"But how?" Cordelia brushed her tangled hair from her eyes. "How does one learn to deal with it?"
Mathilde saw the bruise on her nursling's wrist and her expression suddenly changed. "Let me look at you."
"I'm all right," Cordelia said, "I just feel dirty. I need a bath."
"I'll have one sent up when I've had a look at you," Mathilde said grimly. Cordelia submitted to a minute examination that had Mathilde looking grimmer and grimmer as she uncovered every bruise, every scratch.
"So, he's a brute into the bargain," Mathilde muttered finally, pulling the bell rope beside the door. "I knew there was something dark in him."
"I got hurt because I tried to fight him," Cordelia explained wearily.
"Aye, only what I'd expect from you. But there's other ways," Mathilde added almost to herself. She turned to give orders to the maid who answered the bell. "Fetch up a bath for your mistress… And bring breakfast," she added as the maid curtsied and left.
"I couldn't eat. The thought of food makes me feel sick."
"Nonsense. You need all the strength you can get. It's not like you to wallow in self-pity." Mathilde was not prepared to indulge weakness, however unusual and well justified.
Cordelia would need all her strength of character to survive untouched by her husband's treatment. "You'll have a bath and eat a good breakfast and then you'd best set about making your mark on the household. There's a majordomo, one Monsieur Brion, who's a force to be reckoned with, I gather. And then a governess.
"What about the governess?" Cordelia, as always, responded to Mathilde's bracing tones. She wasn't such a milksop as to be crushed after one wedding night. There was much more to this new life than the miseries of conjugal sex. Time enough to fret about it again tonight, when presumably it would be repeated. She shuddered and pushed the thought from her. She must not allow fear of the nights to haunt her days.
Mathilde turned from the armoire where she was selecting a gown. "Dusty spinster, I understand from the housekeeper. Keeps to herself mostly, thinks she's too good for the servant's hall. Some distant relative of the prince's."
"And the children?" Cordelia's legs seemed to be lacking in strength. She sat on the edge of the bed.
"No one sees much of them. Governess pretty much has sole charge." Mathilde came over to the bed with a chamber robe.
Cordelia slipped her arms into the clean robe. "Do they say whether the prince has much to do with his daughters?"
Mathilde bent to gather up the bloodstained nightgown. "Hardly sees them. But it's his voice that rules in the nursery even so. That governess, Madame de Nevry she's called, is scared rigid of him. Or so the housekeeper says." She glanced sharply at Cordelia. "There's a bad feeling in this house. They all fear the prince."
"With reason, I imagine," Cordelia said. She frowned. "I wonder why the viscount didn't say anything when I asked him about my husband. I gave him every opportunity to tell me the worst."
"Maybe he doesn't know. A man can have one face for the outside world and another for the inside. And you've got to live in a house to know its spirit."
"But what of Leo's sister-Elvira? She lived here, she must have known these things. Didn't she tell him?"
"How are we to know that?" Mathilde shook her head in brisk dismissal of the topic. "We manage our own affairs, dearie."
Cordelia had always had utter faith in Mathilde's ability to manage affairs of any kind. She didn't always know how she did it, but she hadn't yet come across a situation that stumped her old nurse. The thought gave her renewed strength and courage. "I shall go and visit the nursery as soon as I'm dressed." Forgetting her earlier queasiness, she broke into a steaming brioche from the tray the maidservant had placed on the table. In the small bathroom adjoining her chamber, footmen filled the copper tub with jugs of water brought upstairs by laboring boot boys.
"What should I wear, do you think? Something gay and bright. I want them to think of me as someone cheerful and not at all stuffy."
Mathilde couldn't hide her smile at the quaint notion that anyone might think Cordelia stuffy.
Cordelia eased her body into the hot water with a groan of relief. Mathilde had sprinkled herbs on the surface and emptied the fragrant contents of a small vial into the water. Immediately, Cordelia felt the soreness and stiffness fading away with the throbbing of her bruises. She let her head rest against the copper rim of the bath and closed her eyes, inhaling the delicate yet revivifying scent of the herbs.
Mathilde placed the breakfast tray beside the tub, and after a while Cordelia nibbled on the brioche and sipped hot chocolate as the steam wreathed around her. Her habitual optimism finally banished the lingering horror of the night. It had been hell, but the worst was over because she now knew the worst. And now there were two little girls in a nursery waiting to make her acquaintance. Were they scared? she wondered.
Madame de Nevry was in a very bad temper. Amelia and Sylvie, well versed in their governess's moods, knew they were in for a miserable day the minute she marched into the nursery soon after dawn and ordered their nurse to prepare cold baths for them.
"But I am already so cold," Sylvie whimpered, standing on the bare floorboards, shivering in her nightgown. It was too early for the rising sun to have taken the chill off the night air that filled the nursery from the perpetually opened window.
"It is your father's wish that you should learn to endure discomfort," Madame stated, pinning the child's hair in a tight knot on the top of her head. The prince had actually said only that his daughters were not to be pampered, but the governess chose to interpret the instruction according to her own mood.
Sylvie whimpered again as her scalp was pulled back from her forehead and the pins dug into her skin. Nurse, looking very disapproving, lifted her and dumped her skinny little body in the tub of ice-cold water. Sylvie cried out at the top of her lungs and received a slapped hand from the governess for her pains. Amelia stood and watched, waiting her turn with rather more stoicism than her sister.
They had heard the sounds of the party the previous evening as they'd lain in bed listening to the confused noises of carriage wheels, shouting linkboys, doors opening and closing in the house far below the nursery, the faint strains of music. They'd imagined the food at the banquet, but since their own diet was plain to the point of tastelessness and had never been anything else, they could only imagine a table laden with the strawberries and chocolates they had sometimes been given by Monsieur Leo, when he could sneak the treat into the schoolroom.
"Come, Amelia." Madame snapped her fingers impatiently as Nurse lifted the still-squalling Sylvie out of the freezing water and wrapped her in a thick towel. Madame's face was thin and pinched, and her lips and the tip of her nose had a blue tinge to them as if they'd been inked with a quill pen. On her cheeks burned two vermilion spots of color. She looked like a paint palette, Amelia thought, raising her arms passively as Nurse drew off her nightgown.
Sylvie's whimpers faded as she huddled in the towel. The goosebumps on her skin went down and her shivers lessened while her twin was doused and soaped and doused again, her lips blue with cold, her teeth chattering.
Even after they were dressed, they were still not properly warm, and a meager breakfast of bread and butter and weak tea did little to improve matters. Madame's blue nose turned pink as she drank her own tea. The girls had noticed it always did when she poured something from a little flask into her cup. And her cheeks grew even redder.
"We will study the globe this morning." Louise gestured to the large round globe with her pointer. "Sylvie, you will find England and tell me the name of the capital city."
Sylvie peered at the bumps and squiggles and lines. Everything looked the same to her. She closed her eyes and stabbed with her forefinger.