by Jane Feather
At last the governess dozed off, and they scrambled onto the seat to gaze outside, their thrilled whispers so low they couldn't possibly disturb the snoring Louise, who didn't awaken until the carriage turned through the great gilded gates into the outer court of Versailles.
She sat up and with fluttering hands adjusted her wig, which had slipped sideways. The girls were sitting innocently opposite her, hands in their laps, their bright blue eyes gazing steadily at her. She coughed, took a quick nip from her flask, and looked out of the window. She had never seen Versailles and gazed awestruck at the magnificent spread of golden buildings, their red roofs and shutters glowing in the evening sun.
The girls tumbled from the carriage as soon as the footstep was lowered, ignoring the steadying hand of a powdered footman. They stared around. Sylvie's hand crept into her sister's. She felt like an ant she'd once watched crawling laboriously across the schoolroom floor. Amelia squeezed the hand tightly, totally terrified by the size of the court stretching ahead of them toward the massive golden palace.
The prince's carriage had arrived first and he stood a little way away from the children, in conversation with Monsieur Brion, who'd been alerted to his master's arrival by a runner.
Michael glanced over his shoulder at his daughters. They looked absurdly tiny and frightened, as they should, he reflected. This was no place for a pair of small children.
"Take them away," he said to Brion. "I assume rooms have been set aside for them."
"Yes, indeed, my lord. The princess has supervised the arrangements herself with the dauphine's approval."
"I trust the princess finds herself in good health?" Michael took a pinch of snuff, his tone bland.
"Perfectly, I believe, my lord."
Michael sneezed abruptly. He dusted his nose with his handkerchief. "I understood she was to ride to hounds today."
"Indeed, my lord. I gather she had a very good day." He controlled his furious disappointment with difficulty. "Is the king returned from the hunt?" "An hour ago, sir."
"Then I shall attend him at once." Michael stalked off without a backward glance at his daughters and their bemused governess.
The court was gathered in the state apartments, talking about the pleasures of the day's hunt over the gaming tables. The king looked up from his favorite game-lansquenet- as the prince bowed before him.
"Ah, Prince, you are back from your errand, I see. You have brought your children? Madame the Dauphine is most anxious to make their acquaintance."
"They are with their governess at present, monseigneur, but will wait upon the dauphine at her pleasure."
"Oh, yes, of course. Well, I daresay you wish to find your delightful wife. She accompanied us on the hunt, splendid archer. We were most impressed… brought down at least two birds." He nodded amiably and the prince took his dismissal.
He strolled through the rooms, acknowledging acquaintances, listening for interesting morsels of gossip. A man could get out of touch in as little as a day in this hotbed of scandal. There was no sign of Cordelia at the tables, although the dauphine was playing animatedly with her ladies. He took a glass of wine from a footman's tray and wandered over to the long windows overlooking the gardens. The lights on the mock Venetian windows along the canal had just been lit.
Bungling idiots! The plan had been foolproof. They had not been required to think of anything themselves, just to identify their quarry from an unmistakable description and follow the prince's orders to the letter. A simple fall, a blow to the head, a few hours lying on the forest floor until she was missed and a search party was sent out for her. How could they have failed?
"I imagine my nieces are very excited at their new lodgings."
Michael spun around. Leo was smiling his amiable smile. Damned fool, Michael thought savagely. He probably thought the palace was a perfectly good place for his nieces. Besotted idiot didn't give a moment's consideration to the deleterious effect of distractions and such a violent break in their carefully ordered routines. He had no patience to exchange inane pleasantries about a situation into which he'd been blatantly manipulated, even if he couldn't blame Leo for it. He bowed, said tightly, "I trust their governess can curb unseemly excitement." And he stalked off.
Leo's blood raced with savage fury. Michael was clearly not a happy man, and he would be bound to take out his unhappiness on Cordelia. He glanced at his fob watch. Five o'clock. The women in the Pare aux Cerfs would be preparing for the evening. But as yet, they wouldn't have visitors. Now would be a good moment to discover if Tatiana had had a chance as yet to talk to her brother-in-law about acquiring a false passport.
Michael, seething with cold fury, made his way to his own apartments, where he presumed he would find his wife, unharmed and as stubborn and defiant as ever. He found her sitting at the mirror in her dressing room peering intently at her image. She rose immediately at his entrance and curtsied. "Good evening, my lord."
He ignored the cool greeting. "You attended the hunt this morning?"
"I had some success with my bow and arrow," she offered, taking her seat at the mirror again, folding her hands in her lap, with an air of demure attention that did nothing to conceal the insolence behind it. "The king was pleased to compliment me."
"Nothing untoward occurred?" His pale eyes were pinpricks as he watched her for a reaction.
Cordelia decided rapidly. If she told him of the attempted robbery, he could well institute a search for the footpads, and he would show no mercy if they were found. Even if he didn't care a fig for his wife, his pride would not endure that a crime against his family should go unpunished.
She shrugged. "Nothing out of the ordinary, my lord."
A flash of vicious frustration darted across the pale surface of his eyes. He spoke with caustic satisfaction, "Hunting is not a safe activity. I am beginning to think that you should give it up."
Cordelia stared at him, her expression as dismayed as he'd hoped it would be. "Give it up, my lord?"
"If you are with child, it is unwise," he said with a grim little smile. "I would not risk my heir."
Cordelia didn't know whether she was pregnant or not, but she did know that he was tormenting her and enjoying it. She could defeat him only by not giving him the satisfaction of seeing her unhappiness. "I'm sure you know best, my lord," she said with an indifferent shrug. "The children are settled in their apartments. Would you wish to see them?"
It was a successful deflection. Michael flushed angrily. "I would not. I also intend that they should remain with their governess exce
pt when they're summoned by a member of the royal family. On those occasions, you will accompany them, but you will also be escorted by a guard."
"A guard, my lord?" Her eyebrows crawled into her scalp. "What danger could they be in at Versailles?"
"You will do as I say, is that understood?"
"Of course, my lord." She rose and curtsied again, radiating insolence, so that he took a step toward her, his mouth tight, his hand raised.
Then he stopped and his asp's smile flickered thinly. "I will deal with this further when I come to you tonight, madame. Be prepared." On which note he turned on his heel and marched out.
The familiar sick tremors fluttered in her belly, but Cordelia squashed them resolutely. She had Mathilde's little vial. Michael always took a glass of cognac before he came to her. He would have it in his hand when he stood by the bed, looking down at her as she lay waiting for him, struggling to hide her fear. Struggling and so frequently failing.
But never again. From now on he would never detect so much as a quiver of fear. And tonight she would use Mathilde's potion.
Chapter Twenty
Michael entered his dressing room just after midnight. He locked the door behind him, then locked the door communicating with his wife's dressing room.
He unlocked the brass padlock of the ironbound chest and took out the book with purple binding-a startling contrast to the somber bindings of the daily journals. He turned the volume between his hands, running his finger over the gold lettering on the spine. The Devil's Apothecary. A most useful volume. If accidents failed, he could find something in here to cause his wife a serious indisposition. Enough to ensure her removal from Versailles. It was always better to do things for oneself, he thought. Relying on bumbling idiots to carry out even the simplest instructions was clearly futile.
He didn't want an illness that resembled Elvira's in the least degree. Something more like food poisoning, perhaps. Not fatal, just distinctly unpleasant. But neither must it be something that would endanger a possible pregnancy.
He closed the book with a snap, returned it to the chest, turned the key in the padlock. Then he unlocked the doors to his dressing room and rang for his valet. There was silence coming from his wife's dressing room. He had insisted she be escorted back to the apartment as soon as the royal family had left the evening's concert, so he knew she would now be abed, after Elsie's less than expert assistance. Abed and waiting for him, knowing that she had offended him earlier. Knowing what she must expect. His loins stirred.
"Cognac!" he demanded with a snap of his fingers as his valet appeared.
He drank deeply and the fiery spirit calmed him. Once he had Cordelia out of Versailles, the rest would be easy. He must separate her from all her friends, all who had known her before. And most particularly the dauphine. He would be able to censor her correspondence very simply, and when she was completely isolated, then he would be free to do with her as he pleased.
He frowned suddenly. Leo Beaumont might prove awkward. He could well ask inconvenient questions if Cordelia was suddenly incommunicado. But Leo could be handled. He was only really interested in the children. Michael would throw him a distracting sop or two regarding the girls and ensure that whenever he saw Cordelia it was only in her husband's company. The man was gullible; he could be managed.
Cordelia, lying wide-eyes and wakeful, heard Michael's bell, and her skin seemed to shrink on her bones. He would be with his valet for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, and then he would come to her. Her hand shook slightly as protectively she buttoned the high neck of her nightgown. A pointless gesture, she knew, but an involuntary one.
When she'd seen Mathilde the previous afternoon, her nurse had said the sleeping draught would take a half hour, maybe three quarters, to work. Michael was a big man.
But a half hour was more than enough time for him to inflict punishment, Cordelia thought grimly. But what couldn't be helped must be endured. He would only be able to assault her once tonight; and if she concentrated on that, she could bear it. It could be no worse that what she'd endured before.
But the tremors in her belly intensified as she listened to her husband and his valet moving about next door. Her palms were slippery with sweat, her heart pounding. But when the door to her chamber opened and her husband's powerful shape was for a moment outlined in the doorway, illuminated by the shaft of light from the room behind, a great calm swept over her. Her fingers curled around the little vial, finger and thumb gently easing off the stopper.
Michael stepped into the room, closing the door at his back. Cordelia slipped from bed as he crossed the room carrying his brandy goblet. She stood beside the bed, a frightened smile trembling on her lips. "Welcome, husband."
Michael looked startled. He was a man of habit and ritual, and Cordelia was supposed to await him in bed. Then his lip curled. This show of fear and penitence was presumably a plea for leniency. A foredoomed plea, but nonetheless gratifying for that.
He came up to her and stood over her. She dropped her eyes before the cold, ruthless cruelty of his gaze. A quiver went through her, and the silence in the room stretched into infinity as he watched her dread grow with each moment. He set his glass down on the bedside table, caught her hair on either side of her head, twining his fingers painfully in the ringlets, crushing her mouth beneath his in a smothering, assaulting travesty of a kiss.
But for the moment he only held her head. Cordelia struggled to keep her mind clear as his heat and musky odor enveloped her. Her hand moved sideways, blindly. She had registered the position of the glass in her mind's eye. Her fingers located the rim. She estimated three drops but couldn't be certain exactly how many had fallen in. Mathilde had said the potion was tasteless and odorless, but that was with three drops. If she'd added too much, maybe he would notice. But she couldn't afford to add too few. Her fingers fumbled with the stopper and then her hand was back at her side, the vial hidden in the folds of her nightgown as she now gave him what he wanted-resistance. She struggled to breathe, to free her hair from the vicious tugging of his fingers.
When he abruptly raised his head, spun her around, and hurled her facedown across the bed, she held her breath. He planted his knee in the small of her back, holding her down as he drained the contents of his glass in one swallow. Her hand with the vial was trapped beneath her. When he threw up her nightgown and drove into her, she closed her eyes tightly, her teeth closing over a fold of the coverlet, biting down as she fought to keep back the cries of pain and mortification. Soon it would be over…
Half an hour later, Cordelia lay listening to her husband's breathing. His heavy frame weighed down the mattress beside her, s
o that she had to hold herself stiffly to stop rolling into the deep trough against his body. She could swear that his breathing had changed. It had been lighter before, but now it deepened, became stertorous. She could feel that his body had somehow changed, become heavier, more inert. Tentatively, she touched him. His skin was clammy. He didn't move. She pulled aside the bedcurtains, letting in the moonlight from the window. Still he didn't move. She propped herself on an elbow and leaned over him, examining his face. It was a mask, showing not a flicker, not a twitch. She touched his mouth. No reaction.
Her heart in her mouth, she slipped from bed. Still he didn't move. She snaked her hand beneath the mattress on her side of the bed and felt for the key to his chest. Her heart was pounding so loudly it was astonishing that it didn't penetrate his sleep. But Mathilde had done her work well.
The little padlock lay on the palm of her hand as Cordelia stepped back from the bed, her gaze still riveted to the form on the mattress. With a sudden heave, Michael rolled over onto his side, burying his face in the pillows. She felt sick.
His snores deepened yet again, reverberating around the room. She stood immobile by the bed, turning the key over in her hand, looking down at Michael, his face still buried in the pillow. Even muffled, his snores still reverberated. He wasn't going to wake for hours.
If she was going to do it, it had to be now. Cordelia flew across the room, through her own dressing room, and let herself into Michael's. She closed the door and lit the lamp, turning the wick down low, then dropped to her knees before the chest. The key fitted the brass padlock with oiled ease. She turned the key, heard the little click as the padlock opened. She lifted the lid. The contents looked just as they had done on the last occasion-the book of poisons on top of the series of journals.