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

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СКАЧАТЬ the night had just passed. She felt as if days had gone by since she had summoned Henri to her audience chamber. How long would it be before the duke found a way to take her life? What would he do to her before he had her beheaded? Was it true that one could still see after one’s head had been sliced off? She felt like a bird fluttering against the bars of its gilded cage. She picked up her sketchbook, then put it down. She rubbed her wrists, though they bore no marks.

      Kaspar said, “Shall I call for a bath for Your Grace?”

      He always spoke first. She had never noticed particularly, but Arno always deferred to him, perhaps because Kaspar was older. He was nearly thirty, she thought, while Arno had been delivered to the palace at eighteen and was now not quite twenty-three. She had asked Sylvie their ages; it was difficult to tell when they never put on a man’s muscle, at least not in the way one was used to seeing.

      “Where is Sylvie?” she asked. Baths were Sylvie’s duty.

      “Sleeping, Your Grace,” Kaspar said. He stood at ease, his big hands resting on his sheathed twin swords. From this close, she could see the thin white scars that marked his forearms, old injuries from training with blades. His eyes were pale gray. “Shall I wake her?”

      “No,” Camille said. She wanted a bath, but not enough to wait for one to be prepared. She had to think. And Sylvie had slept little recently, instead spending most of a night and day finding Henri and arranging to bring him to Camille. She should let Sylvie sleep now, she realized, because they must escape the palace tonight, she and Sylvie and her eunuchs as well; she could not allow them to die because of her. To die in her service was one thing. To die for nothing was quite another.

      Right now, her brain spun like the innards of a clock, getting nowhere.

      Arno stepped forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. For a moment, everything in her mind stopped. His hand was so warm. She drew strength from it. He said, in his gentle tenor, “Please, Your Grace, let us put you to bed.”

      Kaspar added, “We will keep you safe.”

      Surely they knew that was impossible. “That is your duty,” she said, to test his response.

      “That is our duty and our desire,” Kaspar said. “Do not doubt, Your Grace, that we will care for you to our deaths and beyond.”

      She could not protest his dramatic words; if she were killed, they would be killed as well. She nodded.

      Arno added, before he let his hand fall from her shoulder, “You may ask anything of us. Anything we can do for you, we will. Let us serve you tonight.”

      Camille drew a deep breath. She could not delay any longer, nor did she care to do so. “The guards at the outer walls change in the hours before dawn. We will leave then, both of you and Sylvie and I, and we will—” She hesitated the barest moment, remembering Henri with a rush of affection. “The stableboy is loyal to me. He will help us to hide until we can go.” If Michel discovered what the boy had done…and she was gone, and all her most treasured servants and horses…no. She could not abandon him to that. “The boy Henri will come with us, as well.”

      Kaspar knelt before her, touching his forehead to her foot. “As you commanded, all is prepared for a rapid escape. I will follow you, Your Grace.”

      “Arno?”

      The younger guard knelt beside Kaspar. “Your Grace, I—I think I should not go. Not at first.”

      Kaspar sucked in an audible breath.

      “Don’t,” Arno said, touching Kaspar’s arm. Camille watched the interplay keenly; Kaspar did not look at him. Because he thought Arno’s plan unwise, or out of fear for his friend?

      Arno said, “Someone will need to gather information, about pursuit. I could come to you later, on the road, or send someone I can trust. It is better me. You see, Vilmos will protect me. His mother was my mother’s cousin. It is not his fault I was cut, and ever since he found me he has watched over me. Also, now he owes you something as well, and will speak for you among the palace guard. I would not flaunt my presence in the palace. I have friends in the town.”

      “Your Grace, he would be in grave danger from the duke,” Kaspar argued. “It is true, Vilmos’s loyalty to the duke is not strong, but—”

      Camille’s suspicions were confirmed. Vilmos was not utterly enamored of her husband. She said to Arno, “It is more risk than I should ask you to bear.”

      “It is your right to ask me to go to my death,” Arno said. “I do not think this will be my death.”

      Camille thought. Kaspar was distressed, but Arno was correct. Arno’s actions might save them all from death. She nodded, once. “Arno will stay. We will have Henri to help care for the horses on the journey.”

      Kaspar closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. He bent and kissed her foot.

      Camille and her guards packed the few personal items they would take with them; the rest would be retrieved from a hiding place outside the palace walls. They quickly finished, but nearly six hours still stretched out before they could depart.

      Camille said, “We will let Sylvie sleep a while longer, then send her to the stables to find the boy. Until then, you must also rest.”

      “Your Grace,” Kaspar said. “Let us serve you tonight.”

      Custom encouraged using eunuchs for sexual pleasure. In all their time together, Camille had never asked. She’d been loyal to Michel, even after he’d betrayed her a thousand times. This afternoon, she’d betrayed him with Henri. To do this with her eunuchs—one of whom would go into desperate danger for her sake—seemed suddenly to loom as an important mark of how she’d changed. Also, it would be better than lying in her bed alone, staring at the ceiling and worrying herself to flinders. She said, “Thanks to you both. I would like that, very much.”

      She let Kaspar take her hand and lead her to her bedchamber, Arno trailing behind.

      Kaspar lit tapers on her nightstand and dressing table; after she sat down on her bed, Arno knelt and removed her slippers. The stubble on his skull glinted gold in the candlelight. He set the slippers aside but remained at her feet, his head bowed, the nape of his neck vulnerable.

      When several seconds passed and he did not move, Camille said, “What is it, Arno?”

      He shook his head, then bowed lower and kissed the tops of her feet, more sensually than Kaspar had done, warm damp pressure that sent tingles up her legs. She reached down and laid her palm on the crown of Arno’s head. His skin was hot, his stubble like a cat’s tongue and so pleasant to touch that she rubbed her hand over all of it that she could reach, ending with a tug at his ear. She sat back on her elbows. “Both of you, join me.”

      “If I may, Your Grace?” Kaspar asked. He indicated his weapons. She nodded, and he divested himself of his harness, laying his throwing knife on her night table and his swords on the carpet next to her bed. Arno did the same.

      Her two guards did not completely disrobe; they never had done so in her sight, and she had not liked to demand that of them. Kaspar kept his loose trousers, and Arno his long drawers. She wasn’t sure if their modesty was meant to protect them from her gaze or to protect her from having to see that they were not whole men. She thought of telling them that it did not matter, but then another СКАЧАТЬ