Victoria Janssen - The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover

VICTORIA JANSSEN

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For Lorrie. Twenty-plus years of pie and helicopters, and counting.

CHAPTER ONE

The Duchess Camille’s maid, Sylvie, draped a blue silk robe over her shoulders. Camille had to restrain herself from clutching it to her bare breasts. Normally, Camille had no particular emotion about being dressed or undressed by her servants—it was too common an occurrence—but today each touch made her flinch. Sylvie’s anger made her tension worse, even when demonstrated only as a hint of roughness when tugging Camille’s long, dark hair free of the robe. Sylvie hadn’t yet cleansed the splotch of Camille’s blood from the front of her own simple blue gown, and her long blond braid extruded messy wisps. It didn’t help to know Sylvie was not angry at her, but the Duke Michel.

Across the room, the midwife finished washing in a porcelain basin painted all over with flowers no larger than a woman’s thumb, the fierce jerks of her arms dripping water and imported jasmine-scented lather onto carpet so thick it swallowed the feet. The midwife’s cropped hair glistened in the light of a dozen fat candles. They were surrounded by all the luxury one could want, except for safety.

Camille didn’t dare give in to her own anger. She had denied it for so long that it had gone solid in her belly like a chunk of dirty glass. She felt sick with it, and weary down to her marrow. She would give anything to be alone for a few moments, to collect herself, but if she sent them away now, after the examination she’d just endured, she would reveal her weakness. She had already let slip her emotions once today, when the duke had told her Lord Alphonse was dead. In her distress, she had nearly revealed his mission, the mission which had led to his death. She would keep her dignity now, and with it her secrets.

Sylvie said, “I will fetch you a glass of wine, madame, and ice for your bruises.”

“Sit,” Camille ordered, unable to bear a continuation of Sylvie’s earlier pacing of holes in the plush gold carpet. She glanced toward the washbasin, carefully avoiding her reflection in the nearby full-length oval mirror, its wide frame like a tangle of golden brambles. “Mistress Annette?”

The midwife was thirty years old at the most, and normally worked at the brothel in the town, caring for the diseases from which prostitutes suffered and helping to birth what children they might bear. She was a tiny woman with hair cut close to her scalp and a scar on her chin. For her surreptitious visits to the palace, she dressed in a baggy dun gown, a sparrow flitting into a golden cage and out of it again, unnoticed by any except Sylvie and Camille. Camille had never seen her elsewhere. She did not even know where Mistress Annette lived; Sylvie always fetched her, when she was needed. But she would—had—entrusted Annette with her health and life.

“You were not pregnant, Your Grace.”

Camille did not allow herself to show any reaction, but all the same, Sylvie rose from her chair and returned to where Camille stood.

“Am I injured?”

Mistress Annette picked up a towel and dried her hands. “You are bruised,” she said, as if Camille had forgotten the reddened swelling over her jaw and cheekbone, her skin broken from the impact of the duke’s rings. Her left shoulder ached from slamming into the silken wallpaper of his private audience room; her hip and elbow throbbed from hitting the marble floor.

“There is no injury inside?”

“No, Your Grace.” Mistress Annette set down the towel and stepped closer, until she stood within arms’ reach. She said calmly, “He will kill you one day, you know.”

Sylvie began to speak but Camille held up a hand for silence. “I could become pregnant. I am not too old.”

Mistress Annette crossed her arms across her chest. “Your Grace, I am hard put to remember you are not just any woman. Because in this matter, you are certainly as unwise as any I’ve met.”

Camille heard Sylvie catch her breath; ironic, as Sylvie was not afraid to speak her mind to her duchess, either. “If I give the duke an heir, he will have no need to find another duchess.”

“His Grace has no bastards, but not for lack of trying. Not a one. If I were you, I would find another sire, and pass the child off as his.”

Mistress Annette had never stated it so boldly before. Camille shook her head in refusal. She had married Michel, a younger son, and in becoming her consort, he’d become duke, with power over her. She could have protested her father’s order to marry Michel and run away, but she had not, foolishly fearing the duchy would suffer without her. She had spoken the vows with her own voice. Once she had done so, she had a responsibility to her marriage, and a responsibility to her duchy’s people. She had stood up to her mistake for over twenty years.

A few blows should not weaken her resolve so much. Except, this time Lord Alphonse had died. He’d been killed while trying to help her, not even knowing that the appeal he carried to Lord Maxime betrayed his duke. He’d been barely older than Annette or Sylvie. Sylvie might very well be next.

“Madame!”

Camille blinked as the room slowed and settled. Sylvie was holding her arm, fingers digging painfully into her bruised muscles. Mistress Annette ducked beneath Camille’s other arm and supported her to her bed. The underside of the bed’s canopy, blue and gold like the sheets and coverlet, bore appliquéd figures of men plowing fields and sowing grain, a transparent allegory to encourage the fertility of the couples who lay within. Except Michel had never taken her here; she’d always been brought to his chambers, or more lately, wherever he felt she would be uncomfortable and refuse his advances.

“He will kill you,” Annette said again, without emphasis, as if stating the sky was blue. She laid the back of her hand against Camille’s forehead, then her cheek. Camille closed her eyes; that single tender touch brought her close to shattering. “Sylvie, fetch blankets.”

Nauseated and beginning to shiver, Camille said, “I’m only hungry. I didn’t eat while Sylvie went to find you.”

Annette tucked a pillow beneath Camille’s feet. She repeated, “He will kill you. And you know what will happen then. He will rape this duchy, and then move on to the next, just as your father did.”

Even now, Camille could not bring herself to say aloud that she had failed, that Michel had indeed won, even when it was true. She said, “You must leave the palace, before you’re found in my apartments.”

“Never fear, Your Grace. Unlike you, I have concern for my own skin.”

Sylvie returned and spread blankets over Camille’s feet before moving upward. “Madame, you need rest. Annette, what must I do?”

“Convince her to find someone else to get her with child,” Annette said. “And have a care that he’s healthy, and looks enough like the duke.”