Before Versailles (63 page)

“Many of them?” asked Pellison.

“Fifteen, twenty. They bought up our wine and all the food we could cook.”

“Going on a journey, it seems.”

“To Monaco,” said the woman. “At least that’s what the stable boy heard. I hear the view of the sea is pretty there.”

“I hear that, too,” said Pellison.

“S
O YOU’RE
S
ANDRINE.”

Louise’s maid stood perfectly still and hoped against hope that stillness would suffice. A musketeer had appeared out of nowhere, and now here she was, standing before the king of France, as La Porte pulled hunting boots off his feet.

Louis cocked his head to one side, puzzled. “Are you or are you not Sandrine? Not that shirt, and I want a brocade jacket.”

Sandrine nodded her head, the best she could do.

“You serve Miss de la Baume le Blanc. Yes?”

Again, Sandrine managed a movement with her head. Her eyes met his, but she had to look away. She saw him around the palace. Everyone did; it was the custom of French kings to live in public, but to be this close, all by herself, in his most private chamber, well, it was too overwhelming.

“Sandrine, I am going to need your complete loyalty. You will be the holder of a secret, the secret of my love for your mistress. Have you the strength to hold that secret?”

Her nod was a jerk.

He stood, still in his hunting clothes, his hair wild and unkempt, planted himself inches from her. It was as if she could feel some holy warmth radiating out from him. So she’d tell her children one day.

“Will you play messenger between your mistress and me? La Porte will bring you notes which you must see her receive. Request your mistress to be in the chamber where we meet after dinner. Will you deliver that message for me?”

She dropped into a curtsy, nodding like a maniac at the floor. To her shock, he reached out and brought her up out of the curtsy. He bowed over her hand.

“I am your servant if you help me. You will never regret earning my trust.” He turned away, went over to a chair where his valet had laid out clothing for him.

“You may leave now, Sandrine,” La Porte said.

She turned in a circle, not remembering which door she’d entered.

“That one.” The valet pointed. In his hand was a small bag. “From his majesty,” he told her.

She was in the maid of honors’ bedchamber before she had the wits to see what was in the bag. She took a peek. There were coins. She swallowed. More coins than she had seen in her lifetime. She sat down on the little cot in a back attic that was hers. Merciful Mother of Heaven, they were rich, and the king himself had bowed over her hand. The world as she knew it had just tipped over.

T
HIS TIME
L
OUISE
felt less shy and more impatient. She was in the chamber again, sitting in a chair, hands clasped in her lap. When the door opened, and he entered the chamber, she jumped up from where she was sitting and smiled. She even forgot to curtsy. “I thought you might not send for me again—”

“You’re all I can think about.”

She sank down on her heel to curtsy to him, but he pulled her close. Her ear was against his chest, and through the sumptuous fabric she could hear his heart beating hard. For her.

“My ministers think me solemn as they talk about this and that, but all I am thinking of is you. I was half-afraid you wouldn’t be here—” he said between the kisses he was now placing on her face.

“I will always be here.”

Louis put his mouth on the bare flesh that began a sweet swell of breast. His hands explored the soft part of her upper arms hidden by the lace of her full sleeves. She stood with eyes half-closed, trembling a little, which touched Louis. She was no court diamond, polished to hardness and facile in feeling. He wanted to obliterate for a time all else in his life. He led her to the bed, pulled at her laces and ties, at his laces and ties, and then they were mostly naked, and he kissed her like a soldier on pillage, entangling his hands in her hair. Lovemaking was easier this time, wetter, fuller, sweeter, and he could not have imagined that it would be more overpowering than the first time, but it was.

Even when it was over, he couldn’t stop kissing her. He kissed down one side of her and then the other, and she shivered and sighed, but was silent. Tell me you love me, he willed her to say, but she was silent, closing those hypnotic eyes and covering her face with one arm. The arc of her arm, the hollow of its pit, were beautiful. And now he wanted to make love again, and this time he was slower, more curious, more focused on her. He wanted to bring her to the passionate cries his wife made, but soon he was kissing her like a wild man, and his release was close to pain it was so good. He pulled her tight against him. “Every night, we must send one another a note. Will you do that? I won’t rest until I’ve had a note from you,” he said.

“What shall I say in the note?” Though Louise didn’t know it, her voice carried happiness like a silver bell in its tones.

“That you love me. That you miss me.”

“Every second I’m not with you, I miss you.”

He ran his hands down her body, fierce and possessive and as happy as she was. “Tell me that. Tell me of your day. Wish me good night. There will be no secrets between us, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Are you always so obedient?”

The happiness in her face dimmed. “I told you I wasn’t clever—”

He stopped the rest of her words with a kiss. He traced the achingly fine planes of her face. “I don’t want clever. I want true-heartedness.”

“To the prince, like an altar fire.”

“What is that?”

“The motto of my house. Appropriate, yes?”

She made him laugh. “Come hunting with me tomorrow,” he demanded. He loved the way she looked on horseback.

“If Madame goes, certainly I will.”

That’s right; he forgot. He couldn’t command her at will. She was not the
maîtresse en titre
with her own household and lodging. She belonged to Henriette’s household. Well, so be it. They’d maneuver around it for now. She was
maîtresse en titre
of his heart.

“Have you any other orders for me, your majesty?”

She teased him, smiling at him in a way that he could not resist. “Wear a blue ribbon here,” he touched above one ear, “for love of me tomorrow. And when you write to me, tell me what you’ve fretted over in the day. I would rid your life of any worries. Now, get out of bed, you lazy wench. Go over there and then walk toward me.”

She did as she was told, naked to the afternoon light coming through the windows and naked to his eyes. Her face was somber as she walked toward the bed.

Yes, he thought, I didn’t imagine it. There is a slight limp.

“Do you hate it?” she asked when she was at the bedside.

“Back into bed, my beauty.” He leaned over to examine her leg, stroking it. “How did you come to hurt it?”

“I fell off a horse when I was little. And it never healed properly.”

“How old were you?”

“Three.”

“You were riding at three?”

“Even before. I rode wedged between my father and the neck of his horse. It’s one of my first memories, being lifted atop his horse, looking at the world from there.”

The urge to talk about the viscount was in his throat, to tell her his fears and his ambitions, but he stopped the words and allowed himself to be sidetracked by the way her waist moved so beautifully into the swell of her hip, and then he had to turn her over to look at her buttocks, and caressing those led to other things and before either of them knew it, they were entangled and straining against one another again in that age-old joining of a man and a woman, and the feel of her was so supple in his arms, the knowledge that he could love with complete safety was so alluring, that he cried out like someone killed, surprising himself and her.

“Do I displease?” she said into his mouth, knowing she didn’t.

And all he could do was kiss her into silence and follow along like flotsam on the huge wave this pleasure made. He insisted on taking her down to the bath chambers with him. He’d had to plan for it as if he were invading a country, and he’d lain awake in bed envisioning their route. They crept down secret corridors and halls, finally down a secret staircase, he in his breeches, she in nothing but the sheet he’d grabbed from the bed, a musketeer ahead of them, both of them collapsing now and then with laughter at the chance they took. Once there, Louis sent his musketeer away and insisted on bathing her in the great marble tub cut into the floor.

She was upset. “It isn’t seemly. You are the king.”

“I want to know every inch of you.”

He was determined in his washing, thorough, stopping to kiss her in places that called to him, the blade of a shoulder, the soft middle of the back of the neck, the space between thumb and forefinger. He saw that she was looking at one of the portraits on the wall. An ancestor of his had been quite a collector of paintings, and the bath chambers were a private gallery that only kings might admire.

“Do you like her?” The portrait was of a woman, a hint of a smile on her face. “She’s called the Mona Lisa, and a man named Da Vinci painted her. If he were alive today, I’d have him paint you. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll have a portrait made of you and put it in my closet.”

He’d cover it with drapery, so that no eyes should see it. He wanted one of her dressed in her finest and one of her naked in this marble bath. He stepped into the bath with her and one look at her slitted eyes led to kissing, but he was too aware of passing time, of obligation. Half-naked, but sure-footed, he rewrapped her in the sheet and led her back up the secret stairs. They surprised his valet fussing with the covers on the bed.

“We’ll hunt tomorrow before noon,” Louis said to her. “Do you have a proper horse? And I’ll see you tonight. I’ll ignore you except for one dance, but only because I don’t want anyone remarking on my attention to you. My every thought will be of you.” He talked on as his valet dressed him.

La Porte tied the ribbons of the tight red leather doublet Louis wore and allowed himself one glance at his master’s face. There was something radiating from the king’s eyes, happiness, some new self-possession and assurance. He looked the young god. This one gives him the passion he craves, the valet thought, and the passion lights an indomitable flame. He smiled a little smile to himself that only the pillows saw.

Dressed beautifully, Louis pulled Louise forward. The sheet fell from her breasts, and he touched one as he set the sheet about her shoulders again and held her face in his hands. “I love you,” he said. “A note every night, beginning tonight.”

Once he was gone, La Porte went to another door and allowed Sandrine inside. He ignored them as they began to dress Louise, his eyes on the chamber, checking it over. There must be no sign that his majesty had ever been here. He began to unfold clean linens across the bed.

When Louise was at the door, one hand on its latch, La Porte pointed to a box on the table, near the meal neither his majesty nor she had touched.

“For me?”

Her artlessness touched him. La Porte sniffed, to cover his growing softness for her.

Louise picked up the velvet box. In it were earrings, diamond earrings in a cluster shape long enough to reach her shoulders. They were beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but it was too much. She shut the box abruptly. She could never wear these. She already had bracelets. Everyone would notice. Questions would be asked. Whispers begun. Who courted le Blanc? Who gave her diamonds? And even more to the point, what had she given to obtain such jewels? “I can’t accept these,” she said to La Porte.

He was frost itself. “That, my lady, you must take up personally with the generous giver of such largess. You there—”

Sandrine froze where she was.

“Stay a moment, if you please. I have instructions from his majesty.”

When Louise was gone from the chamber, the valet pointed to a neat pile of soft linen chemises, handmade lace at the sleeves and throat. “These are for her. The lace, you see it? It was woven by nuns in Spain.”