The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover

She lifted her hair in front of her shoulder and fell back onto her coverlet. The tasseled golden ropes binding back the curtains could symbolize her bondage here in the palace. Perhaps she should have insisted that Henri take her here, but he’d been so afraid, and so defiant of his fear, that she had done what he asked. It had been a small thing. He was doing her bidding, after all. She refused to remember her small moments of fear, when she’d thought she would not be able to convince him to take her.

He had surpassed her expectations. There was something to be said for vigor and enthusiasm when accomplishing a difficult task. Being fucked over a bench had been unexpected. Caught up in sensation for which she had not planned, for long moments she’d been unaware of her surroundings, lost in the intensity of being fucked by a partner whom she could not see.

If Henri had been the duke, she would have wanted to keep an eye on him. She would have been unable to relax even a fraction. As it had happened…she had been surprised by her own response. Perhaps because she had known she could stop Henri at any moment she chose? The duke’s threats had always been present in the back of her mind, but for those moments with Henri, she had taken something for herself. How much risk would there be in summoning him again? It might take several tries before he impregnated her. If he failed, would she be able to remain hopeful, and find another potential sire?

Soon, she’d be expected to give herself to the duke. His pleasure would be at issue, and her life.

Until then, she had only herself to please. She lifted her hand and ran it down her belly, pressing in lightly with her nail, then sliding her fingertip between the folds of her quim. She circled her bud, then pressed in. She twitched inside, as if in residual orgasm. She still had life in her, even after what had gone before. She rubbed herself again, sliding her other hand to join the first, using that one to massage her outer lips, pressing into the finger on her bud. Her arousal rose and spread slowly, like golden light. She thought of riding, she and her bay mare Guirlande cresting a ridge near the east boundary just as the sun vaulted over the hills, her groom and guards far outdistanced for a moment alone, a moment of peace.

She trembled into climax, each gentle spasm flooding her with another liquid wash of delight. When it was over, she slipped beneath her coverlet and linens, curled on her side with her knees drawn up, and coasted into a deep, satisfying sleep.

“Your Grace.”

Camille blinked and stared up at the duke’s chamber servant, Vilmos. He wore his usual blue livery trimmed in gold, and carried one of her heavy silk robes over one folded arm. His thick neck, pale hair and heavy features could give the impression of stupidity, though she knew he was crafty and perhaps more intelligent than his master the duke. His eyelids always looked sleepy and full; she could never tell what he was thinking, or how far his loyalty extended. Presumably the duke did not fear him, or he would never allow him into his bedchamber. If she were the duke, she would be more cautious.

Camille swallowed and said, with as much alertness as she could muster, “Where is His Grace the duke?”

“He is waiting for you below,” Vilmos intoned. “I am to bring you and your escort.”

So she was to be summoned like one of his concubines. Again. Vilmos would ensure she did not refuse. “I am ready.”

He held out her necklace and earrings and waited while she put them on, then wrapped her impersonally in the red silk robe, knelt and inserted her feet into embroidered slippers, and led her through her rooms. Camille took a moment to be grateful that she wasn’t being taken to the duke naked, as she had been on other occasions. She suspected that had been the order, but Vilmos had given her the robe for his own private purpose. She wondered what that meant about his relationship to her husband. Could Vilmos, perhaps, be coerced to her side? And if so, what would be the best advantage she could gain?

She glanced at Vilmos, but he appeared lost in his own thoughts. She knew the game of conspiracy, from her youth in the court of the king, but Vilmos showed no hint of it. She was building castles from sand. A single gesture of humanity did not mean Vilmos would betray her husband. Perhaps he merely pitied her as she grew older.

Kaspar and Arno awaited them in the corridor. Though their muscularity was less impressive than Vilmos’s due to their castration at a young age, they were of a height with him and she immediately felt less vulnerable.

She held her head high as they walked through opulent corridors, past the occasional courtier or footman or maid, and once past a courtier and a maid copulating in an alcove with enthusiastic gasps, at least until they noticed Vilmos’s steely gaze. Camille involuntarily stepped back against Kaspar as Vilmos shot out a meaty hand, seized the maid’s shoulders, and dragged her free of her petrified partner with an audible sucking sound. “You,” Vilmos addressed the man, one of the lesser land barons whom Camille affected not to recognize. “Leave.”

Grabbing at his trousers, the baron backed away, eyes fixed on Vilmos until he rounded a corner and scuttled off. Vilmos clamped one hand around the maid’s upper arm and with his other, tugged her gray dress and shift back down over her hips. “Marrine, you are late for your duties tonight,” he said reproachfully, and dragged her along with their procession. One of her husband’s concubines, Camille guessed. Marrine stood barely as tall as Vilmos’s elbow and was thin as a wraith except for her exuberant bosom. Straggles of violently red hair escaped her sober gray cap. A red suck-mark was clearly visible on her neck.

Camille hoped Marrine had not recognized her. Why should she? Minus her gown and cosmetics, with her hair pouring down her back and Kaspar’s and Arno’s protective bulks blocking her view? Then again, why should she care? That would be less embarrassing than being shamed by her own husband. She didn’t doubt the whole palace knew the duke’s proclivities. The courtiers seemed to remain loyal to him despite how he treated his duchess. Perhaps it was simply easier to do so. If she had not rebelled, why should they? And how many of them knew for a fact how she’d been treated? If they were wise, they treated two-thirds of everything they heard in the palace as rumor.

Vilmos led them through a door flush with the wall paneling and down a narrow staircase lit by lamps burning perfumed, musky oil. Camille wrinkled her nose, then quickly repressed her reaction. She was obviously heading for another of the duke’s outlandish scenarios. He planned to make her watch. Inwardly, she sighed. She did not have the stomach to watch his pale buttocks pumping over some pliant maid in a strange costume for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, she had little choice. Had the last one been a milkmaid or an extravagantly female version of a courier? No, there had been two. One in a blacksmith’s apron and nothing else, the other wielding a bellows in ways Camille had found more humorous than erotic.

The stairs changed from carpeted wood to carved limestone. She had never traveled this passage before. Only servants and prisoners were obligated to visit the underlevels of the palace. She might be taken there if she were to be beheaded. Inwardly, she shuddered at the thought. Outwardly, she focused her gaze on Kaspar’s big shoulders moving down the stairs ahead of her.

She heard a clanking noise as Vilmos drew out a bunch of keys to unlock the red door she glimpsed at the bottom of the staircase. She guessed they must be adjacent to the cool rooms where cheese was stored, and for a wild moment considered what erotic use the duke had found for the duchy’s famed tart blue.

Camille entered the chamber, her guards swiftly positioning themselves at her shoulders. Vilmos had already dragged Marrine to the duke, who chucked her under the chin before he waved his hand toward a table heaped with furs. Vilmos lifted her as if she weighed as little as a broomstraw and deposited her there. Marrine did not fight him as he removed her cap and her red hair sprang free; she reached over her shoulder and began to unbutton her dress.

The duke strode over to Camille, reached out one manicured finger and hooked it beneath her jeweled collar. Camille took care not to jerk away; she did not want to be choked. “You’ve taken pleasure today,” he barked. “I know it.”

He didn’t know for sure, or he would have acted much more swiftly and decisively. “You keep an army of concubines, Your Grace,” Camille replied. “Do you begrudge me satisfaction? You’ve made no move to provide it yourself.”

“Women were placed on this earth to please men,” the duke said. His plump lips curved behind his silky gray beard, but his cold blue eyes did not change expression. “It has been a long time since you have pleased me.” He snorted. “It is a pity you had the time to dress before Vilmos brought you to me. Would you have liked to parade the palace naked, I wonder? Would your lover have seen you?”

His finger still crooked beneath her collar, the duke stepped closer. His floor-length robe of dense velvet was trimmed all down the front in silky black fur. One step more and the fur brushed her robe, raising a nasty prickle.

“You will tell me who it is,” he said. “I can make you afraid of me.”

She was afraid. He held her life in his hands. He simply didn’t want to see it. He wanted to break her anew each time, like a boy plucking wings off a populace of flies.

“I’ll have an answer out of you, Camille.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said, hating herself for letting him bully her, but hating him even more.

His left hand rubbed up and down her cheek, his hot fingers squeezed by rows of rings. The set stones caught the light and glowed dully, angrily: ruby, emerald, topaz, amethyst. Square plates of gold interspersed with hunks of tourmaline banded his thick wrist. She stared at the stones rather than look up at his leering face. She could smell the perfumed oil in his beard and the cloves he chewed for his breath.

At last he released her collar. He trailed his finger down and squeezed her breast through her robe. Perhaps she was to be his vessel tonight. He had to fuck her at least once, in case she had managed to become pregnant that afternoon. She wasn’t sure how she was going to manage that part. She closed her eyes, feeling her nipple draw tighter at the duke’s manipulations. Given enough time to prepare herself, this could be bearable. Just once, and never again. Just once—nausea strangled her. She could not. She would do anything if she never had to see his prick again.

She stared at his hand as his fingers pressed painfully into the soft flesh of her breast. His other hand grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to her knees. “Have you learned to swallow a cock yet? I’m told a lack of breath is an effective incentive. Vilmos, perhaps you could hold her, so she may learn properly how to please me.”

Camille couldn’t help her flinch, a choked whimper escaping her lips. The duke shoved her away onto the floor. He traced his foot over her bare fingers, as if contemplating how best to crush them, then shifted and ground his toe into her quim. “You are less amusing than you once were,” he said. To the air he said, “There is a throne for Her Grace. Secure her there.”

A spectator again. Relief drenched her. Arno glanced at her apologetically as he strapped her arms to the ornately carved chair. He settled at her feet like a faithful hound, his shaven head almost touching her knee. Kaspar stood behind the chair, a looming shelter. She could feel the warmth of his body on the back of her neck.

Camille had a clear view of the cellar room, which was carpeted in plush red silk and hung with erotic tapestries she recognized as having once hung in the duke’s bedchamber. She’d always despised them, because the women were always depicted being taken unwillingly, if one could guess from their stark facial expressions. An ebony table held a basin and pitcher; another held wine and cups. She could particularly see a side view of the fur-heaped table where Marrine reclined, naked and with her hips elevated on a pillow. A pile of cut roses on long, thorny stems lay near her. No costumes tonight, then, unless someone was to wear the flowers.

The duke unfastened his wide, jeweled belt and tugged it free. He draped it over one shoulder, the buckle dangling in front. His robe fell open, baring his naked body. He was thickening around the waist and sagging in the chest but his legs were still powerful. His prick hung turgidly; he stroked it as he lounged in a chair similar to Camille’s, though his boasted a padded, embroidered seat.

Camille glanced at Marrine, then at the duke, unsure of his intentions. He was not inclined to restraint. She lifted her chin, anticipating a new threat to be faced.

“Vilmos,” said the duke.

His servant turned, to face her, Camille realized. He wore knee breeches, stockings and flat shoes with his uniform jacket. He stripped open his jacket and pulled apart the halves of his shirt to reveal a massive chest. His chest hair was only fractionally darker than that on his head, and just as dense. Then he flicked open the buttons on his breeches and withdrew his prick, partially erect and already thick as Camille’s wrist.

“Her Grace will accommodate you for a few moments,” the duke said, smiling nastily. “Her mouth must be useful for something other than insolence.”

Vilmos stepped out of his shoes, pushed his breeches down his hips, and stepped out of them as well. He padded over to her in his stockinged feet, one hand holding his cock. He stopped a pace away from her. Arno glared up at him. Camille said softly, “Arno,” and he rose immediately, though without releasing Vilmos from his gaze. She heard Kaspar’s hiss of warning from behind her. At last, Arno stepped back. He rested one warm hand on her shoulder, an unusual liberty, but one which she did not deny him.

Vilmos pressed his shins against her legs and held out his cock. He looked uncomfortable. He did not have the control she did. She would show the duke nothing of her thoughts.

Vilmos was so tall, she scarcely had to bend to reach him. Thankfully, he was clean, his hot skin smelling of chamomile soap. Had he known this would happen? If so, she appreciated the consideration.

In other circumstances, she might have enjoyed tasting so large a cock, but not in front of the duke. She opened her mouth and took him in, sucking hard and dipping her tongue into his slit to speed him along and deny the duke as much pleasure as she could. Vilmos swelled alarmingly fast; she pulled back once, but he pressed against her lips until she opened to him again. He began squeezing and stroking his own length while she licked and suckled at the crown; she could hear him gasping. Just as her jaw was beginning to ache, he tugged himself free of her mouth, his hands falling to his sides.

The duke lifted a ringed hand. “You and the maid will entertain me now.”

Camille nearly laughed at his indifferent tone. She could see his prick nudging his belly, its head shiny with fluid. Had her submission aroused him, or Vilmos’s unquestioning obedience?

She did not want to watch the duke. Pretending he did not exist, she turned to Vilmos and Marrine.

Vilmos cupped his hands beneath Marrine’s thighs and pulled her legs loosely around his waist. She crossed her ankles and smiled like a dancer about to take the stage. He had powerful buttocks that clenched impressively as he guided himself into Marrine, or at least to a point just past the flange of his cock’s head. There he stopped. Marrine squirmed. Her arms, which she had flung provocatively above her head, reached for their joined bodies as if to tug him forward.

Camille wondered if calling out advice was allowed. She suspected Marrine would have better luck being taken from behind. She also suspected this awkwardness was part of the show. What a show! She fought back a laugh. Would they follow with a trip to the menagerie? And where were the food vendors?

Vilmos drew back and thrust forward again, his hands shoving Marrine’s thighs farther apart. At the peak of each thrust, he held still for a moment, and then pushed forward incrementally more. Marrine had uncrossed her ankles and her bare feet bobbed in the air. She was panting. Vilmos let go of her legs and held open her folds, rubbing her bud with his thumb as he continued his stuttered rhythm. Camille could see he’d penetrated a bit farther, and as she watched, he eased in farther still. His cock was dark maroon, shiny with Marrine’s fluids.

Vilmos thrust hard and Marrine groaned, a surprisingly deep sound from so small a woman. The involuntary sound was shockingly arousing, a visceral reminder of her own afternoon with Henri. Camille’s quim dampened as Vilmos sped up his efforts and, all at once, slid fully into his partner. After that, it didn’t take long. Marrine slid among the furs with the force of Vilmos’s thrusts, her fingers plucking at her own nipples. She groaned more loudly. Vilmos was silent, though his fingers kneaded Marrine’s quim, thighs and belly with frantic grasping motions.

Camille breathed slowly, showing nothing, though her body wanted to writhe. Arno’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and she glanced up at him in surprise. She had forgotten he stood there. He smiled at her, an expression she was not accustomed to seeing on the faces of her guards.

“Hurry!” the duke’s voice commanded. Camille twitched in distaste. Vilmos redoubled his efforts. Marrine squealed as she came, then relaxed as she rode out his last few thrusts. She was smiling, and sensuously writhed her shoulders against the furs.

Camille felt no such relaxation. Her bones thrummed inside her legs and arms. Her palms itched. Her quim contracted uselessly around nothing; her clitoris ached for her to press upon it. She focused on Arno’s grip on her shoulder. Gradually, she settled back in her chair. She did not want the duke to hear, or even see, her beg. She’d done so, before. Never again.

She heard a creak of wood as the duke stood. “My robe,” he commanded Vilmos.

Vilmos moved quickly for so large a man, and with surprising dignity for someone whose cock flapped free. He drew the robe from the duke’s shoulders and folded it over the back of his chair, while the duke went over to Marrine. As if inspecting a pastry, he prodded two fingers into her quim. She lifted her legs gracefully and clasped them around his neck.

The duke snorted. “I’ll have none of your theatrics, girl.” He reached up and gripped her calves, pulling them apart and down to his waist. “Vilmos! I require your service.”

Camille thought she saw a flicker of annoyance on Vilmos’s placid face, then it was gone. He bowed and returned to the naked duke. As the duke eased his prick into Marrine—whose smile this time seemed, to Camille, distinctly insincere—Vilmos warmed his hands beneath his arms, then laid them on the duke’s pumping buttocks.

Camille blinked. She had seen the duke use two female concubines at once, or even three, for his amusements, but never anything like this. And Vilmos had no erection whatsoever.

She meant to look away. She did not want to watch the duke, and his eyes were fixed on Marrine’s jouncing breasts, so he would not notice that Camille was ignoring him. But her curiosity kept her watching Vilmos, who had begun to trace his fingers down the crack between the duke’s buttocks. When the duke stopped moving and abruptly called his name, Vilmos bent and ran his tongue along the path where his fingers had been. To Camille’s astonishment, he then pulled the duke’s buttocks apart and began to lick around his hole. She thought he might have dipped into the hole with his tongue, but was not sure.

“Enough!” said the duke, and began to fuck Marrine again. Vilmos kept his hands on his master’s rear, his expression blank. When the duke stopped again and called his name, he worked two fingers into the duke’s hole. The rest of his hand jerked, as if he simulated a spurting prick.

The duke resumed his fucking, but this time Vilmos did not stop what he was doing. After a moment or two, the duke let out a cry such as Camille had never heard from any man and sped up his thrusting. His face had reddened, and sweat dripped from the ends of his hair. She watched Vilmos’s hand, and identified an upward stroke that elicited the duke’s pleasured cries.

The duke came very quickly. That much, Camille thought wryly, had not changed. She was impressed, though, with what Vilmos had done. She had never seen such a thing before, and if she had been watching any man but her husband, she might have found it arousing to see a man penetrated as if he was a woman, and to know that his pleasure came from the hands of his penetrator. The idea of that sort of control excited her in a way she was sure the duke had not intended. She had momentarily forgotten her predicament.

It appeared the show was over. Marrine was licking the duke’s prick clean, and Vilmos was washing his hands and surreptitiously rinsing his mouth with wine. Camille would have appreciated a glass herself. Vilmos brought a cup only to the duke, however.

“Your Grace,” Arno said softly. “Allow me to remove this.”

For a moment, she thought he meant her robe; then she saw his hand on the fur-lined cuff which bound her arm to the chair. She nodded, hopefully with aplomb. Arno set to work on one arm and Kaspar on the other. They both completely ignored the activity on the other side of the room, which she supposed made sense, as they were eunuchs. For the first time, she wondered if any sexual pleasure at all was possible for them. They still had, she understood, their pricks, though their sacs were empty.

When her bindings were entirely removed, she stood, careful to let the blood flow back into her knees before she attempted to straighten. She said, in her most commanding voice, “Do you have further need of me, Your Grace?”

Her husband had drizzled wine from Marrine’s breasts to her thighs, and was currently snuffling in her quim while she swatted at his flanks with a handful of the roses. He waved a negligent hand and said, “Vilmos, take her to her rooms and secure the door. Bring her back to me next week, and we shall see if she is more amenable.” Then he returned to his concubine. She was forgotten. Camille felt cold. The duke’s treatment of her made it obvious that he no longer cared if she became pregnant or not. She was only a toy to him now, and one of which he would soon tire.

Her time was rapidly running out.

CHAPTER FOUR

By the time Henri finished mucking out Guirlande’s stall and carting the soiled straw to compost, the moon was up. He stopped midway back to look at the stars.

Even a stableboy could be dazzled by the glory of the night sky. His heart slowed and swelled with awe. He couldn’t touch the stars, but he had touched the duchess.

He sighed and trundled his smelly wheelbarrow back to the yard. He needed to stop thinking of his afternoon with the duchess, stop making it into more than it had been. She had used him. Hadn’t she?

He couldn’t deny that, secretly, he had wanted her for years. Desire had slowly replaced his earlier fantasies that she’d singled him out for equestrian training because he was somehow special. Now the danger was past, he didn’t even mind she’d used him. There was no other way he could have had her.

How bovine he’d been, blurting out that he would help her escape. As if she would ever need him to rush to her rescue. Her maid was loyal, and her eunuchs. There would be others, too, greater than a stableboy. He wondered if any of them cared for her at all.

He took a last walk down the row of his charges, petting the noses of those horses still awake and eyeing him over their stall doors. He would have to be up early to school Tulipe in the ring, and Lilas needed to be conditioned on the longe line. Guirlande, he sensed, would be coming into season soon, and possibly Tonnelle also. That would mean a trip to one of the far-flung breeding barns and, for him, relative luxury. Not only would he be caring for far fewer horses, he wouldn’t be assigned odd jobs, as when he was easily in view of the stable- master and his chief grooms. He wouldn’t be catching the associated random blows. Even better, the breeding barns were built in past days of unimaginable affluence, for a duke who had loved his horses, so the hayloft where Henri slept would rival—well, he had used to think it would rival the very bedchamber of the duke, but today he had been disabused of that notion. It didn’t matter. Small luxuries were easier to enjoy.