by Jane Feather
"Did I not please you last night, my lord?" Despite her exhaustion there was a snap to her voice, but Michael was so full of his own gratification he heard only what he wanted to hear.
"As much as a virgin can please a man," he said airily, retying his girdle. "I'll not require you to take the initiative in these matters, but you must learn to open yourself more readily. Then you will please me perfectly." He strode to the door, a spring in his step. "Ring for your maid. You need attention." He sounded mightily pleased with himself at this evidence of his potency.
Cordelia stared at the closed door, fighting for composure. Then she dragged off her soiled nightgown and began to scrub herself clean, to scrub as if she would remove the layer of skin that he'd sullied.
Mathilde had kept her vigil all night, and as soon as the prince appeared in the corridor, she stepped forward. "I'll go to my mistress now, my lord?"
"Good God, woman! Where did you spring from? I just told the princess to ring for you."
"I have been up and waiting this past hour, my lord."
"Mmm. So you're a faithful attendant at least. Yes, go to her. She needs attention." He waved her toward the door with another smug smile. His bride had found him a most devoted husband, and he couldn't remember when last he'd been so aroused, so filled with potent energy. Certainly not since he'd begun to suspect Elvira's unfaithfulness.
But that was past history. He had a new bride and a new lease on life. Cordelia would not disappoint him, he would make certain of it.
Mathilde bustled into the dimly lit chamber. "His lordship looked right pleased with himself."
"He is loathsome," Cordelia said in a fierce undertone. "I cannot bear that he should touch me ever again."
Mathilde came over to her. Her shrewd eyes took in the wan face, the lingering shock in the blue-gray eyes. "Now, that's a foolish thing to say. For better or worse, he's your husband and he has his rights. You'll learn to deal with it like millions of women before you and millions to come."
"But how?" Cordelia brushed her tangled hair from her eyes. "How does one learn to deal with it?"
Mathilde saw the bruise on her nursling's wrist and her expression suddenly changed. "Let me look at you."
"I'm all right," Cordelia said, "I just feel dirty. I need a bath."
"I'll have one sent up when I've had a look at you," Mathilde said grimly. Cordelia submitted to a minute examination that had Mathilde looking grimmer and grimmer as she uncovered every bruise, every scratch.
"So, he's a brute into the bargain," Mathilde muttered finally, pulling the bell rope beside the door. "I knew there was something dark in him."
"I got hurt because I tried to fight him," Cordelia explained wearily.
"Aye, only what I'd expect from you. But there's other ways," Mathilde added almost to herself. She turned to give orders to the maid who answered the bell. "Fetch up a bath for your mistress… And bring breakfast," she added as the maid curtsied and left.
"I couldn't eat. The thought of food makes me feel sick."
"Nonsense. You need all the strength you can get. It's not like you to wallow in self-pity." Mathilde was not prepared to indulge weakness, however unusual and well justified.
Cordelia would need all her strength of character to survive untouched by her husband's treatment. "You'll have a bath and eat a good breakfast and then you'd best set about making your mark on the household. There's a majordomo, one Monsieur Brion, who's a force to be reckoned with, I gather. And then a governess.
"What about the governess?" Cordelia, as always, responded to Mathilde's bracing tones. She wasn't such a milksop as to be crushed after one wedding night. There was much more to this new life than the miseries of conjugal sex. Time enough to fret about it again tonight, when presumably it would be repeated. She shuddered and pushed the thought from her. She must not allow fear of the nights to haunt her days.
Mathilde turned from the armoire where she was selecting a gown. "Dusty spinster, I understand from the housekeeper. Keeps to herself mostly, thinks she's too good for the servant's hall. Some distant relative of the prince's."
"And the children?" Cordelia's legs seemed to be lacking in strength. She sat on the edge of the bed.
"No one sees much of them. Governess pretty much has sole charge." Mathilde came over to the bed with a chamber robe.
Cordelia slipped her arms into the clean robe. "Do they say whether the prince has much to do with his daughters?"
Mathilde bent to gather up the bloodstained nightgown. "Hardly sees them. But it's his voice that rules in the nursery even so. That governess, Madame de Nevry she's called, is scared rigid of him. Or so the housekeeper says." She glanced sharply at Cordelia. "There's a bad feeling in this house. They all fear the prince."
"With reason, I imagine," Cordelia said. She frowned. "I wonder why the viscount didn't say anything when I asked him about my husband. I gave him every opportunity to tell me the worst."
"Maybe he doesn't know. A man can have one face for the outside world and another for the inside. And you've got to live in a house to know its spirit."
"But what of Leo's sister-Elvira? She lived here, she must have known these things. Didn't she tell him?"
"How are we to know that?" Mathilde shook her head in brisk dismissal of the topic. "We manage our own affairs, dearie."
Cordelia had always had utter faith in Mathilde's ability to manage affairs of any kind. She didn't always know how she did it, but she hadn't yet come across a situation that stumped her old nurse. The thought gave her renewed strength and courage. "I shall go and visit the nursery as soon as I'm dressed." Forgetting her earlier queasiness, she broke into a steaming brioche from the tray the maidservant had placed on the table. In the small bathroom adjoining her chamber, footmen filled the copper tub with jugs of water brought upstairs by laboring boot boys.
"What should I wear, do you think? Something gay and bright. I want them to think of me as someone cheerful and not at all stuffy."
Mathilde couldn't hide her smile at the quaint notion that anyone might think Cordelia stuffy.
Cordelia eased her body into the hot water with a groan of relief. Mathilde had sprinkled herbs on the surface and emptied the fragrant contents of a small vial into the water. Immediately, Cordelia felt the soreness and stiffness fading away with the throbbing of her bruises. She let her head rest against the copper rim of the bath and closed her eyes, inhaling the delicate yet revivifying scent of the herbs.
Mathilde placed the breakfast tray beside the tub, and after a while Cordelia nibbled on the brioche and sipped hot chocolate as the steam wreathed around her. Her habitual optimism finally banished the lingering horror of the night. It had been hell, but
the worst was over because she now knew the worst. And now there were two little girls in a nursery waiting to make her acquaintance. Were they scared? she wondered.
Madame de Nevry was in a very bad temper. Amelia and Sylvie, well versed in their governess's moods, knew they were in for a miserable day the minute she marched into the nursery soon after dawn and ordered their nurse to prepare cold baths for them.
"But I am already so cold," Sylvie whimpered, standing on the bare floorboards, shivering in her nightgown. It was too early for the rising sun to have taken the chill off the night air that filled the nursery from the perpetually opened window.
"It is your father's wish that you should learn to endure discomfort," Madame stated, pinning the child's hair in a tight knot on the top of her head. The prince had actually said only that his daughters were not to be pampered, but the governess chose to interpret the instruction according to her own mood.
Sylvie whimpered again as her scalp was pulled back from her forehead and the pins dug into her skin. Nurse, looking very disapproving, lifted her and dumped her skinny little body in the tub of ice-cold water. Sylvie cried out at the top of her lungs and received a slapped hand from the governess for her pains. Amelia stood and watched, waiting her turn with rather more stoicism than her sister.
They had heard the sounds of the party the previous evening as they'd lain in bed listening to the confused noises of carriage wheels, shouting linkboys, doors opening and closing in the house far below the nursery, the faint strains of music. They'd imagined the food at the banquet, but since their own diet was plain to the point of tastelessness and had never been anything else, they could only imagine a table laden with the strawberries and chocolates they had sometimes been given by Monsieur Leo, when he could sneak the treat into the schoolroom.
"Come, Amelia." Madame snapped her fingers impatiently as Nurse lifted the still-squalling Sylvie out of the freezing water and wrapped her in a thick towel. Madame's face was thin and pinched, and her lips and the tip of her nose had a blue tinge to them as if they'd been inked with a quill pen. On her cheeks burned two vermilion spots of color. She looked like a paint palette, Amelia thought, raising her arms passively as Nurse drew off her nightgown.
Sylvie's whimpers faded as she huddled in the towel. The goosebumps on her skin went down and her shivers lessened while her twin was doused and soaped and doused again, her lips blue with cold, her teeth chattering.
Even after they were dressed, they were still not properly warm, and a meager breakfast of bread and butter and weak tea did little to improve matters. Madame's blue nose turned pink as she drank her own tea. The girls had noticed it always did when she poured something from a little flask into her cup. And her cheeks grew even redder.
"We will study the globe this morning." Louise gestured to the large round globe with her pointer. "Sylvie, you will find England and tell me the name of the capital city."
Sylvie peered at the bumps and squiggles and lines. Everything looked the same to her. She closed her eyes and stabbed with her forefinger.
Louise put up her pince-nez and examined the spot. If asked to perform the task she had set Sylvie, she would have had difficulty. However, Sylvie's choice appeared to be in a range of mountains, and Louise was fairly convinced that England was not a mountainous land.
It was at this point that the door opened to reveal an astounding vision, shimmering, glowing with color in the drab room.
"Good morning. My name is Cordelia and I have come to make your acquaintance."
The girls stared openmouthed as a black-haired girl in a gown of turquoise silk stepped into the room, her jeweled heels tapping on the oak boards. She was smiling, her mouth red and warm, her eyes so big and blue they seemed to swallow them.
She bent and held out her hand to Sylvie. Leo had said something about hair ribbons, but she couldn't remember which was which. "Are you Sylvie or Amelia?"
"Sylvie. There's Amelia."
Cordelia took both their hands in hers, overpowering-ly aware of how small they were. She had never been much aware of children before, but these two, gazing at her with such solemnity, filled her with a strange awe.
"Princess, we were not expecting you." The glacial tones drew Cordelia upright again.
"You must be the children's governess. Madame de Nevry, I believe?" She smiled warmly, reflecting that nothing would be gained by alienating this disagreeable-looking woman.
"That is so, Princess. As I said, we were not expecting you. The prince gave me no instructions as to receiving you." She struggled to hide her dismayed shock at a vision that bore no resemblance to her imaginings of the new Princess von Sachsen. The girl was barely out of the schoolroom herself, and she was beautiful. Even to Louise's jaundiced eye, the vibrant beauty pulsing from the princess was undeniable.
"No, well, I daresay that's because he doesn't know I'm here," Cordelia said cheerfully. "I thought it would be much nicer to meet Sylvie and Amelia without any formal fuss and bother." She turned back to the girls, who still regarded her with openmouthed disbelief. "Shall we be friends, do you think? I do so hope we shall." She took their hands again, holding them in her own warm grasp.
"Oh, yes," they said in unison on a little gasp of delight. "Do you know Monsieur Leo? He's our friend too."
"Yes, I know him," she said, ignoring the preparatory mutterings from the governess. "I know him very well, so we shall all be friends." She straightened again to include the governess in the conversation. "I understand from my husband and Viscount Kierston that His Lordship is a frequent visitor to his nieces."
"That may be so," Louise allowed without moving so much as a muscle. "However, if you'll excuse us, Princess, the children must do their lessons."
"Oh, how drear that they should have to have lessons on the day I arrive." Cordelia's nose wrinkled and she moved closer to the governess on the pretext of studying the globe. "Are you having a geography lesson?"
"We were," Louise said pointedly.
Cordelia nodded as her suspicions were confirmed. The woman smelled like a soused herring, and it was barely nine o'clock in the morning. Surely Michael couldn't know that his daughters' governess drank. But for time being, she would keep the knowledge to herself. She had much to learn about this household.
"Then I'll leave you for the moment," she said amenably. "But I'd like the girls to visit me in my boudoir before dinner. There's no need for you to accompany them." She treated the governess to a dazzling smile. "At one o'clock, shall we say." Bending, she swiftly kissed the children. "We shall learn to know each other soon." Then she was gone, leaving Sylvie and Amelia in a warm daze and their governess as frozen rigid
as a stalagmite.
"Practice your writing," she commanded, gesturing to the table and the pens and parchment.
She sat down abruptly by the empty hearth and stared at her reflection in the burnished grate. Surreptitiously, she withdrew the little silver flask from her pocket and took a swift gulp. She could not believe that the prince had countenanced his bride's surprise visit to his daughters. He lived his life by rite and rote and laid down strict orders for the schoolroom as he did for the rest of the household. But what was Prince Michael doing with such a frivolous, volatile, vibrant, unorthodox young bride?
Louise took another gulp. From what she knew of her relative, he wouldn't tolerate those qualities in the girl for very long.
Cordelia returned to the main part of the palace and descended the curving staircase to the cavernous hall with its marble pillars and vast expanse of marble floor.
Monsieur Brion appeared from nowhere and came to the stair with stately step, bowing low as she reached the bottom. "Is there something I can do for you, Princess?"
"Yes, I should like to be shown around the palace, please. And I should like to meet with the housekeeper and the cook." Cordelia's smile was warm, but the majordomo had the astonishing feeling that his new mistress, for all her youth, was not going to be easy to manage.
"If you have instructions for either the cook or the housekeeper, madame, I will be pleased to relay them for you."
Cordelia shook her head. "Oh, I don't think that will be necessary, Monsieur Brion. I am perfectly capable of giving my own instructions. Please ask them to come to me in my boudoir at noon. Now, perhaps you would like to show me around."