The Diamond Slipper (22 page)

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 school-room 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 belive 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.”

“Cordelia, is there something you wish for?”

She turned at her husband’s voice. He stood in the doorway to the left of the hall and, judging by the table napkin in his hand, was presumably in the middle of his breakfast. Her eyes fixed upon his hands. They were square, thick fingered, with clumps of graying hair on the knuckles. Her skin seemed to shrink on her bones at the hideous memory of those hands marking her body. Only with the greatest difficulty did she keep from stepping backward, away from him.

“I was asking Monsieur Brion to accompany me on a tour of the palace, sir.”

Michael considered this and could find no fault. “By all means,” he said with a nod at Brion. “I shall be in the library in one hour. Perhaps you would join me there, madame.”

Cordelia acquiesced with a curtsy and waited until her
husband had returned to his interrupted breakfast before turning back to the majordomo. “Shall we go?”

Monsieur Brion bowed. This was a different kind of bride from her predecessor, unsophisticated, less canny, and yet he thought he could detect a certain strength. In this household one garnered allies wherever one could. “Where would you wish to start, madame?”

An hour later Monsieur Brion showed his new mistress into the library. He was still uncertain about the princess. She had been shockingly informal with the servants they’d met, but the questions she’d asked him about the household had been uncomfortably penetrating, and he was convinced that his earlier assessment had been correct—he had felt the sting of a most powerful will beneath.

Michael carefully wiped the nib of his pen and placed it in perfect alignment with the edge of the blotter before rising from the secretaire when his wife entered.

“I trust you were pleased with what you saw, madame.”

Cordelia couldn’t bring herself to step further into the room, a step that would bring her that much closer to her husband. “You have a most beautiful palace, sir. I particularly admired the Boucher panels in the small salon.” She had to learn to conduct ordinary conversations with this man. She had to separate the daytime husband from the nighttime ravisher. If she couldn’t do that, she would be crushed like an ant beneath his boot.

Michael had turned back to his secretaire. With small, precise movements, he sanded the sheet on which he’d been writing and closed the leatherbound book. “Did you notice the Rembrandts in the gallery?”

“Yes, but I preferred the Canaletto.” She watched as he carried the book to an ironbound chest beneath the window. He withdrew a key from his pocket, unlocked the chest, and, with the same precision, placed the book inside, then dropped the lid and locked the chest. Cordelia couldn’t
see what was in the chest, but it struck her as strange that he should have to lock up his writings. But then she reflected that perhaps they were diplomatic secrets and observations. An ambassador was as much a spy for his monarch as he was a diplomat.

“The Canaletto is very fine, but the subject matter is more frivolous than Rembrandt’s.”

Cordelia didn’t argue this point. Her eyes continued to roam the room and fell upon the portrait above the mantel. She knew immediately who it was. The physical resemblance between the woman and Leo Beaumont was unmistakable. Although the woman’s eyes were blue instead of hazel, the resemblance was contained in their expression, in the nose, in the quirk of that sensual mouth.

“This is your late wife?” She examined the rich, voluptuous figure with a deep curiosity and a strange little thrill that she knew arose because the act of looking upon Leo’s twin in some way connected her with Leo himself.

“Yes. It’s a particularly fine Fragonard.” The prince’s tone did not encourage further discussion of the portrait, but Cordelia didn’t move away. She wanted to touch the soft curving white arm, the shining fair hair, so powerfully did the woman’s personality come across. Had she also suffered through hellish nights?

“She’s wearing my bracelet,” she said with a shock of recognition, holding up her wrist in demonstration.

“The bracelet was my gift to Elvira on the birth of her daughters,” Michael said, his tone now thoroughly frigid. “It is a priceless work of art and I believed it to be a suitable betrothal gift. There is no need to talk of it further.”

Cordelia didn’t immediately respond. She examined the bracelet on her wrist and then the one on Elvira’s wrist. “She has another charm,” she said. “A heart. Is it jade?”

Michael’s lips thinned. Was she stupid or stubborn to persist in these observations when he’d made it clear he didn’t wish to discuss the subject? “You have your own charm. The bracelet now belongs to you. I wish now to discuss
with you the arrangements for our sojourn in Versailles during the dauphin’s wedding.”

Cordelia touched the delicate diamond slipper. She supposed that by removing the charm dedicated to Elvira and replacing it with one dedicated to the new owner, her husband considered he had been acting with all due consideration. But still, it felt a little peculiar to be wearing the dead woman’s jewelry, however beautiful.

“Viscount Kierston said you have an apartment at Versailles.” She turned back to the room, her finger unconsciously tracing the shape of the serpent around her wrist.

“Yes, the king has graciously allotted me a suite of rooms on the third staircase. You will find them commodious enough, I believe.”

Cordelia knew that apartments at Versailles, thirty miles outside Paris, were greatly coveted and were only allocated to the king’s favorites or those with significant influence. “Does Viscount Kierston have an apartment at Versailles?” she asked casually.

“He is much favored by Madame du Barry. He has a small room on the outer staircase through her influence.”

That didn’t sound too comfortable, but for a bachelor it was probably considered sufficient. Her heart lifted. At least he would be at Versailles also. He had promised to stand her friend.

“I intend to instruct my daughters’ governess to bring them to the drawing room before dinner to pay their respects to you.” Michael changed the subject, impatient with this question-and-answer session that had nothing to do with the matters at hand.

“Oh, I’ve already met them,” Cordelia said cheerfully. “I visited the schoolroom earlier. They are such lovely children.”

“You did
what
?” Michael stared in astonishment.

Cordelia swallowed. Obviously, she’d made a mistake. “I didn’t think it would displease you, my lord. I was anxious to meet them.”

Michael moved toward her and she stood her ground with the greatest difficulty. “You will not ever take such matters on yourself, do you hear me, Cordelia? I rule this household and you will not
ever
attempt to usurp my rule.”

“But … but how could my visiting the schoolroom be considered usurping your authority?” she protested, forgetting her fear of him in her indignation.