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