Cordelia spun on her heel and marched into the salon, which was lit only by two candles on the mantel. "Monsieur Brion!" She called for him at the top of her lungs. And when he didn't immediately materialize, she yelled again. She paced the Turkey carpet, from window to door, her hands gripped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.

"Princess. Did you call?" Brion appeared from the kitchen. He was still fully dressed in livery and would remain so until the prince had gone to bed. He looked anxiously at the princess.

"Where's Mathilde? What's that girl doing in my chamber?" She rapped out the questions, so filled with dread that her voice was a high-pitched staccato rattle, bearing almost no resemblance to her own.

The majordomo pulled nervously at his chin. "The prince told me to summon Elsie to attend Your Highness," he explained.

"Where is Mathilde?" She took a step toward him and involuntarily he edged backward.

"The prince said Mistress Mathilde had to go somewhere." Brion was wringing his hands apologetically as the white-faced Fury, eyes ablaze, advanced on him.

"Where? Where has she gone?"

Unhappily, he shook his head. "The prince didn't say, my lady."

"But Mathilde. She must have said something." It was unreal to imagine that Mathilde would disappear without a word.

"I didn't see her, my lady. She was in your bedchamber last I knew, then the prince came up before the banquet and spoke with her. I haven't seen her since."

Cordelia was beginning to feel as if the world had tilted into insanity. This couldn't be true, it couldn't be happening. "Her belongings. Has she taken them?"

"I don't believe so, madame." To his relief, he saw that the princess was beginning to calm down. The light of madness was slowly dying in her eyes, and her voice had resumed its normal pitch and volume.

"Have you been told to send them on anywhere?"

He shook his head. "Not as yet, my lady."

Cordelia nodded slowly. "Very well. Thank you." She turned and went back to her own room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Elsie still stood where she'd left her in the middle of the room, gazing anxiously at the door through which her mistress had disappeared-and now reappeared.

"Should I help you now, my lady?"

Cordelia didn't appear to hear. She resumed her pacing, nibbling at a loose thumbnail. Why would Michael send Mathilde away? How had he done it? Mathilde would not have abandoned Cordelia willingly or easily. He must have come up here before the banquet had begun, after she had defeated him so soundly at the card tables. And he'd said nothing to her the whole evening.

The banquet in the opera house had not begun until ten o'clock and had dragged on interminably into the early hours of the morning. Michael had sat beside her, saying nothing to her, confining all his conversation to those around them. They were all strangers to Cordelia, and because her husband didn't address her, neither did anyone else, leaving her feeling as if she were sitting invisible in a freezing void. Once the dauphin and his bride had been escorted from the opera house, the prince had said in a cold undertone that she now had his leave to return to their own apartments, where he would join her at his pleasure.

Cordelia didn't make the mistake of assuming she had a choice. She had simply curtsied and left. She had come up to bed and found Mathilde gone, just as Michael had planned it.

Her head began to ache anew and her body throbbed with weariness. She had been up and wearing court dress for almost twenty-four hours, and the heavy weight of damask and the constriction of her corset was a torment in her fatigue. She was too tired tonight to deal with this. She wanted Mathilde. And the thought of what Michael might have done to her nurse buzzed in her brain like a tormenting bee. She had never believed anyone could defeat Mathilde, could force Mathilde to do anything she didn't believe was right. So how had he compelled her departure?

"Should I help you, madame?" Elsie ventured again. She knew what she was supposed to do but didn't know how to respond when she was prevented from performing her tasks. Experience, however, had taught her that if she failed to perform those tasks, she would be blamed regardless of the reason.

"Yes… very well, yes, you may assist me," Cordelia said vaguely.

Relieved, Elsie ran forward to unbutton, unhook, unlace with reverent hands. Cordelia stood stock-still, offering little help, too absorbed in her own thoughts to be really aware of what was happening. She shrugged into the white velvet chamber robe that Elsie held for her, and sat on the dresser stool, beginning to unpin her hair.

"Oh, I must do that for you, madame." Elsie leaped forward. "I've never waited on a lady before," she confided, pulling out pins hastily. "So I hope I'm doing things right." She picked up the ivory-backed brush and began to draw it through the rippling blue-black cascade falling down Cordelia's back.

Cordelia didn't respond. She was still thinking furiously. Mathilde would come back. She would come to her even if she'd been forbidden by the prince. If she was physically capable of doing so.

The door opened behind her and her heart jumped into her throat. She looked at him in the mirror in front of her. He stood in the doorway. He had removed his sword, but apart from that was still dressed in his wedding finery, the gold emblem of Prussia pinned to his sash.

She drew the folds of her chamber robe tighter around her as she rose to face him. "Where is Mathilde, my lord?" She spoke without inflection, but her eyes were filled with anger and contempt. Not a shadow of fear. She had gone beyond fear.

"She has been replaced as your abigail." He smiled his asp's smile. "I told you that you had need of a woman with more experience of the duties of a lady's maid at Versailles than some elderly nursemaid."

"I see." Still her voice was flat. "Elsie informs me that she has no previous experience of an abigail's work anywhere, let alone Versailles. But I daresay you assume that she comes by the required knowledge in some other way. Perhaps she breathes it in, or it comes to her in dreams."

Michael's pale eyes became opaque. For a minute he couldn't believe what he was hearing. This cold, derisive sarcasm from a chit of a girl and in front of a servant to boot. Then a muscle twitched in his cheek, and the pulse in his forehead began to throb, and his eyes became cold and deadly.

Cordelia knew that she had not aroused his anger to this extent before, and despite the desperation that fueled her defiance, sick tremors of fear started in her belly. She fought them down, forcing herself to meet the threat in those terrible eyes. What could he do to her worse than he had already done?

"Get out of here!" He spun round to the petrified Elsie, who with a little gasp dropped the hairbrush and fled the room, ducking past the prince in the doorway.

Michael flung the door closed. He came across to her and she stood her ground, still meeting his eye, her chin held high.

"By God," he said softly, "I will break you, madame. I will break you to the saddle like any self-willed filly." He took the sides of the velvet robe and threw them open. His eyes dropped to her body, white, naked, its perfection marred only by the traces of his previous possessions.

An hour later he left her. He was humming to himself as he went into his dressing room, where his valet still waited to put him to bed. He had not removed his clothing beyond what had been necessary to achieve his purpose and now, still humming softly, allowed the man to undress him and hang up his clothes in the armoire. The valet assisted the prince into his chamber robe and then stood waiting, his hands folded, to see if his master had further orders for him.

"Bring me a glass of cognac and then go."

The man obeyed, bowed a good night, and soundlessly left the room, thankful for his dismissal. He had found it impossible to close his ears to the ugly sounds coming from the princess's bedchamber.

Michael drained the cognac in one gulp. Taking from his pocket the key that he'd automatically transferred from his suit coat, he went over to the chest, unlocked it, and took out the present journal. He refilled his glass, then stood leafing through the daily entries. He sipped from his glass, his mouth taut. Had the lock been opened deliberately that morning? He couldn't believe that it had been anything but an accident. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, at any rate. It was extraordinary that he could have been careless, but it seemed the only explanation-he must not have secured the padlock properly the previous night. He had perhaps been overly anxious to get to his wife.

He walked into his adjoining bedchamber and placed the journal on the secretaire. Then he returned to the chest. He drew out the volume for 1765. His mouth grew thinner, his frown deeper, as he read through the entries. Throughout, his comments indicated that Elvira bloomed, daily increased in beauty. How much did that beauty owe to her triumph at cuckolding her husband?

He snapped the book closed and drained his glass once again. He replaced the journal in the chest and went back to the secretaire. Dipping quill in the inkstand, he began the day's meticulous entry. It was long, containing as it did a detailed description of the wedding, the demeanor of the royal party, and the subsequent celebrations. Only then did he describe the last hour with his wife.

He placed his pen on the blotter and stared unseeing at the doodling pattern of dripping ink. Cordelia was bidding fair to become as unsatisfactory a wife as Elvira had been. But he had failed with Elvira. He would not fail with this one. He would master this one in life.

Cordelia lay naked on the bed, curled into a tight ball, her body convulsed with violent shivers, dry sobs gathering in her throat. It had been worse… much, much worse than usual. If he had hurt her in rage, she thought, it would have been easier to bear. But he had used her, inflicting pain with an icy deliberation that had negated her very self, had reduced her to an animal, soulless, spiritless, worth no more than a clod of earth.

She knew she had cried out during the worst of it, although she had sworn to herself that she would keep silent. Now her weakness filled her with self-disgust. Perhaps she deserved such treatment. Perhaps she'd invited it with her cowardly cringing. A wave of nausea rose invincible and she rolled off the bed with a moan, reaching for the chamber pot. She could see herself in her mind's eye, crouched on the floor, vomiting helplessly with shock and self-disgust, a trembling, fearful, beaten animal.

But as the heaving of her stomach quieted and cold sweat misted her skin, her brain seemed to clear. The vomiting had somehow purged her spiritually as well as physically. She rose unsteadily to her feet, looking around for something to cover her chilled nakedness. The robe he'd torn from her lay on the floor, and she pulled it on, huddling into it. She looked around the dark room, where the shapes of the furniture stood out gray against the gloom. The window was a black square, but beyond she could see the faintest lightening at the edges of the darkness.

She could not sleep. She could not get back into that bed. She wanted Mathilde, with the deep, overpowering, speechless need of a wounded child for its mother.

Without any clear thought, she left the bedchamber, crossed the salon, and let herself out into the corridor. Candles in wall sconces lit the deserted expanse, and as the door to the apartment closed behind her, a great wave of relief and release broke over her. She was free. Out of the stifling, shackling darkness of her prison. Where she was going or what she was doing were questions that didn't even pose themselves. She clambered painfully onto a broad windowsill overlooking an inner courtyard, gathered the robe securely around her, rested her head on her drawn-up knees, and waited for daylight. Waited for Mathilde.

Leo left a card party just as dawn streaked the sky. He was mildly the worse for cognac. Cards, cognac, and companionship had seemed the only distractions from the niggling unease that made sleep an impossibility. He couldn't separate Cordelia from Elvira for some reason. He was bound to them both by ties whose similarity he couldn't explain to himself. Elvira was his sister, his twin. He loved her unconditionally. Her welfare was his responsibility. And now he was haunted by the idea that perhaps he had failed to meet that responsibility.