The Diamond Slipper (16 page)

When they stopped to cross a tributary of the Danube at Steyr, Leo left Cordelia in the charge of his groom and went to confer with the French delegation. Cordelia was fascinated by the operation involved in getting such a massive procession across the single-track wooden bridge. She trotted along the riverbank, the groom in attendance, watching as the great coaches lumbered and swayed perilously close the the edge of the creaking bridge.

“Cordelia?”

“Christian!” She turned with a cry of delight. Christian was astride a gangling chestnut gelding with an ungainly gait and looked far from at home. But he was not a natural equestrian. “How I was hoping you would come and find me. I’m not permitted to go off on my own down the procession. Protocol.” She wrinkled her nose in laughing disgust. “Are you enjoying yourself? Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, nothing.” Christian looked up at the red ball of the sun sinking below the river to the west. “A messenger came hotfoot from Vienna this morning. He brought me a letter from Hugh. You remember Hugh, he played the violin in Poligny’s concerts.”

“Yes, yes.” Cordelia nodded eagerly. “What did he say?”

“The cat is really among the pigeons,” Christian said with a chuckle of satisfaction. “Everyone’s read the broadsheet. Poligny is defending himself from the rooftops, but Hugh said people are talking and pointing the finger. The empress hasn’t said anything as yet, but palace rumor has it that she’s thinking of sending him away.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Cordelia clapped her hands. “The
story will reach Paris long before we do. You’ll be a celebrity already.”

Christian looked thoughtful. He plaited his mount’s coarse mane with restless fingers. “I was thinking that perhaps I should go back to Vienna. If Poligny is really out, then there’ll be …” He stopped, habitual modesty preventing him from continuing.

“There’ll be a vacancy for court musician, and who better to fill it than Poligny’s star pupil,” Cordelia finished for him. She leaned over to take his hand. “Oh, love, I want whatever’s best for you. But I shall miss you dreadfully. Particularly now that everything’s become so confused.”

“Confused?”

“It’s this awkward business of being in love with the viscount,” she said with an almost despairing sigh. “And after last night, I know he feels more than he’ll admit to—”

“What about last night?” Christian interrupted.

Cordelia felt herself blushing. “Well, something happened. I … I accidentally blundered into his chamber and, well—”

“He didn’t
ravish
you?” Christian’s brown eyes were suddenly ablaze.

“Oh, no,” she reassured hastily. “Nothing quite like that. But … things got rather out of hand.” She looked at him helplessly, a rueful smile on her lips.

Christian leaned close to her, his eyes piercing in his pale angular face. “Did the viscount take your virginity, Cordelia? If he did, I’ll kill him.”

“Oh, no. You can’t do that,” Cordelia exclaimed. “And no, he didn’t,” she added, seeing that Christian was almost ready to fling himself from his horse. “I’m just so confused now.”

Leo’s voice reached them as he cantered toward them along the bank. “I give you a good evening, Christian. Cordelia, you need to cross the bridge now.” He drew up next to the musician, nodded pleasantly, and added, “I trust you find your accommodations satisfactory, Christian.”

Christian stared at the viscount, the fire still in his eyes. A tide of color spread over his pale features, then as swiftly faded. “Yes, thank you,” he said stiffly.

“Christian was telling me of the reaction in Vienna to our broadsheet,” Cordelia said excitedly. “It’s everything he hoped it would be. In fact, he’s wondering whether he should return to Vienna and try for Poligny’s position.”

“I’m not wondering that any longer,” Christian announced as stiffly as before. “I’ll be staying with you.” He stared hard and meaningfully at the totally bewildered viscount before digging his heels into his mount’s flank and cantering away, his usually graceful body jouncing around in the saddle like a sack of flour.

“Now, what’s eating him?” Leo inquired, taking Cordelia’s rein and urging her horse around toward the bridge.

Cordelia, who knew perfectly well, muttered something inaudible, jerking her reins free of his grasp. She had the conviction that Leo would not care for anyone knowing about last night. And he would not understand her need to confide—even in someone as close to her as Christian.

Chapter Nine

P
RINCE
M
ICHAEL WAS
not completely satisfied with the suite of rooms allocated to him and his bride at the Chateau de Compiègne. However, since the apartments set aside for the dauphine would not be completed before her arrival the following day because the workmen hadn’t been paid, he decided it would be tactless to complain if the furnishings in his own suite were a trifle shabby.

The prince had traveled with the king and the dauphin to meet Marie Antoinette at Compiègne. The dauphine was still a day’s journey away, but Louis had decided to honor his new granddaughter by coming out to greet her. He was in great good humor and had been delighted when it occurred to him that Prince Michael might wish to ride out to meet his own bride. The prince had accepted with appropriate gratitude what amounted to a royal command couched as invitation, although he would have preferred to welcome the princess on his own ground. Rushing to meet her seemed to indicate a somewhat unseemly eagerness. The girl was only sixteen, after all, and must not be encouraged to expect too much attention from her husband.

However, he was here at Compiègne and, the following afternoon, would ride with the king and court some fourteen kilometers to the edge of the forest where he would meet his second wife.

He took out the miniature from his pocket, examining it with a frown. She did look very young, but now Michael saw a boldness to her eyes that he instinctively disliked. She held her head with an almost challenging stance, gazing out of the mother-of-pearl frame with an uncompromising air.

Michael’s frown deepened. He snapped his fingers
irritably at his servant who was unpacking the prince’s portmanteau. The man hastened to put a glass of wine into his master’s outstretched hand.

Michael sipped, not taking his eyes off the miniature. When he’d first looked at it, he’d seen no resemblance to Elvira. But he’d been looking at the coloring, the shape of the face. Now he wasn’t so sure. There was something uneasily familiar about the girl’s expression. She was much younger than Elvira had been at her wedding; she came from the strict formality of the devout Austrian court. How could there be any resemblance to the flamboyant, sophisticated, flirtatious Englishwoman who had destroyed his peace?

His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. It would not happen again. He would take this unformed, untutored, inexperienced little innocent and mold her to his own requirements. If she showed any signs of exhibiting Elvira’s character traits, he would erase them without compunction. And they would be easier to deal with in this young girl than they had been in Elvira. He would have a submissive, faithful, duty-bound bride, who knew her obligations and learned swiftly how to please her husband.

“Sir … sir, your hand!” The voice of his servant broke into his rapt concentration.

Michael looked down at his hand. Somehow he had snapped the glass stem between his fingers, and a shard of glass pierced his skin. “God’s blood!” he swore, tossing the glass into the empty grate. “Fetch me a bandage, man! Don’t stand there like a booby.”

“Tomorrow we will reach Compiègne, where the king and the dauphin will be waiting to greet Marie Antoinette.” Leo’s expression was a study in neutrality. The procession had reached Soissons, thirty-eight kilometers from Compiègne, and he stood with Cordelia outside her bedchamber
in the riverside inn that accommodated the royal party for the night.

“I know.” Absently, Cordelia twirled a ringlet around her finger before sucking it into her mouth. They were within a day’s ride of journey’s end, and her customary ebullience was fast ebbing.

Throughout the journey Leo had been pleasant and friendly, but his manner had been more avuncular than anything else, and he had somehow ensured that they were never alone together, except when they were riding. Any attempts to move the conversation onto the subject of their future relationship had met with stony silence and his rapid departure. Since his company was all-important to her well-being, Cordelia had quickly learned to behave as he dictated. She amused him with her light and frequently insightful chatter, discussed weighty subjects with due gravity, and tried very hard to control the need to declare her love at every second sentence. And while the prospect of meeting her husband remained in the future, she had managed very well. But now time was slipping away. Once she was given into her husband’s charge and Leo relinquished his responsibility for her, she saw only a frighteningly unknown landscape.

“Has it occurred to you that your husband might also be there waiting for you?”

“Yes.” She chewed the end of the ringlet. It had occurred to her more than once in the last hours. “But I rather assumed he’d be waiting in Paris.”

“He might be. But I have a feeling he will be at Compiègne.”

“I won’t have to go to his bed until the formal wedding is solemnized,” she said almost to herself, through her mouthful of hair.

But Leo heard her, and the mumbled words reminded him how much she belonged to another man. “That is a thoroughly disagreeable habit.” Roughly, he flicked the sodden ringlet from her mouth.

“I only do it when I’m thinking disagreeable thoughts.”

“I don’t suppose it occurs to you not to speak such thoughts in public,” he snapped.

Cordelia took a deep breath. This was her last chance. “Leo, I know you don’t want me for a mistress … no … no, please listen to me,” she begged, seeing him prepared to silence her. “Please let me speak, just this once.”

“Not if you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say,” he responded curtly. “I have told you I don’t know how many times, that I will not listen to your nonsense—”

“No, this isn’t nonsense,” she interrupted eagerly. “I’m not properly married to the prince, only by proxy. It hasn’t been consummated or anything, so it could be annulled, couldn’t it?”

“
What
?” He stared at her in disbelief. This was a new angle, even for Cordelia.

“I could explain that I don’t want to marry him. That it was all a big mistake. I could tell him that he wouldn’t want to be married to someone who couldn’t bear to have him for—”

“Have you completely lost your wits, girl? You are as firmly married to Michael as if you’d been married in St. Peter’s by the pope himself. The settlements are drawn up, your dowry is in place …. Dear God, you have your head full of fairy stories.” He ran a hand through his dark hair that tonight he wore uncovered and unpowdered.

“I don’t believe it can’t be done,” she persisted stubbornly. “I don’t believe I can’t have you for husband instead.”

“Now, just you listen to me.” He took her shoulders, speaking through compressed lips. “Get this into your head. I would not marry you if you were the only woman on earth.” He shook her to emphasize the savage statement and had the dubious satisfaction of seeing her eyes cloud with hurt, all eagerness, conviction, and determination blotted out. “You seem to think that all you have to do is wish for something and it will come true. But you forget, Cordelia,
that there are other people involved in these fantasies of yours. People who have their own opinions and wishes. I do not wish to be part of your fanciful caprices. Do you understand? Is that plain enough for you?” He shook her again.

Cordelia was stunned by the power of his words, the savagery of his rejection. “I … I thought you liked me,” she said, her voice catching, her eyes filling with tears.

Leo swore, a short sharp execration. “Whether I like you or not has nothing to do with it. I am sick to death of being woven into your whimsical notions of how to rearrange your destiny.”

“Won’t you even stand my friend?” she asked painfully. “May I not talk to you as I talk to Christian?”

“You tell Christian such things?”

“I tell Christian everything. We’ve always shared all our confidences.”

Leo closed his eyes briefly. “And I suppose you told your friend about Melk?” He didn’t need her confirmation. The young musician had been glaring at him as if he were Attila the Hun ever since they’d crossed the Steyr.

Cordelia didn’t respond, but continued to gaze at him, her eyes darkest gray with pain.

“Dear God!” he muttered almost despairingly. He couldn’t bear her to look at him in that way.

“Won’t you stand my friend?” she repeated with sudden urgency, laying her hand on his arm. “I have need of friends, Leo.”

She would need friends, both in her marriage and as she negotiated a path through the obstacles of life at Versailles. It was not something he could deny her even if he wished.

“I will stand your friend,” he stated without inflection. Then he turned aside to open the door of her chamber. “Good night, Cordelia.”