The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover

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, regal face.

Her crimson gown rustled as she paced to the door, like the caged crow in the stables. He scrambled back to his feet and followed. She had what she wanted of him, as the aristocrats always had what they wanted. It was their right.

How in the world could he even disrobe before her? Much less…less…

She stopped before the door and said, as if discussing her choice of gown, “It’s best done now. My husband will send for me tonight.”

Henri nodded again. What else was he to do?

The duchess opened the door a crack and peered out. She murmured to her waiting maid, then snapped the door closed. Henri twitched. “This way,” she said.

He followed. A delicate wooden chair with a plush red seat and curving arms that ended in carved blossoms hid another door behind swaths of red fabric, embroidered all over with flowers in a deeper red thread. Henri expected darkness, but the corridor of red marble was lit by yellow beeswax candles, sweet-smelling and thick as his forearm, in gold sconces shaped as unearthly smooth disembodied feminine hands, braceleted in cruel red stones. He’d never seen so many candles in his life. Who lit them? Who trimmed away the drips? Ebony chairs lined the walls, each carved with more flowers and accompanied by its own little matching marble-topped table, for what purpose he could not imagine. Each table was bare. The duchess swept down the corridor without glancing at the paintings of flowers in gilt frames, the tapestries populated by gardens and ladies and fat babies, even the carved figure of the duke’s head in white marble whose gaze, blind but all-seeing, made Henri want to hide his eyes. To his relief, he saw no guards.

He had to catch himself when she abruptly halted and withdrew a golden key from her bosom. Hastily, Henri averted his eyes, saw the dirty smear his hand had left on the pale pink wallpaper, and scrubbed it clean with a corner of his sleeve. The key scratched in the lock and the door swung open.

Henri scarcely saw the rooms they passed through now. He retained a blurred impression of fresh flowers and jewel- colored velvet, oval mirrors in frames as wide as his hand, overstuffed tapestried sofas with matching pillows, silver platters of fresh, shiny fruit, sinuous glass oil lamps perfuming the air. When the duchess finally halted, a square wood bed loomed before him, roofed in wood, canopied and curtained in fringed gold silk and piled with tasseled blue pillows—a bed wider than a prize stallion’s loose box and half the size of the hovel where he had been born. Henri had spent his nineteen years sleeping on straw, his spare shirt for a pillow and rats scampering across his discarded boots. Now he was expected to service the duchess on a bed worth an entire village? Impossible. His cock dangled flaccid as an empty sausage casing. He didn’t recognize his own voice when he said, “Stop.”

The duchess turned.

“I—I want—” Henri swallowed.

The duchess gazed impassively at him. She said nothing. She did not have to speak, he realized. He was here; she’d got her way and apparently had no further concern for how the…act proceeded.

He would make her feel something. If he was to die after, then he wanted to die a man, not a silent slave. “I want you in there,” he said as firmly as he could, gesturing toward the room before, a less frightening room.

To his surprise, the duchess retreated without comment, her skirts brushing his leg as she passed. Henri shuddered like a nervous horse and went after her.

This room was huge as well, but at least there was no bed. The duchess said, “If you give me a child, I shall reward you in gold coin.”

Henri’s cheeks flushed with shame. He was not a whore. As if gold would help him, if the palace guards caught him in her chambers. Gelding by hot iron was the first and least of what he would suffer. Delicious anger stiffened his cock, rasping it against his homespun pants, and he found he didn’t care what she thought of him. He hadn’t been asked to be her friend, only her stud. He could do as he liked with her. Anything. In this room, Her Grace the duchess was his to rule.

If he failed, would she find another to do her bidding? He couldn’t bear the thought. He must not fail. For a little while, he must rule her.

“Remove your clothing,” said Henri.

“I cannot. You must help me.”

This problem had not occurred to him. He was not a lady’s maid any more than he was a whore. However, the idea curiously excited him. “Bend over that sofa,” he said. “No, over the back.”

She did exactly as he asked. Bent over like that, her bosom swelled out the top of her gown, almost bursting free. Her face was hidden, but he could see bare white skin at the nape of her neck. Henri circled her, looking from all angles. Buttons bound her into her crimson gown. He’d never seen so many buttons on one garment. He imagined how many hours a seamstress might have spent covering those buttons, sewing them on and painstakingly stitching fabric loops to hold them. He imagined ripping the buttons off, letting them fly everywhere. Instead, he slipped them free down to her waist, then insinuated his hands down her bodice to squeeze enormous soft handfuls of breasts. Her breath hitched. So did his. Her buttocks twitched against his groin. He closed his eyes. Yes, he could do this; his body was brave. Reluctantly, he let go of her and returned to his task.

The gown pooled at her waist. He knew how to unlace a bodice and accomplished that task swiftly. Beneath lay a chemise of fine silk, softer even than her skin. The chemise was meant to be drawn over her head, but the thin silk tore easily and the sound of its ripping traveled straight to his balls. Beneath it she wore nothing. Henri feasted on her exposed vertebrae. He sucked on her neck until he remembered the consequences of leaving a mark and changed his strategy, just in time.

She was breathing unevenly, and he felt fine tremors under his hands. He examined her disarray as if she were a saddle he’d been given to polish, except that this saddle was his to ride upon. He dug his toes into the thick carpet, trying to decide what to do next.

“Hurry,” she said.

He hesitated, then said, “No.”

Stripping off his patched shirt, he flung it aside. His skin tingled, caressed by cool, perfumed air. The heavily embroidered fabric of her skirt crackled as he gathered up fistfuls, his calluses snagging on the nap. “I want you to stay here, like this,” he said.

The duchess did not respond to what he’d said, so he lifted up her skirt—acres and acres of skirt—as if she was a kitchen maid. He finally crushed it as best he could around her waist, revealing another layer of thinner, stiffer skirts. He treated these perfunctorily, arriving finally at her drawers, no different from anyone’s except for being fine red silk. Curious, Henri inspected with his fingers and found a perfectly ordinary slit in the fabric, no gold thread or jewels or even embroidered flowers. But beneath! Perfectly smooth! Was this a sign of her aristocratic birth, or—of course not. Stupid. She had an army of maids to cleanse and shave her.

The image of her and her maids was nearly too much for him; it resembled a painting that hung in the Dewy Rose. Henri stroked one finger down her slit and she quivered, like a horse flicking off a fly. Her steamier heat rose from within, so he could not resist parting her lush folds and sliding his finger deeper still. She was slick as melted butter, ready for him already. He excited her. More likely, he thought, the situation excited her, but who was he to complain? His free hand untied his pants’ drawstring, and his cock fought free.

Booted feet rang in the corridor, blessedly some distance away. His feverish eyes lighted on a padded bench against the wall. He grabbed the duchess’s arm and hustled her to it, holding his pants with his free hand, letting her gown fall where it would. She stumbled and stepped out of it, whispering, “I hear the guards! You must—”

The boots didn’t slow as they approached. “Not for us,” he said. They wouldn’t dare. Not just before he entered her. The boots passed on. The duchess sagged, but only for an instant.

A neat pile of sewing rested on the bench he’d chosen, probably belonging to one of the women who served her. Henri swept it to the floor, all of it. She looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes icy; he took a deep, shaky breath and nudged the fabric carefully away from their feet.

He was relieved when she looked away from him again. She wore the remnants of her chemise and silk drawers with her earrings. Her slippers had disappeared somewhere along the way, but a heavy chain of brilliants collared her neck. He hadn’t even noticed them against the splendor of her gown. Her hair, though mussed, retained its ornate style and jeweled hair ornaments. He could almost imagine her a ten-copper lay, playing at being duchess in one of the bawdy houses down in the town.

She drew the ripped chemise from her body, each arm flowing gracefully. He’d never seen skin so white and smooth. A rich attar of flowers rose from her bared, heated flesh, making him want to wipe his feet on the carpet and cower even as he possessed her. He shoved his pants down his legs; luckily, his cock remained undaunted.

Her hands loosened the string holding her drawers, and slowly, so slowly, dragged them down over lush hips and plump white buttocks. The body of a woman made to bear children, Henri thought, burning even more hotly.

Unable to wait an instant longer, he mounted her from behind in one deep push. She groaned deeply as if he’d struck her. Henri savored her cunt’s scalding grasp as long as he could before beginning to thrust, short sharp strokes, each punctuated by his grunt and her gasp.

He heard boots again in the corridor, drawing nearer. The duchess gasped, either with fear or because his calloused hands squeezed her breasts hard each time he withdrew. Henri didn’t care about guards right now. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. Blind to all but the bucking flesh beneath him, he crushed her into the bench, impaling her again and again. Her cunt squeezed his cock and he sucked in air. Seizing her hips, he ground into her as fiercely as he could, pressing her bud against the padded surface beneath them. Too hard; he should be more gentle, but she twisted and moaned, the sudden sound like fire down his spine. He jolted into her pulsing cunt, until she had drained him dry.

Afterward, silence. The sweat of his effort dried quickly, and he landed in cold and sticky reality. The sound of boots slowed and drew nearer.

Henri shuddered, then realized it was the duchess whose body shook. “Be still,” he breathed into her ear. The boots clicked away, down the hall. Henri let out a slow breath and withdrew himself from her body.

He didn’t want to just leave her with his seed drying on her thighs; he wouldn’t do that even to a whore. The duchess straightened slowly but did not turn to face him. Henri said, “Turn around,” but he couldn’t muster the commanding tone he’d managed earlier.

She turned anyway, a woman with thick long hair obscuring her luscious breasts, clad only in a jeweled collar and silken stockings that tied at her knees, like an erotic painting. She did not move to cover herself, but stood tall and poised; even in bare feet she was slightly taller than Henri, he noted for the first time. “You have done well,” she said. She did not smile.

Had anyone ever seen her smile? His anger was gone, spent. He felt only sadness as he looked at her.

Henri remembered the sounds she had made only moments earlier. He thought he had given her some pleasure, at least. “Will you tell me if you are breeding?” he asked, then glanced away, feeling heat creep down his neck. The whole duchy would know if she were breeding.

“Look at me.”

Henri lifted his head. Her cheeks and chest were still flushed, and the air reeked of sex and sweat. Yet she still appeared untouchable.

“Yes, boy, I will tell you if I am breeding,” the duchess said. “Now you must go. You’ve been brave, but it won’t do for you to be caught here. The duke is jealous of his possessions.”

He couldn’t bear to leave her like this. “No.” Henri took a step back and felt his pants under his heel. Slowly, he bent, picked them up, and stepped into them, all without turning his back on her. She was not looking at him. Her gaze rested on a portrait over the mantel, of three bay horses grazing among grassy hills.

The cloth of his pants felt coarse after the luxurious fabrics he’d ripped from the duchess’s body. Staring down at his hands as he knotted the drawstring, he said, “Your Grace, if you are not breeding, will you tell me?”

“If I am not breeding, it will be no surprise.”

Henri felt for his shirt on the carpet and finally located it. From inside its folds he said, “Will you come to the stables?”

“My husband does not permit—” She hesitated. “Yes, I will come to the stables.”

Her voice was as calm as it had been before, but he fancied he could catch a trace of hopelessness. He reached for her hand without thinking, then let it fall before it reached her, afraid of giving offense. Perhaps he could persuade her. “Come at night. I would save you if I could, Your Grace. If you would travel away with me. You can ride. You do not have to die.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. Even nearly naked, she looked every inch a duchess. She said, “I do not think there is any escape from this life.”

He’d never before thought of the palace as a trap. He wondered if she ever struggled against it. “I did not think I could…try to give you a child, either.”

Her mouth twitched into an unconvincing smile. “We shall see, Henri. We shall see. Now, go. Sylvie will see you safely back to the stables.”

Henri knew what we shall see meant. She’d set herself on a course and meant to stick to it. He’d heard that tone before, from his most stubborn uncle, who’d ended up dying at sea, food for sharks, all because he refused to make peace with his father over a woman whom he hadn’t even married. Henri was in even less of a position to argue with the duchess. He might be good enough to service her, but she seemed unlikely to take advice from a grubby stableboy.

He lowered his eyes and quickly bowed before hurrying to the door. He would do better to forget about this, as soon as he possibly could manage it.

CHAPTER THREE

The Duchess Camille sat on the edge of her bed, the blue silk velvet coverlet caressing the bare backs of her thighs and the drawn-back curtains of the canopy brushing her bare shoulders. Under threat from Sylvie’s eagle eyes and sharp tongue, a flurry of bathmaids gathered up discarded towels, bottles of bath oil and skin cream, razors and strops, polishing grit and all manner of perfumed oils and balms, which Laure had applied to her skin while Tatienne and Solange shaved her legs and pubic area. It was all very tedious. She had never been sure why it mattered, since no one ever saw her bare skin except the maids and her husband. She sometimes wondered if the rituals of adornment were meant solely to devour time for women more idle than she.

Camille was now grateful she’d let the boy take her in a sitting room and not her bedroom. Sylvie had set a rose-scented candle burning in the sitting room, which overwhelmed everything. If the bathmaids had noticed anything amiss, they had not spoken of it.

She closed her eyes for a few moments, welcoming the spring chill as the perfumed bathwater dried on her body; she needed to return to reality before darkness fell and her husband called for her. If he called for her.

Now she was tired, and her body ached. Sylvie chased away the last of the bathmaids, summoned two footmen to haul away the tub, then returned to hover over Camille. “Madame,” she said, in a much gentler tone than she’d used with her fellow servants. “You must eat. I brought you food while you were in the bath. See? All things you like. I prepared it myself.”

There was a silver tray on her side table, filled with cubes of fresh bread, thin slices of sharp cheese, a ramekin of soft goat’s cheese, a cluster of meringues and a juicy pear, laid out in a fan of slices. “Thank you, Sylvie. You may go.”

“Madame, are you well?”

Sylvie had served Camille for too many years. Camille knew she was truly asking about the boy, and what she had done with him. Camille resisted asking Sylvie’s opinion of him. She said, “I am perfectly well. I do not require your help to eat.”

“Yes, madame.” Sylvie bowed and departed. Listlessly, Camille picked up a slice of pear and forced herself to chew it. She would need all the strength she could muster. She did not want to face the duke. Not just now. But she must face him. Doing things she did not care to do were part of her duty.

Heaps of documents obscured the surface of her marquetry desk, tucked into a corner near shelves of weighty tomes inherited from her father and his father before him. In her anxiety over the duke’s increasing impatience with her, she’d neglected her normal perusal of the financial and judicial reports, brought in daily by Lord Stagiaire’s secretary. More than five years had passed since the duke had removed her from sitting in judgment, or even from reviewing cases, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from at least following the duchy’s business in private. Lord Stagiaire had been her tutor once, and still maintained a confidential position with the king. Even if the duke found what information he’d provided and continued to provide to Camille, his status as an elder of politics would protect him.

Once, Camille had been able to throw herself into the work of researching precedents and alternative judgments. It wasn’t how she might have chosen to spend her time, but it was worthy work, and she’d been well-trained for it. However, once she’d been denied directing or even witnessing the outcome of the issues she’d so carefully studied, her research had begun to seem more and more worthless, equivalent to decorative embroidery that would never be seen. Once she’d been forbidden her horses as well, she’d retreated into herself. The sight of her abandoned desk gave her a guilty stab. By giving up her studies, she’d done what the duke wanted. And here she was, trying to get herself with child!

She remembered hearing the door click shut behind Sylvie and the boy. No, not merely a boy, she corrected herself, but Henri, whom she’d taken into her body. If they’d been successful, he might be the father of a child she carried, and her child would not be fathered by some boy of no name. Camille tried to imagine having a child, seeing it grow and learn. Would it be a boy or a girl? A boy might be all that would keep her from death. She would never be able to tell it of its true heritage. That would be too dangerous. It would likely to be too dangerous even to allow Henri to see the child. Perhaps he would not care. She had been told the lower orders did not care so much for their children, as they lost them so often. She had no way to find out if it was true. No peasant would give a truthful answer to his duchess. Perhaps Sylvie would know. She was very resourceful. Perhaps the midwife would tell her.

After her first year of marriage, Camille had summoned a midwife from the town for a careful examination, as she hadn’t trusted the palace’s male physician. Nothing had been wrong with her physically, nothing that the midwife could see, and she’d been told to expect a child in good time. Two years ago, in desperation, she’d summoned a second midwife, whom Sylvie found for her; that was Annette. That first time, Sylvie smuggled Annette in as a pageboy, and she’d examined Camille thoroughly, both inside and out. Cold as her manner had been, Mistress Annette reassured Camille that she’d suffered no disease, and scoffed at the notion that riding astride could prevent pregnancy.

“Your husband’s jism is more likely to blame, he wastes it so freely.” Her scorn for the duke had been clear, and Camille was grateful for once that he had his own amusements and never visited the town’s brothel; if he heard Annette’s words, he would have her executed without a second thought. Camille had believed everything Annette had told her, but had not yet been desperate enough to try to find another possible father for her child.

Now she wished she had been. She had wasted far too much time in hope. How ironic that her own mother had given birth a mere ten months after marriage, though she had not had much to do with Camille afterward, leaving her to a wet nurse and having her brought down, suitably wrapped in velvet and a lace cap, for ceremonial occasions only.

Camille had no idea if she herself would be able to love her child. If she could not…how cruel, once it knew. To know you lived only to save your mother’s life. If she lived past its birth, though, she might have emotion to spare for her child. She would at least try. She would not leave the babe to nurses and tutors while she shut herself away among her own amusements. Perhaps none of it would matter. She did not feel pregnant. How long would it take before she would know? She felt sure she would know, somehow, in her body, before she missed her courses or had any other physical sign. She tried to imagine how her child would look, and could only picture a smaller, rounder Henri, thick brown hair matted to his forehead, endearing snub nose, wide blue eyes surrounded by lashes dense and long as summer grass, an enticingly plump lower lip. If she was not pregnant—she could not think of that now. It was out of her control for the time being. To think of her own doom was just as dangerous as thinking the opposite. She had survived so far by living moment to moment to moment. She should think on the present.

She sat cross-legged on the bed and ate another slice of pear, then a fragment of cheese. She could feel the stretch in her leg muscles from her afternoon exertions. Her quim throbbed pleasantly, deep within. It had been a long time since she’d had sex. The duke did not seem to care if she became pregnant or not. A younger woman, and a more compliant one, would be infinitely more to his taste, and had been from the beginning of their marriage, over twenty years ago now. His ideal duchess would be a younger woman who never spoke and always smiled. No, Michel wouldn’t notice the smile if the woman kept her legs open.

How unfair, to die because you were not a man’s preferred toy. If he’d put her aside in favor of his concubines, even publicly, she might have endured, holding on to her dignity as the only blood heir to the duchy. Her people would have blamed the duke, not her. That was likely what he feared would happen, should she be both out of his favor and alive. Even though he ruled, he had not been born in the duchy. Her people would remember. They accepted him now, as he’d been crowned by her father. What would happen if Camille repudiated him? Of course, she could not do so while trapped within her suite of rooms. He could find her too easily, and close her mouth by opening her throat. She had already embarked on the safer course of convincing him he’d achieved the heir he needed to consolidate his position.