The Diamond Slipper

Chapter Fourteen

"Where's Mathilde?" Cordelia stared at the red-cheeked girl in her bedchamber. The girl was bobbing curtsies, her cheeks growing redder by the minute.

"I don't know, m'lady. Monsieur Brion said I was to look after you. Shall I help you with your gown?" Nervously, she came toward the princess, who continued to stare at her as if she were some unknown member of the animal kingdom.

Cordelia spun on her heel and marched into the salon, which was lit only by two candles on the mantel. "Monsieur Brion!" She called for him at the top of her lungs. And when he didn't immediately materialize, she yelled again. She paced the Turkey carpet, from window to door, her hands gripped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.

"Princess. Did you call?" Brion appeared from the kitchen. He was still fully dressed in livery and would remain so until the prince had gone to bed. He looked anxiously at the princess.

"Where's Mathilde? What's that girl doing in my chamber?" She rapped out the questions, so filled with dread that her voice was a high-pitched staccato rattle, bearing almost no resemblance to her own.

The majordomo pulled nervously at his chin. "The prince told me to summon Elsie to attend Your Highness," he explained.

"Where is Mathilde?" She took a step toward him and involuntarily he edged backward.

"The prince said Mistress Mathilde had to go somewhere." Brion was wringing his hands apologetically as the white-faced Fury, eyes ablaze, advanced on him.

"Where? Where has she gone?"

Unhappily, he shook his head. "The prince didn't say, my lady."

"But Mathilde. She must have said something." It was unreal to imagine that Mathilde would disappear without a word.

"I didn't see her, my lady. She was in your bedchamber last I knew, then the prince came up before the banquet and spoke with her. I haven't seen her since."

Cordelia was beginning to feel as if the world had tilted into insanity. This couldn't be true, it couldn't be happening. "Her belongings. Has she taken them?"

"I don't believe so, madame." To his relief, he saw that the princess was beginning to calm down. The light of madness was slowly dying in her eyes, and her voice had resumed its normal pitch and volume.

"Have you been told to send them on anywhere?"

He shook his head. "Not as yet, my lady."

Cordelia nodded slowly. "Very well. Thank you." She turned and went back to her own room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Elsie still stood where she'd left her in the middle of the room, gazing anxiously at the door through which her mistress had disappeared-and now reappeared.

"Should I help you now, my lady?"

Cordelia didn't appear to hear. She resumed her pacing, nibbling at a loose thumbnail. Why would Michael send Mathilde away? How had he done it? Mathilde would not have abandoned Cordelia willingly or easily. He must have come up here before the banquet had begun, after she had defeated him so soundly at the card tables. And he'd said nothing to her the whole evening.

The banquet in the opera house had not begun until ten o'clock and had dragged on interminably into the early hours of the morning. Michael had sat beside her, saying nothing to her, confining all his conversation to those around them. They were all strangers to Cordelia, and because her husband didn't address her, neither did anyone else, leaving her feeling as if she were sitting invisible in a freezing void. Once the dauphin and his bride had been escorted from the opera house, the prince had said in a cold undertone that she now had his leave to return to their own apartments, where he would join her at his pleasure.

Cordelia didn't make the mistake of assuming she had a choice. She had simply curtsied and left. She had come up to bed and found Mathilde gone, just as Michael had planned it.

Her head began to ache anew and her body throbbed with weariness. She had been up and wearing court dress for almost twenty-four hours, and the heavy weight of damask and the constriction of her corset was a torment in her fatigue. She was too tired tonight to deal with this. She wanted Mathilde. And the thought of what Michael might have done to her nurse buzzed in her brain like a tormenting bee. She had never believed anyone could defeat Mathilde, could force Mathilde to do anything she didn't believe was right. So how had he compelled her departure?

"Should I help you, madame?" Elsie ventured again. She knew what she was supposed to do but didn't know how to respond when she was prevented from performing her tasks. Experience, however, had taught her that if she failed to perform those tasks, she would be blamed regardless of the reason.

"Yes… very well, yes, you may assist me," Cordelia said vaguely.

Relieved, Elsie ran forward to unbutton, unhook, unlace with reverent hands. Cordelia stood stock-still, offering little help, too absorbed in her own thoughts to be really aware of what was happening. She shrugged into the white velvet chamber robe that Elsie held for her, and sat on the dresser stool, beginning to unpin her hair.

"Oh, I must do that for you, madame." Elsie leaped forward. "I've never waited on a lady before," she confided, pulling out pins hastily. "So I hope I'm doing things right." She picked up the ivory-backed brush and began to draw it through the rippling blue-black cascade falling down Cordelia's back.

Cordelia didn't respond. She was still thinking furiously. Mathilde would come back. She would come to her even if she'd been forbidden by the prince. If she was physically capable of doing so.

The door opened behind her and her heart jumped into her throat. She looked at him in the mirror in front of her. He stood in the doorway. He had removed his sword, but apart from that was still dressed in his wedding finery, the gold emblem of Prussia pinned to his sash.

She drew the folds of her chamber robe tighter around her as she rose to face him. "Where is Mathilde, my lord?" She spoke without inflection, but her eyes were filled with anger and contempt. Not a shadow of fear. She had gone beyond fear.

"She has been replaced as your abigail." He smiled his asp's smile. "I told you that you had need of a woman with more experience of the duties of a lady's maid at Versailles than some elderly nursemaid."

"I see." Still her voice was flat. "Elsie informs me that she has no previous experience of an abigail's work anywhere, let alone Versailles. But I daresay you assume that she comes by the required knowledge in some other way. Perhaps she breathes it in, or it comes to her in dreams."

Michael's pale eyes became opaque. For a minute he couldn't believe what he was hearing. This cold, derisive sarcasm from a chit of a girl and in front of a servant to boot. Then a muscle twitched in his cheek, and the pulse in his forehead began to throb, and his eyes became cold and deadly.

Cordelia knew that she had not aroused his anger to this extent before, and despite the desperation that fueled her defiance, sick tremors of fear started in her belly. She fought them down, forcing herself to meet the threat in those terrible eyes. What could he do to her worse than he had already done?

"Get out of here!" He spun round to the petrified Elsie, who with a little gasp dropped the hairbrush and fled the room, ducking past the prince in the doorway.

Michael flung the door closed. He came across to her and she stood her ground, still meeting his eye, her chin held high.

"By God," he said softly, "I will break you, madame. I will break you to the saddle like any self-willed filly." He took the sides of the velvet robe and threw them open. His eyes dropped to her body, white, naked, its perfection marred only by the traces of his previous possessions.

An hour later he left her. He was humming to himself as he went into his dressing room, where his valet still waited to put him to bed. He had not removed his clothing beyond what had been necessary to achieve his purpose and now, still humming softly, allowed the man to undress him and hang up his clothes in the armoire. The valet assisted the prince into his chamber robe and then stood waiting, his hands folded, to see if his master had further orders for him.

"Bring me a glass of cognac and then go."

The man obeyed, bowed a good night, and soundlessly left the room, thankful for his dismissal. He had found it impossible to close his ears to the ugly sounds coming from the princess's bedchamber.

Michael drained the cognac in one gulp. Taking from his pocket the key that he'd automatically transferred from his suit coat, he went over to the chest, unlocked it, and took out the present journal. He refilled his glass, then stood leafing through the daily entries. He sipped from his glass, his mouth taut. Had the lock been opened deliberately that morning? He couldn't believe that it had been anything but an accident. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, at any rate. It was extraordinary that he could have been careless, but it seemed the only explanation-he must not have secured the padlock properly the previous night. He had perhaps been overly anxious to get to his wife.

He walked into his adjoining bedchamber and placed the journal on the secretaire. Then he returned to the chest. He drew out the volume for 1765. His mouth grew thinner, his frown deeper, as he read through the entries. Throughout, his comments indicated that Elvira bloomed, daily increased in beauty. How much did that beauty owe to her triumph at cuckolding her husband?

He snapped the book closed and drained his glass once again. He replaced the journal in the chest and went back to the secretaire. Dipping quill in the inkstand, he began the day's meticulous entry. It was long, containing as it did a detailed description of the wedding, the demeanor of the royal party, and the subsequent celebrations. Only then did he describe the last hour with his wife.

He placed his pen on the blotter and stared unseeing at the doodling pattern of dripping ink. Cordelia was bidding fair to become as unsatisfactory a wife as Elvira had been. But he had failed with Elvira. He would not fail with this one. He would master this one in life.

Cordelia lay naked on the bed, curled into a tight ball, her body convulsed with violent shivers, dry sobs gathering in her throat. It had been worse… much, much worse than usual. If he had hurt her in rage, she thought, it would have been easier to bear. But he had used her, inflicting pain with an icy deliberation that had negated her very self, had reduced her to an animal, soulless, spiritless, worth no more than a clod of earth.

She knew she had cried out during the worst of it, although she had sworn to herself that she would keep silent. Now her weakness filled her with self-disgust. Perhaps she deserved such treatment. Perhaps she'd invited it with her cowardly cringing. A wave of nausea rose invincible and she rolled off the bed with a moan, reaching for the chamber pot. She could see herself in her mind's eye, crouched on the floor, vomiting helplessly with shock and self-disgust, a trembling, fearful, beaten animal.

But as the heaving of her stomach quieted and cold sweat misted her skin, her brain seemed to clear. The vomiting had somehow purged her spiritually as well as physically. She rose unsteadily to her feet, looking around for something to cover her chilled nakedness. The robe he'd torn from her lay on the floor, and she pulled it on, huddling into it. She looked around the dark room, where the shapes of the furniture stood out gray against the gloom. The window was a black square, but beyond she could see the faintest lightening at the edges of the darkness.

She could not sleep. She could not get back into that bed. She wanted Mathilde, with the deep, overpowering, speechless need of a wounded child for its mother.

Without any clear thought, she left the bedchamber, crossed the salon, and let herself out into the corridor. Candles in wall sconces lit the deserted expanse, and as the door to the apartment closed behind her, a great wave of relief and release broke over her. She was free. Out of the stifling, shackling darkness of her prison. Where she was going or what she was doing were questions that didn't even pose themselves. She clambered painfully onto a broad windowsill overlooking an inner courtyard, gathered the robe securely around her, rested her head on her drawn-up knees, and waited for daylight. Waited for Mathilde.

Leo left a card party just as dawn streaked the sky. He was mildly the worse for cognac. Cards, cognac, and companionship had seemed the only distractions from the niggling unease that made sleep an impossibility. He couldn't separate Cordelia from Elvira for some reason. He was bound to them both by ties whose similarity he couldn't explain to himself. Elvira was his sister, his twin. He loved her unconditionally. Her welfare was his responsibility. And now he was haunted by the idea that perhaps he had failed to meet that responsibility.

Cordelia was a young girl whose life had touched his by chance for a few weeks. He lusted after her. If he was truly honest, he could admit that to himself. But pure lust and a passing responsibility didn't account for what he felt toward Cordelia.

The confused yet obsessional thoughts continued to tumble in his head amid the brandy fumes as he made his way to his own humble room on an outside staircase in the north wing. On an inexplicable whim, he deviated from his course, taking a side stair that led into the corridor outside the von Sachsen apartment. The closer he came to the door, the greater his unease. It was almost like a miasma filling the marble-floored passage.

He walked past the double doors. Turned and walked past them again. Then with an impatient shrug, he swung on his heel and started back the way he'd come. And then he stopped. Slowly, he retraced his steps. A crouched figure huddled on the deep windowsill. The figure was so still he hadn't noticed it at first.

The lustrous blue-black river poured down her back. Her face was turned from him, resting on her knees.

"Cordelia?" He laid a hand on her shoulder.

With a start she turned her head. Her eyes were almost vacant, dark holes in a face whiter than her robe. "I'm waiting for Mathilde."

Leo frowned. "In the corridor? Where is she?"

"I don't know. Michael sent her away. But she won't leave me. I know she won't."

He saw the shadow of the emerging bruise on her cheekbone. And he knew what he had been trying so hard to deny. Gently, he moved aside the robe at her neck. Finger bruises stood out against the smooth white skin. The well of rage was bottomless. Wave after wave broke over him. He saw Elvira, he saw the shadow in her eyes. He saw Cordelia, bereft, her spirit, her courage, her laughter vanquished.

Bending, he lifted her from the windowsill, cradling her in his arms. She said nothing as he carried her away.

He carried her through the quiet corridors and up deserted staircases, his heart filled with rage. She curled against his chest, her arms around his neck. Her eyes were closed, the thick lashes dark half-moons against the deathly pallor of her cheeks, and he thought she slept. Her breathing was deep and regular and he could feel her heart beating against his hand.

At the head of a steep stone staircase, he opened a narrow wooden door onto a small chamber. It was simply furnished with a bed, an armoire, a washstand, two chairs, and a round table beneath the narrow window that looked out onto the Cour de Marbre. It was very much a bachelor apartment.

Leo laid Cordelia on the bed and her eyes opened. They were startled, then frightened, then slowly her gaze cleared and he saw with a surge of relief that she was fully aware, the vacant look in her eyes displaced by knowledge and recognition.

He bent over her and unfastened the velvet robe, slipping a hand beneath her to draw it away from her body. His mouth was tight, his eyes grim as he examined her closely, gauging how badly Michael had hurt her. The marks on her body were not severe, but he knew that the real wounds had been to her self, to the determined, courageous, effervescent spirit that made her what she was.

Cordelia lay still beneath his gaze, her own eyes, fearless now, gazing up at him. She was warm at last and the dreadful shaking had stopped. But Leo's rage and pain were a palpable force in the room. His hands as he raised her arms, her legs, turned her over, were as gentle as a dove's wings, but his eyes were fearsome.

"I don't expect he did this to Elvira," she said softly. "She was different from me. Perhaps she didn't provoke him. I can't seem to help provoking him."

He was not surprised that Cordelia had guessed the source of his mental agony. He had noticed how insightful she was when it came to her friends. He touched her cheek with a fingertip and she smiled.

"It was because I beat him at cards," she said, reaching up to hold his wrist, keeping his hand against her face. "He sent Mathilde away because I made people laugh at him." She turned her face against his hand and kissed his palm. "Please hold me."

Leo sat down and lifted her into his arms. She was fragile, almost insubstantial, reminding him of a skeleton leaf. Her bare skin was soft and warm beneath his hands, and he slid one hand around to cup the roundness of her breast. She moved against him, raising a finger to pull loose his cravat. She kissed the pulse at his throat, and her breath was a sweet rustle of need and longing against his skin.

"I need you to show me how it can be," she whispered with soft urgency. "I need to know that it doesn't have to destroy. It doesn't have to be vile. Once you showed me a little of what it could be like. Show me now, Leo. Please." It was a heartfelt plea, no hint of mischief or seduction.

"Make me whole again," she whispered, raising her head to kiss his mouth, her body lifting slightly on his lap. His hands moved over her of their own accord, tracing the contours of her form, the narrowness of her rib cage, the swell of her breasts, the flat belly.

She seemed to be coming alive under his touch; her body filling again with the vital spirit that made her who she was, opening again like a weather-torn bud under the rays of a sudden sun.

Slipping his hands free, he gently circled her neck, his fingers light as featherdown smoothing away the rough marks of Michael's imprints. He knew that what he was doing was right. Only by vanquishing Michael's prints upon her body could he heal her. "Are you sure you want this now, sweetheart?" he asked quietly. "It's so soon after he hurt you. Are you sure you're ready?"

She could feel her own pulse beating rapidly against his fingers. His eyes were now dark and unreadable, but they seemed to swallow her whole.

"Please," she said again. Her voice was a plea, the residue of her pain and fear lingering, but the need in her eyes could not be denied. It was a need not for passion but for tenderness, for the healing touch that would close the wounds of violation.

He moved his hands to cup her face, tracing the curve of her cheekbones, the line of her jaw. He was terrified of hurting her, of making the wrong move, of frightening her. He passed his hands over her in a delicate caress, almost hesitantly brushing his fingertips over her nipples, looking into her eyes for the first sign of dismay, of withdrawal. And when he saw none, he bent his head to kiss her breasts, taking her nipple into his mouth, suckling, grazing, until he felt the crown of her breasts harden under his tongue.

Cordelia's head fell back against his shoulder, her naked body lying across his lap. She felt herself open and vulnerable, an offering for his eyes, his mouth, his hands, and she yet knew that to feel open and vulnerable here, with Leo, was safe, an essential part of the wonder of loving. Only once had she come close to understanding that wonder, but she knew with every breath she took that at Leo's hands tonight she was going to understand it fully.

He moved his mouth from her breasts to the hollow of her throat. "I'm so afraid of hurting you. I want to touch you, sweetheart, but I need you to tell me if I may."

"Please," she whispered. "Please touch me." She didn't seem able to move, her body was as languid as a cat's in the sun, and yet beneath the surface her blood flowed swift.

Leo's fingers moved between her parted thighs. Again, he hesitated, expecting her to tighten against him, but she remained open, passive, and yet there was nothing passive about the heat of her body or the swift rise and fall of her breasts or the sudden hardening of the sensitive bud that rose under his dancing touch. He watched her face. Her eyes were closed tight, but her lips were warm and red, and there was a translucent glow to her cheeks. "Sweetheart?"

Her eyes opened. She stirred beneath his arousing touch. "I love you, Leo."

He smiled, moved his damp hand up over her belly, shifted her on his lap so that her head fell into the crook of his arm. He kissed her, this time with a touch of his own urgency, his tongue pressing against the barrier of her lips, asking, not demanding, entrance. Her lips parted immediately and his tongue explored the sweet cavern of her mouth. She moved beneath him now, and her own tongue joined tentatively with his.

It seemed to Cordelia that she had abdicated responsibility for her body. It seemed to know all on its own what to do, how to respond. She was aware of something building deep in her belly, a liquid fullness growing in her loins, and now she turned in his arms to press her nakedness against him.

Leo stood up, lifting her with him. She looked up at him and smiled slowly. "Is it time?"

"Only if you wish it," he said quietly, holding her against him, searching her expression. She reached up to touch his mouth with her thumb, running the pad across his lips in an unknowingly sensual gesture that was all the answer he needed.

Leo laid her on the bed again, then swiftly stripped off his clothes. Cordelia hadn't seen a naked man before. She gazed at the lean, powerful frame, the flat belly and narrow hips, the erect shaft jutting from the nest of curly black hair, the long hard thighs. And for an instant her body closed tight, shrinking in upon itself as if in defense against the intrusion of a violent trespasser.

Leo sat on the bed, his hand stroking her belly until he felt her relax again, her body become fluid beneath his touch. He was waiting for a sign and she gave it to him. She reached to touch his erect flesh, her eyes half closed as she felt him, learned his shape, his texture. Making of his strange flesh something she knew and understood. When she guided him within the moist portal between her thighs, she knew that she wanted this man inside her, making her whole as he joined with her in flesh and in spirit.

He gazed intently down into her eyes, looking into her very soul as he held himself at the very edge of her body. "Tell me how you feel, sweetheart."

She knew he wanted to pull something from her, something more than the responses of her body. He wanted to hear her say how much she wanted this. How much she needed it. That without it, she could never be healed, never be whole again.

"I need you so much. I love you so much," she replied, her eyes candid, her tongue lightly moistening her suddenly dry lips. "I want you inside me, Leo."

He drew her legs up onto his shoulders, running his hands down the backs of her thighs, cupping the curve of her buttocks. Then he entered her fully with one long, leisurely, deep movement.

And as she felt him moving within her, Cordelia fell from some great and miraculous height. She tumbled over and over, light as a thread of silk, through a golden ether. Her mouth was dry and she could hear little sobbing cries that on one plane she knew were her own, and when she landed and the liquid rush of her pleasure flowed from her she clung to her lover as he moved again within her, and again, taking his own pleasure now, savoring the glorious tightness of her honeyed sheath, until he withdrew from her and let his own climax cascade over him, his seed spilling warm and wet on her belly and thighs.

She stroked his back as he lay breathless upon her. Her legs had fallen to the bed in an ungainly sprawl, her heart was thudding, her body as limp as a newborn kitten's.

Finally, Leo rolled sideways, relieving her of his weight. He lay on his back, one hand flung across her belly, the other over his eyes. He waited for the guilt, the sour remorse, the biting self-contempt, but he felt only a wondrous joy as if he had both given and received a priceless gift.

"I can endure anything if you love me," Cordelia whispered, stroking his hand as it lay heavily on her belly. "You've made me strong again, Leo. You've given me back myself."

He stared upward at the molding on the ceiling, his joy and confidence seeping from him like lifeblood from a wound. If he loved her, how could he endure that she should go back to Michael?

"I will take you away from Michael," he said. "But I have to plan. If we act in haste, it won't work. It will be too easy to pursue us, and Michael has every legal right to do as he wishes with a runaway wife. Do you understand, Cordelia?" He sat up, caught her beneath the arms, and drew her up facing him. He cupped her face. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Cordelia nodded and smiled trustfully. "Yes. I will wait. And I will endure." She touched his face. "I swear to you that it won't be so bad now that I have you to love me. Nothing can touch me now, Leo. Nothing."

He shook his head almost impatiently. He had less faith than Cordelia in the power of mere emotion as shield and buckler. "You must go back now," he said heavily. "I will work as fast as I can to get you away, but for now…"

"Yes, I understand." She smiled, the same vibrant smile he had learned so reluctantly to love. "If only I could find out what happened to Mathilde." Her smile was wiped clean from her face and she stared in horror. "He couldn't have had her killed… or… or imprisoned, could he?"

"Of course not," Leo said with a confidence he didn't feel. Michael wouldn't resort to murder, he was certain, but an oubliette in some dark French prison wouldn't be hard to arrange for an errant servant.

Hurriedly, he threw on his clothes, while Cordelia shrugged into the robe. Her color had returned and the white velvet now accentuated her radiant beauty instead of drowning her deathly pallor.

"Let me carry you. Your feet will freeze on the floors." Marble and stone were hard on bare feet, and Cordelia didn't demur as he swung her easily into his arms. She felt very different this time. Stronger, firmer, more supple, no hint of leaflike frailty.

"I can defeat Michael," Cordelia said into his ear. "I am stronger than he is. I don't need to prey upon people in order to feel powerful. I will beat him at his own game, Leo."

"And what happened the last time you tried that?" he asked dryly. Much as this return of the vital Cordelia delighted him, he was only too painfully aware of the dangers.

"I'll be careful," she said after a minute. "I won't make the mistake of gloating again."

They turned onto the corridor that housed the von Sachsen apartments, and Leo felt Cordelia tense in his arms. His mouth tightened. The thought of putting her back into that hellhole filled him with revulsion, but he could see no alternative. Not for the immediate future.

As they approached the door a figure emerged from a corner of lingering shadows not yet pierced by the early light.

"Mathilde?" whispered Cordelia, almost in disbelief. Then she was struggling in Leo's hold. He set her down and she ran barefoot toward the woman who held out her arms to receive her.

"There, baby, there, baby," Mathilde crooned, stroking her hair, her back. Her eyes, sharp and bright and shrewd, looked over her nursling's head at the viscount. She seemed to read everything she needed to know in his face, because she nodded and a grim little smile touched her mouth.

"What did he do to you, Mathilde?" Cordelia straightened, pushing her hair out of her eyes, her retreat into babyhood passed. "Did he hurt you?"

"Bless you, no, dearie," Mathilde said briskly. "But he's turned me off without a character, without a sou, just the clothes on my back. But never you fret, Cordelia, he'll not keep me from you."

"But what will you do? Where will you go? I can give you money, of course, but-"

"There's plenty of places for a body to lie quiet in this palace," Mathilde told her. "The place is a small city, with staircases and nooks and crannies everywhere. I'll be around, dearie. I'll be watching you even if you don't often see me." She didn't say that the prince had given her a choice of leaving quietly, or of being arrested on a charge of theft and spending the rest of her natural life in the Bastille, her nursling lost to her forever. The threat still hung over her if the prince ever laid eyes on her again.

She didn't say this, but Cordelia made a good guess. She looked at Leo, a question in her eyes.

"I'll take care of Mathilde," he said, turning to the elderly woman. "Cordelia will need you until I can get her away from her husband. I'll hide you and we'll contrive somehow that you should see her often."

Mathilde looked shrewdly at Cordelia, then again at the viscount. Then she nodded, but this time with brisk satisfaction. "Well, that's as it should be," she said obliquely. "I always knew it had to be. The little one will only love once. Just like her mother."

She drew Cordelia to her again and kissed her. "I'll get you something that will give you some respite from that brute of a husband, don't you worry now."

"What kind of thing?" Cordelia was immediately curious. Mathilde was as devious as she was clever, and she knew many strange arts. If she were pitted against Michael, Cordelia would put her money on her nurse anytime.

"Never you mind."

"Listen to me, Cordelia." Leo spoke urgently. He didn't have Cordelia's faith in Mathilde's ability to draw Michael's teeth, and even if he did have, the woman was offering no immediate solution. "You must promise me that you won't provoke him again."

"I can't let him think he's beaten me," she said fiercely.

"Swallow your pride for a while. Just until I can contrive something." He tipped her chin, forcing her to look up at him.

"I'll be very careful," she conceded. "Not good enough! Do you love me?" "You know that I do."

"And you have put this hideous situation in my hands. Haven't you?" "Yes, but-"

"Therefore you will do as I tell you. I cannot help you if you don't do as I say. Is that clear, Cordelia?"

She hesitated, wanting to agree but knowing that her spirit would not allow her to give Michael even the illusion of victory. Then footsteps sounded from along the corridor behind them. Heels taptapping on the marble. Voices came closer. One of them belonged to a courtier acquaintance of Michael's. Cordelia had vanished like a white wraith through the door to their apartment and Mathilde had melted into the shadows, before Leo could move.

Leo swore under his breath. She had not promised. Didn't she understand that she had laid upon him the heaviest burdens a man could bear-her trust and her love? He had carried those burdens for Elvira too, but he had dropped them. He would not fail Cordelia in the same way. But dear God in heaven, how was he to protect her when she deliberately courted danger?

Cordelia closed the door to the salon. Monsieur Brion stood in the kitchen doorway, his expression startled as he stared at the barefoot princess in her chamber robe. Cordelia looked across the room and met his gaze steadily. She knew he and all the servants knew what went on at night behind her bedchamber door. Just as she knew how Michael misused them when it pleased him. Now, with her clear-eyed gaze, she offered the majordomo an alliance.

Monsieur Brion bowed. "Good morning, madame." Casually, he adjusted an ornament on a side table before saying, "His highness has not yet rung for his coffee."

Cordelia smiled. "Thank you. You may send Elsie to wake me with my chocolate in ten minutes."

Monsieur Brion bowed again, and Cordelia went into her own room. She threw off the chamber robe and climbed into bed. The sheets were cold. She pulled up the coverlet and smiled to herself. She would not break. Now she would not break. She had the love of her life. She knew what love was. And knowledge was power. The knowledge of love would protect her.