Cordelia chuckled and danced down the stairs. Despite a sleepless and extraordinarily energetic night, she was filled with vigor and energy. A whole day in Leo's company stretched ahead, even if it was on the back of a horse. She grimaced at a prospect that ordinarily would have filled her with delight. Mathilde would know how to soothe the soreness, dissipate the stiffness. But instead of Mathilde, she had only the gormless if well-meaning Elsie.
But she would make the best of it, she told herself firmly. Mathilde would expect it of her, and this miserable situation wouldn't last forever. They would defeat Michael.
As she turned into the corridor leading to her own apartments, a scurrying maidservant bobbed a curtsy, looking a little curiously at the disheveled lady in her evening dress tottering on her high heels in the early morning. Cordelia gave her an airy smile but waited until she passed before opening the door to her own apartments.
The salon was deserted. She'd told Elsie not to wait up for her, and if Monsieur Brion was aware that she hadn't returned overnight, he was discreetly ensuring that she returned unobserved.
She slipped into her own chamber, threw off her clothes, bundling them into a corner, dragged a nightgown over her head, and jumped into her cold, unrumpled bed. Reaching out, she hauled on the bell rope, then lay down, pulled the covers up, and closed her eyes tightly.
"I need a bath, Elsie," she declared when the maid arrived somewhat breathlessly a few minutes later, bearing a breakfast tray. "I'm to join the hunt within the hour and I need hot water." She threw aside the bedclothes as she spoke, leaping to her feet. "Hurry, girl."
Elsie bobbed a curtsy and disappeared. Cordelia poured hot chocolate into a cup and hungrily attacked her breakfast.
She was as ravenous as if she hadn't eaten in days. She slapped thick slices of ham between hunks of rye bread and wolfed it down while Elsie laboriously filled a porcelain hip bath from steaming brass jugs of water.
Cordelia rummaged through Mathilde's pouches of herbs, trying to identify by scent the ones her nurse used to relax muscles in a bath. "These should do." She scattered the herbs on the surface of the water and sank into the tub with a little shudder of pleasure. "Oh, that's better. Put out my riding habit, Elsie. The emerald green velvet one, with the tricorn hat with the black feather."
Forty-five minutes later, feeling immeasurably restored, Cordelia joined the hunting party assembling in the outer courtyard. Her groom held Lucette. Leo, already mounted, was drinking from the stirrup cup presented by a footman.
"Good morning, Princess. I trust you slept well."
"Very well, thank you, my lord." She smiled serenely, putting her booted foot in her groom's waiting palm.
"Isn't it wonderful to be riding to hounds again, Cordelia?" Toinette's excited call came from the royal party gathered a few feet away. "You must come and ride with us."
Cordelia shot Leo a ruefully disappointed look and obeyed the dauphine's summons. The king greeted her pleasantly, the dauphin with a dipped head and averted eyes. Toinette was radiant.
The huntsman blew the horn, and the crowd of gaily dressed riders moved out under the early sunshine with a jingle of silver bridles and a flash of spurs into the thick forest surrounding Versailles.
The broad ride stretched through the trees, dappled with green and gold as the bright sunlight shone through the new leaves. The scent of the earlier rain rose from the turf, crushed beneath the hooves of a hundred horses. The lean, elegant deerhounds ran yapping ahead of the hunt, their huntsmen on sturdy ponies following. Beaters crashed through the bushes, driving up birds for the archers' skill, scaring doe and rabbit into the path of the dogs.
For the first hour, Cordelia rode with Toinette in the king's party, but when the dauphin had drawn alongside his bride and begun a stilted conversation, Cordelia had discreetly excused herself and dropped back. The dauphin, it seemed, needed all the encouragement he could get to increase his acquaintance with his wife. And Cordelia needed no encouragement to join Leo, who was riding just behind.
He greeted her with a doffed hat and a formal "I trust you're enjoying the ride, Princess."
"Immensely, it's such a beautiful day," she replied in like manner. "And I've already shot two pheasants," she added with the ill-concealed triumph that usually followed her gambling wins. But she certainly hadn't cheated with her bow. The arrow had flown clean and swift to its target, bringing the bird down dead and unmangled for the dogs to fetch and the keepers to bag.
"So I saw," Leo said, amused. "You're a fine archer, if a trifle immodest."
Cordelia chuckled and fitted another arrow to the bow that rested across her saddle. She held the reins with one hand, the bow and its arrow with the other, with an air of assurance that bespoke both experience and skill. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Leo, can you think of any reason why the dauphin should not have consummated his marriage as yet?"
"What?" He was incredulous.
"It's true. Poor Toinette is at her wits end. Every night he leaves her at her door. One of his gentlemen must have told the king, because yesterday he spoke to her about it. That was why he came to her boudoir when we were in dishabille and I had no shoes on. She said he was very delicate and gentle, but it was so embarrassing to admit that she didn't know what was wrong."
"Good God! Poor child, what could she possibly know of such things? Maybe he needs a physician."
"Yes, she said the king was going to order an examination. So she's waiting on tenterhooks to see what happens. She has to conceive."
"Of course," Leo agreed wryly, the realities of the marriage no more lost on him than they were on the lowest members of the Paris stews.
What if Cordelia already carried Michael's child? It was a question he had tried to ignore, but no longer. If Cordelia gave Michael a son, perhaps, just perhaps, Michael might be prepared to surrender his wife in exchange for his male heir. In a fantasy land, perhaps he would be prepared to surrender his wife and his female offspring in exchange for an heir. But how could Cordelia give up her own child? How could either of them contemplate leaving an infant in the hands of such a man? But Michael would move heaven and earth to reclaim a male child. There would be no safety, no peace, ever, unless they lived outside of society in a world where the children would be deprived of their birthrights, unable to claim their rightful place in the world, and therefore unable to make even the ordinary choices of adulthood, like whether or whom to marry. They would be dispossessed. How could he condemn helpless innocents to such a future? But how could he condemn Cordelia to a living death at the hands of Prince Michael?
First things first! He reined in the galloping thoughts before they bolted from him. If she was pregnant, they would cross that bridge when they came to it.
The cavalcade turned onto a broader thoroughfare, where a group of carriages awaited them. Madame du Barry sat prettily at the reins of an open landau, her ladies beside her. The king drew rein and greeted her. The dauphin bowed to his father's mistress. The dauphine looked the other way.
"Oh, Toinette, you're behaving so stupidly," Cordelia said in low-voiced exasperation, cutting into Leo's absorption.
"Why? What's she doing?" Leo was suddenly aware of the ripple of whispered awareness around him.