The Diamond Slipper (14 page)

“Oh, very well.” She shot out her hand, half rising on her stool, leaning over the board as if it took her whole body to move the small wooden carving. Her knees caught the edge of the table, toppling it, and the entire game disintegrated, pieces tumbling to the carpet. “Oh, what a nuisance!” Hastily, she steadied the rocking table.

“Why, of all the graceless, brattish, mean-spirited things to do!” Leo, furious, leaped up. Leaning over the destroyed board, he grabbed her shoulders, half shaking, half hauling her toward him.

“But I didn’t do it on purpose!” Cordelia exclaimed. “Indeed I didn’t. It was an accident.”

“You expect me to believe that?” He jerked her hard toward him, almost lifting her over the board, unsure what he intended doing with her, but for the moment lost in disappointed anger that she could do something so malicious and childish. Cordelia’s protestations of innocence grew ever more vociferous.

Then matters became very confused. He was shaking her, she was yelling, his mouth was on hers. Her yells ceased. His hands were hard on her arms, and her body was pressed against his. Her mouth, already open on her indignant cries, welcomed the plunging thrust of his tongue. Her hands moved down his body. With an instinctive certainty of what was right, she gripped his buttocks through the dark silk of his britches. The hard bulge of his erect flesh jutted against her loins, and she moved her body urgently against his as her tongue drove into his mouth on her own voyage of exploration, demanding, tasting, wanting. She was aware of nothing but the wanting—an overpowering tidal wave of desire that throbbed in her loins, raced through her blood, pounded in her pulses. Everything she had felt before was but a faint shadow of this wild, abandoned hunger.

Leo fought for clarity, but he could feel every line of her body under his hands. Her skin burned beneath her shift, heating his palms as he ran them over her, learning the shape of her, her curves and her indentations. He gripped the loose material at the back of the garment and pulled it tight so that her body was molded by the linen. He looked down at the pink glow of her breasts beneath the white, the hard crowns jutting against the material, the dark shadow at the apex of her thighs. And all hope of clarity was lost to him.

Her lips were parted, her breath swift as he examined her shape. She put her hands on her hips and lifted her head with a challenging triumph, her eyes scorching with their passion and hunger. With a rasping breath, he dragged the shift over her head and put his hands on her body. His caresses were rough and urgent, and she met each hard stroke with a swift indrawn breath of arousal, thrusting her body at him, wanting him to touch every inch of her, to brand her skin with his mark.

She fell back across the chess table under the pressure of his body. The sharp edges of the fallen pieces pressed into her bare back but she didn’t notice, caught up in the red
mist of this wild desire. Her hips lifted for the hands, now caressing her inner thighs, opening her petaled center, finding the exquisitely sensitive core of her passion. The waves built in her belly, built to an unbearable crescendo when she thought she would die. And then she did, toppling slowly from a scarlet height of ecstasy into a soft blackness that leached every ounce of strength from her body, and she could hear her own sobbing cries of abandoned delight.

Leo held her against him as the shuddering joy convulsed her, his hands under her back as she sprawled across the chess table. He held her until her eyes opened and she smiled, her face transfigured with a wondrous radiance.

“What did you do to me?”

“Sweet Jesus!” He slid his flat palms out from under her and straightened. His golden eyes were almost black as he stared down at her, spreadeagled in such wanton abandon across the table.

“For God’s sake, get up!” His voice was harsh. He pulled her upright onto her feet. “Put your shift on.” He pushed her toward the white crumpled garment on the floor. The deep imprints of the chess pieces were on her back as she bent to pick up the shift. “I don’t believe myself,” he muttered, aware of his own arousal now as a painful need.

Cordelia turned back to him, clutching the shift to her bosom. “I still don’t understand what happened.” Her eyes were bewildered beneath the still-misty radiance of fulfillment. “We didn’t—”

“No, we didn’t,” he interrupted harshly. “But what I did was bad enough. For pity’s sake, go to bed, Cordelia, and leave me alone.”

For once her impulsive protest died on her lips. She turned back to the gaping bookshelves, still clutching her shift. He tried not to gaze at the long sweep of her back, the perfectly rounded bottom, the slender length of her thighs. He tried, but failed.

At the bookshelf she said over her shoulder. “I really
didn’t intend to knock over the board. It was truly an accident.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said wearily.

“But it does. I don’t want you to think that I’d do something that despicable.” She had one hand on the shelf, her earnest gaze seeking his.

Leo gave a harsh crack of laughter. “My dear girl, in the list of the evening’s despicable events, that one is hardly worth considering.”

“That wasn’t despicable,” she said, her voice very low. “Nothing so wonderful could be wrong.”

Leo closed his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “Now, go to bed.”

Cordelia slipped through the gap into her own chamber and pushed the shelf back in place. She needed Mathilde’s wisdom, but it would have to wait until the morning. She fell into bed, as limp as a kitten, and was asleep in seconds.

Chapter Eight

D
AWN STREAKED THE
sky when Mathilde entered Cordelia’s bedchamber accompanied by a maid carrying a ewer of steaming hot water. The girl set this on the dresser before turning to rekindle the fire against the early morning chill.

Cordelia slept on behind the bedcurtains as Mathilde laid out her riding habit and repacked the trunk with the clothes she’d worn the previous day.

“Bring the princess a pot of coffee, girl. She’ll need something to warm her; there’s a nip in the air.”

The maid curtsied and left the chamber, where the fire now burned brightly. Mathilde drew back the bedcurtains.

“Wake up now, child. The bell for prime rang some ten minutes ago and breakfast is to be at seven in the great hall.”

Cordelia rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. For a moment she wondered where she was. Then the wave of memory broke over her. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked ruefully at Mathilde.

“I’m in love.”

“Holy Mary, not with that young musician, I trust!” Mathilde exclaimed. “He’s a nice enough lad, but not for the likes of you, m’dear.”

“No, not Christian.” Cordelia sat cross-legged on the bed. “The viscount.”

“Holy Mother!” Mathilde crossed herself. “And since when has this happened?”

“Oh, since first I saw him. I believe he feels something for me too, but he won’t say so.”

“I should hope not. What honorable man would declare his feelings for another man’s wife?” Mathilde pushed a loose gray lock back beneath her starched cap.

“Mathilde, I don’t
wish
to be married to my husband,” Cordelia said with low-voiced intensity.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it, girl. It was the same with your mother. It’s the same with most women of your class. They marry where advantage leads them, not their hearts.”

“Men’s advantage,” said Cordelia bitterly, and Mathilde didn’t contradict her. “My mother didn’t love my father?”

Mathilde shook her head. “No, your mother loved outside her marriage, and she loved with all her heart. But she did nothing to be ashamed of.” Mathilde raised a warning forefinger. “She was honest to her deathbed.”

“But unhappy?”

Mathilde pursed her lips then she sighed and nodded. “Yes, child. Desperately so. But she knew where her duty lay, and so will you.”

Cordelia began to massage her feet, frowning fiercely. “My mother stayed at the Austrian court. There’s no freedom there. Perhaps if she’d been at Versailles—”

“No, don’t you be thinking any such thing,” interrupted Mathilde. “You’ll be in trouble worse than a snake pit, thinking like that.”

“I think I already am,” Cordelia said slowly, pushing her thumbs hard into the sole of her foot, keeping her eyes on her task.

Mathilde sat down heavily on the end of the bed, her face grim. “What are you saying, child? Has the viscount had knowledge of you?”

“Yes and no.” Cordelia looked up, flushing, biting her bottom lip. “What you told me happened on the marriage bed didn’t happen, but he touched me in … in very intimate ways and … and something wonderful happened to me. But I don’t understand quite what.”

“Mercy me!” Mathilde threw up her hands. “Tell me what happened.”

Cordelia did so, somewhat haltingly, her face burning even though Mathilde had cared for her since infancy and
knew all her most intimate secrets. “But if what we did was not intercourse, Mathilde, what was it?” she finished.

Mathilde sighed. This situation was more troublesome than if her nursling had lost her virginity in an explosion of passion. Initiation was rarely pleasurable however passionate, and was unlikely to encourage repetition. But true pleasuring once experienced was a different matter.

“There are some men who are willing and know how to pleasure a woman, child. But for the most part, they’re not interested in more than their own satisfaction. You’d best put what happened behind you and forget about it. Be grateful for a gentle husband and as many babes as you can conceive. It’s the best a woman can hope for.”

Cordelia dropped her foot, saying blunting, “I don’t believe that, Mathilde. And I don’t think you believe it either.”

Mathilde bent over her to take her face between her hands. “Listen to me, dearie, and listen well. You must take what’s given you in this world. I’ll not watch you fade away from wishing, as your mother did. You’re strong, I’ve made you so. You must look for what you
can
have, and forget what you can’t.”

“My mother didn’t care for my father?”

“She didn’t see what there was to care for in him because she was too busy pining for what she couldn’t have.” Mathilde released her face and straightened, her expression suddenly hard and determined. “I’ve not raised you to hanker for the impossible. I’ve taught you to take what you have and make the most of it. Now, get up and get dressed. We don’t have all morning.”

Cordelia swung her legs off the bed and stood up, just as the maid reappeared with the coffee. “Oh, lovely. Thank you. I can’t tell you how I long for coffee. Thank you for taking the trouble.” She smiled at the maid with such warmth that the girl beamed and curtsied before filling a cup and handing it to the naked princess.

“No trouble at all, Your Highness.” Still beaming, she backed out of the chamber.

“I really wouldn’t have thought it of the viscount,” Mathilde muttered. “If I didn’t know how you always get your way, I’d not understand it at all. He seems such an honorable man.”

“But he
is
an honorable man.” Cordelia came quickly to Leo’s defense. She took a deep revivifying gulp of coffee. “And I really didn’t try to make it happen, it just did. And he made it stop, even though it must have been difficult for him.”

“Aye, that it must,” Mathilde said grimly. The thought gave her some satisfaction as she laced her charge a little more tightly than usual.

Cordelia endured without a murmur of protest. When Mathilde was this upset, it was best to let her get it out of her system. Involuntarily, she glanced at the bookshelves. Could she make them open again? She didn’t know exactly how it had happened last night. Was there a knob she’d accidentally pushed, or a switch? Or did one just lean against the books at a certain spot? Not that she’d ever find out. They’d be long gone from this place in an hour.

“There, you’ll do.” Mathilde twitched Cordelia’s starched stock into place at her neck. “Hurry away now.” She waved her hands at her, shooing her from the room. Cordelia couldn’t decide whether her nurse was vexed as well as concerned.

Deeply thoughtful, she stepped into the corridor just as Leo, in riding dress, emerged from the next-door chamber. “Good morning.” She felt strangely shy. She curtsied, her eyes lowered.

“Good morning.” His expression was somber, his eyes lightless, his mouth taut. He gestured curtly that she should precede him down the staircase to the hall.

Cordelia, most unusually, was tongue-tied. Throughout the ceremonial breakfast, her eyes kept drifting to his hands and she would remember where they had been on her body
and a surge of glorious memory would flood her with warmth. It was a relief to concentrate on the ceremonies as the dauphine took farewell of her brother Joseph, who would now return to Vienna, leaving his little sister to journey without family to Strasbourg, where she would be formally received into France.

Toinette was less emotional at taking leave of her brother than she had been of her mother, but it was still a solemn moment when the emperor escorted his sister to her carriage for the last time.