The Diamond Slipper (40 page)

“Give me your arm,” he demanded harshly. He stood up, leaning on the valet’s stalwart arm, his face set in lines of grim determination to defeat this mortifying weakness. “I’ll take a hot milk punch and a plate of sirloin. Then I’ll have the leech to bleed me.” He drew the sides of his robe together. He cast a look of bemused frustration at his wife, then staggered from Cordelia’s room, supported by his valet.

Cordelia smiled grimly. She must discover from Mathilde how long Michael’s weakness would last. If he was forced to keep to his bed for a while, then matters would be easier to arrange.

As she rang for Elsie the clock on the mantel struck the half hour. The men would return from the boar hunt at around ten. Four hours of that brutal sport was enough even for the king, who lived for the hunt.

“Put out the gray gown, Elsie,” she instructed as the maid scurried in, looking as usual as if she’d run a marathon to get there. Her cheeks were scarlet, and her hair was escaping in a frizz from beneath her cap. She curtsied and smiled nervously as she set Cordelia’s breakfast tray on the table. “Will that be the one with the heather-colored petticoat, m’lady?”

“Yes, the one you mended yesterday,” Cordelia said
patiently, dipping her brioche into the wide, shallow bowl of coffee.

“And you wear the blue silk shoes with it,” Elsie announced triumphantly.

Cordelia couldn’t help smiling. “Precisely.”

With a pleased beam, Elsie filled the basin with hot water from the ewer and bustled over to help her mistress out of her nightgown, asking with an air of importance, “How will you be wearing your hair today, m’lady? Should I heat the curling iron?”

Cordelia shook her head hastily. Elsie’s last attempt with the curling iron had produced a few singed ringlets. “I’ll wear it loose, with a ribbon.”

At ten o’clock she went into the salon, where Monsieur Brion was arranging the newest periodicals on a console table. “How is the prince?” she inquired casually, casting a quick checking look at her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.

“I have sent for the physician, my lady. He keeps to his bed, I understand,” Brion replied without a flicker of an eye.

“If he should inquire after me, perhaps you would inform him that I am waiting on the dauphine. She will expect me to escort Mesdames Amelia and Sylvie to her later this morning.”

“As you say, madame.” He bowed. Cordelia smiled. They both gave a half nod, then the majordomo moved to open the door for his mistress.

Cordelia moved as fast as her high heels and wide hoop would permit down the grand staircase and out into the garden. She strolled along the gravel walks and through a side gate that led to the stable courtyard. It was here that the hunt would return.

Within five minutes the first huntsmen clattered onto the cobbles, the king at their head. They were splattered with mud and blood. Blood clotted on their britches and their gloved hands, streaked their faces. The grooms accompanying them carried their weapons, the knives and spears that
they had used in the last fierce tussle with the boar. A hand-to-hand fight to the death, with the maddened deadly animal cornered by dogs and men, all out for its blood.

Women did not go on boar hunts. They were considered too dangerous, too bloody. The death toll among dogs and horses was frequently horrendous, and many a huntsman was crippled for life by a slashing tusk.

The morning had clearly been successful. A group of beaters carried a massive boar slung on two poles, blood dripping from its slit throat. Hounds limping and slavering crowded around, waiting for their share of the prize. The stench of blood was almost overpowering, and even Cordelia, who had been riding to hounds ever since she could walk, was sickened by it.

Leo came in with the second party. He too was blood spattered, his leather boots coated with mud. Presumably, he was one of those who had to be in at the kill, facing the beast, eye to eye. It didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was her wish that he would leave the risky reckless bravado to others and stay safely on his horse at the kill.

“Princess von Sachsen.” She turned swiftly at the king’s unmistakable hail, curtsying deeply. He beamed at her from atop his horse. “What a beautiful morning we’ve had. But we were expecting your husband?” He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Cordelia swam gracefully out of the curtsy. “My husband is indisposed, monseigneur. He sends his deepest regrets.”

The king frowned. “Indisposed? Not seriously, I trust?”

“No, indeed not, sire,” she said swiftly. Indisposition in the king’s presence was frowned upon, death was forbidden. It was an absolute rule that a dead body should never lie under a roof where the king was in residence, and if anyone had the bad taste to expire in the night, they were removed with unseemly haste before the king got to hear of it.

“Then I will expect to see him this evening,” His Majesty declared, accepting the hand of an equerry to dismount.

Cordelia curtsied again and slipped away from the royal
notice. Leo was standing to one side, respectfully bareheaded in the king’s presence, tapping his whip in the palm of his hand.

“What’s the matter with Michael?” he asked in a low voice as she came to stand beside him.

“Mathilde’s potion. But I must talk to you at once. It’s most dreadfully urgent, Leo.” She tried to keep her eyes on some distant spot across the yard, tried to keep the panic from her voice, tried to appear if she were merely passing the time of day.

But Leo wasn’t fooled and his gut knotted with apprehension. It wasn’t like Cordelia to panic. He glanced around, then said, “Make your way to the laurel maze; I’ll meet you there.”

“But soon, Leo. You must come quickly.” She hurried away, leaving him in a turmoil of anxiety. He looked down at his filthy hands, his torn and blood-streaked coat and britches. Splashes of mud had dried hard on his face. He had to change. He would draw unwelcome notice if he appeared in the gardens in such a state.

Cordelia waited half an hour at the entrance to the laurel maze. It was in a secluded uncultivated part of the landscape, on a grassy knoll that gave a clear view over the parterres and fountains of the formal gardens below. They would see anyone coming while being concealed themselves within the maze.

But where was he? And how was she to tell him what she’d discovered? How was she to tell him that his beloved twin had been murdered? How could he bear such knowledge, bear to know that he had done nothing to help her?

She saw him climbing the knoll toward her. He was dressed in ivory satin, the lining of his coat peacock blue. He was bareheaded, wearing neither wig nor powder. And despite the dreadful business that had brought them here, a current of desire jolted her loins, curled her toes. He was so beautiful. And he loved her. She ducked backward into the maze, out of sight of anyone who might chance to look up
from below. She was too far away to be immediately identifiable, but any risk, however small, was one too many.

Leo stood at the top of the rise and looked casually around, shading his eyes with his hand, as if taking stock of his surroundings. Then, in a leisurely fashion, he strolled into the maze.

“What is it?” he asked quietly. His face was pale, his eyes steady, his voice even.

Cordelia twisted her hands into impossible knots. However hard she’d tried, she hadn’t been able to come up with the words. “Michael poisoned Elvira,” she blurted finally. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

His face was a dreadful mask, his eyes lightless caverns, the planes and contours of his skull suddenly standing out in harsh relief. “What did you say?”

Cordelia moistened her lips. She reached for his hands, but he jerked them away with an impatient rejection that hurt even though she understood it. “Last night I read Michael’s journals. He is meticulous in his daily entries. I think there’s a volume for every year of his adult life. I read about Elvira ….” She stopped, her hands outstretched, palms up in a gesture of helplessness.

“Tell me,” he rasped. “Everything you can remember.”

“I can remember everything,” she said painfully. “I have one of those memories that retains everything I read on a page. It … it … it’s very useful for studying.” She swallowed, realizing how stupid such burble sounded.

“Get on with it.” He began to pace the narrow aisle between the high laurel bushes as she recited word for word the pages from Michael’s journal. And when she fell silent, he continued to pace, and the profound quiet seemed a black chasm into which they slowly slid.

“Could … could Elvira have been unfaithful?” Cordelia could bear the silence no longer.

Leo’s dead eyes sprang into life. “Possibly,” he said curtly. “But what has that to do with murder?”

“Nothing … nothing, of course. I’m sorry.”

“Poison!” he spat suddenly. “Of all the vile instruments. A weak, cowardly,
woman’s
weapon!”

Cordelia had no urge to defend her sex at this point. She didn’t know what to do or say. Leo was completely unapproachable. Every line of his body held her away. She was the bearer of ill tidings, and messengers always suffered. But her heart ached for him and she longed to touch him, to offer him some comfort, but she knew there was nothing she had that was strong enough to overcome his grief and anger. Not even the power of her love.

“Leave me!” It was a curt order and he didn’t look at her as he issued it.

Cordelia melted away, down the hill, blending with the glittering butterflies of the court strolling under the sun, between the fountains.

Leo spun on his heel, his eyes blinded with tears as he retreated into the cool seclusion of the maze. He wanted to scream his rage and grief to the skies but instead he paced the narrow alleys between the high laurel hedges, slamming one hand into the palm of the other in a futile expression of his despair.

He blamed himself. He should have known. All their lives, he and his twin had been inextricably bound together. They had understood each other’s thoughts before they were spoken. As small children, even when apart they had occasionally had uncanny flashes of knowledge about the other’s doings or feelings. When Elvira had been sick of scarlet fever, Leo had been at school, but the night when the fever hit its peak, the moment when his twin had hovered between life and death, he had woken and found himself staring into a strange internal landscape. A dark tunnel with a soft warm light at the end. He had struggled, finding it hard to breathe, as he’d fought to refuse the invitation of that light. His whole body seemed to be at war, wrenched from side to side by opposing forces, and then the light had receded and he’d woken fully, drenched in sweat, as
exhausted as if he’d been fighting a pitched battle for many hours.

He had fought that battle against death hand in hand with Elvira across the distance that separated them. But when she lay dying at her husband’s hands, he’d been frolicking in Rome and had experienced not a twitch of unease.

How could he have abandoned her? How had it happened, when had it happened, that the spiritual tie between them had loosened and flown apart?

Tears poured unrestrained down his face as he moved deeper and deeper into the maze. Tears of guilt and of unspeakable grief. They had both known that they were drawing apart, that the connections of twinship were giving way to the independence of their separate lives. They had accepted it, acknowledged it. But now Leo felt again, for the first time since Elvira’s death, that old spiritual connection. Now he knew that he had truly lost a part of himself, and he felt that loss in his blood, in his bone, in his sinew.

Chapter Twenty-one

A
T THE FIRST
birdsong of the dawn chorus, as the king’s hunting party were leaving for the boar hunt, Amelia had nudged her sister awake. Sylvie opened her eyes and sat up all in the same movement. “Where are we?” She gazed bemused at the strange bedchamber with its blue velvet hangings and gilded ceiling. A fresh, fragrant breeze blew through the long open windows.

“In the palace, stupid,” her sister whispered, sitting up beside her. “We’re going to meet the king.”

Sylvie’s mouth opened on a round O as memory flooded back. “With Cordelia.” Only in the presence of others did they give their stepmother the courtesy title of Madame.

“Yes, and not with Madame de Nevry.” Amelia stuffed the pillow against her mouth to stifle the excited giggles bubbling irrepressibly from her chest. “Change places, Sylvie.” She wriggled over her sister.

“We can’t do that
here
,” Sylvie protested. “What about the king?”

“He won’t know,” Amelia said matter-of-factly. “No one ever does.” She shoved against her sister, pushing her over to the other side of the bed.

Sylvie continued to look doubtful. The trick they played in the nursery and schoolroom at home was all very well, even when their father was their dupe, but to play it in the king’s palace, in front of the king, was very different. “What about Cordelia?”

“She won’t know either,” Amelia stated, hiding her own doubts now under a show of bravado. “No one will know, ’cept us. Like always.”