The Diamond Slipper (28 page)

Cordelia didn’t make the mistake of assuming she had a choice. She had simply curtsied and left. She had come up to bed and found Mathilde gone, just as Michael had planned it.

Her head began to ache anew and her body throbbed with weariness. She had been up and wearing court dress for almost twenty-four hours, and the heavy weight of damask and the constriction of her corset was a torment in her fatigue. She was too tired tonight to deal with this. She wanted Mathilde. And the thought of what Michael might have done to her nurse buzzed in her brain like a tormenting bee. She had never believed anyone could defeat Mathilde, could force Mathilde to do anything she didn’t believe was right. So how had he compelled her departure?

“Should I help you, madame?” Elsie ventured again. She knew what she was supposed to do but didn’t know how to respond when she was prevented from performing her tasks. Experience, however, had taught her that if she failed to perform those tasks, she would be blamed regardless of the reason.

“Yes … very well, yes, you may assist me,” Cordelia said vaguely.

Relieved, Elsie ran forward to unbutton, unhook, unlace with reverent hands. Cordelia stood stock-still, offering little help, too absorbed in her own thoughts to be really aware of what was happening. She shrugged into the white velvet chamber robe that Elsie held for her, and sat on the dresser stool, beginning to unpin her hair.

“Oh, I must do that for you, madame.” Elsie leaped forward. “I’ve never waited on a lady before,” she confided, pulling out pins hastily. “So I hope I’m doing things right.” She picked up the ivory-backed brush and began to draw it
through the rippling blue-black cascade falling down Cordelia’s back.

Cordelia didn’t respond. She was still thinking furiously. Mathilde would come back. She would come to her even if she’d been forbidden by the prince. If she was physically capable of doing so.

The door opened behind her and her heart jumped into her throat. She looked at him in the mirror in front of her. He stood in the doorway. He had removed his sword, but apart from that was still dressed in his wedding finery, the gold emblem of Prussia pinned to his sash.

She drew the folds of her chamber robe tighter around her as she rose to face him. “Where is Mathilde, my lord?” She spoke without inflection, but her eyes were filled with anger and contempt. Not a shadow of fear. She had gone beyond fear.

“She has been replaced as your abigail.” He smiled his asp’s smile. “I told you that you had need of a woman with more experience of the duties of a lady’s maid at Versailles than some elderly nursemaid.”

“I see.” Still her voice was flat. “Elsie informs me that she has no previous experience of an abigail’s work anywhere, let alone Versailles. But I daresay you assume that she comes by the required knowledge in some other way. Perhaps she breathes it in, or it comes to her in dreams.”

Michael’s pale eyes became opaque. For a minute he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This cold, derisive sarcasm from a chit of a girl, and in front of a servant to boot. Then a muscle twitched in his cheek, and the pulse in his forehead began to throb, and his eyes became cold and deadly.

Cordelia knew that she had not aroused his anger to this extent before, and despite the desperation that fueled her defiance, sick tremors of fear started in her belly. She fought them down, forcing herself to meet the threat in those terrible eyes. What could he do to her worse than he had already done?

“Get out of here!” He spun round to the petrified Elsie, who with a little gasp dropped the hairbrush and fled the room, ducking past the prince in the doorway.

Michael flung the door closed. He came across to her and she stood her ground, still meeting his eye, her chin held high.

“By God,” he said softly, “I will break you, madame. I will break you to the saddle like any self-willed filly.” He took the sides of the velvet robe and threw them open. His eyes dropped to her body, white, naked, its perfection marred only by the traces of his previous possessions.

An hour later he left her. He was humming to himself as he went into his dressing room, where his valet still waited to put him to bed. He had not removed his clothing beyond what had been necessary to achieve his purpose and now, still humming softly, allowed the man to undress him and hang up his clothes in the armoire. The valet assisted the prince into his chamber robe and then stood waiting, his hands folded, to see if his master had further orders for him.

“Bring me a glass of cognac and then go.”

The man obeyed, bowed a good night, and soundlessly left the room, thankful for his dismissal. He had found it impossible to close his ears to the ugly sounds coming from the princess’s bedchamber.

Michael drained the cognac in one gulp. Taking from his pocket the key that he’d automatically transferred from his suit coat, he went over to the chest, unlocked it, and took out the present journal. He refilled his glass, then stood leafing through the daily entries. He sipped from his glass, his mouth taut. Had the lock been opened deliberately that morning? He couldn’t believe that it had been anything but an accident. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, at any rate. It was extraordinary that he could have been careless, but it seemed the only explanation—he must not have
secured the padlock properly the previous night. He had perhaps been overly anxious to get to his wife.

He walked into his adjoining bedchamber and placed the journal on the secretaire. Then he returned to the chest. He drew out the volume for 1765. His mouth grew thinner, his frown deeper, as he read through the entries. Throughout, his comments indicated that Elvira bloomed, daily increased in beauty. How much did that beauty owe to her triumph at cuckolding her husband?

He snapped the book closed and drained his glass once again. He replaced the journal in the chest and went back to the secretaire. Dipping quill in the inkstand, he began the day’s meticulous entry. It was long, containing as it did a detailed description of the wedding, the demeanor of the royal party, and the subsequent celebrations. Only then did he describe the last hour with his wife.

He placed his pen on the blotter and stared unseeing at the doodling pattern of dripping ink. Cordelia was bidding fair to become as unsatisfactory a wife as Elvira had been. But he had failed with Elvira. He would not fail with this one. He would master this one in life.

Cordelia lay naked on the bed, curled into a tight ball, her body convulsed with violent shivers, dry sobs gathering in her throat. It had been worse … much, much worse than usual. If he had hurt her in rage, she thought, it would have been easier to bear. But he had used her, inflicting pain with an icy deliberation that had negated her very self, had reduced her to an animal, soulless, spiritless, worth no more than a clod of earth.

She knew she had cried out during the worst of it, although she had sworn to herself that she would keep silent. Now her weakness filled her with self-disgust. Perhaps she deserved such treatment. Perhaps she’d invited it with her cowardly cringing. A wave of nausea rose invincible and she rolled off the bed with a moan, reaching for the
chamber pot. She could see herself in her mind’s eye, crouched on the floor, vomiting helplessly with shock and self-disgust, a trembling, fearful, beaten animal.

But as the heaving of her stomach quieted and cold sweat misted her skin, her brain seemed to clear. The vomiting had somehow purged her spiritually as well as physically. She rose unsteadily to her feet, looking around for something to cover her chilled nakedness. The robe he’d torn from her lay on the floor, and she pulled it on, huddling into it. She looked around the dark room, where the shapes of the furniture stood out gray against the gloom. The window was a black square, but beyond she could see the faintest lightening at the edges of the darkness.

She could not sleep. She could not get back into that bed. She wanted Mathilde, with the deep, overpowering, speechless need of a wounded child for its mother.

Without any clear thought, she left the bedchamber, crossed the salon, and let herself out into the corridor. Candles in wall sconces lit the deserted expanse, and as the door to the apartment closed behind her, a great wave of relief and release broke over her. She was free. Out of the stifling, shackling darkness of her prison. Where she was going or what she was doing were questions that didn’t even pose themselves. She clambered painfully onto a broad windowsill overlooking an inner courtyard, gathered the robe securely around her, rested her head on her drawn-up knees, and waited for daylight. Waited for Mathilde.

Leo left a card party just as dawn streaked the sky. He was mildly the worse for cognac. Cards, cognac, and companionship had seemed the only distractions from the niggling unease that made sleep an impossibility. He couldn’t separate Cordelia from Elvira for some reason. He was bound to them both by ties whose similarity he couldn’t explain to himself. Elvira was his sister, his twin. He loved her unconditionally. Her welfare was his responsibility. And now he
was haunted by the idea that perhaps he had failed to meet that responsibility.

Cordelia was a young girl whose life had touched his by chance for a few weeks. He lusted after her. If he was truly honest, he could admit that to himself. But pure lust and a passing responsibility didn’t account for what he felt toward Cordelia.

The confused yet obsessional thoughts continued to tumble in his head amid the brandy fumes as he made his way to his own humble room on an outside staircase in the north wing. On an inexplicable whim, he deviated from his course, taking a side stair that led into the corridor outside the von Sachsen apartment. The closer he came to the door, the greater his unease. It was almost like a miasma filling the marble-floored passage.

He walked past the double doors. Turned and walked past them again. Then with an impatient shrug, he swung on his heel and started back the way he’d come. And then he stopped. Slowly, he retraced his steps. A crouched figure huddled on the deep windowsill. The figure was so still he hadn’t noticed it at first.

The lustrous blue-black river poured down her back. Her face was turned from him, resting on her knees.

“Cordelia?” He laid a hand on her shoulder.

With a start she turned her head. Her eyes were almost vacant, dark holes in a face whiter than her robe. “I’m waiting for Mathilde.”

Leo frowned. “In the corridor? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Michael sent her away. But she won’t leave me. I know she won’t.”

He saw the shadow of the emerging bruise on her cheekbone. And he knew what he had been trying so hard to deny. Gently, he moved aside the robe at her neck. Finger bruises stood out against the smooth white skin. The well of rage was bottomless. Wave after wave broke over him. He saw Elvira, he saw the shadow in her eyes. He saw Cordelia, bereft, her spirit, her courage, her laughter vanquished.

Bending, he lifted her from the windowsill, cradling her in his arms. She said nothing as he carried her away.

He carried her through the quiet corridors and up deserted staircases, his heart filled with rage. She curled against his chest, her arms around his neck. Her eyes were closed, the thick lashes dark half-moons against the deathly pallor of her cheeks, and he thought she slept. Her breathing was deep and regular and he could feel her heart beating against his hand.

At the head of a steep stone staircase, he opened a narrow wooden door onto a small chamber. It was simply furnished with a bed, an armoire, a washstand, two chairs, and a round table beneath the narrow window that looked out onto the Cour de Marbre. It was very much a bachelor apartment.

Leo laid Cordelia on the bed and her eyes opened. They were startled, then frightened, then slowly her gaze cleared and he saw with a surge of relief that she was fully aware, the vacant look in her eyes displaced by knowledge and recognition.

He bent over her and unfastened the velvet robe, slipping a hand beneath her to draw it away from her body. His mouth was tight, his eyes grim as he examined her closely, gauging how badly Michael had hurt her. The marks on her body were not severe, but he knew that the real wounds had been to her self, to the determined, courageous, effervescent spirit that made her what she was.

Cordelia lay still beneath his gaze, her own eyes, fearless now, gazing up at him. She was warm at last and the dreadful shaking had stopped. But Leo’s rage and pain were a palpable force in the room. His hands as he raised her arms, her legs, turned her over, were as gentle as a dove’s wings, but his eyes were fearsome.

“I don’t expect he did this to Elvira,” she said softly. “She was different from me. Perhaps she didn’t provoke him. I can’t seem to help provoking him.”

He was not surprised that Cordelia had guessed the
source of his mental agony. He had noticed how insightful she was when it came to her friends. He touched her cheek with a fingertip and she smiled.

“It was because I beat him at cards,” she said, reaching up to hold his wrist, keeping his hand against her face. “He sent Mathilde away because I made people laugh at him.” She turned her face against his hand and kissed his palm. “Please hold me.”

Leo sat down and lifted her into his arms. She was fragile, almost insubstantial, reminding him of a skeleton leaf. Her bare skin was soft and warm beneath his hands, and he slid one hand around to cup the roundness of her breast. She moved against him, raising a finger to pull loose his cravat. She kissed the pulse at his throat, and her breath was a sweet rustle of need and longing against his skin.

“I need you to show me how it can be,” she whispered with soft urgency. “I need to know that it doesn’t have to destroy. It doesn’t have to be vile. Once you showed me a little of what it could be like. Show me now, Leo. Please.” It was a heartfelt plea, no hint of mischief or seduction.

“Make me whole again,” she whispered, raising her head to kiss his mouth, her body lifting slightly on his lap. His hands moved over her of their own accord, tracing the contours of her form, the narrowness of her rib cage, the swell of her breasts, the flat belly.