’s met with black eyes and a tight mouth, Magnus’ gaze fixed back on him as he slides the hand caressing Lestat’s hair down to his cheek, twisting his head sideways until his face drags from his thigh to be buried instead against his crotch, no vision or air otherwise allowed, and it ain’t his business, Louis reminds himself, despite the clutching feeling low in his gut.

He’s got his own affairs, his own matters to attend to, and with the Vicomte’s offer and the Baron’s invitation, every aspiration he’s had the past decade feels within reach, and his gaze dips down to Lestat’s pale hand, now pressed to the Prince’s knee, as if trying to push back, push up, gain any leverage at all, and Louis feels the dagger at his wrist, a hot thread pulling up in him, thumb reaching to slip it out almost on instinct, but then Lestat’s hand goes lax and he laughs, that same strange bray that Lestat had heard in the gallery, and Louis pauses. The sound ricocheting through his ears, abrasive and silly, like the boy himself is, and - - what was he going to do? Threaten the Prince over a whore he clearly bought? Foolish, he thinks, focus flicking back to the door.

He doesn’t know the boy at all.

(And if he turns back to look one last time - -

Well.

Ain’t a look just a look?)