A herald's trumpet sounded. There was a stir around them. People leaned forward slightly, looking back down the series of rooms. The royal party was approaching.

Toinette was tiny. A slender, almost childish figure smothered in diamonds. But she looked around her, acknowledging the homage of the court with a grace and dignity that belied her childlike appearance. Beside her walked the dauphin, who seemed much more ill at ease than his bride. There was a moment when Toinette caught

Cordelia's eye, then she had passed and Cordelia wasn't sure whether the gleam in the round blue eyes had been laughter or tears.

During the wedding, gaming tables were set up in the chain of state rooms, with cards and dice for the king and his courtiers to while away the remainder of the day until the banquet. Roped barriers kept the witnessing crowds from getting too close as they gawked at the court at play. It had begun to rain heavily, sending the masses inside from the gardens, and the smell of wet cloth pervaded the air already heavy with scented candles.

Cordelia saw her husband and. Leo at the king's table playing lansquenet. The ladies of the court, including the dauphine, were also at cards. Cordelia strolled among the tables, trying to decide whether to dice or join the card-players. As she passed her husband, the king looked up from his cards. "Princess von Sachsen. Pray take a seat at our table. If you don't play, then you may bring your husband luck." He beamed with great good humor.

"Oh, but I do play, Your Majesty." Cordelia's eyes suddenly sharpened. Lansquenet, a game of German origin, had been played a great deal at the Viennese court. She and Toinette had perfected their somewhat dubious skills at the tables and had become adept at defeating the archdukes.

She took the chair held for her by a footman, arranging her skirts of crimson and ivory with a deft hand, her dazzling smile embracing the table.

Leo recognized that look. That mischievous, calculating, gleeful gloat. He had seen it in the carriage as they played dice to pass the time, and he had seen it over chess one memorable night. And now he was seeing it again, only she was at the king's table in the state rooms of Versailles, surrounded by courtiers and gaping spectators.

He shot her a warning look, but she smiled sunnily and took up her cards. He said, "I doubt you have so many bystanders at Schonbrunn, Princess? The Austrian court is less open to the world."

"Oh, I am accustomed to playing under the most watchful stares, my lord," she said with the same radiant smile.

Leo ground his teeth. He glanced at Michael, who seemed indifferent. He would expect his- wife to play. Everyone gambled. It was a social skill.

The king held the bank. "We play high, Princess," he warned with a jocular smile. "But I daresay your husband will stake you. A wedding gift, eh, Prince?"

Michael's smile was tight, but he drew a leather purse from his coat pocket and handed it to his wife with the patronizing comment "If you play at all competently, my dear, that should cover you for a few hands."

"I believe you will discover that I play competently, sir," she said serenely, opening the purse. She placed a golden louis on the table and fanned out the cards in her hand with an expert flick of her wrist.

Leo groaned to himself and took up his own cards. Apparently there was nothing he could do to avert catastrophe.

But catastrophe seemed long coming. Cordelia won steadily. She played intently, her expression utterly serious, except at the end of a hand when she would gather up her winnings with that little crow of triumph that he remembered so vividly. She beamed around the table, and even the king chuckled and told her she was a fine card player but a shameless winner.

Michael, however, looked blacker and blacker. He was losing to his wife, his golden louis piling up at her white elbow, and her triumph was a thorn in his side. It was directed at him. She threw it at him with every smile. She had the upper hand and she was relishing every minute of it. Even the thought that later he could have his revenge didn't help the sour taste of defeat in the face of her gloating. Had she been meek and modest, he could almost have borne her success, but this blatant exultation was intolerable.

Leo tried to see how she was doing it. He watched her hands, the slender white beringed fingers. Her sleeves reached only to her elbow, so the obvious hiding place for cards was denied her. She made no sudden distracting movements, and when he thought she had become blinded to danger by her success, she averted any possibility of suspicion by calmly losing the next three hands.

She had a purpose, more serious than mere winning, and it took him a while to see it. She lost when it seemed sensible to do so, but she never lost to her husband. She outbid him, outmaneuvered him, took every louis he had with him. And she smiled with such artlessly shameless satisfaction that, even though Michael was clearly livid, everyone at the table laughed and shared her pleasure, her husband obliquely becoming the butt of their laughter.

And when she sweetly offered to lend her husband some of the money he had so kindly given her to play with, the table rocked with amusement. "She's got you there, Prince," the king boomed. "Such a pretty little thing, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but sharp as a rapier. If you ever need to repair your fortunes, just send your wife to the tables."

Michael smiled thinly and Leo wondered if he was the only one to feel the hostility and tension surging beneath the apparent bonhomie at the table. Finally Leo threw in his cards, laughingly admitted defeat, pushed his last coins across to Cordelia, and begged the king for permission to leave the game.

"I was always taught that a wise gamester knows when to close his game," Cordelia said swiftly. "Would Your Majesty excuse me also? I feel my luck is about to turn."

"You would deny us our revenge?" chuckled the king. "But we will have it another time, my dear Princess." He tossed his own cards to the table. "Ladies, gentlemen, I shall retire before the banquet."

His fellow players rose, as did the rest of the tables. The king passed through the salon, offering his arm to his new granddaughter-in-law. "Come, my dear."

Cordelia's head ached after the intensity of the game, but she was filled with jubilation. She would pay for it later, but it had been worth it. She scooped her winnings into her reticule under cover of the king's departure and left the table before Michael could summon her back.

Her initial impression of the palace had been of a succession of glittering mirrors, gleaming marble floors, rich tapestries, exquisite paintings. But there must be more to the place than that.

She moved unobtrusively through the series of rooms, keeping to the court side of the roped barriers. The massive Hall of Mirrors was disorienting, and she stopped, almost blinded by the reflections of the great candelabra in the vast expanse of looking glass. The crowded scene of glittering, jeweled courtiers and the massed throng of spectators were doubled by their reflection, and she felt as if she'd strayed into some infernal scene by Hieronymus Bosch. The acoustics in the gallery threw the noise up to the ceiling, where it bounced back in a discordant racket of voices, rattling dice, and above it all the gallant strains of a trio of musicians.

Cordelia reached the end of the gallery and turned aside into an anteroom. It was quieter here, with only a few people standing around looking out at the rain-drenched garden and discussing whether the evening's firework display would have to be postponed. Beyond the anteroom was a long windowed corridor that she guessed would lead downstairs and to some garden exit. She started toward it.

Leo broke off his conversation as he caught sight of the distinctive crimson and ivory figure crossing the anteroom. "Excuse me." He strolled casually in pursuit, waiting to catch up with her until they were out of earshot of the people in the anteroom.

"What the hell did you think you were playing at?" he demanded, catching her wrist, spinning her to face him.

"Lansquenet," she retorted, her eyes still sparkling with excitement. "Wasn't that what we were all playing, sir?"

"How did you do it?" He refused to respond to her mischief, unable to think of anything but what could have happened if she'd been discovered.

"I won," she said. "It was as simple as that."

"Damn you, Cordelia! Tell me how you did it!"

"Oh, don't be cross, Leo." She put a hand on his arm. "Nothing bad happened and I squashed Michael like a bug. Didn't I?" Bitter triumph laced her voice, glittered in her eyes, curled her lip.

Leo was shocked by the bitterness. It was as unexpected in Cordelia as malice would have been. She was wickedly mischievous, but never spiteful. She was determined, candid, frequently outrageous, but embittered… never.

"He was livid, could you tell?" she continued in the same tone. "Wasn't it wonderful? They laughed at him and I beat him." Her lovely mouth tightened. "I will not let-" Abruptly, she stopped, remembering who she was talking to, realizing that she had dropped her guard.

"Won't let what, Cordelia?" Leo asked quietly. He took her hands, holding them tightly. "What are you talking about?"

She tried to laugh, to avert her gaze. "I was just rattling on. I do when I get excited; it's a terrible habit. You know how I love to win-it just goes to my head."

"Are you in trouble, Cordelia?" His gaze was piercing, intent.

She shook her head. "Of course not. How should I be? No one guessed what I was doing."

"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it. Something is wrong. What is it?"

"Nothing is wrong. Of course it's not. At last I'm here, in fairyland. How else would you describe this place, Leo? It's even more fantastic than I'd imagined. I can't wait to explore the gardens and-"

"Stop it!" he interrupted sharply. "What are you trying to hide?"

If Michael had treated Elvira as he treated his second wife, she had not told her brother. Cordelia was now convinced of it. Leo's concern was as puzzled as it was genuine. He had loved his sister dearly; it would be unbearable now, after her death, to suspect that she had suffered at her husband's hands.

There was one sure way to deflect him. "I'm trying to hide that I love you," she said simply. "I'm married to one man and I love another. That's what's the matter, Leo. Nothing else. Just what you've always known. I'm torn apart. I have to pretend with my husband, all the time. All the time," she added with pointed emphasis. "In bed, in-"

"That's enough," he snapped, wanting to close his ears to the words, his mind to the images they created. He dropped her hands. "If you cannot resign yourself to reality, Cordelia, you will only store up misery for yourself. Don't you see that?"

She raised a sardonic eyebrow. Nothing could be more miserable than the reality of life with Prince Michael. "Is Christian settled with the Due de Carillac?"

It was such an abrupt change of subject, he was taken aback. But it was easier to talk of Christian than to talk of futile love. And if that was all that was troubling Cordelia, then he could do nothing to help her.

"I believe Carillac made him a generous offer," he said neutrally. "I daresay Christian will be at Versailles at some point during the wedding festivities. Carillac will want to show him off."

"I wonder how we can contrive to talk," Cordelia mused. "Michael must have ceremonial duties, meetings and levees and things to attend. He can't watch me all the time." She shook her head suddenly and offered him a bright smile. "Forgive me, I have need of the retiring room."

She glided away in the direction of one of the rooms set aside as a tiring-room for the ladies, but her smile seemed to remain, hovering in the air, bright, and as brittle as crystal.

Leo went over to one of the long windows looking down on the gardens. He stared out into the rain. Why did she think Michael watched her? Husbands weren't spies. She had been keeping something from him, lying to him. But why?

Chapter Fourteen

"Where's Mathilde?" Cordelia stared at the red-cheeked girl in her bedchamber. The girl was bobbing curtsies, her cheeks growing redder by the minute.

"I don't know, m'lady. Monsieur Brion said I was to look after you. Shall I help you with your gown?" Nervously, she came toward the princess, who continued to stare at her as if she were some unknown member of the animal kingdom.