The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover

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Kaspar’s voice startled her. “Thérèse will not come to make up the fires for another hour,” he said. “Until then, these corridors are usually deserted.”

“And the paths leading outside the walls?” she asked. Even as a young girl, she had not slipped out of the palace at night, thanks to the guardianship of the eunuch Jarman.

“Those paths are less safe,” Kaspar admitted. “Sometimes they are quite busy with guardsmen and courtiers returning from the Dewy Rose, paid companions going back to their homes, and the like. I will guard you, Your Grace.”

Camille wished she could guard herself; she chafed at the need for circumspection. It felt cowardly, and she’d had enough of being a coward. She hadn’t been brave enough to confront Michel; she’d had the opportunity, but done nothing to take advantage of it. Next time, she told herself, she would not be so cautious. Next time, she would work from a position of strength.

Kaspar led her on a direct route to the palace’s main rear entrance. At the door, he reached to readjust the hood of her cloak. Camille brushed his hand away. “I am not a child,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. Kaspar inclined his head, then loosened his right-handed sword in its sheath. He pressed his ear to the door before easing it open.

Darkness and cool air rushed in, carrying a rich scent of damp earth and crushed grass. Camille inhaled deeply, feeling the outdoors like a tingle of freedom on her skin. She fought a sudden urge to run full tilt into the starlight and roll in the greenery. Instead, she tried to steady her breathing as she stared beneath Kaspar’s massive arm and into the darkness. Distantly, she heard voices, resolving into a rumble of male ribaldry. Three men? Four? She heard a distinctive jingle—a chain-mail hauberk—and shrank back.

Kaspar tugged her forward. “Come. We must be out before they enter.”

Camille let him pull her out the door and to the left, staying in the wall’s shadow. A stretch of open grass, punctuated by a few sleeping cows, might as well have been a moat; they would easily be seen crossing it. The rear boundary wall reared beyond. In the illumination cast by their lantern, the shadows of four guardsmen loomed black against the wall’s gleaming white marble.

“Hold still,” Kaspar murmured, pressing her into a crouch next to the palace wall. Her dark cloak would melt into the dark granite, she hoped. He let his bag slide off his shoulder, next to her, and stepped into the light.

Trembling, Camille watched from beneath the hood of her cloak. Eunuchs were forbidden to venture outside the palace alone, and though she’d bent that rule before, there was no guarantee the guardsmen would do the same. If they decided to imprison Kaspar for the night, she could still make her way to the breeding barn alone, but retrieving Kaspar would be difficult, and delay their departure significantly. If the guards decided to escort him back to her chambers, and found her gone, it would be a disaster.

“Ho!” the smallest of the guardsmen called. “Kaspar!”

Worse and worse. Camille recognized the voice—Léopold, one of Michel’s personal honor guard, who reported directly to him. He stopped in the middle of the graveled path, hands planted on hips. “What’s amiss, eunuch? Searching for your manhood among the cowpats?”

“’Hap you can find it with them catamites at the Dewy Rose,” another said, and belched. A third guard cuffed him on the side of the head and murmured something, which led to a brief scuffle between the two.

Ignoring the byplay, Kaspar said, “I’m in search of Vilmos. Have you seen him?”

“Fucking His Grace, most like,” Léopold said, his perpetual sneer audible in his voice. “I’d leave his service first.”

The fourth guardsman spoke. “Better fucking His Grace than losing his ballocks.”

Kaspar said, his tone cool, “Better without ballocks than buggering His Grace’s filthy arse.”

If Kaspar provoked them into killing him, Camille would kill him again. She closed her eyes as insults began to fly faster and more foully, soon succeeded by the meaty smack of fists on flesh; the crash of the lantern being dropped; the thumps of large bodies hitting the ground; grunts and curses and panting. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and found that two of the guardsmen were dragging Kaspar off Léopold’s supine form. The last guardsman doubled over in the grass, vomiting.

“You’d better be off before Léopold comes to,” one of them said. Camille recognized his voice: Rodrigue, another of Michel’s honor guard. “Eugène, you, too. You can’t afford any more trouble. Weren’t you due on duty at dawn?” Eugène cursed and sprinted for the door into the palace. Camille winced as the door slammed shut behind him.

“Thanks,” Kaspar said.

“You’d better be off to Her Grace, in case Léopold takes it into his head to make trouble,” Rodrigue said, bending to hoist Léopold over his shoulder. He snagged the fourth guardsman by the sleeve and then shoved him toward the door. “If I see Vilmos, I will let him know you asked after him. Take the lantern, will you?”

“My thanks, again.” Kaspar stood watching as Rodrigue and his drunken companion maneuvered Léopold through the narrow door, thumping his head against the wall more than once in the process. Then he wiped his sleeve across his face; in the lantern light, Camille saw a dark stain of blood beneath his nose.

Slowly, she unkinked her back and stood, propping one hand against the wall. Kaspar looked in her direction and snuffed the lantern. She heard his shoes crunching on gravel, then a clank as he set the lantern on the ground, next to the door. Camille took a deep breath and joined him. Softly, she said, “Thank you.”

Kaspar said, “Léopold might be trouble.”

“Then we’d best hurry.”

His hand took hers in the darkness, and as he led her to the rear gate, Camille felt a rising joy. Soon she would be free.

CHAPTER SIX

Henri would have danced all the way home from the bathhouse if he had not been so utterly exhausted. He’d worked all morning, spent the afternoon alternating mortal terror with lust, then labored in the stables well into the evening, all before his exertions with Nico at the baths. And he had to be up before dawn to exercise the horses before the heat of the day.

No replacement had been bought for Poire after the old fellow, the duchess’s childhood pony, had keeled over in the field last summer. Henri usually slept in Poire’s empty stall, down at the end of the row. He kept his blankets there, and his extra shirt, except now he was wearing the shirt and carrying his filthy one in a sack. He felt so clean that he was reluctant to put it on again for work in the morning. In the morning, though, this wondrous night would seem like a dream. He hoped. One had to return to ordinary life sometime, and it would be easier if he didn’t think too much about what he might be missing.

Henri lifted the bar across the stable door as cautiously as he could. None of the senior grooms slept here, not anymore, but they would hear a crashing noise from their cots in the next barn, where the duke’s hunters ate their heads off and occasionally sauntered around the paddock. Henri’s—the duchess’s—horses were in prime condition. He kept them that way for her, because even if she never rode them again, she might see them, and he did not want her to be disappointed. Besides, he loved his horses.

He bolted the door again from the inside and padded down the aisle fronting the luxurious stalls. Slices of moonlight silvered the floor. Tonnelle whickered, so he stopped to pat her shoulder and let her nuzzle his hair. “Why are you still awake?” he asked softly. Of course she did not answer. Guirlande was awake also, blinking at him sleepily over the barrier inscribed with her name in fading gilt. Henri pulled her head down to his and pressed their foreheads together, breathing in the familiar smell of horse. He wanted to talk to her, to say aloud all the amazing things that had happened to him today, but not only would it be silly, but someone might hear. He must never speak, or even think, of what had happened today with the duchess. It might mean her death, and it would certainly mean his.

Henri yawned and began to clamber over the barrier marked Poire. Halfway over, he gasped and tried to go backward, but the dark figure he’d glimpsed grabbed his shoulders and yanked him into the straw.

He landed on something soft, but was immediately flipped over and pinned. Straw poked hard into the back of his neck as his assailant’s forearm pressed into his throat. Henri tried to suck in air and the pressure lessened. Abruptly, the figure let go and backed away.

“You startled me,” she said, as if it had been his fault she’d tried to strangle him.

He recognized the voice: Sylvie, the duchess’s maid who had fetched him that afternoon. “Oh,” he said dumbly, shaking from head to foot.

“You shouldn’t have come back so late,” Sylviesaid. “I’ve been waiting for over an hour.” She dusted herself off with one gloved hand and unsealed her dark lantern. She wore snugly fitting riding leathers, a man’s shirt and tall boots. His eyes widened. Her figure was slender, her hair concealed beneath a cap; if he’d seen her from a distance, he might not have recognized her as a woman. Perhaps that was the point. A lone woman wandering the stableyards at this time of night might run into unpleasantness.

“Waiting for what?” Henri asked.

He was unprepared to be clouted on the shoulder. He barely ducked in time to evade the worst of the blow. “Such is the loyalty of a stableboy!” Sylvie hissed. “You’ve forgotten already! Madame will be very disappointed!”

Henri sat down in the straw. He hadn’t intended to sit, but there he was, sitting, his fingers clenched around prickly handfuls. “Her Grace?” he whispered.

“Yes, fool! Did you not say you could help her to escape, if there was need? Well, now there is need! For her, and she goes nowhere without me, and we will also have a guard, one of the eunuchs. And she says—she says—we must have you. Though I can’t see you’ll be much use. The eunuch and I can take care of the horses well enough, if we take it in turns to guard her. But madame must have what she wants. So you must come with us.”

Henri blinked. “Now?”

Sylvie grabbed his shirt, hauled him upright, and shook him. “I did not come here for my health, idiot boy! Prepare your things, we are leaving tomorrow.”

Wildly, Henri calculated in his head. He needed a stick and some dirt to make any complex computations, but even without that he knew already he didn’t have enough money to feed himself on a journey of any length, much less the duchess and her retinue of two as well. Nor would he be able to earn sufficient funds along the way, not for so many. “It won’t be enough,” he said, trying to make her understand. “I will gladly give it, all of it, but it won’t get us far. What will we do when my money runs out?”