The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover. Victoria Janssen
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“I have work,” he said.
“It can wait. Her Grace wishes to see you.”
At first, he was sure he’d misheard. He stood gaping. He hadn’t seen the duchess in months, even from a distance. He’d even heard whispered rumors the duke had killed her in a wild rage, or that she’d been shut up in an asylum, gone mad from failing to bear a child. Perhaps she had gone mad. It was unheard-of for her to summon a servant as lowly as he. Had he misunderstood? Was he meant to meet with a steward? Still, it would be good to know at least if she lived, and how she fared. Perhaps this woman could give him news; perhaps he could give her a message about the welfare of the horses. Perhaps that was why the duchess wanted to see him; she wanted to personally question him about her horses. “What does she want of me?”
“That is for Her Grace to say. Come, boy. I cannot loiter here all day.”
Henri kept his head down as he followed the maid through a servants’ entrance in the palace’s immense white walls, down a dim corridor, and through a fitted door into the ducal palace. Why had he been summoned? He could not guess if the purpose was good or bad. Or, he told himself, it might be good for the duchess, but bad for him.
The maid walked very quickly, without glancing behind to see if he followed. The floor was polished marble, a gray color that reminded him of winter ice. No one moved through the corridors, a circumstance Henri found chilling, as well; he knew the duke had nearly a hundred servants. Surely some of them would be about. Someone would have to clean this floor. And he knew a few footmen; they spent a great deal of time standing about in corridors, waiting for someone to need them. Where had the footmen gone? The only section of the palace that had no footmen was…but of course he could not be walking through the duchess’s wing of the palace. She saw her servants in an audience room, off the main hall, the one everyone knew from when court was open to the public. This must be merely a different route there.
That still didn’t explain the deserted corridors. The main hall would have even more servants than the duchess’s wing. As the maid led him up a narrow stairway that smelled strongly of lemon and beeswax, he wondered how many bribes their privacy had cost, and why the bribes had been necessary. Then the maid stopped before a mahogany-paneled door inlaid in gold leaf, opened it and gestured for him to go through. Henri did so; she did not follow. The maid shut the door behind him and he heard a thump, as if she had leaned her back against it.
The room was incredibly bright from a chandelier bristling with lit candles and crystalline droplets of the clearest glass he’d ever seen. The light reflected almost painfully from the white marble floor. The walls were hung with tapestries in lush twining, leaflike patterns of blue and gold, dazzling his eyes and muffling sounds. He felt as if he’d stepped inside a jeweled box, like the one in which the duchess had kept the bridle ornaments for Guirlande. Though for all its intricate glamour, the room felt too still; its air had the faintest dusty smell of disuse.
He turned to his right, intending to examine the tapestry more closely, and saw the duchess, immobile as a statue. Truly the duchess, and not some functionary. His breath caught at her beauty and aristocratic bearing. She wore a crimson gown with a belled skirt and a low squared neckline that emphasized her bosom, and more jewels than he’d ever seen in one place at one time, even on a courtier riding to a party. Faceted blood- colored rubies were pinned into her long silver-streaked hair; more rubies dripped from her ears like tiny clusters of grapes. Her pale eyes fixed on him, and he fell immobile from the intensity of her regard. Henri was rarely noticed by anyone. Being noticed by the duchess was like being hit in the chest.
She’d noticed him before. When he was a boy, it had been she who sent her own riding teacher to tutor him as well, for those times when she could not be present to school her own horses. And one time only, Henri had provided cupped hands to boost her foot into the stirrup. He’d been about fifteen then. He still remembered the gold heel on her supple leather riding boot, beneath a lavishly embroidered skirt hem; he’d been afraid to look higher. She’d given him a copper. Only weeks after, she’d been forbidden to ride—it was said her riding astride had prevented her from conceiving an heir. She had never even borne a girl.
She was forty now, and probably past bearing, so it couldn’t hurt for her to ride again, could it? She might defy her husband for such a freedom. Henri remembered how she’d stroked her horses’ necks and pressed her forehead to theirs. He’d watched her, many times. She loved her horses, he could tell, and for that reason he loved her. Horses knew people. One horse might love her if she were cruel, but certainly not all of them. Henri had ridden all of her horses, and every one worked with him in perfect trust. He’d ridden one or two of the duke’s hunters, as well; that had taught him that the duke was cack-handed and deaf to the animals’ body language, for their actions were stiff and awkward. In contrast, the duchess’s horses moved like silk.
“You look enough like my husband,” she said. “It should be possible.”
He couldn’t mistake her meaning. The whispers, the rumors, they were true. Henri couldn’t speak; one wrong word and she could have him caged in the city square and pelted with rotten fruit and rocks. But he couldn’t run away, either, because the duchess had summoned him. She’d had him summoned and he hadn’t fled, as any reasonable person would have done when the nobility took notice of them. If only he did not care. If only it did not matter to him if she bore an heir or if she died.
In this audience room, they were alone. If he were seen alone with the duchess, by anyone at all besides her loyal maid, he would die in the worst way imaginable. So far as he knew, the duchess was allowed no men in her direct presence without her eunuch guards—or without her husband, the duke, of course. Henri stared even harder at a porphyry medallion set into the white marble floor. The cleanliness and luxury made Henri’s knees shake and his balls shrivel. He was probably already doomed, when he had done nothing to harm anyone, nothing but obey the duchess’s maid who’d brought him here like a favorite riding hack.
“Boy? Do you understand what your duchess requires of you? I understand you know something of the breeding of horses, so you should be more than equal to this task.” Her voice was low but commanding. He could not imagine defying that voice.
She approached him, and he shrank from her. Was he supposed to reply? His throat felt stuffed with old hay. Then came the unthinkable—a light touch to his hair.
“Look up.”
Trembling, he did so, as if she tugged his reins.
“Please,” she said. She might as well have been asking for morning ale. Her face was like a silver coin he’d once seen, cleanly cut lips and a long, straight nose, but this close he could see the bruises, carefully covered, along her jaw, and fine lines feathering from the corners of her eyes. Thick swatches of iron-gray streaked the ebony hair that fell past her waist. Her eyes, the cold gray of a winter sky, shone and swelled with water before she blinked, once, and transformed them back to metal.
His world shifted for a moment into some afternoon fantasy, glimpsed in sunlit dust sifting down from the hayloft. He would save her, and she would…have him killed, so no one would know what she had done? “Y-Your Grace,” Henri said. Her gown exhaled costly spices he could not name. His own clothing was pungent from horses and leather and sweat. The maid had directed him to leave his muddy boots behind, so his bare, calloused toes curled against polished stone.
The duchess stood back from him, her skirts unfurling over her jeweled slippers. “If I do not provide an heir within the year, I will be killed, so my husband can take another wife within the bounds of law,” she said flatly. “They will shave my hair and cut off my head. Do you understand? Answer me.”
“Y-yes.”
“I cannot protect you. I am a woman and my command to my husband’s guards is not worth a copper coin.” She paused. “Will you do this for me?”
For her. She would never humiliate herself like this, not to someone like him, unless she truly needed his aid. His mouth felt numb with fear as he nodded and knelt on the marble, searching in vain for another flicker of humanity in her pale,