Читать книгу The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover - Victoria Janssen - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

Henri ran his hands over Guirlande’s sleek hide, adding a final gloss to her grooming. As he ducked beneath the cross-ties which held her still, she snorted affectionately into his hair. Henri grinned and loosed the ties from her halter before moving on to Tonnelle.

“Boy!”

Henri whirled, wondering what he’d done—or not done— this time. A sharp-featured young blond woman stood in the open doorway of the stable, holding her skirts well clear of the straw. He’d spotted her once or twice before and assumed she was the lover of one of the senior grooms or perhaps of a courier. She wore a nondescript scullion’s dress, but gestured as imperiously as an upper servant. “Leave the horse. Come with me.”

“I have work,” he said.

“It can wait. Her Grace wishes to see you.”

At first, he was sure he’d misheard. He stood gaping. He hadn’t seen the duchess in months, even from a distance. He’d even heard whispered rumors the duke had killed her in a wild rage, or that she’d been shut up in an asylum, gone mad from failing to bear a child. Perhaps she had gone mad. It was unheard-of for her to summon a servant as lowly as he. Had he misunderstood? Was he meant to meet with a steward? Still, it would be good to know at least if she lived, and how she fared. Perhaps this woman could give him news; perhaps he could give her a message about the welfare of the horses. Perhaps that was why the duchess wanted to see him; she wanted to personally question him about her horses. “What does she want of me?”

“That is for Her Grace to say. Come, boy. I cannot loiter here all day.”

Henri kept his head down as he followed the maid through a servants’ entrance in the palace’s immense white walls, down a dim corridor, and through a fitted door into the ducal palace. Why had he been summoned? He could not guess if the purpose was good or bad. Or, he told himself, it might be good for the duchess, but bad for him.

The maid walked very quickly, without glancing behind to see if he followed. The floor was polished marble, a gray color that reminded him of winter ice. No one moved through the corridors, a circumstance Henri found chilling, as well; he knew the duke had nearly a hundred servants. Surely some of them would be about. Someone would have to clean this floor. And he knew a few footmen; they spent a great deal of time standing about in corridors, waiting for someone to need them. Where had the footmen gone? The only section of the palace that had no footmen was…but of course he could not be walking through the duchess’s wing of the palace. She saw her servants in an audience room, off the main hall, the one everyone knew from when court was open to the public. This must be merely a different route there.

That still didn’t explain the deserted corridors. The main hall would have even more servants than the duchess’s wing. As the maid led him up a narrow stairway that smelled strongly of lemon and beeswax, he wondered how many bribes their privacy had cost, and why the bribes had been necessary. Then the maid stopped before a mahogany-paneled door inlaid in gold leaf, opened it and gestured for him to go through. Henri did so; she did not follow. The maid shut the door behind him and he heard a thump, as if she had leaned her back against it.

The room was incredibly bright from a chandelier bristling with lit candles and crystalline droplets of the clearest glass he’d ever seen. The light reflected almost painfully from the white marble floor. The walls were hung with tapestries in lush twining, leaflike patterns of blue and gold, dazzling his eyes and muffling sounds. He felt as if he’d stepped inside a jeweled box, like the one in which the duchess had kept the bridle ornaments for Guirlande. Though for all its intricate glamour, the room felt too still; its air had the faintest dusty smell of disuse.

He turned to his right, intending to examine the tapestry more closely, and saw the duchess, immobile as a statue. Truly the duchess, and not some functionary. His breath caught at her beauty and aristocratic bearing. She wore a crimson gown with a belled skirt and a low squared neckline that emphasized her bosom, and more jewels than he’d ever seen in one place at one time, even on a courtier riding to a party. Faceted blood- colored rubies were pinned into her long silver-streaked hair; more rubies dripped from her ears like tiny clusters of grapes. Her pale eyes fixed on him, and he fell immobile from the intensity of her regard. Henri was rarely noticed by anyone. Being noticed by the duchess was like being hit in the chest.

She’d noticed him before. When he was a boy, it had been she who sent her own riding teacher to tutor him as well, for those times when she could not be present to school her own horses. And one time only, Henri had provided cupped hands to boost her foot into the stirrup. He’d been about fifteen then. He still remembered the gold heel on her supple leather riding boot, beneath a lavishly embroidered skirt hem; he’d been afraid to look higher. She’d given him a copper. Only weeks after, she’d been forbidden to ride—it was said her riding astride had prevented her from conceiving an heir. She had never even borne a girl.

She was forty now, and probably past bearing, so it couldn’t hurt for her to ride again, could it? She might defy her husband for such a freedom. Henri remembered how she’d stroked her horses’ necks and pressed her forehead to theirs. He’d watched her, many times. She loved her horses, he could tell, and for that reason he loved her. Horses knew people. One horse might love her if she were cruel, but certainly not all of them. Henri had ridden all of her horses, and every one worked with him in perfect trust. He’d ridden one or two of the duke’s hunters, as well; that had taught him that the duke was cack-handed and deaf to the animals’ body language, for their actions were stiff and awkward. In contrast, the duchess’s horses moved like silk.

“You look enough like my husband,” she said. “It should be possible.”

He couldn’t mistake her meaning. The whispers, the rumors, they were true. Henri couldn’t speak; one wrong word and she could have him caged in the city square and pelted with rotten fruit and rocks. But he couldn’t run away, either, because the duchess had summoned him. She’d had him summoned and he hadn’t fled, as any reasonable person would have done when the nobility took notice of them. If only he did not care. If only it did not matter to him if she bore an heir or if she died.

In this audience room, they were alone. If he were seen alone with the duchess, by anyone at all besides her loyal maid, he would die in the worst way imaginable. So far as he knew, the duchess was allowed no men in her direct presence without her eunuch guards—or without her husband, the duke, of course. Henri stared even harder at a porphyry medallion set into the white marble floor. The cleanliness and luxury made Henri’s knees shake and his balls shrivel. He was probably already doomed, when he had done nothing to harm anyone, nothing but obey the duchess’s maid who’d brought him here like a favorite riding hack.

“Boy? Do you understand what your duchess requires of you? I understand you know something of the breeding of horses, so you should be more than equal to this task.” Her voice was low but commanding. He could not imagine defying that voice.

She approached him, and he shrank from her. Was he supposed to reply? His throat felt stuffed with old hay. Then came the unthinkable—a light touch to his hair.

“Look up.”

Trembling, he did so, as if she tugged his reins.

“Please,” she said. She might as well have been asking for morning ale. Her face was like a silver coin he’d once seen, cleanly cut lips and a long, straight nose, but this close he could see the bruises, carefully covered, along her jaw, and fine lines feathering from the corners of her eyes. Thick swatches of iron-gray streaked the ebony hair that fell past her waist. Her eyes, the cold gray of a winter sky, shone and swelled with water before she blinked, once, and transformed them back to metal.

His world shifted for a moment into some afternoon fantasy, glimpsed in sunlit dust sifting down from the hayloft. He would save her, and she would…have him killed, so no one would know what she had done? “Y-Your Grace,” Henri said. Her gown exhaled costly spices he could not name. His own clothing was pungent from horses and leather and sweat. The maid had directed him to leave his muddy boots behind, so his bare, calloused toes curled against polished stone.

The duchess stood back from him, her skirts unfurling over her jeweled slippers. “If I do not provide an heir within the year, I will be killed, so my husband can take another wife within the bounds of law,” she said flatly. “They will shave my hair and cut off my head. Do you understand? Answer me.”

“Y-yes.”

“I cannot protect you. I am a woman and my command to my husband’s guards is not worth a copper coin.” She paused. “Will you do this for me?”

For her. She would never humiliate herself like this, not to someone like him, unless she truly needed his aid. His mouth felt numb with fear as he nodded and knelt on the marble, searching in vain for another flicker of humanity in her pale, regal face.

Her crimson gown rustled as she paced to the door, like the caged crow in the stables. He scrambled back to his feet and followed. She had what she wanted of him, as the aristocrats always had what they wanted. It was their right.

How in the world could he even disrobe before her? Much less…less…

She stopped before the door and said, as if discussing her choice of gown, “It’s best done now. My husband will send for me tonight.”

Henri nodded again. What else was he to do?

The duchess opened the door a crack and peered out. She murmured to her waiting maid, then snapped the door closed. Henri twitched. “This way,” she said.

He followed. A delicate wooden chair with a plush red seat and curving arms that ended in carved blossoms hid another door behind swaths of red fabric, embroidered all over with flowers in a deeper red thread. Henri expected darkness, but the corridor of red marble was lit by yellow beeswax candles, sweet-smelling and thick as his forearm, in gold sconces shaped as unearthly smooth disembodied feminine hands, braceleted in cruel red stones. He’d never seen so many candles in his life. Who lit them? Who trimmed away the drips? Ebony chairs lined the walls, each carved with more flowers and accompanied by its own little matching marble-topped table, for what purpose he could not imagine. Each table was bare. The duchess swept down the corridor without glancing at the paintings of flowers in gilt frames, the tapestries populated by gardens and ladies and fat babies, even the carved figure of the duke’s head in white marble whose gaze, blind but all-seeing, made Henri want to hide his eyes. To his relief, he saw no guards.

He had to catch himself when she abruptly halted and withdrew a golden key from her bosom. Hastily, Henri averted his eyes, saw the dirty smear his hand had left on the pale pink wallpaper, and scrubbed it clean with a corner of his sleeve. The key scratched in the lock and the door swung open.

Henri scarcely saw the rooms they passed through now. He retained a blurred impression of fresh flowers and jewel- colored velvet, oval mirrors in frames as wide as his hand, overstuffed tapestried sofas with matching pillows, silver platters of fresh, shiny fruit, sinuous glass oil lamps perfuming the air. When the duchess finally halted, a square wood bed loomed before him, roofed in wood, canopied and curtained in fringed gold silk and piled with tasseled blue pillows—a bed wider than a prize stallion’s loose box and half the size of the hovel where he had been born. Henri had spent his nineteen years sleeping on straw, his spare shirt for a pillow and rats scampering across his discarded boots. Now he was expected to service the duchess on a bed worth an entire village? Impossible. His cock dangled flaccid as an empty sausage casing. He didn’t recognize his own voice when he said, “Stop.”

The duchess turned.

“I—I want—” Henri swallowed.

The duchess gazed impassively at him. She said nothing. She did not have to speak, he realized. He was here; she’d got her way and apparently had no further concern for how the…act proceeded.

He would make her feel something. If he was to die after, then he wanted to die a man, not a silent slave. “I want you in there,” he said as firmly as he could, gesturing toward the room before, a less frightening room.

To his surprise, the duchess retreated without comment, her skirts brushing his leg as she passed. Henri shuddered like a nervous horse and went after her.

This room was huge as well, but at least there was no bed. The duchess said, “If you give me a child, I shall reward you in gold coin.”

Henri’s cheeks flushed with shame. He was not a whore. As if gold would help him, if the palace guards caught him in her chambers. Gelding by hot iron was the first and least of what he would suffer. Delicious anger stiffened his cock, rasping it against his homespun pants, and he found he didn’t care what she thought of him. He hadn’t been asked to be her friend, only her stud. He could do as he liked with her. Anything. In this room, Her Grace the duchess was his to rule.

If he failed, would she find another to do her bidding? He couldn’t bear the thought. He must not fail. For a little while, he must rule her.

“Remove your clothing,” said Henri.

“I cannot. You must help me.”

This problem had not occurred to him. He was not a lady’s maid any more than he was a whore. However, the idea curiously excited him. “Bend over that sofa,” he said. “No, over the back.”

She did exactly as he asked. Bent over like that, her bosom swelled out the top of her gown, almost bursting free. Her face was hidden, but he could see bare white skin at the nape of her neck. Henri circled her, looking from all angles. Buttons bound her into her crimson gown. He’d never seen so many buttons on one garment. He imagined how many hours a seamstress might have spent covering those buttons, sewing them on and painstakingly stitching fabric loops to hold them. He imagined ripping the buttons off, letting them fly everywhere. Instead, he slipped them free down to her waist, then insinuated his hands down her bodice to squeeze enormous soft handfuls of breasts. Her breath hitched. So did his. Her buttocks twitched against his groin. He closed his eyes. Yes, he could do this; his body was brave. Reluctantly, he let go of her and returned to his task.

The gown pooled at her waist. He knew how to unlace a bodice and accomplished that task swiftly. Beneath lay a chemise of fine silk, softer even than her skin. The chemise was meant to be drawn over her head, but the thin silk tore easily and the sound of its ripping traveled straight to his balls. Beneath it she wore nothing. Henri feasted on her exposed vertebrae. He sucked on her neck until he remembered the consequences of leaving a mark and changed his strategy, just in time.

She was breathing unevenly, and he felt fine tremors under his hands. He examined her disarray as if she were a saddle he’d been given to polish, except that this saddle was his to ride upon. He dug his toes into the thick carpet, trying to decide what to do next.

“Hurry,” she said.

He hesitated, then said, “No.”

Stripping off his patched shirt, he flung it aside. His skin tingled, caressed by cool, perfumed air. The heavily embroidered fabric of her skirt crackled as he gathered up fistfuls, his calluses snagging on the nap. “I want you to stay here, like this,” he said.

The duchess did not respond to what he’d said, so he lifted up her skirt—acres and acres of skirt—as if she was a kitchen maid. He finally crushed it as best he could around her waist, revealing another layer of thinner, stiffer skirts. He treated these perfunctorily, arriving finally at her drawers, no different from anyone’s except for being fine red silk. Curious, Henri inspected with his fingers and found a perfectly ordinary slit in the fabric, no gold thread or jewels or even embroidered flowers. But beneath! Perfectly smooth! Was this a sign of her aristocratic birth, or—of course not. Stupid. She had an army of maids to cleanse and shave her.

The image of her and her maids was nearly too much for him; it resembled a painting that hung in the Dewy Rose. Henri stroked one finger down her slit and she quivered, like a horse flicking off a fly. Her steamier heat rose from within, so he could not resist parting her lush folds and sliding his finger deeper still. She was slick as melted butter, ready for him already. He excited her. More likely, he thought, the situation excited her, but who was he to complain? His free hand untied his pants’ drawstring, and his cock fought free.

Booted feet rang in the corridor, blessedly some distance away. His feverish eyes lighted on a padded bench against the wall. He grabbed the duchess’s arm and hustled her to it, holding his pants with his free hand, letting her gown fall where it would. She stumbled and stepped out of it, whispering, “I hear the guards! You must—”

The boots didn’t slow as they approached. “Not for us,” he said. They wouldn’t dare. Not just before he entered her. The boots passed on. The duchess sagged, but only for an instant.

A neat pile of sewing rested on the bench he’d chosen, probably belonging to one of the women who served her. Henri swept it to the floor, all of it. She looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes icy; he took a deep, shaky breath and nudged the fabric carefully away from their feet.

He was relieved when she looked away from him again. She wore the remnants of her chemise and silk drawers with her earrings. Her slippers had disappeared somewhere along the way, but a heavy chain of brilliants collared her neck. He hadn’t even noticed them against the splendor of her gown. Her hair, though mussed, retained its ornate style and jeweled hair ornaments. He could almost imagine her a ten-copper lay, playing at being duchess in one of the bawdy houses down in the town.

She drew the ripped chemise from her body, each arm flowing gracefully. He’d never seen skin so white and smooth. A rich attar of flowers rose from her bared, heated flesh, making him want to wipe his feet on the carpet and cower even as he possessed her. He shoved his pants down his legs; luckily, his cock remained undaunted.

Her hands loosened the string holding her drawers, and slowly, so slowly, dragged them down over lush hips and plump white buttocks. The body of a woman made to bear children, Henri thought, burning even more hotly.

Unable to wait an instant longer, he mounted her from behind in one deep push. She groaned deeply as if he’d struck her. Henri savored her cunt’s scalding grasp as long as he could before beginning to thrust, short sharp strokes, each punctuated by his grunt and her gasp.

He heard boots again in the corridor, drawing nearer. The duchess gasped, either with fear or because his calloused hands squeezed her breasts hard each time he withdrew. Henri didn’t care about guards right now. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. Blind to all but the bucking flesh beneath him, he crushed her into the bench, impaling her again and again. Her cunt squeezed his cock and he sucked in air. Seizing her hips, he ground into her as fiercely as he could, pressing her bud against the padded surface beneath them. Too hard; he should be more gentle, but she twisted and moaned, the sudden sound like fire down his spine. He jolted into her pulsing cunt, until she had drained him dry.

Afterward, silence. The sweat of his effort dried quickly, and he landed in cold and sticky reality. The sound of boots slowed and drew nearer.

Henri shuddered, then realized it was the duchess whose body shook. “Be still,” he breathed into her ear. The boots clicked away, down the hall. Henri let out a slow breath and withdrew himself from her body.

He didn’t want to just leave her with his seed drying on her thighs; he wouldn’t do that even to a whore. The duchess straightened slowly but did not turn to face him. Henri said, “Turn around,” but he couldn’t muster the commanding tone he’d managed earlier.

She turned anyway, a woman with thick long hair obscuring her luscious breasts, clad only in a jeweled collar and silken stockings that tied at her knees, like an erotic painting. She did not move to cover herself, but stood tall and poised; even in bare feet she was slightly taller than Henri, he noted for the first time. “You have done well,” she said. She did not smile.

Had anyone ever seen her smile? His anger was gone, spent. He felt only sadness as he looked at her.

Henri remembered the sounds she had made only moments earlier. He thought he had given her some pleasure, at least. “Will you tell me if you are breeding?” he asked, then glanced away, feeling heat creep down his neck. The whole duchy would know if she were breeding.

“Look at me.”

Henri lifted his head. Her cheeks and chest were still flushed, and the air reeked of sex and sweat. Yet she still appeared untouchable.

“Yes, boy, I will tell you if I am breeding,” the duchess said. “Now you must go. You’ve been brave, but it won’t do for you to be caught here. The duke is jealous of his possessions.”

He couldn’t bear to leave her like this. “No.” Henri took a step back and felt his pants under his heel. Slowly, he bent, picked them up, and stepped into them, all without turning his back on her. She was not looking at him. Her gaze rested on a portrait over the mantel, of three bay horses grazing among grassy hills.

The cloth of his pants felt coarse after the luxurious fabrics he’d ripped from the duchess’s body. Staring down at his hands as he knotted the drawstring, he said, “Your Grace, if you are not breeding, will you tell me?”

“If I am not breeding, it will be no surprise.”

Henri felt for his shirt on the carpet and finally located it. From inside its folds he said, “Will you come to the stables?”

“My husband does not permit—” She hesitated. “Yes, I will come to the stables.”

Her voice was as calm as it had been before, but he fancied he could catch a trace of hopelessness. He reached for her hand without thinking, then let it fall before it reached her, afraid of giving offense. Perhaps he could persuade her. “Come at night. I would save you if I could, Your Grace. If you would travel away with me. You can ride. You do not have to die.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. Even nearly naked, she looked every inch a duchess. She said, “I do not think there is any escape from this life.”

He’d never before thought of the palace as a trap. He wondered if she ever struggled against it. “I did not think I could…try to give you a child, either.”

Her mouth twitched into an unconvincing smile. “We shall see, Henri. We shall see. Now, go. Sylvie will see you safely back to the stables.”

Henri knew what we shall see meant. She’d set herself on a course and meant to stick to it. He’d heard that tone before, from his most stubborn uncle, who’d ended up dying at sea, food for sharks, all because he refused to make peace with his father over a woman whom he hadn’t even married. Henri was in even less of a position to argue with the duchess. He might be good enough to service her, but she seemed unlikely to take advice from a grubby stableboy.

He lowered his eyes and quickly bowed before hurrying to the door. He would do better to forget about this, as soon as he possibly could manage it.