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Madeleine Ch. 01

By: jack_straw



Author's note: It has been nearly a year and a half since my last submission, and over these past few months of idleness, I've been searching for some idea, some story line that would challenge me, and get me excited about writing again. I have about a dozen stories that I've started, but never got fired up over, so they sit in a file somewhere and will likely never see the light of day.

I kept coming back to this scenario, however, and each time I did, the more it intrigued me. With the exception of the El Paso story, I've never really done a period piece, and I liked the idea of writing a romance that arose out of this particular period. The stark contrast of love blossoming on the streets of Paris, amid the absolute horror of the Great War just over the horizon would seem to be a rich field for an interesting story.

I make no claims to know a lot of specifics about the geography of Paris in the early 20th century, so I've deliberately been a little vague about place names as they relate to the story.

One other point to note: Although the dialogue as written appears in English, the reader can assume that in most cases it is being spoken in French.

^ ^ ^ ^ 

PROLOGUE

Arlington, Va.

November, 1967

It comes to me now that I should write down the events of that awful, wonderful time in my life, that I should tell you about Madeleine.

I'm an old man now, and have come to understand that my time is nearing an end. But my mind is still alive, and my memories still vivid. 

How could I forget? Madeleine was the love of my life, a flower in a field of ash, and the story of how our love came to be is one that you will, I think, appreciate. It is a story of hope in a time of hopelessness, of need and want coming together at just the right time in my life to provide something that can never die.

So, please, while I still can, sit and let me tell you my story and the story of a remarkable woman, my Madeleine.

^ ^ ^ ^ 

Paris, France

August, 1914

I was oddly unaffected by the clamor that washed over me as I leaned against the bar in Marcel's, a bistro located on a fairly busy side street not far from the row of embassies that represented the interests of the various nations of the world in France. 

The men in the pub were boastful, and patriotic songs filled the air. Outside, the streets were filled with cheering demonstrators, all of them chafing to get at the "Boches."

It was late on a hot summer afternoon, and these cheering masses were excited about the prospects of war.

Five weeks had passed since the Austrian archduke and his wife had been shot down in the streets of Sarajevo in Bosnia, a place most people probably had never heard of, and in that time the whole fragile fabric of peace and stability had come completely unraveled.

Austria had demanded justice from Serbia, which everyone assumed was behind the killings, and one-by-one the dominoes had fallen. When Russia began to mobilize its army in support of its Serbian ally, that was the trigger that spurred Germany into action, and that, in turn, had brought France into conflict with Germany. War was now an unstoppable train that had left the station.

And I had a cold ball of ice in my stomach, because I knew what was coming, if the people around me did not. 

Suddenly, my attention was diverted by Monsieur Lévesque – Marcel, the pub's owner – who brought his considerable girth over to where I was sitting with a bottle of brandy, from which he refilled my glass.

"Ah, my young American friend, why do you look so down?" Marcel exclaimed. "Drink and be happy. We go to fight the Boches, and we will teach them a lesson."

"I'm sorry, Marcel, but I cannot be happy about what is happening," I said. "War is nothing to be happy about, especially the kind of war you are about to fight."

"Pah!" Marcel spat. "It will all be over by Christmas. We'll smack the Germans around a little, we'l get the provinces back and that will be the end of it."

"Do you really believe that?" I asked. 

"Who knows?" Marcel said. "A little fighting to defuse things, let everyone blow off a little steam, and it will all be back to normal before the end of the year. Why do you think it will be different?"

"Because I know things, things my government pays me well to learn," I said. "Let me tell you a little of what I've learned over the past few years, monsieur, about the Germans, about the British and about your army."

Marcel narrowed his eyes and he looked at me strangely, then pulled a glass down, poured himself a brandy and leaned on his elbows.

"I think that I should hear what you have to say," he said, and I noticed the jovial look had left his face.

^ ^ ^ ^

My name is Robert Guidry, and I was born in the summer of 1879 in the swamps of Louisiana, in St. Charles Parish, upriver a little ways from New Orleans. My parents had 12 children in all, but I am one of just three who survived past their second birthday. I have a sister who is several years older and a younger sister – Amelie – who is two years younger, and with whom I have been close all of my life. 

My father was a trapper, who made a living selling alligator hides. In his prime, he was reputed to be the best gator hunter in the parish. He could catch them, skin them, tan the hides, butcher the meat and make a month's worth of meals out of them.

When I was young, I would split my time between helping Papa and going to school. Mama had insisted that I go to school, and I actually liked it. Books – history books, especially – were my passion, and I began to read and write at an early age. 

Of course, the first thing I had to do when I got to school was learn how to speak proper English. In my family, French was the first language we spoke. My mother spoke enough English to get by, but my father never did. 

But I picked up English quickly, and that was something that I learned about myself at an early age. I always had an ear for different languages and could pick up enough of many tongues that I could communicate nearly anywhere I went. 

My first real encounter with this ability was when I was first starting in school. The area where I was born and raised was the home of a large settlement of Germans. In fact, the little town where I went to school was called Des Allemands, literally, "The Germans," and one of my first best friends was German-American. 

It didn't take me long being around him and his family for me to start picking up some basic German, and by the time I was 10, I could carry on a conversation with his parents in their native language. Later over the course of my life, I became quite fluent in Spanish, and was passable in Italian, Russian and a few other languages. 

Papa tolerated my schooling as long as Mama was alive, but after she died when I was 12, Papa never missed a chance to belittle me and my love of books. 

I put up with it until I grew to surpass him in size and knocked him on his ass one night when he was drunk. 

But I stayed, largely to protect Amelie, until one night when I was almost 17 and he didn't come back from a trapping expedition. We eventually found his pirogue – and the nearly empty jug of whiskey that sat in the well – but we never found my father. 

We surmised that he'd gotten drunk while hunting gators and fell in the swamp. More than likely he drowned and his body was eaten by the gators. I always imagined that to be poetic justice.

Not long after that, Amelie married a nice young man whose family owned and operated a general store in Thibodaux, and that freed me to make my getaway from Louisiana and see the world, which I'd wanted to do for a long time. My choice of escape sounds odd, but I joined the Army.

You must understand, the Army then was nothing like the vast, well-organized apparatus that it is in the modern age. It was small, a little haphazard and not terribly well-thought of. But they offered me a signing bonus, which I used to help Amelie and her new husband, and a chance to see other parts of the country, which I had previously only read about in books.

After completing my training in Georgia, I was first assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas, but not long after that war broke out between the United States and Spain, and I soon found myself fighting in Cuba. Later, after the Spanish war, I was sent to the Philippines to fight the Moros, and a dirty business that was. 

It was there that I lost my idealism, lost any notion that we Americans were somehow more noble than any other nation. In fact, I felt we were worse than the British or the Germans or the French, because they made no pretense of their imperial designs, of the greedy acquisitiveness of their policies. But we were supposed to be better than that, yet there we were fighting a native independence movement and committing some truly awful atrocities in the process.

After we subdued the Philippines, I decided to do something else with my life, and returned to Louisiana and went to college at LSU, where I studied history. 

There was no GI Bill back then, but my veteran status was rewarded nonetheless with a job as an officer in the school's militia unit, a precursor to the modern ROTC program. When I graduated in 1908, my Army experience, coupled with my degree and my fluency in French and German got me a job with the State Department, and I went into the foreign service.

Actually, my first job with the State Department was as a clerk in Washington, I guess, while they tried to figure out a job that suited my abilities. After a year and a half of office drudgery, I finally got the break I'd been looking for. I was assigned as an attaché with the American Embassy in Berlin, and in the spring of 1910, I sailed for Europe.

When I got to Berlin, my assignment was fairly nebulous, and a trifle dangerous. My boss, the Undersecretary to the Ambassador, was a fairly visionary gentleman – or perhaps he was just paranoid – but he felt it was in our country's best interests to learn as much as we possibly could about the German Army.

Because I'd been a soldier and spoke fluent German, I was assigned to that task. Whenever foreign dignitaries were invited to watch military reviews – and the Germans had plenty of them – I was there, to size up their numbers, take note of any new weaponry that might be on display and just learn whatever I could. 

That was the easy part. The hard part was traveling throughout the country and learning what I could about what the Germans didn't want the general public to know. I quickly found the best way to do that was to prowl the beer halls and attach myself to groups of soldiers, especially reservists who were there for routine training. 

German soldiers were notorious braggarts, more so than those of other countries, and I quickly figured out that if I plied these citizen-soldiers with enough beer, they'd tell me anything I wanted to know – in a roundabout way, of course. 

I spent three years in Germany, and when I returned to the United States, I wrote a position paper outlining what I believed the Germans would do if they went to war with France. 

I argued that based on what I'd learned from careful observation, especially in the northwest part of the country, that they would most likely attack France through Belgium, that they would seek to overwhelm the French Army by marching through the plains of northern France and set their sights directly on Paris. 

Part of my analysis included an assessment of the troop strengths available to the Germans both in the northwest and along the frontier with France itself, in the area of Alsace-Lorraine, the "lost" provinces that France had ceded to Germany in the peace settlement that ended the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and which the French burned to regain.

The Secretary of State himself supposedly looked at my work, shrugged his shoulders and went about his business.

However, my immediate superiors apparently thought enough of my work that they assigned me to the embassy in Paris, to do a similar analysis of the French Army, and in the summer of 1913 I arrived in Paris, rented myself a flat in a newly-built building not far from the embassy and set to work.

Marcel's was just down the street from my apartment building, and I had become a fixture there in the year that I'd been in Paris. He served excellent food, his brandy was outstanding and then there was his daughter, Madeleine, who helped her father both in the kitchen and as a serving girl.

Madeleine Lévesque was 16 when I first met her in 1913, and I was enchanted from the first. She was the stereotypical French girl – dark hair, dark eyes, mischievous smile, slender figure – and she flirted with all the men who came into the pub, and I was no exception.

But there was always something different between us. She didn't just flirt with me, she would sit when she had some free time and we would talk, about all sorts of things, all manner of subjects. For a shopkeeper's daughter, she was remarkably well-read and quite intelligent. She had a natural curiosity about everything and a thirst for knowledge.

In another life, she might have gone onto the university and studied philosophy, or some other subject. However, college in France back then was expensive and usually reserved for the scions of the upper classes, the men mostly, and while M. Lévesque wasn't poor, he wasn't wealthy either. Besides, Madeleine felt she needed to stay and help her father, who had been widowed for several years.

Besides all the other amenities, Marcel's was a stopping-off place for workers from a variety of the embassies, and an astute listener who could understand different languages, like me, could always pick up little tidbits of useful information.

That was how I found myself having a heart-to-heart chat with Marcel on the eve of war.

^ ^ ^ ^

"First, monsieur, you must understand that I have been to war," I began. "I have seen what modern machine guns can do, what the new cannons are capable of. I have traveled in Germany and in France, and I have a pretty good idea of what each army has at their disposal. Please don't be offended, but your leaders have no idea what they are up against. They are sending your soldiers into a trap."

I explained to Marcel that the French had a preponderance of their forces in the east, ready to attack the Germans through Alsace and Lorraine, with only a relative covering force in the north. They were clearly hoping the British would come into the war on their side – that hadn't happened yet, but it was expected any day now – but the Brits only had six divisions that they could send at the outset. 

That wasn't going to be nearly enough to slow down the German assault, which was going to come racing over the flat countryside in the north in huge numbers. The French had this illusion that if the Germans were stronger on their right that it would mean they would be weaker in the south, where the French attack was expected. 

But what they didn't know – and which I did – was that the Germans had far more troops at the ready than the French expected, by close to a 2-to-1 margin. Moreover, the terrain through which the French were to attack was mountainous and difficult for an attacking army – but ideal for a defending force. It was a recipe for disaster.

"France will be lucky if German troops aren't marching down the Champs Elysees by September," I said softly. "Or not. Let's suppose that your troops do somehow stop the Germans short of Paris. What then? I can tell you what will happen. Stalemate. The Germans won't be easily dislodged from their holdings, and, of course, France and Britain will fight desperately for their survival. My friend, this war that you think will be over by Christmas will drag on, with thousands – no, millions – of men killed on both sides. The winner will be whichever side bleeds out less than the other."

"So, what will your country do, then?" Marcel asked, and he now had a worried look on his face. We had talked enough over the previous year that he knew I had some pretty keen insights.

"Who knows?" I said. "Our president, Mr. Wilson, does not want to get America involved in a European war. Nor do my people. We will do all we can to stay out of it. But, in the end, I can't see us staying out of it forever. Sooner or later, one side or the other will provoke us into coming into this war – and if I know the Germans, they'll be the ones who will do it. They're just arrogant enough to do something stupid without regard for American sensibilities. The point is, Monsieur Lévesque, you should go to your church tomorrow and pray a rosary that you're right about this being a short war, because if you're wrong – and I think you are – there are miserable times coming for the nations of Europe, and for France, most particularly." 

I drained my glass, and I was about to leave, when I heard a cheery voice from the kitchen, and Madeleine came bustling out tying her apron around her shapely waist and preparing for her evening shift. She usually worked the midday shift, then returned to their apartment nearby to do household chores before returning to the pub to help with the evening crowd.

She had completed secondary school a year or so earlier, not long before I arrived in Paris, so her entire focus was on the pub and helping her father, whom she appeared devoted to.

"Ah, Monsieur Robert," she exclaimed with a big warm smile. "Such a day! The crowds outside were so heavy. I had trouble getting here from our home." 

"Ah, Madeleine, you are always a sight for sore eyes," I said as we exchanged a brief perfunctory hug, in the best French manner. "How have you been, my dear, it has been a few days since I've seen you."

"Bien," she said. "I don't like all of this talk of war, however. I fear for some of my friends from school. They are so eager to fight, and it worries me. Hopefully, it won't be a long war."

"I hope not, too," I said, while her father and I exchanged a knowing look. "Come, sit with me when you can. I have things I wish to share with you."

"Oooh, sounds exciting," she exclaimed. "You know so much about the world. I will."

With that, she bustled off to serve her customers. I watched as she flirted with some of the other young men in the bar, and I was surprised to feel a little ping of jealousy. I knew I had no claim on Madeleine's affections, and I knew, too, that what she was doing was strictly a business thing, designed to keep the men interested in staying and buying more drinks.

Still, it was there, and as I nursed my drink and felt a slight bit of inebriation coming on, I felt a sense of melancholy at my lonely existence. 

At that time, I was 35 years-old and had never come close to marrying. Indeed, the only women I'd ever had any serious affection for had been my late mother and my sister, Amelie. As for my other sister, Jeanette, she was much older than I, and we'd never been particularly close.

Oh, I had had plenty of women, especially when I was a soldier. I had bedded many a hot-blooded Cuban girl, plenty of willing Filipino women, a number of comely New Orleans whores, not to mention a few German frauleins and Parisian dancing girls since coming to Europe.

And at that point in my life, I would trade all of that experience if I could have the love of Madeleine Lévesque.

Later that evening, as the Frenchmen in the bar got more frenzied, I gave up on trying to have that conversation with Madeleine, and slipped away, having drunk much more than normal. Only Marcel noted my departure, and he gave me a sad smile as I briefly tipped my hat in his direction.

Outside the door, I could see Madeleine in the midst of a group of soon-to-be soldiers, singing "La Marseillaise."

Madeleine Ch. 02



Paris, France

February, 1915

It was cold, bitterly cold, as I turned up the collar of my overcoat and walked out of the embassy into the gathering gloom of the late afternoon.

On impulse, I decided to turn down the little side street that was so familiar and visit Marcel's again. I hadn't been there since my return to France a few weeks earlier, and I found I missed it.

So much had changed in Paris since those heady days of August, when the young Frenchmen had so eagerly sought out war. No one was seeking out the war any more; it was coming for them.

And much had changed for me, as well.

I had spent a very long day in mid-August as a guest of the state police, as they questioned me about my activities over the previous 18 months. I was treated politely, as a foreign diplomat should, but there was no question that I was going to be interrogated.

I believed I had little to hide, so I was forthcoming with as much as I felt they needed to know, and I also indicated that I was willing to share what I knew about the Germans. That put things on much lighter note, and we soon came to an understanding.

I have to say here that from the beginning my sympathies were clear. My country might have been neutral, and thus, officially, so must I, but my heart was with the Allies.

It wasn't that I hated the Germans, but I had seen enough of them during my time there that I didn't trust their leadership for a song. Moreover, I was a Cajun descended on both sides of my family from the original settlers who came to Louisiana from French Canada in the mid-18th century.

Later, I had watched as my predictions to Marcel on the eve of war had come to fruition. The Germans had come barreling across Belgium, disregarding that country's neutrality and bringing the British into the war, as expected. The Germans had smashed into northern France like a runaway train, and it looked like they would roll right into Paris, just as I had told Marcel.

But somehow, thanks to some key blunders along the way by the German generals and incredible bravery by the French and British troops, the Allies, as they were already being called, had rallied and stopped the advance at the Marne River. 

What followed was a race to the sea, as the two sides tried to outflank the other, until they ran out of land. Then they dug in, just like I knew they would, the lines hardened and the horrors of trench warfare were soon a reality.

In college, I had studied certain campaigns where trench warfare and a lack of maneuver had prevailed -- notably at Vicksburg and in the Petersburg campaign in the American Civil War, and, later, in Manchuria during the Russian-Japanese War.

I could see that with the new weapons and materials available to the two armies -- the machine guns, the big cannons, the barbed wire -- that this new kind of warfare would put a premium on defense.

It was a bloody, debilitating business, and already no one could quite figure out how to break the deadlock.

In early November, I had been called back to Washington to report on my findings with the French Army, much as I had with the Germans, and when I got back I got a surprise. I was promoted to Undersecretary to the Ambassador in Paris, and would be returning to France. 

I conferred with my superiors in the State Department and even met the president, Woodrow Wilson. My impression of him was decidedly mixed. He was very intelligent, but I found him to be somewhat cold, and a man who knew he was the smartest person in the room.

Nevertheless, he was the president, he was a gracious host, and I enjoyed my brief time in his company.

Afterward, I spent Christmas at home with Amelie and her family, which already included three daughters and a son, and it was a truly memorable time. When I left after the holidays I somehow knew that it would be a long time before I saw my sister again.  

In fact, more than five years would pass before I would return to Louisiana.

On January 3, I sailed from New York to Le Havre and thus made my way back to Paris. There was some concern about German submarines that were rumored to be prowling the seas in the approaches to the English Channel, but we saw no evidence of them and the passage across the Atlantic was made without incident.

Once I arrived back in Paris, my work had consumed so much of my time that I hadn't had much leisure time. However, I was also fearful of going to Marcel's, because I wasn't sure I could cope with being around Madeleine.

I had written her a letter while I was back in America, and told her some of what was going on in my life, but I had been guarded in how much I revealed to her about my feelings. I merely told her about my promotion and that I would be very busy when I returned.

But, like I said, I missed Marcel, missed Madeleine, missed the warmth of his pub, so I decided to screw up my courage and pay him a visit. I was glad I did.

I was surprised to find the place nearly deserted, but that didn't stop Marcel from hustling out from behind the bar to greet me when he saw who it was that had darkened his door.

"Monsieur Robert!" he exclaimed as he enveloped me in a bear hug, then bussed both of my cheeks in the classic French tradition. "You have come back to us. Madeleine! Come! Look who is here."

I was gratified to hear a feminine squeal from the kitchen then Madeleine too wrapped me in a tight hug. 

"Oh Robert!" she said breathlessly. "I have missed you so!"

As she clung onto me, I could feel myself becoming aroused from Madeleine's firm young breasts and slender hips as they pressed to me. I began to wonder if, perhaps, my feelings toward this young lady were reciprocated. The prospect excited me. She was about to turn 18 and she was becoming more woman than girl.

"Madeleine, bring Monsieur Robert some food," Marcel said. "Robert, please, take a table. You must tell us about America!"

"If you insist," I said, giving him a wink. I was truly gratified by this greeting. It meant the Lévesques had become my friends.

Over a plate of roast beef, a tureen of thick French onion soup and several glasses of cognac, I told them about my trip home. All the while, Madeleine flitted about making sure I was well served. She seemed full of nervous energy, and she smiled at me a lot, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief.

Marcel watched the exchange of looks that passed between us with a wry smile on his face. He asked a few questions, but mostly listened while I told him about going back to Louisiana. 

He didn't believe me when I told him how cold it was on Christmas Day in Thibodaux, since I had frequently bragged about how balmy the winters were in the Gulf South.

We avoided the subject of the war, and the fact that his clientele was down since more and more young Frenchmen were being called up to the front.

Finally, I was sated and Madeleine had removed the bowl and plate, leaving me with a after-dinner snifter of brandy.

I looked over at Madeleine and stared purposefully into her eyes. Uncharacteristically, she blushed and turned away with an almost shy smile, like she knew the thoughts I was having. I swallowed the last of the sweet tart liqueur, still gazing at Madeleine. Then I turned my attention to Monsieur Lévesque and spoke my mind.

"Monsieur, may I ask you a personal question, concerning your daughter?" I said quietly, evenly, not giving a hint of the passion that was welling beneath the surface. "May we speak man-to-man?"

"Madeleine, please, leave us for a moment," Marcel said to his daughter. "We wish to speak privately."

Satisfied that we would not be disturbed, he bade me continue.

"Marcel, my friend, why is it that Madeleine does not have a husband?" I asked with more confidence than I felt. "I would think a beautiful young woman like her would have met and married some handsome young suitor, yet she remains here, and, apparently, does not see gentlemen."

"You must understand my daughter," Marcel said after regarding me for a long moment or two. "She is very independent-minded, and I cannot tell her what to do. I can make suggestions, plead, cajole, but, in the end, she will do as she wishes. In that way, she is very much like her mother. A woman of spirit, that one."

For a long moment, Marcel gazed into his glass reflecting on his late wife, who had been gone for nearly 10 years. Then, he perked up and smiled at me.

"Besides, I believe she is waiting for one special man to come calling," he said, giving me a wink. I picked up the none-too-subtle hint.

"And if this one man were to come calling, how would you feel about it?" I asked. "Is this one man acceptable in your eyes, even if he may be quite a bit older than she."

Marcel laughed heartily at that.

"Oh ho," he exclaimed. "You are my friend, Robert, and I would be honored. True, you are several years older than my Madeleine, but she is old beyond her years. She had to grow up quickly when Marie died. I had to carry on here, and I needed her to take Marie's place as hostess. She had no brothers or sisters to help with the burden, or to spill her soul at her loss. There was only me. You have been a blessing to her, because you listen to her and treat her as an equal. Go to her, she will not fail you."

And that was how my courtship of Madeleine Lévesque began. I walked back to the kitchen, and asked her if she would like to take a stroll with me and talk, and we did, even though it was bitterly cold outside.

We walked in silence the few blocks to the main street, then to the bridge over the River Seine. We looked out at the powerful river, now choked with ice, and for some reason we were hesitant, as if we weren't sure what the next step should be.

"I wrote you while I was in America," I said finally.

"It was very nice," she said. "I can't believe you thought of me while you were home, with your family and friends."

"There aren't many of either, I'm afraid," I said. "My best friends are here."

"Oh?" Madeleine replied. "And am I one of those best friends?"

"Of course," I said. "But you are more than my friend. I ..."

"I know," she said, cutting me off, then she pulled me to her, turned her head up and kissed me.

At first it was just a sisterly peck, but as we looked at each other we knew instinctively that we were indeed more than friends. 

We kissed in a way that would have scandalized people even in my rather laid-back home. It was deep, soulful, her tongue slid into my mouth in a manner that I had come to expect from French girls, and I responded in kind. It was liberating to finally let my passion have full rein with this woman who had haunted me from the first time I'd seen her.

It wasn't until we could feel the cold seeping in through our heavy coats that we separated.

"That should tell you how I feel about you, Madeleine," I said in a husky voice. Even with it being as cold as it was, my penis was rock-hard in my pants, and I had no doubt that she had felt it as we had embraced.

"I've been waiting for you, Robert," she answered as we strolled back toward the pub. "I wasn't sure until I got your letter that you felt about me the way I feel about you."

"But I really didn't say anything about that," I said, puzzled. "In fact, I tried hard to keep from gushing like a schoolboy."

"It was the tone," she said. "It was just conversational, but intimate. You wrote to me about things in your life that you would only tell someone for whom you had a great affection. You may not have expressed it in so many words, but I knew what you wrote came from your heart and was only for me to see. I love you, Robert, and I will love you until the day I die."

"And I love you, Madeleine," I said, then pulled her to me and kissed her again as we reached the back entrance to Marcel's.

In that moment, I knew my life was complete.



Madeleine Ch. 03



June, 1915
Paris, France

"A toast! A toast to Robert," cried Sergei Hoffmann, over the din of well-wishers. 

"Hear, hear!" was the response from several corners of the room.

We were gathered in the private room of a well-known Paris restaurant for the traditional bachelor's night, and the good food and copious amounts of spirits in all varieties had made for a memorable evening.

Stories – many of them bawdy – had been told and conversation had been brisk. These were my friends, the people I had come to know in the two years that I had been stationed in Paris with the U.S. Embassy, and they were there to celebrate my passage from bachelorhood into holy matrimony with the beautiful Madeleine Lévesque.

It was hard for me to believe that just four months had passed since that cold night in February when we had first expressed our feeling for each other.

On the surface, we should not have been a matched couple, for there was much that set us apart.

I was exactly twice her age – she was 18 and I was 36 – and she was the daughter of a bistro owner, while I was an undersecretary to the American Ambassador to France. And, of course, she was a French girl who had lived all of her life in the big city of Paris, while I was actually a country boy from the swamps of Louisiana.

Nevertheless, our love had blossomed, once we unbottled our feelings. As spring loosened winter's grip on the city, we would walk through the parks, or on the streets, talking about all sorts of things.

Many of our conversations had to do with the war that had been raging for nearly a year now. Some nights we would sit by the Seine and hear the muffled thunder of the big cannons from the front, which wasn't all that far away.

Madeleine had already lost several of her friends from school, who had gone to the front and never come back. I would often hold her as she wept for the souls that had been taken – and, remarkably, she would weep for those of the other side, as well.

"It is so senseless," she would say. "Why do they fight? Why? Tell me, Robert, what makes men leave their homes and go off to kill other men that they don't even know, and to die in such a horrible manner?"

And I couldn't give her an answer that made sense, other than the fact that Germany did occupy a significant portion of French land and that the French government was duty-bound to dislodge them.

One thing we did discover was that we both loved music. Our first date had been to a performance of the Paris Symphony, and I was captivated by the way she closed her eyes and moved to the music, as if it was playing her.

Many times, we would simply sit in the parlor at the cozy apartment she shared with her father, or at my place, and talk, or perhaps I would break out my old accordion and sing to her the old Cajun folk songs that my mother had taught me. Soon, she picked them up and we would sing together.

And then we would embrace on the divan and we would kiss. Oh my, would we kiss. Each time we did, I would feel the arousal surge through me like a bolt of lightning, and it would take all of our willpower not to succumb to the lust that threatened to overwhelm us.

Certainly, Madeleine would have probably been receptive to my advances, but I had made Marcel – her father and my friend – a promise that I would not do anything that would bring dishonor to him or his daughter. 

A month earlier, I had surprised Madeleine with a ring and a proposal of marriage, and she had accepted – to the roaring approval of our friends at Marcel's. 

Her father had openly wept, saying, "I wish her mother could have lived to see this moment."

And now I was seated at a long table where my friend Sergei was toasting my success at winning Madeleine's hand. Sergei was swaying slightly from the vodka he'd consumed and he had a slightly crazy look in his eyes.

"Yes, a toast to the lucky man who will soon be bedding the delectable Madeleine," Sergei said. "Perhaps I shall pay a visit to Chez La Vie and fuck a brunette in his honor."

That brought a roaring laugh from the assembly.

Sergei was referring to a rather well-known brothel that most of the men in the room – yes, myself included – had patronized in the past. 

Despite his German surname and German ancestry, Sergei was thoroughly Russian, a minor noble in that country, and an undersecretary at the Russian Embassy. He had been the first friend I'd made when I arrived in Paris, and we had originally been rivals for Madeleine's affections.

However, he had graciously stepped aside when it became obvious to everyone at the bistro – to everyone, apparently, except me – that she only had eyes for me.

"To Robert," Sergei said, as our glasses clinked together. "May they fill their home with sons and daughters, and may they live long and enjoy much happiness. Salut!"

Two days later, I stood in front of the altar at Madeleine's church, with the black-robed priest to my right and the three men who would be standing for me to my left.

Next to me was Sergei Hoffman, and next to him was Clark McDonald, who had started at the State Department at the same time I did and who was now my chief assistant at the embassy in Paris. 

At the far end was Mr. Sharp, the ambassador himself, with whom I had become good friends since his appointment a year or so earlier. 

Unlike Mr. Herrick, his predecessor, William Sharp spoke little French and frequently used me as an interpreter, since I spoke fluent French. Plus, he had relied on my working knowledge of the often-bewildering French government that I had gained during the year which I'd been posted to the U.S. embassy prior to his arrival. 

The church which Marcel and Madeleine attended was a smaller, neighborhood church, and the sanctuary was packed with friends of us both. Missing were members of my family, such as it was. 

Of course, with the war going on, it was far too dangerous for Amelie and her family to make the passage across the Atlantic to be there with me, but she had sent me a telegram expressing her congratulations and her love.

Once we were in place, the small organ started the processional, and Madeleine's maids of honor filed slowly up the aisle.

First was her cousin Emilie, the daughter of Marcel's sister, who was the same age as Madeleine and with whom she had been close since infancy. 

Second was Madeleine's Aunt Charisse, her mother's sister who had come to Paris in the mid-1890s as a teenager and had been a can-can dancer at the Moulin Rouge before taking up sculpture. Charisse wasn't open about it, but it was a poorly-kept secret that she was a lesbian.

None of us – Marcel, Madeleine or myself – necessarily approved of her lifestyle, but Madeleine adored her, in spite of it all. Charisse was a bright, witty person who lit up a room with her mere presence, much like her niece.

Third, came Madeleine's oldest and dearest friend from school, Therese, a sad-eyed blonde who was obviously pregnant with the baby of her husband, who was serving in the Army. 

Finally, the organist hit the notes that signaled the arrival of the bride, and my heart did somersaults as Madeleine stood at the back of the church on the arm of her father, who gave me a huge smile, even as the tears streamed down his face. 

She wore a simple, but beautiful white gown, and her hair was pinned up and beautifully arranged atop her head, with the veil pinned there to fall over the lovely face.

It was a moment that would forever be seared on my brain, because Madeleine Lévesque was simply the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen in that moment.

Her eyes sparkled like diamonds and her smile was ... well, enigmatic. It was a smile of joy, but also of nerves. She had waited a long time for this day, and she wasn't entirely certain about the future. Truthfully, I felt much the same way.

Even though we had spoken a lot over the previous weeks about our hopes and dreams, there was still much that we had to learn about each other. And, too, there was the anticipation of consummating our relationship. I had never wanted a woman sexually like I wanted Madeleine, and I wanted to please her in the worst way. For her part, she had never been with a man, and she was understandably nervous.

When she reached the altar and stood next to me, she looked up at me with a look that struck me to my very core. It was a look of such love and devotion that I was almost taken aback, and I knew in that moment that I would do anything to prove worthy of her feelings toward me.

Later, after we had exchanged our vows, we had all retired to Marcel's for the reception. A small orchestra played, and there was food, drink and dancing, and all the while M. Lévesque flitted about with a huge smile on his broad face.

When it was all said and done, we departed Marcel's through a gauntlet of well-wishers to where a horse-drawn carriage awaited.

"Robert, my husband," Madeleine said breathlessly. "Will we be returning to your apartment, or do you have other plans?"

She was leaning into me with her arm hooked inside mine. She was slightly tipsy from all of the toasts that had been offered in our honor, and she was feeling very affectionate. 

"A surprise, my love," I replied.

"Umm, I like surprises," she answered, leaning her head on my shoulder.

The night was warm, but pleasant as we rode through the streets of Paris. Along the way, passers-by greeted us with congratulations as they saw the sign on the back of the carriage that read, "just married."

At length, the carriage stopped in front of an opulent building, and Madeleine's eyes widened, for we had stopped at the Hotel Ritz, the most luxurious establishment in Paris.

"Robert, you shouldn't have," she exclaimed. "How can you afford this?"

"It is one of my gifts to you," I said. "I cannot give you a honeymoon at this time, so several days in the nicest hotel in the city will have to suffice."

At that, she leaned into me and we walked through the doors of the hotel arm-in-arm, with a liveried bellhop behind us carrying our suitcases.

After checking in, we went up to our suite. I unlocked the door, then reached around, swept Madeleine off her feet and carried her across the threshold. She giggled at that, then kissed me warmly.

I had hoped to take my new bride on a honeymoon trip to the Riviera for a few days, but I was unable to get that much time off. 

Tensions were still running high following the sinking of the Lusitania, a American passenger ship, a few weeks earlier by a German submarine. It was thought that this incident might be the one that would push the United States into the war, and we at the embassy were making preparations in case that came to pass.

Americans were shocked and outraged by the unprovoked attack on an unarmed passenger ship, but privately many of us in the diplomatic corps had been hearing whispers that the Lusitania had been secretly carrying munitions bound for Britain in her hold, which was one reason why she sank so quickly, just 18 minutes after being struck by a torpedo.

At any rate, Mr. Stark could not spare me for more than a few days time, and he wanted me to remain in the city in case I was needed at a moment's notice.

So I had splurged on a few days at the Ritz, where we would be pampered and treated to a luxury Madeleine had never before experienced. I wanted to give her a taste of the good life that could become our future, if my career continued in the way that it was going.

The hotel had provided us with a basket of fruits and candies, and I had ordered a bottle of champagne on ice to be sent to the room. I popped the cork on the bottle, poured us each a glass and toasted my bride once more.

"To us," I said softly. "May we enjoy a long life of love beginning from this day forward."

"To us," Madeleine whispered.

We drank, then she came to me, still in her white wedding gown. We kissed, and this time there was a hunger there that was palpable. We had always kissed with passion, but this was more. Our tongues jousted leisurely and our arms were wrapped tightly around each other as if we could preserve the moment just by willing it.

There was a fire in her eyes when we finally came up for air. My penis was rock-hard in my pants, and I could see her smallish nipples poking through the front of her dress, announcing her arousal.

Madeleine stepped back, then reached up and began removing the pins that had been holding her hair up off her neck. When she had them all out, she gently shook her head and her wondrous soft dark hair cascaded about her shoulders.

I was mesmerized as she methodically unbuttoned the dress and let it fall to the floor. She was dressed now in a slip over a one-piece camisole that was what served as underwear for women in that day.

Off went the slip and I was confronted with a sight that I had spent many a night dreaming about, a nearly-naked Madeleine, her firm young breasts peeking up from the top of the camisole and her delightfully long legs.

Slowly, one by one, Madeleine untied the stays to the camisole, with a smoky look of lust on her face. I just stared as a smile slowly creased my face. This girl may have been a virgin, but she knew what she was doing. She was playing the role of seductress to the hilt, and she knew it.

When she finished, and her breasts were all but exposed, she stepped back to me and put her arms around my shoulders.

"I know a man like you has had other women before me," she said softly. "But I plan to make you forget about all of them. I want you to make me a women, now, tonight, my husband, and I will give you everything you could ever want in a woman. You are mine, and you will be forever."

"As you wish, my love," I said as I pulled her to me and kissed her again. 

My hands reached in the open front of her camisole and gently squeezed her bare breasts, lightly kneading the soft flesh, then slowly twirling her nipples between my fingers. Madeleine growled in appreciation as my hands roamed down her sides and along her flat stomach. 

I resisted the urge to continue further down, as I had pressing business to take care of at that moment. I stepped back and casually removed my vest, my shoes, socks, shirt and pants, until I stood in front of my bride clad only in shorts and undershirt.  

My penis – my cock, if you will – sat like a fat slug in my shorts, and Madeleine's eyes widened slightly as she got her first look at a man in full arousal.

"I believe I will finish unwrapping my wedding present," I said.

I reached over to Madeleine and gently pushed the camisole away from her shoulders and it fell off her body and down her legs.

Now it was my turn to gasp, for there stood Madeleine in all her naked glory.

How can I describe that moment? Simply, she was perfection. Her breasts were not big, but sat high and proud on her chest without the first hint of sag. Her waist was narrow, as were her hips, but she had the most perfect heart-shaped ass on her that I had ever seen. 

And between her legs was a dark, but not very thick patch of pubic hair that descended to the valley of passion that awaited my ministrations.

"My God, you are beautiful," I whispered.

"Do you really like me?" she answered, a bit timidly. She was nervous now that we had reached the moment of truth.

"Does this answer your question?" I said, as I removed what remained of my clothes and stood before her equally naked. My cock bounced up hard and ready, the head already poking out from my foreskin, red and wet.

"Love me," Madeleine whispered as we came together once again. 

As much as I wanted to push her onto the bed and fuck her silly, I took it slow. We would have the rest of our lives to rut like animals, but she would only have one first time, and I wanted to make it special.

The bed was already turned down, as if the hotel had anticipated our needs. We kissed again, our mouths hot and wet, with urgency spurring us on. Our hands were exploring each other's flesh, becoming acquainted with the body that would henceforth be giving the other pleasure.

I bent down and suckled her breasts, licking and lightly biting her nipples. Her gasp of lust told me I was on the right track, especially when my fingers found her sex. She was wet, very wet, and her breathing quickened as I quickly found her little clitoris and gently rolled it with the tip of my finger.

Then it was my turn to gasp as her dainty hand found my hard stem of flesh. She tentatively began to softly stroke me, and I groaned from the feelings of intense arousal that her touch elicited.

"Please, Robert, love me," she whispered. "I'm ready, but be gentle. I've never had a man before. I was waiting for you to be my first."

As much as I wanted to play, our need to be one was too great. Madeleine lay back, her dark hair fanning across the pillow, her legs spread open in invitation. I got up on my knees between her legs, then gazed for a moment at the prize I was about to win. 

Madeleine's sex was open like a flower, a dark coral color, gleaming in her arousal. Her eyes were pleading for me to do it, and I did. Grasping my cock at its base, I aimed it for her hole and slid the head of my cock in. I quickly encountered her hymen, and stopped momentarily to get her ready for what was to come.

"This will hurt some, my love," I said softly. "But it will be worth it."

"I'm ready," she said.

In response, I drove my hips forward, pushing past her barrier and into her hot depths. Madeleine squealed in pain for a moment, but as I sank my length into her and let her adjust to my size, she cried softly and panted for me to do it.

I reached down, gathered her in my arms, and we kissed wildly as I slowly began to churn in her vagina. It didn't take long before she got into the rhythm and was answering my inward thrusts with upward thrusts of her hips as if she was trying to keep the connection between us as long as possible

"Oh, Robert, it feels so good!" she exclaimed, her pain already a vague memory. Her hands clutched at my back as we made love with an ever-increasing passion. 

"Yes, yes, yes!" she panted as I could feel her body beginning to reach climax. I was hoping to make it last as long as I could, but the weeks that I had gone without any release, the months that I gone without a woman – saving myself for this particular woman – all helped bring my own orgasm to a boil much faster than I might have wanted.

But Madeleine wasn't complaining. Not in the least. Her body was shimmying and jerking as she quickly approached a full-body climax the likes of which I had rarely seen in all my years of lovemaking.

It was too much. With a grunt and a groan, I lurched forward and exploded a fountain of semen deep in Madeleine's vagina, which spasmed around my spewing penis in rapid response.

We held each other for long moments as the feelings of sexual release rushed from one to the other, until finally we were spent, for the moment. 

We lay together in a welter of arms and legs, our bodies covered in a sheen of sweat, smiling at each other. We had known the passion between us would be good, but neither of us could have dreamed it would be that good.

"So, was it worth it?" I said playfully.

"Oh, yes, Robert, it was all worth it," she said. "The waiting for you to notice me, the waiting after we began our courtship and the pain of my first time, it was all worth it. I love you so very much Robert, and I will be the best wife you could have ever imagined."

And she was.



Madeleine Ch. 04



December, 1915
Paris, France

Madeleine looked resplendent in her dark green dress, with the bright red corsage I had pinned on her breast. 

She looked very much in keeping with the holiday, which was the idea, since we were entering the ballroom at the Ritz Hotel, the same one where we had spent our wedding night, for the American Embassy's annual Christmas banquet.

Because the United States was still neutral in the Great War that was raging not far away, we were not under the same moral imperatives that restricted the holiday celebrations of the combatant nations.

It would not be seemly for the French or British to put on extravagant parties for the holidays when they had men dying by the thousands at the front. 

But we weren't under any sort of restrictions, and the American Ambassador, William Sharp, had decided that we would celebrate the season in the normal fashion, which meant the large banquet, with a small orchestra for after-dinner dancing, would go on as usual. 

Diplomats from all of the nations that still had embassies in Paris, along with many French government dignitaries, had all been invited, and almost all of them had accepted.

Truth be known, our colleagues among the French, British and Russians welcomed the opportunity to let their hair down and enjoy some festive moments. Heaven knows, there had been few such moments in the previous year. 

We were mingling with the crowd during the social hour, prior to the meal, when I saw someone I had hoped I'd seen the last of a year or so earlier.

He was an attaché with the Spanish Embassy, but I also knew him by reputation from his time as a minor functionary in Cuba, before the Spanish-American War. His name was Don Juan Pablo de Velasquez, and we had developed an instant dislike for the other from the first time we met, not long after my first arrival in France in 1913.

Not only was he arrogant, a darkly handsome man of about 40 who was related in some way to the Spanish royal family, but he had been one of the many diplomats who had been frequenting Marcel's and sniffing around Madeleine when I came on the scene. 

Most, like my Russian friend Sergei, had gracefully bowed out when it became clear that I was the one she wanted, but not Don Velasquez. He had made passes at her almost until the day of our wedding, and I hadn't forgotten.

Of course, I was predisposed not to like him anyway, because of some things he had done while in Cuba before the war there. He had been widely suspected of ordering a massacre in a small village in the mountains that was supposedly a haven for Cuban rebels.

The unit I had been with during the Spanish-American War had actually come upon this little town, and there was plenty of evidence that an atrocity of some sort had taken place – a burned-out church and a mass grave being the most prominent.

Of course, by then, Don Velasquez was long gone and well beyond any kind of justice we could have meted out.

Not long after our wedding, Don Velasquez had supposedly been called back to Spain for some reason, and no one had seen much of him in the previous six months. But there he was in his full dress uniform, which made him look like some sort of pretentious peacock.

Naturally, the moment he saw us together, he made a beeline to where we happened to be standing, chatting with an acquaintance from the British Embassy.

"Why Madeleine, it such a pleasant surprise to see you here," he said to her, while completely ignoring me.

"Don Juan, how have you been?" Madeleine said without much enthusiasm. "You do know my husband, Monsieur Guidry?"

Good girl, I thought as I greeted Don Velasquez. We stared at each other for a moment as we shook hands in a rather stiff manner, before I turned to my wife.

"Come, my love, we must find our seats," I said. "As always, a pleasure, Don Velasquez."

"Madeleine, you must favor me with a dance later," he said in parting.

"Maybe later," Madeleine said halfheartedly.

As we turned to find our seats, she turned to me and said in a low voice that only I could hear, "He is such a ... pig."

"You don't know the half of it," I said.

A few minutes later, as we were being seated, she looked at me with the usual megawatt smile on her face and told me that she had an early Christmas present for me that she wanted to show me later that night.

"Will I like this gift?" I said.

"Oh, yes, you will," she said with a mischievous smile on her face. "You will like it very much." 

The dinner was sumptuous, and the wine delicious. As was my practice of late, I limited myself to two glasses at dinner, plus a snifter of brandy with dessert.

During dinner, the orchestra had played mostly background type music, but after dinner they began to step up the tempo and play music that was more suitable for dancing.

We didn't immediately go to the dance floor, because we were engaged in a brisk conversation with an acquaintance from the French government on what the United States intended to do in regard to the war.

I was gratified – and he was surprised – when Madeleine contributed some salient points to the debate. Her point was that no one should be eager to go to war, and if America could find some way to avoid it, then we should do so.

"I have already lost too many of my friends from school, including my best friend's husband, whose new baby will never know her father," Madeleine said with emotion in her voice, referring to her friend Therese, whose soldier husband was missing and presumed dead. "It is not something that should be entered into lightly."

The official nodded his head sadly, but replied that sometimes we must do that which is unpleasant in defense of our way of life. 

He had a point, but I wasn't eager to see my country enter the war. I had already made several trips to the front – well, close to the front, anyway – in the company of French or British colleagues, and I could see that it was horrible business indeed.

Finally, we made our way to the dance floor, where I took my lovely wife in my arms and we moved somewhat gracefully to the music. Neither one of us were accomplished dancers, but we enjoyed the feel of being together in something of a romantic setting.

We had danced several numbers when that spell was broken abruptly.

"Monsieur, may I cut in?" said Don Juan Velasquez in his oiliest tone of voice. "Madeleine, you promised me a dance."

"So, I did," Madeleine said. "Come."

I could tell she was not very happy about it, and I was seething that this piker had interrupted a beautiful moment between me and my wife.

But it would not do to cause a scene, so I bowed out gracefully and stepped over to where a passing waiter was carrying a tray covered with flutes of champagne. I took one and downed the tart wine in one long gulp.

I turned then to keep an eye on Velasquez and Madeleine, and for a moment I couldn't find them. I waded into the crowd, and what I saw made my blood boil even hotter.

Velasquez had his right hand on Madeleine's left buttock, and he was caressing it, with a sly smirk on his face when he saw me. As he turned slightly, I could see that Madeleine had a shocked and panicked look on her face, like she didn't know what to do. 

Finally, she simply brushed his hand away, but he simply changed hands and began caressing her right buttock. She brushed his and away again, but slid a hand up her side in a fairly lewd manner, until moments later, the music stopped as the orchestra took a break from performing.

Madeleine was nearly in tears as she dashed to where I was standing, and several people around us looked over in alarm as she came into my embrace.

"Robert, you saw?" she said in a quivering voice. "He ..."

"It's all right, my love," I whispered in her ear. "I will take care of this." 

"I think I need to use the ladies room," she said. "I'm not feeling well."

"Go, and when you return, we will go home," I said.

I'm not sure why Velasquez thought I would stand by and watch him paw my wife. Maybe it was because I always exhibited a calm, pleasant demeanor in public, and was fairly non-confrontational.

But he'd forgotten – or maybe he never knew – that I had been a soldier once and had risen to the rank of sergeant, a rank I earned in combat. Moreover, despite my years in the diplomatic corps, I was still a Cajun, and we don't let insults like that go idly by.

After I got Madeleine somewhat sorted out, with another woman to escort her to the ladies, I turned my attention to Don Juan Diego Velasquez.

He was seated at a table with some of his friends from the Spanish embassy, with his back to me. He was regaling his colleagues some story about, "the serving girl," and what he'd done with her before, and what he'd like to do with her again. 

I assumed he was referring to Madeleine, and when he made some comment about how he'd fucked her once before that just fueled my rage.

His friends saw me coming, but their warning was too late. I clasped a hand around the side of his neck, effectively pinning him to the chair. I think in that moment, he realized that he had seriously underestimated me.

At that age, I was not a particularly large man, but I wasn't small, either, standing slightly under six feet tall. Moreover, all of my life I have been lean and fit, with powerful hands and upper-body strength that came from wrestling gators with Papa as a teenager. 

When I had joined the Army, I learned the value of physical fitness, and I had made exercise a part of my daily routine ever since. The embassy had a gymnasium with its complex and I made use of it nearly every day when I could.

Keeping a firm grip on Velasquez's neck, I leaned over and whispered in his ear in perfect Spanish.

"Senor Velasquez," I began, and I could feel him bristle. Spanish dons in the pre-Civil War era didn't like being called, "senor," because they considered it a term of usage for commoners. I knew that and had used it deliberately.

"If you ever come near my wife again, or say anything bad about her again," I hissed. "I will hunt you down, rip your balls off and stuff them down your throat. Comprende?"

He never looked at me, but just nodded his head. I released him from my grip, turned and walked away without another word to anyone at his table.

At that moment, Madeleine came out of the hallway into the banquet room in the company of the wife of one of the correspondents for the New York Herald-Tribune, looking a little pale. She smiled bravely when she saw me, but I knew something wasn't quite right.

"The champagne and rich food didn't settle well on her stomach," the lady said. "But she'll be fine, I think, once you get her home."

"Thank you, ma'am," Madeleine said.

"Oh, my pleasure," the woman said, giving me a wink as she returned to where her husband was in conversation with Mr. Stark. 

It was a cold night, and Madeleine snuggled up to me in the taxi ride to our apartment. We each kept our own counsel in that moment, and when she started to speak about the incident on the dance floor, I just shushed her.

"It is over, and not worth dwelling on," I said.

Later, we prepared for bed, and we both dressed for bed, she in her winter nightgown and me still in my long johns, which I didn't bother to remove. In warmer weather, we often slept nude, but it was a cold night and the gas heater in the bedroom hadn't yet succeeded in warming the room sufficiently for that.

We came together under the covers, though, her mouth finding mine for a searing kiss. Despite the wine I'd had that night, my blood was up, mostly from the confrontation with Velasquez. I know it was irrational, but I felt he'd sullied Madeleine somewhat with his crude pass, and I felt honor-bound to reclaim my bride.

I reached between her legs, and found she was naked under her gown, thus allowing me free access to her sex. She was wet and hot to the touch, and she cooed in response as I gently stroked a finger between her labia and softly circled her little clitoris. She answered my caresses by fishing out by rock-hard penis from the open fly in my underwear.

Our kisses were more urgent now as we felt the need to be together, and Madeleine further surprised me by gently pushing me onto my back and straddling my hips. Holding my cock at the base, she fit the head to her opening and sighed as she slowly let herself down until I was fully impaled in her delightful depths.

I smiled at the thought of my once-virgin bride, at how sensual she had become in the months we had been married. She had taken to lovemaking eagerly and with enthusiasm, and was not shy about asking for it.

But this was a treat, and something that clearly pointed the difference between French women and American women, at least in that period. 

A French girl had no qualms about being on top, and having sex in other positions, as well. But not many Americans in my experience were comfortable with anything other than having the man on top and the woman on her back. 

The room had begun to warm up nicely as the heater did its work, along with the heat from our coupling, and Madeleine responded by pulling the nightgown over her head and tossing it aside, leaving her naked. That left her hair looking wild and tousled, and she threw her head back and let her long dark mane fall to her back.

Her eyes were closed in a reverie and she had a small smile on her face as she rode me in a slow, but steady up-and-down rhythm. 

I reached up then and filled my hands with her lightly jiggling breasts, pressing my fingers around her taut nipples. For some reason, her breasts seemed a little fuller than usual, but I just attributed it to the passion we were showing.

"Ah, Robert, you are so good to me," she whispered, and I could only grunt in response, for I was beginning to feel the onset of my climax, and I began to thrust upward more and more forcefully, willing her to reach her peak with me.

And, sure enough, I could feel the timbre of her body begin to quicken, and she began to gasp softly as we fucked with ever mounting joy.

My hands gripped her hips, controlling her motions, and I stared mesmerized by the gentle sway of her breasts. In that moment, I truly considered myself the luckiest man in the world for having such a woman. 

Even as the thought passed my mind, I could feel Madeleine begin to shimmy, and that was the moment I'd been waiting for. 

With a soft cry, I thrust upward once more and surrendered my sperm into her hot young womb. We clutched at each other and kissed passionately as we teetered at the peak of our mutual climax, until we finally exhaled sharply, then with a laugh, she rolled off of me and gathered herself in my arms, still panting heavily.

"Robert, I cannot imagine any man being better for me," she said, when she'd finally gotten her wind back.

"My love, you said earlier that you had a surprise for me," I said in a teasing tone of voice. "Just because you have drained me of my manhood doesn't mean you're off the hook. What is this surprise that you have for me?"

"I haven't told you this, because I wanted to be sure," she said, hesitantly. "But I have not had my menstrual period for the past two months. I went to see Dr. Jeanpierre today, and he confirmed it. I am with child."

The news hit me like a board across my head, and for a moment I was speechless. Madeleine misread my silence as disapproval, and she spoke in a concerned tone.

"Robert? Does this displease you?" she said.

"Oh, God, no, my love," I said. "I'm just a little stunned. We are going to have a child? Oh my God. You could not have given me a more wonderful Christmas present. Are you sure what we just did is not going to harm the baby?"

"Don't worry , Robert," she said. "Once I get further along, it might, but not right now. I just felt the need to be with you, and love you both because of the baby and because of what happened tonight. I could not believe he would do something like that. It stunned me, and I couldn't react for a moment. Then I was worried that you might see in my hesitation that I had allowed it or encouraged him, and nothing could be further from the truth. I love you so much, and I don't want you to ever doubt that."

And now she was almost in tears, and I realized that for all of her charm and worldliness, Madeleine was still a teenager, a young woman who had not yet seen all the worst of men.

"It's all right, love," I said. "You handled it properly. And I paid Senor Velasquez a visit while you were in the ladies room. I doubt if he will bother us again, and if he does, he will learn that sometimes it is the quiet men you have worry about most."

Madeleine just sighed as she snuggled in my embrace, and she was soon snoring softly. I, on the other hand, found sleep elusive. So I was going to be a father. I found the prospect daunting, yet satisfying. We had pledged to fill our home with children, and this would be the first.

Finally, I rolled over, moving Madeleine into a spooning position and fell asleep with visions of sons and daughters dancing through my head.

It was a fairly difficult pregnancy, and Madeleine was in the care of her doctor for much of it. Nevertheless, I felt a great deal of pride at the glow she exhibited as her belly grew. She walked with her head high, showing to the world that she was proud to be carrying my child.

And so it was that on August, 11, 1916, our daughter was born. We named her Marie Therese, after Madeleine's late mother and her best friend. She would prove to be a joy to have, but by the time she was born, events were about to overtake us all.

The war, and everything around it, was about to intrude upon our idyllic life, and it would make for some difficult times for me and my young family.



Madeleine Ch. 05



September, 1916

Paris, France

It was a Monday, when my life took a significant turn. I had completed my morning exercise at the embassy and had arrived in my office when I was summoned to Mr. Stark's office for what was described as an urgent meeting. 

This in itself was not unusual, as I spent almost half my time in the ambassador's company, discussing events, planning strategies or interpreting for him.

But this time, I found him in the company of a high-ranking British general and the second-in-command at the French Foreign Ministry. Introductions were made and I was offered a seat in the semicircle in front of Mr. Stark's desk.

"Robert, you have been called here for a new assignment," he began. "We have talked much of America's coming role in this war, and I have been ordered to begin preliminary preparations. It is not a matter of whether the United States will enter the war, but when and how. Of course, nothing will happen until after the election, and probably not until after the new year. But you and I both know it is inevitable. The stakes are too damn high for us to not act. If Germany wins, it will be a catastrophe for Western civilization. Democracy will be set back at least a generation. As such, it is crucial that we have some detailed understanding of what our troops are going to confront once they get here."

"And how does my role fit in this?" I said, as a queasy feeling grew in my stomach.

"Mr. Guidry, you have been close to the front, but you have not actually seen what it is like on the front lines," the British officer said. "We are proposing to take you directly to where the fighting is, for you to use your special talents for observation and analysis so that you may assess what you Yanks are going to need when the time comes."

"Has the Secretary of State signed off on this?" I asked, not quite believing that a high-ranking functionary in the Wilson Administration would have proposed such a dangerous breach of American neutrality.

"He has, and so has the President," William Stark said, pointedly. "They specifically proposed that you be the one to undertake this mission. They are assured of your thoroughness and discretion."

"Will I be in danger in this mission?" I said, now beginning to warm to the idea. "And if so, will I be able to defend myself?"

"Monsieur, you will be protected as much as it is possible, but, yes, there could be danger," the French official spoke for the first time. "You will, of course, be allowed to use any means necessary to protect yourself, should it come to that. But I do not believe you will be tested in that manner."

As I looked in the faces of the French official and the British general, I could see just a hint of desperation on their faces. They had tried everything to break the stalemate on the Western Front, and nothing had worked. So now they were just waiting for the Americans to come to the rescue.

The only consolation for them was that the war wasn't going any better for the Germans, either.

In early spring, Germany had launched a ferocious assault on the French fortress at Verdun, knowing that France would throw everything it had into the defense of what was a city of great emotional significance to the French people.

The idea, which could be gleaned from whispered conversations among the neutral diplomats and intercepted wireless messages that found their way into our hands, was that the Germans intended to bleed France dry at Verdun, and if they could actually take the fortresses and the city of Verdun itself, that it might well break the French will.

But by this point, after months of bloody, ineffectual fighting and autumn approaching, I could see that strategy backfiring on Germany, as their casualties were every bit as high as those of the French.

As for the British, they had their own problems. They had spent much of 1915 engaged in an utterly futile mess in the area near Constantinople, where they had made hoped to force the Ottoman Turks to capitulate. Instead, it had been the British who had been embarrassed, with a shocking number of casualties.

The British had also been blind-sided by a sudden uprising in Ireland, which had been put down with considerably more force and loss of life than most impartial observers deemed necessary. 

But all of that had paled in comparison to the debacle they had endured in July at the Somme, where 60,000 British soldiers had been killed in the first day of what was supposed to be a decisive offensive. They were at that moment still trying to achieve a breakthrough, but for the most part, it had simply petered out with only a few hundred yards -- maybe -- changing hands.

This war had unfolded much like I had warned Marcel two years earlier, only it had become much more of a bloody nightmare than even I could have envisioned.

And now, I was apparently going to be thrust into the middle of it, whether I was ready or not.

Madeleine was still not fully recovered from childbirth when I told her the news of my new assignment. I impressed upon her that she must tell absolutely no one of what I was going to be engaged in, not even her father -- especially not her father. 

As much as I loved Marcel, I knew his nature was to share news with everyone, and I had reason to believe that his bistro harbored a few men from the diplomatic corps who were working as agents for the Germans. 

Indeed, a young Brazilian functionary who often drank at Marcel's bar had been expelled from the country a few months earlier, allegedly for espionage. In my opinion, he'd been lucky the French hadn't stood him up in front of a firing squad, and the only reason he wasn't was that he was a diplomat from a neutral nation.

I knew how tricky my position was to those in my own embassy, and by extension in America itself. Americans were deeply divided over the war, but at that moment the majority still favored staying out of it. 

In fact, Mr. Wilson was in a hotly-contested re-election campaign against the Republican, Charles Evans Hughes, and both men were running on neutrality platforms. 

Moreover, there were plenty of neutralists in the American embassy in Paris, who would highly disapprove of an American attaché becoming involved in a mission that was clearly, overwhelmingly partisan to the Allies.

And I knew, too, that if I were captured or killed that my government would make every effort to distance itself from my activities. Therefore, I had to be careful, knowing I was on my own.

Needless to say, Madeleine was very upset over the thought of my going anywhere near the front, but she also understood that I had a duty to serve my country in any way necessary. This was my job, and I couldn't say no.

The worst part was that Madeleine was still restricted from sexual relations after childbirth, so the extent of our last night together before I left was some cuddling and kissing. Not bad in itself, but not what I would have wanted before heading off to experience the war.

On October 1, I met my contact with the British Army, who was assigned to escort me to the front. By mid-afternoon, I was in the rear reaches of the trench system, and it was then I began the process that cost me a part of my soul.

The trenches were an elaborate system of defenses in depth, an incredible feat of engineering, really. But the whole process, the whole lifestyle built around the trenches was completely dehumanizing.

If you put men in situations where they are forced to live like animals, one shouldn't be surprised when they act like animals. And that was very close to how men lived in the trenches during that dreadful time, like animals.

By this time, efforts were made to rotate units from the front to the rear for rest, recuperation and refitting. But when a soldier was on the front line, there was little opportunity to bathe or practice anything like proper hygiene.

Worse then anything, however, were the smells of the trenches, almost all of them foul. There was the acrid stench of explosives, the rich odor from the latrines, the putrid smell of rotting flesh and, of course, the earthy smell of mud, which seemed to absorb all of these smells into one pungent stew.

Mud, in fact, was the one constant in the trenches. It was everywhere, and when you were on the front lines, you could forget about dry feet, especially when it rained. There was always a detail repairing and refurbishing the trenches in one spot or another, and it was because of the mud.

I took with me stacks of notebooks and recorded everything I saw and did. I did everything with the units I was with except go over the top, which happened once or twice while I was there, to little effect.

The reaction of the French and British troops could be boiled down to two basic types. There was resentment at this Yank in their midst, "playing at war," as one Limey soldier put it. Or there was a sort of mad joy as they assumed that my presence meant that America was entering the war on the side of the Allies. 

I always hated to disappoint them by telling them that, no, we weren't yet in the war. As for the others, they soon came around when I proved willing to pitch in and help out whenever needed.

However, America's entry into the war became a stronger possibility when we got the news that President Wilson had been re-elected, though not by much. 

I knew from the brief conversation we had had on the one occasion when I had met the president back in 1914, that he believed strongly in Western-style democracy, which was best represented by the Allies. 

Whatever other shortcomings the man possessed, he was sincere about that and never wavered in his belief that America would and should be the defender of democracy, should it come to that. 

At any rate, I spent two months in the theater, and it was a life-changing time. If I had been a skeptic about life and politics before, my time at the front made my a full-blown cynic. 

I just could not fathom the mindset of the leaders who had gotten the world to the point where millions of men were living and acting like mindless animals. And, of course, I learned in the trenches that life was awfully cheap.

The one thing that came through loud and clear, and which was reflected in the report I subsequently delivered, was that if America came into the war, it must play by its own rules, and try not to get sucked into the trenches.

The British and French had this notion that America would merely provide fresh fodder for the war machine in the West. I stressed over and over in my report that we must not allow this to happen.

My moment of truth, the day I lost my soul, so to speak, came on a dreary day in mid-November. I was with a British unit in a forward position when out of nowhere our little sector came under attack.

It started with a brief mortar barrage, which was largely for the purpose of destroying the barbed wire in No Man's Land, the area of tortured earth that separated the front lines of each side.

After about a half-hour, we heard the voices coming from the German side, of commanders ordering an assault group to press forward.

The Brits seemed to know what was coming, for the machine gunners quickly manned their position, and the riflemen stood at the ready.

"I want you back and out of the way," the British captain said to me quickly, between barking out orders to his men. "If the worst happens, and we get overrun, don't try to be a hero. There are worse things than surrendering, especially since you are technically a neutral."

"Some neutral," I said. "I don't think those Jerrys coming over here will appreciate the niceties of international diplomacy."

"Just stay out of the way," the captain said. "We can handle this. It's probably just an exercise, just to let us know they're still out there." 

It was a little more than that, as we could hear some skirmishing on either side of our position. But the captain and his men were cool under fire, and they quickly began to take their toll on the gray-clad Germans who were coming through the mist.

How can I describe the chaos of that moment? There was the constant clatter of the machine guns, the popping of the automatic rifles, the strident voices of the officers and the desperate cries of the men who were hit by the return fire of the Germans.

As for me, I was glad I had just the day before cleaned and oiled the automatic pistol I carried with me. I had it out of my holster, just in case.

At the height of the fighting, a half-dozen German soldiers made it into our trench, and the fighting was hand-to-hand in many areas throughout the trench.

Looking around the corner from where I was standing, I saw a large German and a British sergeant wrestling in the mud on the floor of the trench. The German had a large knife in his hand and he had the smaller British officer on his back, with only the Brit's desperate maneuvering keeping the German at bay.

I didn't hesitate. I reached out and fired twice at the German's neck. He slumped heavily onto the sergeant, who quickly rolled the dead man over and crawled shakily off the floor. Another German soldier turned his rifle in our direction, and I shot him three times.

At that point, an artillery barrage commenced from behind us, and the German attack quickly ground to a halt. 

The sergeant and the captain both couldn't thank me enough, but the incident left me shaken. I was amazed at how easily killing men in combat came back to me. Moreover, any lingering thoughts of neutrality were left shattered by my actions.

Needless to say, no mention of my role in the day's activities was mentioned in any official reports. It was just one of those little things that happen in the fog of war. 

It was getting on toward the end of the year, just before Christmas, when I was abruptly pulled from the French unit where I was staying and ordered back to Paris. I had begun to wonder if the U.S. Embassy had forgotten about me, even though I sent periodic dispatches back to the ambassador.

It was just gone dark when I trudged up the stairs to our apartment, having come straight from the front. Mr. Stark himself had met me at the staging point at the rear, and had told me to go home, take the holiday time to get my bearings and come see him after Christmas.

I was tired and dirty, and I wondered if Madeleine would even recognize me. I hadn't had a haircut, and I hadn't shaved for several weeks, which made me appear as a street bum.

I stopped just outside our door, as I heard from inside the sound of Madeleine's voice singing a lullaby to our child. Then, as I put the key in the door, she stopped with a sharp gasp.

"Robert?" she asked hesitantly, when she got her first look at my appearance. Then, as recognition dawned, she squealed happily and rushed to my arms. 

She still had Marie on her shoulder, but that didn't matter, as the three of us shared a welcome-home embrace that almost made the previous two months bearable. Almost.

Then she wept in earnest as she looked deeply into my eyes and saw the pain of what I had seen while I was away.

"Oh, Robert, you have seen the war, and it is worse than we imagined, isn't it," she said tearfully.

"Yes, yes it is, much worse," I said. "But I am glad to be home."

"Come, you must eat, then we will clean you up, so I can have my Robert back," she said. "I am just about to put Marie down for the night. She is such a good baby."

Before she did that, though, I took my daughter in my arms and fell in love with her all over again. She cooed and pulled at my beard with the happy innocence of the very young. 

I wondered in that moment what kind of world we would bequeath to her generation, and that brought a cloud to my face that Madeleine instantly recognized.

At length, the child fell asleep on my shoulder, while Madeleine worked in the kitchen getting me something to eat. She hadn't had anything prepared, because she hadn't expected me home that night, but she was able to rustle up some stew.

After getting the baby to bed, Madeleine set about putting water on to boil for my bath while I ate the meal she had hastily prepared.

A word here about our apartment. It was in a fairly new building and had been wired for electricity and gas, both of which were fairly new developments in building construction at the time. We had a modern gas oven and a new electric icebox that helped keep food fresh, and the building also had running water and indoor plumbing, luxuries I hadn't had growing up in Louisiana.

But we were still a few years away from the time when homes commonly had water heating units, so in order to have a hot bath, one put several pots of water on the stove to boil, and would do that until the water was the proper temperature.

Through it all, Madeleine kept looking over at me with a beguiling, somewhat nervous smile, like she couldn't quite believe I was home. 

Once she had everything set on the stove, she came over to the chair where I was sitting and sat right down in my lap and just held me.

"I have missed you so, my husband," she said softly. "I don't want to lose you."

"You'll never lose me, my dear," I said. "Even when we're apart, you'll never be far from my heart."

"Will you have to go back?" she asked, after a minute or so as she sat together and held each other, becoming familiar again with the feel of the other's body.

"For the moment, no," I said. "But who knows what the new year will bring. We believe the Germans are going to resort to unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic soon, and if they do, it may well drive us into the war before very long. If that happens, then I will more than likely be returning to the front in some capacity. I don't think I'll be fighting, however. I'm much too valuable to the embassy for that." 

"You know, I am proud of you, Robert," Madeleine said. "I have the best husband a woman could have. You are smart, brave, honest and loving, plus you have an important job serving your country. Who could ask for more?"

Just then the water began to boil, and we carried the pots of water to the bathroom to fill in the tub. Madeleine shooed me out as she worked to get things just right. After a few minutes, she called me in.

I gave a soft gasp when I saw what she had done. She had turned the gas lamp down and had several candles at various points in the room, giving it a soft, sensual feel. 

She herself was still dressed in the black skirt and white blouse she preferred, but she had removed her stockings, and had rolled up the sleeves and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse. And, finally, she had let her hair down. I don't know that she had ever looked better.

"Take off your clothes and relax in the bath, my love," she said softly. "It is my job as wife to take all of your cares away, to treat you as a man deserves to be treated."

I wasn't about to argue. It had been weeks since I'd had a hot bath, and I was relishing the chance to enjoy one in the company of my beautiful young wife.

Once I was naked and in the bath, I relaxed, really, for the first time in many weeks. I was home -- for now -- and that was all that mattered.

Madeleine had some scented soap that she had bought at some boutique and she applied a liberal amount onto a wash cloth and began to bathe me. Simply the touch of her hands on my skin was enough to bring me immediately to a full arousal. My penis jutted out of the water like the periscope of a German submarine, ready for action, and that evoked a giggle from my wife.

She washed me all over, occasionally running her hands over my cock, but generally paying it little attention. When she had my arms, legs and torso cleaned, and had shampooed my hair, Madeleine finally caressed my scrotum, washing it thoroughly, then she had me turn over and washed my backside.




Madeleine Ch. 05



I groaned lustily as she slid a soapy finger over my anus, gently rimming the puckered flesh, but not actually penetrating, as she cleaned me thoroughly back there. 

Anal sex was not a step either of us were quite willing to take just yet. We had engaged in a bit of anal foreplay as part of our sexual repertoire, and we found it very stimulating. But we hadn't yet taken the plunge, and we weren't sure if we ever would.

Abruptly, Madeleine moved her hand away and bade me roll back over and lie back. Lastly, she washed my face and ears, then rinsed the sponge in the soap-dimmed water. I thought she was finished, but she shook her head no. 

Walking over to the shelf where I had some of my toiletries, Madeleine found my shaving cup, brush and the razor. She mixed some shaving lather in the cup with the brush, then knelt next to me and spread the lather over my face.

"A good wife takes care of her husband," she said softly. "In every way."

"And you are a good wife," I said, in a similarly soft tone.

Even as I was wondering whether she had ever shaved a man's face before, she read my mind.

"Don't worry, Robert," she said. "I used to shave Papa when I was younger. He insisted on teaching me. He said it was a skill that I would need when I married. I didn't understand it at the time, but I did as he asked. Now I'm glad I did."

When she had my face covered with the lather, she stropped the blade to sharpen it just a bit, then she began. 

I couldn't help the sensual feelings as Madeleine slowly, carefully shaved the thick beard from my face, except for my mustache, of course. My cock was rigid in the cooling water as her hands caressed my face and neck as she did her work.

I think it was a matter of trust that made it such an almost erotic experience. In a sense, I was putting my life in her hands. I was trusting this young woman that she would shave me correctly and safely, and the trust I placed in her told Madeleine that I held her in highest esteem.

When she was finished, she took a cloth and cleaned the remaining lather off my face, then ran her hands over my smooth features before bending over and kissing me deeply. We kissed with a hunger that was all-consuming, but Madeleine had one more surprise left for me.

I was all set to climb out of the tub and ravish my young bride, but she pushed me gently back into the water.

"Let me do this first," she whispered. "Lift your hips just a little."

I was slightly puzzled at first, until she picked up the bar of soap, rubbed some on her hands and began to fondle my penis. She stared into my eyes as she quickly stroked my cock up to full hardness once again.

Softly and slowly, Madeleine worked both hands up and down on my rigid flesh. The slick soap, combined with the fluid of my arousal sent sparks from my cock to my spine and up to my brain, where they exploded in sensations of lust.

Over and over, for several minutes, she brought me to the brink, as I had showed her earlier in our marriage, and backed off. Then she would start up again. Every nerve, every muscle in my body was taut with anticipation as I felt the sizzle of incipient explosion building in my groin.

And then, Madeleine began to speak softly, almost to herself, in an erotic patter that I had never heard from her before.

"I want to take off my clothes, I want to run naked through the fields with you," she said. "I want to feel this hard member flowing into my hot depths. I want to feel your mouth on my breasts, suckling my nipples, nursing me the same way Marie nurses, only you would be feeding me, feeding me your lust. I want you to take me and love me, like only you can. You, Robert, you are the only one, the only man that can make me sing, the only man I ever wanted in that way. I used to lie in my bed at night and dream of you, and when I did, I would touch myself and make myself climax at the thought of you making love to me. Ohhhhh yesssss, I wanted you so much."

That was it; I couldn't stand any more. With a growl, I felt the rush of semen from somewhere deep in my soul come spewing out the end of my cock like a geyser, splattering over my chest in several great spurts of lust. 

Finally, I was spent, and I felt every part of my body relax as I fell back into the tepid water. There was an otherworldly light in Madeleine's eyes as she took the wash cloth one more time and carefully wiped the dregs of my lust from my stomach, my chest, and, finally, my cock.

When she was finished, she stood up, picked up a fluffy towel off the rack, held it out to me and bade my enter her embrace. As she softly dried me, I crushed her in my arms and kissed her deeply. 

At length, I pulled back, looked into Madeleine's eyes and saw reflected the love, lust and devotion that this woman had for me, and I must say it humbled me. I vowed once again that I would do all I could to live up to her view of me as a man, a husband and a lover.

I didn't wait. I reached down and began to unbutton her blouse, her skirt and the sleek slip she wore underneath. When she was naked, we walked arm in arm to the bedroom, fell on the bed and made love -- twice.

After the second time, when I was sweat-covered and exhausted, I held Madeleine in my arms, and as I fell gently into sleep, I heard her whisper in my ear.

"Welcome home, my love."

Yes, I was home, but for how long? 



Madeleine Ch. 06



June, 1917 Paris, France

It was on a warm late spring morning that I arrived in my office to be greeted with a summons to the ambassador's office.

When I arrived, I stopped short, for Mr. Stark had a visitor, someone I knew well, and for whom I had decidedly mixed feelings.

Gen. John James Pershing was seated in a chair across from the ambassador's desk, and he rose when I entered the office.

"Sergeant Guidry," he said as he offered his hand in greeting, using the rank to which I had risen during my service in the Army. "You've done well for yourself. I'm pleased."

"General Pershing," I replied as we shook hands guardedly. "It has been a long time."

For just a moment, my mind went back to the steamy jungles of the Philippines, where I had served under Black Jack Pershing in subduing the Moros.

In some respects, I admired the man. He was a very capable soldier, and leader of men in combat. We had become well-acquainted during our time in the Philippines, and he had been crucial in the advancement of my military career. 

However, I also came to believe that he was at least partly responsible for some of the excesses that American troops engaged in during that bloody conflict. 

I should make it clear that I don't know for certain whether he ordered or even knew about some of the darker things that went on there. 

But I have always been convinced that he at least suspected some things were happening there that shouldn't have been going on, and that his attitude of doing whatever it took to achieve the objective -- in this case, subduing Aguinaldo's rebels -- fostered an atmosphere where atrocities could be committed.

American activities in the Philippines were a deep dark secret in certain circles in the Army. It was a forgotten episode in a faraway part of the world, nobody was willing to speak up, and, frankly, nobody was probably willing to listen at that point in time.

However, Pershing himself had given me a letter of recommendation that eased my entry into LSU when I left the Army, and helped me obtain my position with the college's militia, so I was somewhat beholden to him, and perhaps that ensured my silence on the matter. 

All of that passed through my mind in but a heartbeat, then I focused on the task at hand. I had been brought in for a specific reason, and I suspected my previous service under Pershing was a major factor in that reason.

Pershing had just arrived in Paris a week or so before to begin the process of establishing an American presence in the war. He was to be the supreme commander of the American Expeditionary Force, which would soon be joining the French and British in fighting Germany.

As I had expected all along, the Germans had finally done something stupid that pushed the United States into the war on the side of the Allies.

The stated reason was the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, which President Wilson believed was a grievous breach of American neutrality, and which many Americans believed was an inappropriately sneaky way to wage war. 

Personally, I thought that was incredibly naïve. The British blockade of the European continent, which Germany rightly called a, "starvation blockade," was having a debilitating effect on the German people, and the best means at their disposal to fight that blockade was the submarine, which by its very nature was a stealth weapon.

And there was no doubt in my mind -- nor that of anyone in the know -- that American merchant ships headed for Britain were secretly carrying armaments to Britain that ended up with the Allied armies. 

So I didn't have a serious moral problem with unrestricted submarine warfare as a tactic of war, and by itself that might not have been enough to jolt America out of its neutrality.

What did it was the so-called Zimmerman Telegram, a notorious bit of correspondence from the German foreign minister, Alfred Zimmerman, to the German Embassy in Washington. The British had intercepted the telegram, figured out what it meant and had eagerly -- gleefully -- passed it on to the Americans.

Basically, the Germans were suggesting an alliance with Mexico against the United States, and in return Mexico would be given the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in the event of a German victory.

It was outrageous and outlandish on its face, because Mexico was in no position to offer Germany any sort of material assistance in the war. Mexico was more than five years deep into a bloody and chaotic civil war that had left that nation ruined.

In fact, Jack Pershing himself had spent months campaigning in Mexico with a small force in pursuit of Mexican bandits after one of them, one Pancho Villa, had come across the border and shot up a small town in New Mexico.

Nevertheless, the mere thought of some of our states as booty in the Great War inflamed American opinion, never mind the fact that we had taken those very states from Mexico by force almost 70 years earlier.

It was that something stupid that I had told Marcel Lévesque years earlier would be what got the U.S. into the war, and in April, the president had declared war on Germany.

Now, Gen. Pershing was in Paris with his staff and my assignment was to be a liaison with him and his staff in acclimating them to the brutal realities of war on the Western Front.

We weren't any too soon getting involved, either. Just weeks earlier, the Tsar of Russia had abdicated and a democratic government had been formed, but it was precariously perched in power, and Russia's continued involvement in the war was uncertain.

My good friend Sergei Hoffman had been called back to Russia, and he had reluctantly gone home. We had enjoyed a farewell dinner at Marcel's the night before he departed, and he wished Madeleine and I good luck.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I would never see my friend again. We heard from him for awhile through letters he sent, but after the Bolsheviks took power in November, those letters stopped, and we never heard from him again.

I can only assume that as a diplomat for and a minor noble in the tsarist regime that he had been a target of the Bolsheviks and that he had paid for that with his life in the madness that befell Russia in the years that followed the revolution of 1917.

I spent the rest of that day, and the rest of the week in consultations with Pershing and his staff members. I quickly realized that I needed to disabuse our officers of the nature of this war.

"There is nothing glorious about the fighting in this war," I told a group of staffers in a lecture one afternoon. "It is dirty, brutal, monotonous, terrifying and bloody."

The next week, I got an assignment that both thrilled and terrified me. I was asked to accompany an American pilot to take some aerial photos of the front lines. 

The pilot was one of the men who had been flying and fighting with the so-called Lafayette Escadrille, a group of American volunteers who brought their expertise to the Allies.

I had never been up in an airplane before, and the experience was like nothing I'd ever had before. It was exhilarating in one sense, but I was also shaken by the thought of the many things that could have gone wrong.

We were not up there to fight, but to do some reconnaissance, and I wasn't sure what would happen if we had encountered an enemy plane. 

We were actually flying over German territory, and I was afraid we would draw the attention of the Germans, who would send a squadron up to take care of us. But, fortunately, we were able to do our business unimpeded.

Another concern was the matter of taking photos from the rear cockpit of an early airplane. I had to take a firm grip on the camera and lean slightly out of the open cockpit to shoot. Sure, I was strapped in, still, it was a terrifying experience.

From up high, however, one could get a real sense of the trench system, and the photos I took were instrumental in giving me and the Army staff the overall picture of the geography of the war.

Nevertheless, I was relieved when we finally landed. I kissed the ground when I disengaged from the plane, much to the amusement of my pilot.

In early June, something happened that drove home the importance of my job. Earlier in the spring, the French had suffered heavy losses in a futile assault near Verdun, and the French troops reached their breaking point. 

Thousands of French soldiers had mutinied, and others who were prodded into battle marched to the front bleating in derision, the implication being that they were simply sheep being led to slaughter, which was not far from the truth.

Gen. Pershing heard about the mutiny and pressed to me the importance that something like that must not happen with our troops.

The French mutiny, however, was a manifestation of a wider war-weariness that was finding more and more expression in art and literature, as well as on the streets of Paris. Nearly three years of butchery, with no end in sight, had fostered a bitterness and a coarsening of life that was palpable in Paris, so close to the front.

I, for one, had taken to carrying my trusty pistol with me at all times, even in public. I procured a smaller one for Madeleine, as well, and I took her out to the country south of the city to teach her how to use it, should it become necessary. I was taking no chances with my life, nor that of the woman I loved.

I was working long hours, and traveling quite a lot between Paris and the American Army headquarters, and Madeleine was faithfully keeping house, tending to Marie and helping her father at the bistro, where business had picked up again after a lull shortly after the war began.

Madeleine was a wonderful cook and housekeeper, and she had taken to the role of wife and mother like a duck to water. She was a natural nurturer, a woman who was born to care for others. She had taken care of Marcel during her youth, and she took care of me and our child.

She and her friend Therese had worked out an arrangement where they cared for the other one's baby while they each split time serving at Marcel's. We had also set up a nursery area in the back office at the bistro on occasions when they were both needed.

As a war widow, Therese was entitled to a stipend from the French government, but it wasn't much, since she and her husband had not been married long. Marcel had offered her a job, and she had accepted gratefully. 

Having a friend who could look after our child paid off nicely on our second anniversary in June.

I returned from a visit to Pershing's headquarters to be greeted by a smiling Madeleine and the smells of something delicious coming from the kitchen.

"Where is Marie?" I asked after a lengthy kiss.

"She is staying the night with Therese and Rosa," Madeleine said in a seductive tone of voice, referring to her friend's young child, who was already a playmate of our little girl, who was just learning to walk. "We have the house to ourselves. I have something in mind for you." 

"Oh?" I exclaimed, with a raised eyebrow. "Can I assume this will be something I will enjoy?"

"Oh, indeed," she said, leaning over and kissing me again. "I think you will enjoy this very much. You know, of course, that it was two years ago today..."

"Yes, my love, the best day of my life," I said. "A magical day."

We kissed again, a sort of hunger growing between us, then Madeleine pulled away to finish preparing dinner.

After a sumptuous meal, Madeleine excused herself to our bedroom, while I relaxed on the sofa with a copy of the afternoon newspaper.

At length, I heard Madeleine call for me to come join her. I walked to the bedroom, opened the door and stood transfixed.

Madeleine was kneeling on the bed, with her back to the door. She was dressed, sort of, in a one-piece set of bloomers, that were somewhat old-fashioned, but incredibly sexy with the ties to the crotch and the top undone.

The effect had her sex open and ready, like she was offering herself as a meal. Her breasts were out and hanging free from the opening at her chest, the dark pink tips stiff in plain arousal.

She was looking back at me with a seductive smile, like some Parisian courtesan, her fingers beckoning me to enter, to take her. Her long dark hair was down and spread about her shoulders like the finest silk. She had obviously spent some time brushing it to a polished sheen.

"My God," I whispered. "You are so beautiful. The most beautiful woman I've ever seen. You always have been."

"Come, Robert," she whispered back. "Come and take me. Just for tonight, I will be your whore, your wanton woman. I will do anything you want, any way you want."

I couldn't pass up an offer like that, although truth be known, Madeleine always had a little bit of whore in her when we made love. She loved sex, and had a real sense of adventure in bed. And I was to find out just how uninhibited she could be.

I quickly stripped and threw my suit onto the chair, then approached the bed, lightly fisting my cock, which was already hard in anticipation. The head was red and wet from arousal as I pulled my foreskin back in preparation.

I was tempted to just climb on the bed and mount her, but I decided that if she wanted to play, then so did I.

"Turn around, my whore," I commanded softly, and she quickly complied. Madeleine's eyes were sparkling with lust as she looked up at me in anticipation. "Suck it."

There was no hesitation. She leaned forward slightly, took my cock in her hands and brought the head to her face. Her tongue slid out from her moist lips and licked the head, the slid her lips down the shaft, licking around the rigid flesh, causing me to groan in incipient ecstasy. 

She bathed the shaft with her lips and tongue, sawing my length over her open mouth, before abruptly slipping the head past her lips and into her mouth. 

I groaned louder this time, as she sucked a good two-thirds of my length into her maw. She kept a firm grip at the base of my penis while feeding the rest into her hungry mouth. She was humming in lust of her own as she worked me with her mouth, sending vibrations all the way to my brain.

I lost myself in the sensations of Madeleine's oral ministrations, and I congratulated myself on my success in teaching her how to do it. Oral sex had been part of our sex life almost from the beginning, and Madeleine had been eager to learn. 

This was just another example of how much freer the French were in sexual matters. Most nice young American wives of that period would never be caught dead sucking their husbands. But it was simply another way for Madeleine to please her man, and she had not objected at all at the thought of taking me in her mouth.

Nor did I object in the least at pleasuring her that way. I had come to appreciate the wonders of cunnilingus during my college days by a New Orleans prostitute that I had come to know, and I enjoyed showing Madeleine what I knew.

As much as I was reveling in the feeling of my wife's warm, wet mouth on my cock, I wanted a taste of her hot pie.

I pulled myself away from Madeleine, and felt a stir at the tendrils of wetness that clung to her lips momentarily.

I climbed up on the bed, knelt down behind her, just like she was and inhaled her essence. She as dripping wet, and the aroma of her hot slit was intoxicating. 

I grabbed her hips and slashed my tongue up her slot, then bored in until my lips were pressed against her labia. I felt Madeleine's body twitch involuntarily and a low groan escaped her mouth.

I smiled to myself at how I was able to please my little minx, at how I had made her mine. I wouldn't have called her my love slave, but that's basically what she was. I had quickly learned how to work her body like a fine-tuned machine, and she loved me for it.

In and out, I licked her sex, while reaching under to roll her clit with a finger. Madeleine was thrusting her hips back as he climax began to climb, and I knew the time was nigh.

Giving her vagina one last kiss. I stood up, slid in right behind her, lined up my cock to her opening and pushed the head right on in. We both groaned deeply and loudly as I plunged in to the hilt in one smooth, screaming stroke.

In no time, I was in rhythm and we were gasping in lust. I could not believe how hot and wet Madeleine was as I fucked her with long, purposeful strokes. She threw her head back and her long hair flipped back with it, with loose strands spread over her shoulders.

"You are so beautiful, my love, my whore," I whispered as I felt the sap rising in my scrotum with each sizzling stroke. 

"Unnnnnnnnh, yessssss," Madeleine exclaimed. "I will ... always be your ... whore, Robert. Always."

Madeleine's body was starting to shimmy and shake as we reached for a mutual climax. Higher and higher, the sensations kept building. I leaned over and captured her breasts in each hand, rolling her nipples between my fingers as I did, and it was like turning on a switch.

She shuddered from her head to her toes, and she cried out in passion as the orgasm ripped through her body. That was all I could stand. With a groan, I fucked her incredibly deep three full strokes then surrendered a crackling load of semen.

I felt like my entire body was coming through my penis as I spurted my seed deep in my bride's womb. For long minutes the convulsions of lust swept over us, then we slowly sank to the bed in sweat-soaked satisfaction.

"Robert, you are my love," Madeleine whispered as we lay together in our afterglow.

"And you are mine, Madeleine," I whispered back.

If I could have, I would have preserved that moment in glass, for there would be fewer and fewer of them as my role in the war began to deepen. 

It wasn't that our love in any way diminished, but the time was rapidly approaching when I would be spending more time in the field than at home, and we would have precious few moments like this one.

And we were on a collision course with personal trials and tribulations we could not have imagined.



Madeleine Ch. 07



March, 1920

Le Havre, France

It was with a deep sense of melancholy that I stood along the rail at the stern of the ocean liner, watching the coast of France recede into the distance.

I was going home, after seven years of service with the American Embassy in Paris, and while part of me was glad to be returning to America, a larger part of me knew I was leaving behind a large part of my life.

It was a cold, blustery day on the cusp of spring, and I had my overcoat buttoned to the top to ward off the chill that came from the ocean. I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I watched France fade away in the ever-growing distance.

Just then I felt the soft touch on my arm, and I looked over at the woman next to me, with the sleeping child on her shoulder. I looked in her eyes for just a moment, and saw reflected there the pain and weariness that had nearly consumed us over the previous two and a half years.

"Come, Robert, I must take the child down below," she said. "Why don't you join us. You will catch your death of cold out here."

"In a few minutes," I replied. "I'd like to stay alone for a moment. I have much on my mind. I'll be down shortly."

"As you wish," she said, and turned to go back toward the stairway that led to our cabin.

I looked back to get one final glimpse of the land I had come to love over the previous seven years, during that awful time when hell visited earth. But the land had already been obscured by the low-hanging clouds and the distance we had already sailed, leaving me with nothing but empty ocean with which to share my thoughts. 

I thought back over everything that had happened over that period, of the friends I had made both in my own embassy and the embassies of other nations that had been allied with France, of Marcel and, of course, of Madeleine.

^ ^ ^ ^ 

Nov. 11, 1918

Paris, France

At 11 a.m. that morning, the guns went silent, ending the Great War after slightly over 51 months of bloodshed.

I was back at the American Embassy, awaiting the final word from Gen. Pershing's staff that the Germans had laid down their arms, in accordance with the terms of the armistice they had signed a few days before, and that the war really was over.

A few minutes before 11, the telephone rang in Ambassador Sharp's office. He picked up the earpiece, listened for a few seconds, then answered, "Good, congratulations."

After hanging the earpiece back on its receiver, he turned to us with a smile, and said the two words that we'd been waiting months to hear, "It's over."

We shook hands around the room with a sense of satisfaction, but without the jubilation that was sure to be felt around the world -- at least among the victorious Allies. Those of us in the diplomatic community knew there was plenty of work left to do.

For those of us in the American Embassy, we knew that winning the war was only part of the battle. We wanted to win the peace, as well, and we knew that doing so might put us at odds with our allies, the French and British.

But that would be a problem for the months ahead. Today was a day for celebration. 

Minutes later, when the clock reached the top of the hour, the news began to spread all over Paris. Church bells rang throughout the city, and crowds of celebrants began to fill the streets.

Mr. Sharp had given us the rest of the day off, and I had made my way through the thickening crowds to Marcel's, where it had all started for me.

As soon as I entered the bistro, Marcel came over to me and we embraced in a way that only close friends do. There were tears of joy streaming down his face, which I knew reflected the palpable relief all over the world that this four-year long nightmare was finally over.

I made my way back to the kitchen, where I found Madeleine directing the cook and filling food orders. She saw me, and we hugged deeply, just letting the love flow from one to the other.

The previous months had been hard on us, and our relationship had been tested in profound ways, so that embrace reflected our hopes that maybe things would get better.

Madeleine hadn't worked in the bistro much in recent months, for a variety of reasons, which had much to do with the trials and tribulations that had beset us. My mind wandered back over the weeks and months, and I replayed the events in my memory.

Ironically, things began turning bad as a result of a blessed event.

I happened to be back in Paris in early August, 1917, when Madeleine reached me at the embassy with the news that she was pregnant. 

Naturally, I was overjoyed. Our hopes that we had talked about when we had first been courting included filling our home with children.

However, Madeleine was sick a lot during that period with persistent morning sickness. After speaking to her physician, I was reassured that everything was progressing normally, so I returned to the front and Gen. Pershing's headquarters.

The pace of American arrivals was quickening, and my workload was heavy. Our troops needed to be trained in the new warfare that existed on the Western Front, and my expertise was needed both in lecturing the officers mostly, plus I was also being assigned to assess German troop strengths.

One of my signal skills was accurately gauging the relative strength of enemy troops in a particular sector based on a number of factors that included reports from secret agents working behind German lines.

Obtaining this information was the most dangerous part of my job, because it put me close to the front, and even occasionally required me to go behind the lines.

Still, the bulk of my work involved analysis of information and organizing that data in a form that was easily understandable to the generals and diplomats with whom I was working.

That was what I was doing on the fateful day in October when I got an urgent telegram from the embassy informing me that Madeleine had been hospitalized. 

I managed to reach Marcel by telephone -- no small feat under the conditions -- and he informed me that Madeleine had miscarried the baby. There was more, but before he could tell me what it was, we lost the connection. 

My first inclination was to drop everything to be with my wife, and I was prepared to do so, but Gen. Pershing wasn't willing to let me go. That caused a rift between us that never really healed.

Up to then we had settled into the same kind of working relationship we'd had in the Philippines, one where we seemed to think alike. That was what had bonded us then, and we had fallen into a similar role in France.

For 10 days we argued about it. His view was that it was a particularly bad time for me to be leaving his headquarters. He was at that moment fighting with the French and British about the American role in the war, and he needed all the help he could muster.

As expected, they saw American troops as trench fodder to shore up their flagging resources. On the other hand, Pershing -- with the backing of the president -- was adamant about keeping American troops together and intact.

We were willing to enter the breech wherever needed, but Pershing, stubborn Missourian that he was, didn't budge on the issue of keeping the U.S. Army troops unified and under his command.

Moreover, he argued with me that other soldiers weren't able to rush off and hold their wives' hands, so why should I be allowed to leave?

I finally pointed out quite heatedly that I wasn't a soldier any more and he wasn't my boss. Finally my view prevailed, although it took direct intervention by Ambassador Sharp to allow me to return to Paris.

When I got there, I found the situation was much worse than initially feared. Madeleine had lost the baby -- that was a given -- but because of the damage that had been done, she had had an emergency hysterectomy, a dangerous and potentially life-threatening procedure.

And I found I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. While I had been fighting with Pershing to get the leave to come back to Paris, Madeleine, when she got out of surgery, was increasingly upset that I wasn't there to be with her.

At an intellectual level, she understood my situation, but it did little to salve her emotional feelings of abandonment.

To make matters worse, I felt guilty for not being there for her. I believed I had let her down at the moment of her greatest crisis. I blamed the Army in general and Pershing in particular for causing a rift in my marriage, and I never really forgave either.

Madeleine eventually forgave me, but it was a wedge in our relationship that we had to work to overcome, and that time would not come for quite awhile.

It was a solid month before Madeleine was released from the hospital, and emotionally, she never quite got over it. Not only did we lose the baby, but she lost the ability to have any more children. Marie would be our only child.

From that moment, a dark cloud began to hover over our lives, especially when I learned that female problems of a similar nature had been what caused Marie Levesque's premature death a dozen years earlier.

Of course, I still spent a lot of time at the embassy, and in communication with American headquarters at the front. I still had work to do, and it didn't stop because I had personal problems.

Before returning to the front in early December, I hired a housekeeper and nanny for Madeleine and Marie. I could afford it, and it was a necessity given our situation.

Greta Carstens came highly recommended by Mrs. Sharp herself, who had found her nearly destitute at a social relief station in Paris.

She was in her mid-40s and originally from Belgium. She and her husband had fled the German onslaught in 1914, leaving with just what they could carry with them. They had left behind two sons and several daughters. 

The sons were soon dead -- one in combat as a sergeant in the Belgian Army, the other shot by the Germans for an act of sabotage -- and the daughters were apparently holed up in several cities in that country and unable to leave.

Greta's husband had been able to find work as a carpenter, but he had died of a heart attack a few months earlier, and she was one step away from the brothels -- a fate that befell many female refugees -- when Mrs. Sharp chanced upon her.

Greta proved to be a godsend, and she quickly became a part of our family. She not only took over many of the housekeeping and child care duties that Madeleine had handled before, but she also nursed Madeleine back to health, plus she provided my wife with badly-needed companionship and a motherly presence she hadn't had since the death of her own mother.

I spent a rather bleak Christmas with Gen. Pershing's staff, which didn't help my mood any. The general had hosted a small group of us for a holiday dinner that day, but otherwise it was just like any other day on the front.

I finally got a chance to return to Paris in late February for a little furlough time. I needed it. I had been working sometimes as many as 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week for nearly three months, and I was exhausted.

Madeleine met me with some interesting information. With Greta in place and her health improving, she had decided she wanted to answer a call she said she'd been hearing for awhile, and that was to do volunteer work at a hospital near our apartment.

She said her time in the hospital had made her realize how much work was needed to care for the sick among the civilian population, and the wounded soldiers that were constantly coming back from the front.

"Robert, you serve your country by the work that you do," she said as we sat together on a sofa one night. "I feel the need to serve mine by helping at the hospital."

"Are you sure you are up to it, physically, emotionally?" I said, cautiously.

I definitely had my misgivings. She still seemed to be weak from her surgery, and I knew how empathetic she was about people. She was such a caring person, and I worried that seeing the hellish injuries the war inflicted on the human body would be too much for her. 

But I also knew how stubborn my wife could be. When she set her mind to something, there was no force in the universe that could stop her. Indeed, I had to smile as I thought back to how she had set her sights on me, and had let nothing stand in her way.

She reassured me that she was fine, and that she would work only as much ass her body would allow.

So, of course, I relented. Although I was the man of the house, there was precious little I would deny my Madeleine. Considering what happened, maybe I should have said no.

It wasn't until the middle of March that Madeleine received the go-ahead from her doctor to resume sexual relations, and we were almost giddy at the prospects that awaited us that night.

We had actually had dinner out that evening at a café around the corner from our apartment, and Madeleine leaned her head on my shoulder as we walked down to the river after dinner. 

We just stood on the bridge watching the water slowly flowing past, holding hands like we did during that blissful spring when we were courting. 

She had changed some during my time away. She had had much of her long dark hair cut while she'd been in the hospital, and she liked the way it easier to maintain, so she kept it that way. It was sort of an early version of the bob style that would become popular soon after the war.

She was also quieter, more introspective, and a little more prone to melancholy. Losing the baby, and losing the ability to have other children still weighed on her heart, and she wasn't quite as bubbly as she had been before.

But she was still the beautiful young woman I loved and who loved me, and we showed each other just how much when we returned home.

Marie was already down for the night, and we sent Greta home in a staff car from the embassy that was at my disposal at any time, night or day. She was learning that working for a fairly high-ranking foreign diplomat had its privileges.

Madeleine was in bed when I returned to the apartment after seeing Greta off. She was sitting up, her perky breasts exposed to my gaze, but she had the sheet pulled up to the middle of her chest, and I wondered about that.

"Turn the light down, please, Robert," she said somewhat shyly.

"Why?" I asked, as I removed my suit and prepared to join her in bed.

"I don't want you to see my scar," she said, and she cast her head downward for a moment that I could only think was shame of some sort.

I was naked as I crawled into the bed. I lifted her chin up and gazed into her glistening eyes, then I leaned in slightly and kissed her. She was tentative for a moment, but then she sighed and answered my passion with that of her own.

In minutes we were kissing deeply, and I slid a hand over her splendid breasts, the ones I loved to have at my disposal. I twirled the tips between my fingers, and she responded with a quickening of her breath, and a low moan escaped her lips.

I laid her back and pulled the sheet back, and she hesitated for a second.

"The light?" she said.

"Shhhhh," I whispered. "Relax and let me love you -- all of you."

I slid my hand down her chest, and caressed the still-angry scar that crossed her abdomen several inches below her navel. I still hadn't seen it good, as I was concentrating on Madeleine and her luscious lips.

Soon my hand naturally gravitated down between her legs, to the moist, hot valley that lay slightly open for me. I found her clitoris and slowly circled it with my finger, and Madeleine responded audibly, as well as physically, opening her legs wider to allow me easier access. 

Frankly, it was all I could do to hold myself back. I was bursting hard, simply from such intimate closeness with my wife, closeness I hadn't enjoyed in many months. But I had things I needed to do for Madeleine first, before I could surrender to my own passion.

Keeping a slow, steady rhythm with my fingers on her sex, I licked my way down her neck, to her breasts, and began to feast on them, as was my custom. Her nipples immediately responded, becoming stiff and engorged. 

I alternated between licking each nipple and sucking her breasts between my lips, trying to get as much of her delightful flesh in my mouth as possible. 

When I felt Madeleine squirming on the bed, and gasping in lust, I ventured downward. She tried to stop me for a moment, but I was determined. I threw the sheet all the way off the bed and came face-to-face with her scar.

It wasn't a pleasant sight, but I ignored any negative feelings and began to slowly lick and kiss the still-reddish gash on her abdomen.

"Robert, please, no..." she began, but I shushed her again.

"Madeleine, my love, you must understand that I love you unconditionally," I said softly. "No matter what. This is a part of you now, and I am duty-bound to love it as much as I love the rest of you."

And somehow that was a breakthrough she'd needed, because I felt her relax in that moment and surrender to me completely.

I licked and kissed her scar from one end to the other and back again, before turning my attention to her vagina, which was now flowing with the juice of her arousal. She was panting heavily and writhing from the constant work my fingers had been doing while I loved her scar.

I savored the nectar of her lust as I blew softly on her flaming red flesh, then bored in with my lips and my tongue, devouring her tasty womanliness like a hungry dog attacking a thick steak.

It didn't take much of that before Madeleine arched her back and shuddered from head to toe with an all-consuming climax I'm sure she hadn't enjoyed in quite some time.

But I didn't give her long to recover. As soon as she was calmed down just a little, I pulled my face away, and stared into her eyes as I climbed between her legs and prepared to fuck my wife.

She had a dewy look in her eyes and an enigmatic smile on her face as we stared into each other's eyes.

"Yes, Robert, love me completely," she whispered. "You always know what I need."

I just smiled as I fisted my cock in readiness. I slid the head between her labia once, twice, three times before gently pushing forward into her hot steamy canal. 

I took it slow, because I wasn't sure if she would feel any pain or not, but she gave no indication of discomfort as I sheathed my cock in her wet, slippery depths.

I simply cannot describe how good it felt to finally be in my wife's love once again. I just held myself there deep in her womb, and it was Madeleine that began to set the pace.

She pulled back and thrust herself onto my pole with passion and vigor, and we were quickly in rhythm. I leaned down, gathered Madeleine in my embrace and we kissed wildly, all pretense at restraint gone.

It was animal sex at its finest, two lovers deep in the throes of lust, each giving to the other everything we had.

Madeleine was wild under me now, her body jerking and moving with me, like two snakes coiled together in an unbreakable embrace. Our bodies were slick with sweat as we hurtled toward a crashing finish, grunting, groaning, gasping as our passion climbed ever higher.

I held back the time of my release as long as I could, and I was rewarded when Madeleine squealed and cried out, her body shivering with her full-body climax. 

That was the moment I'd been waiting on, with a strangled cry of my own, I felt the molten lava of my climax explode through my cock and spew out the tip with great gouts of semen that flooded Madeleine's vagina and overflowed over my balls and down over her ass.

We shuddered together for what seemed like hours, before we finally collapsed in a sweaty heap, well-satisfied.

When we disentangled ourselves, and she curled into the post-coital embrace, Madeleine began to weep, and that puzzled me.

"What's wrong?" I asked.




Madeleine Ch. 07



"You are the best husband," she said as she fought to compose herself. "I should never have doubted you. I thought you would not want me any more after what happened. But you do love me anyway."

"Of course, I do," I said. "Did I not vow to love you in good times and bad, in sickness and health? Madeleine, I told you I love you through thick and thin. Whatever happens, we'll see it through together."

"Thank you," she said sleepily. "I do love you so, Robert." 

It was a good thing we got our lovemaking in when we did, for the very next night was the last one I would spend in my wife's arms for quite awhile.



Madeleine Ch. 08



CHAPTER 8

Paris, France
March, 1918

I had been on furlough from my duties as an attache from the U.S. Embassy to Gen. Pershing's headquarters, and Madeleine and I had finally reconnected after months of forced celibacy after her miscarriage and subsequent emergency hysterectomy.

I had finally come to realize how close she had come to dying that day. Only a quick transfusion of blood helped her survive the surgery that saved her life, but deprived her of the ability to have any more children.

It was early spring, and we had enjoyed a terrific night of lust as we reawakened our passion for each other.

We had made love again the next night, but without nearly the intensity of the night before, and we were sleeping soundly when the telephone woke us up in the predawn hours.

I was told that I had an hour to gather my things and that a driver would be by to pick me up. The Germans had launched their anticipated spring offensive much earlier than expected, and had caught the Allies by surprise.

One reason they were able to surprise us was that they chose not to precede the attack with a large-scale bombardment, as had become the custom in this war.

As we rode to the front, I tried to go over my notes, which I had compiled through the winter to analyze what the Germans might do.

It was no secret that they were running out of time. If they were going to win the war, it would have to be now, before the stream of American soldiers coming across the Atlantic became a flood that would overwhelm them.

Moreover, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia had led to a cease-fire on the Eastern Front and negotiations were underway that would take Russia out of the war.

Already we had seen clear evidence of increased troop strengths among the German units in France that resulted from divisions that had been freed up from the East.

We also knew from intelligence reports coming from inside Germany that unrest over the war was growing as casualties mounted and food shortages became more acute. 

All of the data I had been able to accumulate clearly indicated that Germany could not sustain its war effort at the current level for much longer. 

It was my view, therefore, that if we could withstand the big blow, and stop whatever offensive the Germans mounted in 1918, we would win the war before the end of the year. 

If Germany could not achieve its goals this time, its war effort would collapse and they would be forced to sue for peace.

And that's exactly what happened, although it was a close thing for awhile.

My first job when I got back to Pershing's headquarters was to try and make sense of the confusing reports as to where the offensive was coming, then to assess their troop strengths, and how best to meet the challenge from our end.

It wasn't easy at first. The suddenness of the German assault had caused severe havoc with our communication systems. Many of the field telephone lines had either been destroyed or captured, so we really didn't have a clear picture for several days.

I was actually the one who figured out that the best way to accurately gauge where the Germans were thrusting was to call up and down the front and see which of our sectors responded. 

By process of elimination, we figured that wherever we didn't get a response meant that was where the Germans were. And that proved to be the case.

It was a long, difficult job that entailed some long hours and days of work on end. Gen. Pershing and I were able to put aside our differences and work together to bring the war to a speedy conclusion.

Regardless of my personal feelings, I had to admit that Pershing was the perfect choice to be the supreme commander of the American forces in France. 

He was tough, sober-minded and smart, and he wasn't willing to simply throw away the lives of his soldiers in the way that the French and British had earlier in the war. Moreover, when he committed our troops, he did so only after thorough preparation and planning.

This attitude sorely vexed the patience of the British and the French, who were anxious for the American troops to take on their share of the combat.

But Pershing's patient approach paid off that summer, as American troops took more of a decisive role in blunting the waves of the German onslaught, and it was Pershing -- based on my analysis -- who pinpointed the places where the Germans were vulnerable to counterattack.

And in late July, we took the offensive, and as expected, the Germans began to crumble.

A little over four months later, the German Kaiser had been forced from his throne and the war was over.

I finally returned to Paris for good in early September, and I was actually somewhat at loose ends. Ambassador Sharp hadn't found a new assignment for me yet, so I was given a lot of time to spend with my family.

Truthfully, I needed the rest. I had received one four-day furlough to return to Paris in mid-June, but otherwise I had spent the previous six months working as many as 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

During the early autumn, the four of us -- me, Madeleine, Greta and Marie -- took a train trip to the Riviera, and spent a week by the sea. It was a blissful time that allowed us to reconnect in a big way. That renewed bond would be extremely fortuitous in the coming months.

On Armistice Day, we finally joined the crowds of celebrants in the streets, probably drank more champagne than we should have and returned to the apartment where we made hot, steamy love.

It was a couple of days later when Madeleine began to complain of not feeling well. She said she felt run down, and when she began to run a fever that night, a cold chill ran down my spine. 

I hurriedly bundled Marie up in the middle of the night and delivered her to Greta at her apartment and told her to keep the child there indefinitely until she heard from me.

I knew what it was, but I still called the doctor in to confirm it, especially when Madeleine's fever worsened and she was unable to get out of bed the next morning.

For several months we had been getting reports of a virulent strain of influenza that was showing up everywhere. It was almost like the Black Death of the 14th century. It swept the globe in capricious fashion, killing many and sparing others.

And now the love of my life had it.

The doctor told me there was nothing he could do. He quarantined our apartment, leaving the two of us together to face this new crisis. He did say that I should try to cool Madeleine's body as much as possible, and I did that by wrapping her in towels soaked in cold water.

It helped some, but after three days, she began to cough up bloody phlegm, and I was convinced it was the end.

Madeleine begged me to help her, but there was nothing I could do other than try to keep her body cooled and keep giving her fluids. I made her drink water and warm broth to try to keep her from becoming dehydrated.

But she kept getting worse, and on the fifth night I finally called in the priest and asked him to give Madeleine last rites.

Father Gerard, our parish priest, came in with a surgical mask on, but otherwise he was compassionate and understanding of our situation.

I was nearly inert with grief at what I knew was coming, a life without Madeleine. He managed to keep me from cursing God for this cruel twist of fate that I believed was going to take my love from me just when we had finally gotten past the war. 

And that was no small feat, for this was something that would have the power to make of me a true atheist, and it took much counseling on his part to keep my already-tenuous connection with the faith. 

The priest finally got me to my knees in prayer for Madeleine's healing, if that was the will of God, and I did. 

It wasn't easy, because I was a hard-headed skeptic, with a cynicism born of two long years in close proximity to the trenches on the Western Front, and in the company of the men who commanded those trenches.

He then spent nearly an hour with Madeleine, heard her confession, such as it was, and absolved her of her sins, whatever they might have been.

When he came out of the bedroom where she lay he looked at me with soulful eyes.

"I've done all I can do," he said. "Whatever happens; she is in God's hands now." 

Madeleine's breathing was ragged, but she was sleeping when I came in and sat next to the bed. Seeing her like that finally collapsed my manly defenses and I wept like I hadn't wept since the day my mother died.

After I composed myself somewhat, I leaned over and whispered in her ear.

"I love you, Madeleine, please don't leave me," I begged.

She awoke briefly and looked at me with watery eyes.

"Robert," she whispered in a raspy voice. "If this is the end for me, please, don't live the rest of your life in mourning. You've made me a very happy woman, and if I am to die, then I die content in my love. Take care of Marie and be a friend to Greta. She is very fond of you. I love you, Robert, no matter what."

Then her body relaxed, as if she was satisfied that she had told me what she needed to say, and she drifted back to sleep, her breathing shallow and irregular. 

An hour or so later, there came a knock at the door, and when I answered it, there stood Marcel, tears streaming down his face. He looked like he had aged 10 years in just a few days.

"Is she...?" he began.

"No, she still lives," I said as I ushered him into the apartment. Legally, under quarantine, he wasn't supposed to be there, but I was not going to deny this father, this man who meant so much to me, the chance to see his daughter, perhaps for the last time in the living world.

But he couldn't stay in the bedroom long, as the sight of his precious Madeleine lying in such misery was too much for him. I held him then as he bawled like a baby, and I wondered what we would do without her.

I finally told him to go home, that there was too much of a risk of him catching the flu, that I would contact him if something happened.

After he left, I lay back on the sofa, with the bedroom door open, and tried to rest. Amazingly, I actually dozed off, so I almost missed it when I heard a voice from the bedroom. But I didn't miss it a second time.

"Robert?" I heard the weak voice croaking from the bedroom.

I bolted up from the sofa, noticing that the first rays of dawn were slicing through the window that looked out to the street.

Madeleine was awake and clear-eyed for the first time in six days. She asked for water and devoured a full glass in nearly one gulp. I felt her forehead and it was apparent that her fever had broken.

Somehow, in some way that I've never understood, Madeleine had survived. She would live, but she faced a long recovery. 

When the doctor declared her over the contagious stage, he sent her to convalescent hospital outside of Paris for an extended stay, and she was there for the better part of the next six months before she was finally fully recovered. 

He was candid that he considered her survival a medical miracle, but it had left her lungs in bad shape. The hospital worked with her on breathing treatments and on regaining her strength. 

The doctor also credited me for my quick thinking in getting our child out of harm's way before she could be infected, although for some reason it appeared that young adults were far more susceptible to the disease than children.

And he had no answers for why I didn't get it, despite the time I spent with Madeleine at the height of her infection. However, I wasn't surprised. I'd never been sick a day in my life, nor would I until very late in my life, when I began to have heart problems.

Although she was a patient, Madeleine soon spent much of her time in the hospital helping the nurses in any way she could, to the limit of her ability. She told me she believed she had found her calling, and that when she was fully well she planned on doing whatever it took to become a full-time nurse.

Once she returned home for good, our lives returned to some semblance of normality. But the experiences of the previous three years or so had left their marks on us.

I had just turned 40, but my face had become lined with age, and my hair had turned nearly all silver. And Madeleine, too, was finding some gray hairs, even though she was just 22. 

Moreover, she had lost all of the girlish innocence that she'd had when I first met her. She was an adult now, a woman through and through, and that was reflected in her eyes, which didn't quite dazzle in the same mischievous way they had earlier.

I missed that part of her, but I understood that time marches on, and given what we'd been through, I should not have been surprised that she had become a sober, serious-minded woman.

Although my workload wasn't what it had been while the war was still raging, I was still extremely busy during the time that Madeleine was convalescing, for I was part of the American contingent that met nearly every day at Versailles for the peace conference.

President Wilson had come to France not long after the end of the war with great fanfare, hoping to see his ideals of a new democratic world realized through the peace that would be hammered out.

I came to admire the man for his idealism and his attempts at making a better world, but I also could see that he was terribly naïve in thinking that our Allies would set aside their need for revenge, their need to make Germany pay for starting the war.

As part of my job, I was sent on a three-week fact-finding tour through Germany, and what I learned was unsettling in the extreme.

For one thing, Germany itself had suffered little physically from the war. Unlike France and Belgium, with their shattered towns and tortured countryside, German cities and towns were intact and appeared normal, its fields and farms unscarred and prospering.

As a result, many in Germany wondered aloud how they could have lost the war, and I heard many people in the beer halls and in the streets talking about how Germany must have been stabbed in the back. 

Who had stabbed Germany in the back? Jews and Communists were the most prominent groups mentioned, and knowing the history of Jews in Europe, I felt a little shudder go through me at the thought of what might happen if this notion took hold.

More to the point, the cities in Germany were a seething cauldron of discontent and political unrest, and I knew when I returned to France that the peace treaty which was coming would do nothing to keep that cauldron from boiling over.

In fact, it was harsher than I expected. Blame for the war was laid solely on Germany, never mind that the system of entangling alliances had made the war all but inevitable, and which the Allies were as complicit in creating as were Germany and her allies.

As a result of this blame, Germany had been hit with crushing reparations to the Allied nations, its military emasculated and its diplomats humiliated.

The German delegation initially balked at the treaty that was presented to them in May, 1919, but they really had no choice, and when they signed, I knew it was only a matter of time before Europe exploded in war again.

Germany was disarmed, and the hope was that it would never again be in a position to make war. But knowing the Germans like I did, knowing both their pride, their vanity and their history, I knew that was folly.

For his part, Mr. Wilson got little of what he'd originally wanted, but he did get the treaty to create a new League of Nations, which had been his most cherished goal.

Sadly, when the president returned to America, he was forced to campaign hard for a reluctant Congress to ratify the treaty and agree to join the League of Nations, and the effort broke him.

During a whistle-stop tour of the West to urge public support for ratification of the treaty, Wilson suffered a stroke and spent the rest of his presidency as a bed-ridden invalid. 

It was a sad end to one of the most complex men ever to sit in the White House. Woodrow Wilson was a brilliant man, but he was flawed in ways that proved destructive to his dreams of a better America and a better world.

In the end, Congress rejected the treaty and the United States turned its back on an active role in world affairs, with devastating consequences.

By then, however, Madeleine and I had another crisis to deal with, and while it wasn't something that would divide us, it was probably the saddest moment of them all.

It was in early September, and I was at loose ends at the embassy. Mr. Sharp was on his way out, his health beginning to fail, and he had announced his retirement from public service a few weeks earlier. He was preparing to return to Ohio, but was awaiting the arrival of his successor, Hugh Wallace.

I would miss William Sharp. We had become close friends over the years we'd worked together, and I admired the way he balanced the needs of his office with the needs of the people who worked under him.

As a result, I was waiting for a new assignment, and I had been told I would probably be recalled to the States. At the time, this was a bittersweet pill I wasn't sure I was ready for. Paris had become my home in the past six years and I had plenty of reasons to stay.

So, I was at my office one morning, putting some of my memories on paper for a possible memoir at some future date when I got a call from Madeleine. 

I could barely make out what she was saying, she was so hysterical, but when I finally understood what she was saying, my blood ran cold. 

Marcel Levesque was dead.

Madeleine's friend Therese had arrived for work as she always did, with her daughter in tow, and had found the bistro still closed. This was most unusual, because Marcel always had a lively lunch crowd, especially now that the war was over.

Therese had called Madeleine and together they had gone to Marcel's apartment, where they found him in bed, already cold to the touch. He'd apparently had a fatal heart attack while he slept.

Madeleine had called me as soon as she found him, and I rushed to the apartment to handle things. 

Truthfully, I had been concerned about his health, for he hadn't looked good in the previous weeks and months. He'd gained weight, almost to the point where he was obese, and his color wasn't good.

He had dismissed my concerns in his usual jovial, self-deprecating manner, but my worries remained. So while I was shocked at his death, I wasn't surprised.

Madeleine, of course, was useless, her grief all-encompassing, so it fell to me to deal with the authorities and make all of the arrangements.

The church -- the same one where Madeleine and I had been married four years earlier -- was packed to overflowing with friends and well-wishers for Marcel's funeral, and the procession to the cemetery that followed the carriage containing his casket lined the streets for blocks on end. 

The night before, Madeleine and I each wept in our own fashion for this jolly man who had made the lives of everyone he encountered better. I was able to finally get her calmed down, and she comported herself with dignity the next day

Of course, I knew that his smiling, jovial exterior masked a deep sadness in his life, but I also knew that he lived life to the fullest each and every day, and I was glad that I had called him friend first and father second. Indeed, I felt like he was more my father than my own father, who had been a cold and angry man

As a result, I worked sparingly at the embassy the rest of the year, and devoted most of my time to handling Marcel's estate. He had left the bistro to me, along with a tidy inheritance, and I had reluctantly put the pub on the market. 

It sold quickly, and part of the sales contract was that Therese would remain as manager. She had become quite adept at accounting, and had developed a sharp eye for the business.




Madeleine Ch. 08



On Christmas Eve that year, we hosted a farewell party at the bistro, and saluted the memory of Marcel. After we all tossed our glasses into the hearth in a symbolic rite of passage, I held Madeleine as she cried one last time for her father, then we turned our attention to the future.

Marie was already asleep in her mother's arms by the time we returned to the apartment, with visions of gifts and goodies from St. Nicholas to come the next morning. 

Once she was put to bed, Madeleine set out some gifts while I changed into something more comfortable, then broke out a bottle of brandy for a nightcap.

I called Madeleine over to sit with me, and pulled a gift out for her that I wanted her to open right then. She smiled as I handed her the package, and her eyes sparkled when she saw what it contained. 

It was a peignoir, of a silky material, one that was sleek and trim, with thin straps at the top and about mid-thigh length. She held it up for my approval, and I smiled suggestively.

"Would you like for me to model it now?" Madeleine asked.

"Of course, my love," I said.

When Madeleine emerged from the bedroom, I sucked in a hissing breath. She was like a goddess, Aphrodite emerging from a flower in my mind. She had brushed her hair to a fine sheen and touched up her makeup to create one of the most alluring sights I could imagine.

This was no longer the eager innocent who had given me her virginity on our wedding night. It had only been four and a half years, but it seemed like another life. So much had happened, and she was a girl no more.

No, the woman who emerged from the bedroom as the clock ticked on toward the arrival of Christmas Day was now a mature beauty, a siren who had me bedazzled. And she knew it.

A sly smile passed over her face as she saw me staring at her as she slowly walked -- strutted, actually -- toward the sofa where I sat.

The material of her peignoir clung to the curves of her lithe body, making it quite plain that she was naked underneath. She stood in front of me in a rather provocative pose, her legs slightly spread and her hips cocked to one side.

"So, have you been a good boy this year?" she said softly, imitating Father Christmas, who rewards the good little children with treats.

"I don't know? Have I?" I answered with a wry tone of voice, getting into the game.

"Maybe this will help you decide," she said, and she bent over at the waist, giving me a view of her unfettered breasts, complete with the dark pink nipples standing out in plain arousal.

I reached up and pulled her to me and we kissed, slowly and luxuriantly, savoring the moment, and as we did, Madeleine slowly folded herself onto my lap, and our embrace deepened.

As we kissed, Madeleine slowly ground her ass onto what was now a raging erection under my dressing gown.

She reached into the folds of my robe and fished out my raging-hard cock, and I responded by sliding a hand up her smooth thigh to the hot valley between her legs, which was wet with anticipation.

We slowly stroked each other's sex as we kissed -- lightly at one moment, hard and passionate at another. She gasped as my finger found her swollen clitoris and rolled it softly while running two other fingers between her labia.

"Do you know how much I love you?" Madeleine said breathlessly. I just nodded and kissed her again. "This much."

Quickly, she slid off my lap and knelt between my legs. With no preamble whatsoever, she opened her ruby lips and sucked my cock deep, humming as she worked at least three-quarters of it back and forth in her wet, delicious mouth.

One of her hands was holding my cock upright while the other was buried between her legs, steadily working her throbbing clit. 

Female masturbation may have been a taboo for American women, although I suspect that more of them engaged in it than would admit. But European women -- especially French women -- were much less inhibited, and Madeleine had always freely confessed to pleasuring herself.

Nevertheless, the thought of my lovely wife fingering herself while she sucked me was intensely arousing, all the more so when she spread her legs and let me see exactly what she was doing.

I groaned, both at the sight of Madeleine's erotic display and the feeling of her lips and tongue working on my cock. I knew I wasn't going to last long, and I gently pulled on her hair to get her attention.

"I want to fuck you, my love," I said, huskily.

But she just shook her head gently and doubled her efforts with her mouth. At that moment, I realized that I was being given a gift. Madeleine didn't particularly like to swallow my semen, but it appeared that she was doing so tonight as her way of telling me how much she loved me.

I must say, the thought was most stimulating.

Madeleine even pulled her hand away from her own pleasure and gripped the base of my cock with both hands, feeding my thoroughly-swollen cock into her maw, working hard -- up and down, up and down -- to get to that moment of climax.

And it was soon to arrive. I felt the feeling come from deep in my soul, and my whole body stiffened as my orgasm rushed to the fore. With a choking cry, I felt it explode out the end of my cock, and Madeleine held her lips tightly around the base of my cock as I spurted into her mouth.

I could feel her throat muscles working to swallow every drop of my hot, thick sperm, and as she did our eyes locked, and for that moment, I saw once again the sparkling look of mischief that had been missing far too often during these past few months of difficulty.

At last, I slumped back in the sofa, temporarily sated, and Madeleine pulled herself away from my deflating penis and crawled back up into my lap. We kissed again, deeply, and I got a good taste of the lingering dregs of my ejaculate.

However, I wasn't ready to simply sit back and rest. 

I quickly maneuvered my wife onto the sofa on her back and slid down in a similar position that she had been in just moments before. I had always made Madeleine's pleasure a important part of our lovemaking, and this was an occasion that called for reciprocation.

I used my hands to spread open her legs, and I was gratified to see the gleaming wetness of her vagina. Maybe she had been anticipating this, because she had trimmed the dark hair between her legs, exposing her sex to my inspection.

As she had done with me, I didn't hesitate, but got right to it. I slashed my way from the pink puckered hole of her ass all the way up through her labia to her clit, circling the throbbing nub with the tip of my tongue, then putting my lips fully onto her sex.

I devoured her like a hungry wolf with a juicy steak, ravishing her pulsing vagina as she writhed on the sofa. Her hands gripped the back of my head, kneading my hair as I worked my mouth on her cunt.

I happened to glance up from my work and saw a sight that sent a wave of pleasure through my body. Madeleine's eyes were closed and head was thrown back in ecstasy, her tongue working lasciviously over her lips while gasps and coos escaped her mouth.

It didn't take long before she too went rigid, then she shuddered from head to toe, gasping and crying out in utter pleasure.

I gave her no time to react. I climbed up on my knees, threw off my dressing gown, pressed the head of my recharged cock to her opening and rammed it home.

"Oh, Robert!" she cried. "Yesssssss!"

I grabbed her ankles and bent her almost in half as I furiously fucked my beautiful wife with a madness I hadn't shown in quite some time -- certainly since before she'd gotten sick.

Yes, we were making love, but we were also purging our demons with an almost animalistic mating, reclaiming each other in a frenzy of lust.

After a few minutes, I slid out of her, and turned her over, so that she was on her knees, leaning over the back of the sofa. Even as I lined my cock up to put it back in, Madeleine reached underneath her body and opened her swollen labia, giving me a bigger target. 

She looked back over her shoulder with a look of pure lust on her face, and begged me to fuck her and to fuck her hard.

I did just that. I grabbed her hips and worked myself like a piston engine in her soupy vagina, and she thrust herself back to keep as much of my cock buried in her sex as possible.

We were hurtling together toward another climax of epic proportions, and we both threw our heads back simultaneously and surrendered to our mutual release.

As we both jerked and came together, I leaned over Madeleine's now-sweaty back and kissed the back of her neck, then licked her ears and finally our lips met as we finally came down off our sexual high.

"I do love you so much," I whispered in her ear as we settled in a sweaty heap onto the sofa. "I don't know what I would have done without you." 

"Merry Christmas, my love," Madeleine said softly. "You are the best man."

After lying together in quiet afterglow, we finally disentangled ourselves and walked arm-in-arm back to our bedroom. Marie would be rising early for Christmas and we had a full day ahead, as we were all going to the embassy for dinner.

As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about how lucky we had been. We had survived challenges that might have broken those who were weaker than we were, and I knew we were ready for whatever life threw at us. 

A few days after the new year, I received orders to return to Washington to await a new posting, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue in the State Department. I didn't think I was cut out for the intrigues of life in the office in Washington, and I knew I didn't want to drag my family all over the world.

But I was going to return anyway, and explore my options, and Madeleine was entirely on board. After the death of her father, Paris had little appeal for either of us, and she was eager to see America, and finally meet my family.

We had packed our things and sent them on ahead, we had tied up our business in France and now we were headed back to America. 

All of this passed my mind in but a second as I stood on the rail of the ocean liner, then as the chill of the open sea began to reach through my overcoat, I followed Madeleine to the stairs and down to the cabin where she had gone with Marie.

It would be my last look back. I was going home, and I was ready now to face the future.

EPILOGUE

Arlington, Va.

December, 1967

I was walking through the garden at the comfortable house I had bought back in 1924. My steps were slow, but I was still relatively healthy for a man of 88, although, as I mentioned, I had had a bit of heart trouble in recent years.

It was cold, but there was no snow on the ground -- that would come later -- and I was contemplating my life, all of it, from my boyhood in Louisiana to my old age as a retired professor of history.

Just then, I heard the approach of someone coming, and I smiled to see that it was Madeleine. She suffered from arthritis and was forced to walk with a cane, but she was still the same slender beauty I'd fallen in love with all those years ago.

Like me, her hair had turned silver, but it shill shone with a vibrancy that belied her 70 years. She still had the same smile that had beguiled me, and in her later years she had recovered much of the dazzle and mischievousness of her youth.

When I had returned to Washington in 1920, I had been offered the No. 2 position in the American Embassy in Canada, and I had accepted.

However, it didn't take me long to realize that it was pretty much an honorific, with little real work involved. To be honest, I was bored to tears, but I stuck with it long enough for Madeleine to get through nursing school there in Ottawa.

When she did, I resigned from the State Department and took a position as professor of history at Georgetown University, back in Washington. I had had several colleges and universities vying for my services, should I decide to leave State, and I had chosen the best offer.

Madeleine had found work as a registered nurse at a hospital in Washington, we had bought a house in Arlington, and settled in as a middle-class family, albeit with a live-in nanny. 

Yes, Greta had come with us to the United States. She had grown fond of us and felt we were the family she had lost in Belgium. She still had her daughters, but they had married, and I had come to learn there was a bit of estrangement between Greta and her daughters.

Unlike many in the middle class, I avoided the stock market, preferring to invest my fairly considerable wealth in other, more secure ways. 

I still lost quite a lot when the market crashed in 1929, but because of our job situations and my astute planning, we got through the Great Depression without much hardship.

Marie had grown to become a fine young woman, with the same independent mind as her mother. She went to college at Georgetown, convenient for us, since she could ride with me to class, and studied pre-medicine. 

She eventually became a doctor, one of the early female doctors in the D.C. area. She married a heart surgeon who had served as an Army doctor in Europe during World War II, and gave us three grandchildren.

I had written my memoirs, and several other books on the Great War, plus I had been a guest columnist for the Washington Post, where I became known for my often-prescient views on world events.

My opinions weren't always popular, given the neutralist bent the country took in the inter-war years, but I was proven correct at virtually every turn.

I had been one of the first American writers to warn of the dangers Hitler posed in Germany, and that France and Britain had their heads buried in the sand if they thought they could deal rationally with a man like that.

Having been in the trenches, though not as a soldier, I knew where Hitler had come from, knew something of the German mind and I understood what drove him, even as his views appalled me.

During the war that I had been anticipating since 1919, I worked as a consultant to the State Department on a contract basis, and my views were considered gospel, especially among those who had known me when I was in France for the great war that was now known as World War I.

We returned to France periodically over the years, especially as trans-Atlantic travel became easier. 

Madeleine always put roses at the grave site where her parents lay side-by-side, and after World War II, we added the grave of Rosa LaPerriere, the daughter of Madeleine's friend Therese who had been hung from a streetlamp by the Germans during the war for being a part of the Resistance.

Sadly, Rosa's awful fate had left Therese mentally unhinged, and she spent the final 10 years of her life in a mental institution. She had never remarried, and in the wake of everything that happened, she lost the bistro.

What had been Marcel's sat abandoned for several years before being transformed into a fashionable boutique. 

It broke our hearts to see what had become of the place, and it seemed like every time we went back we were haunted by the ghosts of those who had enjoyed the warmth of the pub during its heyday. 

Eventually, Madeleine became head of nursing at a hospital in Arlington, and I rose to become dean of the History Department and professor emeritus at Georgetown. 

Even now, I was often invited to speak at symposiums around the area and was a guest lecturer at colleges and universities that surrounded Washington. 

All of those memories passed between us unspoken in but a moment as we walked hand-in-hand through the garden.

"It has been a good life, has it not?" Madeleine said in her still heavily-accented English.

"Yes, many ups and downs," I said. "But it has been a good life, and I love you for making it better. If I die now, I die happy for having spent it with you."

"Ah, Robert, you are, as always, a silver-tongued devil," Madeleine laughed. "But, yes, I love you always and forever."

With that, we returned to our house, to the warmth of our hearth, to live out the rest of our days in quiet contentment.

FINIS