The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover

Kaspar said, “Shall I call for a bath for Your Grace?”

He always spoke first. She had never noticed particularly, but Arno always deferred to him, perhaps because Kaspar was older. He was nearly thirty, she thought, while Arno had been delivered to the palace at eighteen and was now not quite twenty-three. She had asked Sylvie their ages; it was difficult to tell when they never put on a man’s muscle, at least not in the way one was used to seeing.

“Where is Sylvie?” she asked. Baths were Sylvie’s duty.

“Sleeping, Your Grace,” Kaspar said. He stood at ease, his big hands resting on his sheathed twin swords. From this close, she could see the thin white scars that marked his forearms, old injuries from training with blades. His eyes were pale gray. “Shall I wake her?”

“No,” Camille said. She wanted a bath, but not enough to wait for one to be prepared. She had to think. And Sylvie had slept little recently, instead spending most of a night and day finding Henri and arranging to bring him to Camille. She should let Sylvie sleep now, she realized, because they must escape the palace tonight, she and Sylvie and her eunuchs as well; she could not allow them to die because of her. To die in her service was one thing. To die for nothing was quite another.

Right now, her brain spun like the innards of a clock, getting nowhere.

Arno stepped forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. For a moment, everything in her mind stopped. His hand was so warm. She drew strength from it. He said, in his gentle tenor, “Please, Your Grace, let us put you to bed.”

Kaspar added, “We will keep you safe.”

Surely they knew that was impossible. “That is your duty,” she said, to test his response.

“That is our duty and our desire,” Kaspar said. “Do not doubt, Your Grace, that we will care for you to our deaths and beyond.”

She could not protest his dramatic words; if she were killed, they would be killed as well. She nodded.

Arno added, before he let his hand fall from her shoulder, “You may ask anything of us. Anything we can do for you, we will. Let us serve you tonight.”

Camille drew a deep breath. She could not delay any longer, nor did she care to do so. “The guards at the outer walls change in the hours before dawn. We will leave then, both of you and Sylvie and I, and we will—” She hesitated the barest moment, remembering Henri with a rush of affection. “The stableboy is loyal to me. He will help us to hide until we can go.” If Michel discovered what the boy had done…and she was gone, and all her most treasured servants and horses…no. She could not abandon him to that. “The boy Henri will come with us, as well.”

Kaspar knelt before her, touching his forehead to her foot. “As you commanded, all is prepared for a rapid escape. I will follow you, Your Grace.”

“Arno?”

The younger guard knelt beside Kaspar. “Your Grace, I—I think I should not go. Not at first.”

Kaspar sucked in an audible breath.

“Don’t,” Arno said, touching Kaspar’s arm. Camille watched the interplay keenly; Kaspar did not look at him. Because he thought Arno’s plan unwise, or out of fear for his friend?

Arno said, “Someone will need to gather information, about pursuit. I could come to you later, on the road, or send someone I can trust. It is better me. You see, Vilmos will protect me. His mother was my mother’s cousin. It is not his fault I was cut, and ever since he found me he has watched over me. Also, now he owes you something as well, and will speak for you among the palace guard. I would not flaunt my presence in the palace. I have friends in the town.”

“Your Grace, he would be in grave danger from the duke,” Kaspar argued. “It is true, Vilmos’s loyalty to the duke is not strong, but—”

Camille’s suspicions were confirmed. Vilmos was not utterly enamored of her husband. She said to Arno, “It is more risk than I should ask you to bear.”

“It is your right to ask me to go to my death,” Arno said. “I do not think this will be my death.”

Camille thought. Kaspar was distressed, but Arno was correct. Arno’s actions might save them all from death. She nodded, once. “Arno will stay. We will have Henri to help care for the horses on the journey.”

Kaspar closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. He bent and kissed her foot.

Camille and her guards packed the few personal items they would take with them; the rest would be retrieved from a hiding place outside the palace walls. They quickly finished, but nearly six hours still stretched out before they could depart.

Camille said, “We will let Sylvie sleep a while longer, then send her to the stables to find the boy. Until then, you must also rest.”

“Your Grace,” Kaspar said. “Let us serve you tonight.”

Custom encouraged using eunuchs for sexual pleasure. In all their time together, Camille had never asked. She’d been loyal to Michel, even after he’d betrayed her a thousand times. This afternoon, she’d betrayed him with Henri. To do this with her eunuchs—one of whom would go into desperate danger for her sake—seemed suddenly to loom as an important mark of how she’d changed. Also, it would be better than lying in her bed alone, staring at the ceiling and worrying herself to flinders. She said, “Thanks to you both. I would like that, very much.”

She let Kaspar take her hand and lead her to her bedchamber, Arno trailing behind.

Kaspar lit tapers on her nightstand and dressing table; after she sat down on her bed, Arno knelt and removed her slippers. The stubble on his skull glinted gold in the candlelight. He set the slippers aside but remained at her feet, his head bowed, the nape of his neck vulnerable.

When several seconds passed and he did not move, Camille said, “What is it, Arno?”

He shook his head, then bowed lower and kissed the tops of her feet, more sensually than Kaspar had done, warm damp pressure that sent tingles up her legs. She reached down and laid her palm on the crown of Arno’s head. His skin was hot, his stubble like a cat’s tongue and so pleasant to touch that she rubbed her hand over all of it that she could reach, ending with a tug at his ear. She sat back on her elbows. “Both of you, join me.”

“If I may, Your Grace?” Kaspar asked. He indicated his weapons. She nodded, and he divested himself of his harness, laying his throwing knife on her night table and his swords on the carpet next to her bed. Arno did the same.

Her two guards did not completely disrobe; they never had done so in her sight, and she had not liked to demand that of them. Kaspar kept his loose trousers, and Arno his long drawers. She wasn’t sure if their modesty was meant to protect them from her gaze or to protect her from having to see that they were not whole men. She thought of telling them that it did not matter, but then another reason occurred to her; perhaps they meant to reassure her of their intent. What they did was for her and not for them.

Kaspar untied her belt, pushed her robe from her shoulders, and lifted her in his arms, something he had never done before. He cradled her against his bare chest while Arno marshaled pillows into a nest, all without speaking. She wanted to turn into him—it had been years since she’d been held like this—but could not quite bring herself to do it and reveal her need. Just then, Kaspar’s hand cupped the back of her head and pressed her face into his shoulder. She closed her eyes. His thumb rubbed the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. “A moment longer,” he murmured.

His voice was lighter than a whole man’s but comforting all the same. What made him less than whole? The loss of his stones? She did not have a man’s stones, either. And in many ways, Kaspar was a better man than her husband, though such a thing could never be spoken. She wondered if either eunuch truly cared for her. If not, their pretense was infinitely better than whatever the duke felt.

Arno took her from Kaspar’s arms and laid her on the pillows. She sank into the pile of velvet and satin, so soft that she would have difficulty if she tried to struggle out, but she did not want to struggle. Her head lolled as Arno began to massage one of her legs, Kaspar the other, beginning at her toes and working up her foot to her calf. They both had considerable skill. Perhaps—probably—they did this for each other. Whom else did they have?

Her mind drifted, seeking refuge and rest in pure sensation. When her guards’ hands reached her knees, Arno continued upward, his big hands squeezing the taut muscles at the tops of her thighs and sweeping his thumbs over her hip bones.

The bed shifted as Kaspar departed, only to return a few moments later with a ewer and bowl, and a cloth folded over his forearm. Arno slid his hands intimately close and pressed open her lower lips. Camille closed her eyes as Kaspar bathed her in rose water, teasing her tender skin with friction from the cloth and trickles of water. She shifted restlessly against Arno’s hands, then tensed when the next pressure against her came from Kaspar’s tongue. At first flinching at the intensity, she soon twisted her hips, seeking more. “Use your finger, please,” she said. Kaspar’s finger nudged at her opening and she swallowed a cry.

Arno bent close and licked the shell of her ear. “What is your desire, Your Grace?” he asked. “Command me.”

“My breasts,” she said. “Suckle my breasts.”

Arno teased her nipples at first with light flicks of his tongue, but soon, in response to her arching back, pinched one between his lips and pulled, rolling her other nipple between his fingertips. Each squeeze stabbed her belly, pleasure sharp as that of Kaspar’s thick, calloused finger rubbing inside of her. She panted against the knots twisting her insides. “More,” she said.

Arno palmed her breasts and squeezed. She balanced on a web of tension. Kaspar could not reach deeply enough to cut her free. She gasped for air and pushed into his hand, but could not come.

“Arno,” she said. “In the drawer. By the bed. The ivory carving.”

Kaspar looked up. She gestured for him to stop what he was doing. He lifted his head but did not remove his fingers from her quim. His eyes had gone dark, and his forehead was sheened with sweat. She could see her own fluids shining around his lips. He said, “I have used such carvings before, Your Grace. Will you allow me to demonstrate for Arno?”

Camille breathed, forcing her heart to slow its gallop. Slowly, her desperation receded. “You will work together,” she said.

Kaspar bowed, his forehead touching her knee. “I am yours to command.”

The duke had given her the ivory cock in a fit of scorn. She had never used it, from anger at its source and from not wanting to be seen by her maids. Now, it was a further weapon against her husband, providing for her what he did not.

Kaspar took the carving from its drawer and extracted it from its layers of linen wrappings. It looked larger than she remembered, even cradled in Kaspar’s giant hands. “Arno,” she said. “Fetch the oil in the red bottle.”

Arno knew to look in the carved cabinet where her maids kept her bath and massage oils. He then went to the fire and poured heated water from the copper kettle into a bowl, to warm the oil. He carried bowl and bottle to her, and she removed its stopper, a spiral of red glass twisted with blue. “Lay the stopper on the linen,” she said. In the meantime, Kaspar warmed the ivory cock in the water, as well.

“Arno, perhaps you could apply the oil to me, inside and out,” she said. “Kaspar, then show us how you have seen one of these used. Arno will pay close attention, and perhaps take a turn if he finds himself intrigued.”

“And you, Your Grace?” Kaspar asked, with the barest hint of humor.

“I hope to be otherwise occupied,” she said.

Kaspar said, “If you will permit me, Your Grace?” He climbed onto the bed and knelt beside her. He laid the ivory cock on the coverlet and pressed her shoulders, encouraging her to lie back in her nest of pillows. “I will hold the bottle for now,” he said. Arno gave the oil to him and slid onto the bed. He placed his hands on her knees, pressing them apart so he could slide closer. Camille could hear his rapid breathing. She looked up into his face and saw his eyes were wide and dark.

He was afraid, she realized. He was not thinking of what he was doing now, but of what would become of him once she and Kaspar and Sylvie had escaped. He needed encouragement. She signaled Kaspar with her eyes.

Kaspar used his free hand to gently rub Arno’s bare shoulder. He leaned over and kissed Arno’s cheekbone. “Stroke her as you would stroke the petals of a flower.”

Arno said, his hands still cupping her knees, “Would you like that, Your Grace?”

“Yes,” she said. She let her knees fall open another fraction. “You may pour the oil as you wish.”

Kaspar tipped the bottle over her belly. It trickled onto her abdomen and down like the touch of fingers, trickling into the creases between her legs and slicking her mound.

“Now his hands,” she said. Arno cupped his hands as if to receive an offering, and Kaspar bathed his palms in oil.

“Gently,” Kaspar said.

Camille wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but the thought evaporated as Arno laid his hands on her, one hand cupping her mound and the other pressing into her lower belly with a tender pressure like two bodies joined.

She was already swollen from their earlier attentions; Arno’s finger nudged between her lower lips, and her breath caught. “Two fingers,” she said. “Spread the oil deeply within.”

Arno obeyed, his breathing rough but his fingers gentle. Closing her eyes made the sensation too intense. She focused on the ivory cock Kaspar was warming against his chest. Then he bent low and their eyes met. “Now, Your Grace?”

At first she could not speak, only nod. She swallowed and said, “Now.”

Arno moved aside, though he still held her thighs apart. Kaspar oiled the carving, knelt between her knees, and eased its rounded head inside her. When her breath rushed out, he sheathed it fully in her passage. Her bodily tension was such that the stimulation was sweet to the point of pain. She could wait no longer.

“Quickly,” she commanded. Kaspar gave her short, harsh thrusts with a twisting motion that in moments had her back arching off the bed, straining with her whole body toward her climax. Soon she could strangle her cries no longer as she shuddered in release, gasping with each fierce spasm.

Arno leaned to Kaspar and kissed him, at first gently and then hungrily. Camille might have wondered at it, had she not been so limp with fatigue and afterglow. She held out her arms, and was soon surrounded by their warmth and comforting bulk. Each kissed her in turn, a brief, warm pressure. She slept then, deeply, and woke to find Kaspar kneeling beside the bed, dressed again and weaponed, waiting for her to awaken.

“Your Grace,” he said. “Sylvie is here. I have sent Arno for a few small items, and to dress in ordinary clothes.”

Sylvie wore only a robe, her long hair escaping from a messy braid, her cheek creased from her pillow. “Madame,” she said. “What is this that Kaspar tells me? We are to bring the stableboy with us?”

“Yes. He offered his services of his own free will. You are to tell him, for me, that I have need of him now. He is to bring the horses, and a pack mule, and all necessary supplies for them. You recall I mentioned the breeding barn as a good hiding place before we can set out. He will know the best ways to conceal us there, and will be useful in other ways, as well.”

“Other ways—madame—”

“Do not forget yourself, Sylvie. You knew I might not get immediately with child.”

Sylvie flushed. “Yes, madame. I will do as you’ve ordered. I worry, however—”

“I will worry for all of us.”

As soon as Sylvie had dressed and slipped out to find Henri, Kaspar draped Camille in a hooded cloak. “Could you run while wearing it, Your Grace?”

She tested the drape, then gathered up swaths of fabric. Beneath it, she wore a riding habit with a man’s jacket to conceal her shape. She felt confined, but she could move. “I will do what is necessary,” she said, as Kaspar shrugged on a shirt over his knife harness and fastened its ties up the front. He looked different with his hairless chest covered: bigger and more solid. Arno came back into the room, pushed up Kaspar’s sleeves, and strapped on wrist harnesses for a pair of short-bladed knives, while Kaspar gave him what seemed to be a long catalog of instructions, delivered in so low a murmur that Camille could not discern his words.

She turned away from their colloquy and cast a final glance around her rooms. She might never return here again. She might be caught and killed on the journey. If she could not unseat Michel, she might die while facing him. It ought to be better, she reflected, to know one might die while in the midst of action, better than by being passively led to the block, but she could not muster any pleasure at the thought of simply avoiding execution to die in some other way. Dying was dying, and she did not want to die. She’d just begun to have a stirring of hope that life could be better.

Arno removed his nondescript soft cap and came to kneel before her. She kissed the top of his head and drew him to his feet, tugging his head down to kiss each of his cheeks then, formally, his mouth. She said, holding his gaze, “I do not want you to die for me, Arno. You will take care.”

“I will, Your Grace,” he said. “I should go now, when I will not be remarked.”

Camille took his hand and folded his fingers over her signet ring. It looked like a doll’s jewelry in his enormous hand. “You will do well,” she said. “You may go.”

After Arno had gone, Kaspar slung the larger of their bags across his massive shoulders. He reached for Camille’s smaller bag, but she forestalled him. “I would prefer your hands be ready for weapons,” she explained, taking her own bag herself. “We cannot stand on ceremony for the entire journey, not without drawing attention to ourselves.”

“Very well, Your Grace.” Kaspar laid a hand on her shoulder, guiding her toward the concealed door used by her maids. Camille’s heart sped up. She was truly leaving.

She had not traveled these corridors since her youth, when she’d snuck all over the palace for assignations with Maxime. The servants’ paths seemed smaller and darker now than they had then, and unnaturally silent as her riding boots tapped the scarred wooden flooring. The walls between these corridors and the chambers beyond were, by design, thick enough to conceal sounds as loud as rattling carts of porcelain dishes, so she did not need to feel nervous, but logical thought didn’t ease her mind. The air felt close, thick with the reek of burning tallow candles. Their smoke lodged in her throat.

Kaspar’s voice startled her. “Thérèse will not come to make up the fires for another hour,” he said. “Until then, these corridors are usually deserted.”

“And the paths leading outside the walls?” she asked. Even as a young girl, she had not slipped out of the palace at night, thanks to the guardianship of the eunuch Jarman.

“Those paths are less safe,” Kaspar admitted. “Sometimes they are quite busy with guardsmen and courtiers returning from the Dewy Rose, paid companions going back to their homes, and the like. I will guard you, Your Grace.”

Camille wished she could guard herself; she chafed at the need for circumspection. It felt cowardly, and she’d had enough of being a coward. She hadn’t been brave enough to confront Michel; she’d had the opportunity, but done nothing to take advantage of it. Next time, she told herself, she would not be so cautious. Next time, she would work from a position of strength.

Kaspar led her on a direct route to the palace’s main rear entrance. At the door, he reached to readjust the hood of her cloak. Camille brushed his hand away. “I am not a child,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. Kaspar inclined his head, then loosened his right-handed sword in its sheath. He pressed his ear to the door before easing it open.

Darkness and cool air rushed in, carrying a rich scent of damp earth and crushed grass. Camille inhaled deeply, feeling the outdoors like a tingle of freedom on her skin. She fought a sudden urge to run full tilt into the starlight and roll in the greenery. Instead, she tried to steady her breathing as she stared beneath Kaspar’s massive arm and into the darkness. Distantly, she heard voices, resolving into a rumble of male ribaldry. Three men? Four? She heard a distinctive jingle—a chain-mail hauberk—and shrank back.

Kaspar tugged her forward. “Come. We must be out before they enter.”

Camille let him pull her out the door and to the left, staying in the wall’s shadow. A stretch of open grass, punctuated by a few sleeping cows, might as well have been a moat; they would easily be seen crossing it. The rear boundary wall reared beyond. In the illumination cast by their lantern, the shadows of four guardsmen loomed black against the wall’s gleaming white marble.

“Hold still,” Kaspar murmured, pressing her into a crouch next to the palace wall. Her dark cloak would melt into the dark granite, she hoped. He let his bag slide off his shoulder, next to her, and stepped into the light.

Trembling, Camille watched from beneath the hood of her cloak. Eunuchs were forbidden to venture outside the palace alone, and though she’d bent that rule before, there was no guarantee the guardsmen would do the same. If they decided to imprison Kaspar for the night, she could still make her way to the breeding barn alone, but retrieving Kaspar would be difficult, and delay their departure significantly. If the guards decided to escort him back to her chambers, and found her gone, it would be a disaster.

“Ho!” the smallest of the guardsmen called. “Kaspar!”

Worse and worse. Camille recognized the voice—Léopold, one of Michel’s personal honor guard, who reported directly to him. He stopped in the middle of the graveled path, hands planted on hips. “What’s amiss, eunuch? Searching for your manhood among the cowpats?”

“’Hap you can find it with them catamites at the Dewy Rose,” another said, and belched. A third guard cuffed him on the side of the head and murmured something, which led to a brief scuffle between the two.

Ignoring the byplay, Kaspar said, “I’m in search of Vilmos. Have you seen him?”

“Fucking His Grace, most like,” Léopold said, his perpetual sneer audible in his voice. “I’d leave his service first.”

The fourth guardsman spoke. “Better fucking His Grace than losing his ballocks.”

Kaspar said, his tone cool, “Better without ballocks than buggering His Grace’s filthy arse.”

If Kaspar provoked them into killing him, Camille would kill him again. She closed her eyes as insults began to fly faster and more foully, soon succeeded by the meaty smack of fists on flesh; the crash of the lantern being dropped; the thumps of large bodies hitting the ground; grunts and curses and panting. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and found that two of the guardsmen were dragging Kaspar off Léopold’s supine form. The last guardsman doubled over in the grass, vomiting.

“You’d better be off before Léopold comes to,” one of them said. Camille recognized his voice: Rodrigue, another of Michel’s honor guard. “Eugène, you, too. You can’t afford any more trouble. Weren’t you due on duty at dawn?” Eugène cursed and sprinted for the door into the palace. Camille winced as the door slammed shut behind him.

“Thanks,” Kaspar said.

“You’d better be off to Her Grace, in case Léopold takes it into his head to make trouble,” Rodrigue said, bending to hoist Léopold over his shoulder. He snagged the fourth guardsman by the sleeve and then shoved him toward the door. “If I see Vilmos, I will let him know you asked after him. Take the lantern, will you?”

“My thanks, again.” Kaspar stood watching as Rodrigue and his drunken companion maneuvered Léopold through the narrow door, thumping his head against the wall more than once in the process. Then he wiped his sleeve across his face; in the lantern light, Camille saw a dark stain of blood beneath his nose.