When it was over, he checked to be sure Montmorency was still there. He wasn’t. Which made Charles uneasy, but at least now the dancing was over and Montmorency couldn’t disgrace himself-and Louis le Grand-by trying to dance.
Charles turned to La Chaise, hoping that they could go, and saw that La Chaise was leaning over the back of the king’s chair, listening as Louis talked. Wondering irreverently which royal body was speaking-God’s mystically anointed king or the natural man who begat children-Charles watched the white plume wave above a royal nod.
La Chaise straightened and nodded in turn to Charles. “We must go to the buffet salon for a time, not to our chambers yet.”
They joined the crowd’s slow drift toward the door and into the adjoining salon, where courtiers gathered around tables covered with platters of cold meat, plates of heaped pastries, and elaborately constructed pyramids of hothouse strawberries, plums, and peaches. Wine pitchers and ranks of short-stemmed glasses reflected the chandeliers’ flickering light.
“They’ll be pillaging the tables for a while,” La Chaise said, under the pitch of the crowd’s loud talk. “It does look inviting, doesn’t it?”
“You must be feeling better, mon père. Are we allowed to pillage, as well?”
“If we do it without making an unclerical spectacle of ourselves. And you’re right, I am better.” After filling plates and glasses, La Chaise led the way toward a dark alcove where they could eat unobserved. But when they got closer, they saw a man’s back and the rose-colored edge of a woman’s skirt framed in the alcove’s arch.
La Chaise muttered in exasperation and looked around for somewhere else. But Charles put his plate and glass down on a side table and strode to the alcove. The rose-colored skirt was overlaid with delicate white lace and the coat was the same black brocade as Henri Montmorency’s.
“Bonsoir, Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles said, loudly and brusquely.
Montmorency twitched a shoulder without looking to see who spoke. “Leave us. You intrude.”
“Turn around, monsieur.”
The flat order made the boy turn so fast and angrily that his sword smacked against Lulu’s skirt and she exclaimed impatiently. To Charles’s surprise, Montmorency seemed not at all alarmed when he saw who was talking to him. And seemed not to see La Chaise, standing a little aside, at all. Instead of giving Charles the courteous greeting and bow he owed a professor, Montmorency glowered. “What do you want?”
“To know what you are doing here.” Charles glanced into the shadows where the king’s daughter stood. “‘Here’ in all senses of the word, Monsieur Montmorency.”
That produced a giggle from Lulu and a darker scowl from Montmorency.
“I am here with the rector’s permission,” the boy said stiffly.
“I am relieved to hear it,” Charles returned. “Why are you here?”
Montmorency shifted his feet and groped for words, which never came quickly to him. “The ball. Why should I not be here?” He lifted his square chin and fell back on the central tenet of his universe. “I am a Montmorency.”
“And so the king invited you? But you were rudely late.”
The whites of Montmorency’s eyes showed as he glanced into the shadows. “Yes! I mean, no, but-”
“Oh, have done!” Lulu surged out of the alcove, twitching her fan like an angry bird flicking its tail. “I invited him, maître.” Her eyes traveled caressingly over Charles, who removed his bonnet and willed himself not to blush. She tapped him on the arm with the fan. “I sent him a note. So of course he came. Isn’t he fortunate? Wouldn’t you like to have a note from me?” Charles’s distantly polite expression didn’t alter and her voice chilled. “You, I see, only came to celebrate my being sold to Poland.” Her lips trembled and she bit them to stillness.
“No, Lulu,” Montmorency cried, “you know I will never let-”
“Shut up, mon cher!” Her false brilliant smile was back, and she kept it trained on Charles. “Your pupil has the Montmorency love of lost causes, maître. But who knows? Perhaps when I get to Poland, I shall at least enjoy the wolf hunting.”
“You will never go there.” Montmorency tried to take her hands. “I will-”
“You will nothing,” she said, pulling her hands out of reach. As she moved, something clattered to the floor. Montmorency bent to retrieve it, but she was before him. Charles saw that it was a ring, old and heavy, with a deep blue stone capping an elaborate raised setting.
“A lovely jewel, Your Highness,” he said.
Montmorency swelled with pride. “I gave it to her.”
“A small parting gift.” Lulu slipped the ring onto her right-hand middle finger.
“I put a lock of my hair in it,” Montmorency said proudly. “Show him, Lulu.”
She shrugged slightly at Charles and held out her hand. “It’s a locket ring.” She touched the side of the blue stone and the setting opened like a tiny book. A coil of fair hair nestled inside. “Monsieur Montmorency wished me to take something of him with me to Poland. He knew it would be a comfort for me.”
She closed the ring and folded her other hand over it. Montmorency gazed at her with his heart in his eyes.
“I have one, too,” he said, thrusting his hand at Charles. His locket ring had a red stone. He opened it to show the dark blond curl it held.
Lulu glanced at it and looked down. “I must go now,” she said gravely, moving her shoulders a little, as though trying to shrug off the weight of the gleaming pearls. “My women will be looking for me.”
She turned and left, and Montmorency started to follow her, but La Chaise cleared his throat and stepped into his path. “Why are you private with the king’s daughter, monsieur? What business of yours is her going to Poland?”
Penned between the alcove’s archway and the two Jesuits, Montmorency shifted uneasily. “Oh. Well, only that-that she’s-well, going. And-” He flushed and stared at his shoes.
“And what?”
Charles watched the all too familiar spectacle of Montmorency making a mental effort. The results, if any, were unlikely to get the boy off whatever hook La Chaise was trying to hang him on.
“Mon père-maître-” Montmorency looked miserably from one to the other. “Can you not make the king change his mind?” He clasped both hands over his heart. “I shall die if she goes!”
Moved in spite of himself by the boy’s unhappy devotion, Charles shook his head slightly at La Chaise, who was clearly not moved in the least.
“Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles said carefully, “you must know that Mademoiselle de Rouen is not for you. Your house is ancient and great, but the king will marry his daughter only to royalty. I am sure you are aware of that, painful as it is to accept.” Charles had learned the hard way that appealing to his sense of family was the only way to reason with the boy.
Montmorency bowed his head and stood with one hand on his sword-the very picture, Charles thought, of noble renunciation.
The boy drew himself up, resolution in his dog-brown eyes. “I am going to ask the king if he will let me win her right to stay in single combat. I am not so bad with a sword. Even if she could not marry me, at least she would be where I could still see her.”
Charles told himself sternly not to laugh. “Single combat with whom?”
Montmorency shrugged. “I don’t care. One of those ambassadors? Whomever the king chooses.”
Very gently, as though each word were an egg that might break, Charles said, “Your heart does you credit, Monsieur Montmorency. But single combat is no longer done. Your request would not be granted.”