The Princess of Cleves #12

By the time they reached his room he was trembling. He knew it was not the best meeting place, but it would be easier to speak with Rosalind there. She settled herself in an armchair as he fumbled with the lock. Glancing over his shoulder, he tried to decipher her expression, but she was just smiling at him. She wasn't nervous; if anything, there was a voluptuous set to her mouth. The handle of the riding crop he'd had crafted for her was crushed against his ribs. He went to turn, to go sit with her, but he could not move. He heard the rustle of her gown as she approached him, and when her hand touched his shoulder he had to lean against the door to keep from falling.

There was a quaver of panic in her voice as she spoke. "What is the matter Marechal? Has something happened?"

There were tears falling down his cheeks, and he hid his face in his handkerchief. "Were you going to tell me that you were leaving? Or were you just going to let me figure it out when I no longer saw you at court."

Her arms wrapped around his waist. "I'm sorry, I didn't know how to tell you."

"Why are you leaving? Is it because of me?"

She released him and pulled him around to face her. "What are you saying? Of course it isn't because of you. Without you I should have gone mad." Her little hands were on his cheek and she was staring into his eyes. Both her expression and tone were so earnest, the Marechal felt all his doubts drown between her warm fingers.

He did what he longed to do; he sunk to her feet. When she stepped back he stretched his belly across the cold filthy floor. As he approached, she lifted her hem, only an inch, allowing him to gaze upon her red velvet slippers, decked with bows and pearls. He looked up to see her smiling down upon him, and he knew she had worn the shoes for him. He crept close to brush his lips against the soft velvet and smooth pearls. His hands moved up and down her silk stockings, over her delicate ankles and slender legs. He rubbed his face against her until she began to laugh.

"Go sit down, I want to show you your present," the Marechal said. He retrieved his package from where he had dropped it near the door. With his back to her, he took out the riding crop and placed it between his teeth. The warm smell of the leather enveloped him and he shivered. The handle was tipped with mother of pearl, the leather was tooled with a design of wild roses. He crawled over to Rosalind, keeping his eyes on the floor.

He stayed there kneeling, until she took the crop from his mouth. She traced it's soft tip over his face, his lips, his throat. The Marechal started breathing heavily as it moved down his chest to prod his bulging sex. Without even thinking, he was leaning forward, reaching for a dainty foot. She lifted her skirts up to show the top of her stockings, and he stripped one off, her shoe clattering to the floor. She started squirming as he put her toes in his mouth, parting his lips wide to flick his tongue over the soul of her foot. When she jumped, the crop jerked in her hand, poking him painfully in the groin.

"Rosalind," he moaned, holding her foot to his chest. "Why don't you let me carry you away instead?" He moved her foot so it pressed against his sex, and he began thrusting his hips against it. Leaning his cheek against her knee, he started to gasp. With just a twitch of her knee she sent him sprawling back.

"It's a lovely gift, but I'm not in the mood for these games."

The Marechal snatched her slipper from the floor and began to caress his cheek with it. "Then why did you wear these?" His voice was low and languid, his eyes closed. When he opened them she was staring, her lips a thin white line. He felt foolish, fawning over her shoe, and he scrambled to sit beside her. It did him no good though, the little red shoe was still in his hands, with all its satin bows and pearls. Even more awkward, he could not forbear running his fingers all over the velvet, the leather sole.

She reached out and laid her hand on top of his to still his movements. Shaking her head, she retrieved her slipper, and tossed it on the floor in front of her. She stuck out her foot, and worked it back into the shoe by wiggling her toes and flexing her foot. Her face scrunched up as she did it.

"Don't like wearing slippers?" It was the blandest thing he could think to say.

Rosalind smiled. "If it's hot and I'm just sitting there, I take off my shoes. I always feel so much cooler." She lifted up her feet, and flipped off both heels, then swung the slippers from her toes.

The Marechal kissed her cheek. "I love you. Can I come see you in the country?"

"Give me a few weeks to clear my head. I would like to write you."

The Marechal couldn't help himself, he started laughing.

"What's so funny?"

He tried to talk, but he was still laughing too hard. When the Princess frowned at him it didn't help, he had to stifle his giggles with his hand. It was only after she turned her face away from him, vexed, that he was able to collect himself. "Can't you see your garden, lit with silver moonlight, and a dark shadow moving though it. And then, it bumps into another dark shadow, soon to be joined by a third."

Her face turned bright red with anger, until she realized it could happen. The Chevalier slinking around as was his wont, the Marechal's servant looking for his letter, the Duke looking for her. She covered her mouth, but still, laughter slipped out it. The sleek Duke colliding with her other awkward lovers, a tangle of limbs and indignation. "The Prince would probably come out to investigate."

They sat there, trying not to howl, tears starting to form at the corners of their eyes. The image was a vivid one, the Prince apoplectic at encountering what would at this point most likely be a fight. Rosalind calmed herself, and remembered her resolution. She took the Marechal's hands, and turned to him. "I won't be seeing the Duke anymore, so it will just be you and the Chevalier. Is there a reason why you told me not to confide in him?"

"No," he said, and felt guilty for lying. "Yes, I was jealous, he already spent so much time with you, I didn't want you becoming friends as well."

She didn't say anything, just leaned closer.

Her mouth was moving towards his. When she kissed him, it made his heart flutter. There was a tenderness to the way her tongue parted his lips, licking his teeth. He sighed, and when he felt like he would begin to cry, he pushed her away.

"We should part," he said, taking out his handkerchief to dab at his face. "People will wonder where we have been." He handed her a little vial of cologne, rose, and she scented herself with it. It was a ritual between them, these words and gestures.

She had never declared any feelings of love for the Marechal, yet what else could she be telling him with that kiss? She spoke of her love with her lips pressed to his. After they said goodbye in the hall, he turned to see her walk away, the riding crop tucked under her arm, her red slippers flashing beneath her skirt. Returning to his room, he found she had left him a token of her favor, her white stocking discarded on the floor.

* * * *

Rosalind was walking the gardens of Colomiers with her husband, trying to think of the right way to tell him she was retiring from the court. It would not be easy to convince him that it was necessary. He kept asking if she felt ill; her face was pale and her breathing quick. She kept replying no. They both knew she was lying; they both felt how her hands shook. He sent their attendants away so that she may speak freely. They settled themselves in a vine covered pavilion. It would have been romantic were it not for Rosalind's obvious distress.

"I cannot return to Paris," she mumbled.

"What?"

She took a deep breath, and spoke slowly so she would not garble her words. Her heart jumped to the back of her throat. "I will not be returning to Paris."

The Prince sighed. "I thought we were done with this."

"I tried, for you, to attend the court, but it is to much for me."

The Prince scowled, but quickly softened his expression. "What is this craving for solitude? Why this loathing for Paris? You deprive me of your company, you are in a constant state of melancholy. What has happened?" He squeezed her hands, hoping that she would meet his eyes, but she only frowned, staring at the ground.

"There is nothing troubling me, it's just there is always such a bustle at court, a swarm of people at our house, it throws my mind into disarray. It fatigues me, all I desire is some rest," she recited, her hand fluttering over her heart.

The Prince could not tell if the gesture was contrived, or a genuine expression of his wife's struggle to conceal whatever secret consumed her. "Repose does not suit one your age, and your day at court is hardly taxing. I think you wish to be rid be of me," the Prince replied, his voice so bitter Rosalind could taste it.

"You wrong me to think to think so. Send away that multitude that surrounds you, and stay here with me, there is nothing more that I could desire." She clutched the Prince's hands, and finally raised her gaze to meet his. Her eyes glimmered with tears, and beneath them swirled all her confusion.

The Prince could take her dissimulation any longer. If he could not move her with love, perhaps pity would work. He took a deep breath, and then another, relaxing his face, letting his sorrow weigh down his features, his body. Slumping forward to rest his arm on his knees, he turned to her and said in a tight voice, "Your words are useless Madame, your body does not lie, and it says you wish to be alone. Please, if you have any affection for me, tell me what tortures you so and drives you to such desperate acts."

For a minute, Rosalind remained as still as the marble statues that decorated the garden. When she spoke, her voice was cool. "I lack the power to confess this, please do not force me to. It is not prudent for a woman of my tender years to be mistress of her own conduct, exposed in the midst of the court."

The Prince snorted. Of course, she was right. Without the Madame de Chartes by her side, she collected the court's finest gallants like posies. Any anger he had toward his wife only flared for a moment, for well he remembered his own hand in the matter, and how they now shared a lover.

This must be about the Duke, no one else could cause her such distress. Dear God, could she pregnant? Was she planning to run off with someone? "In your silence, I find my mind crowded with such horrors that I may not speak of them. I fear that if they are only fantasies, I shall offend you, and if they are true--"

Rosalind collapsed to her knees. "So, I see I must do what no wife has done before and take my husband into my confidence. All I wanted when we married was to love you, and if I could not do that, to at least be worthy of your esteem." Tears broke through, and she sobbed.

The Prince sat on the bench, his legs starting to grow numb from the hard stone.

She was wiping her face with her handkerchief, her chest heaving. "I want to be worthy of your esteem again. Without my mother to guide me, I am afraid that I have fallen prey to the dangers that hunt women of my age."

The Prince was ready to tell her of his affair with the Chevalier when she began to speak again.

"It is not fair to ask you to pardon my indiscretions, but I ask you to allow me to repent, by staying here, by breaking my vows no more. If the Duke comes, send him away, and if the Marechal visits, tell him...tell him I am sorry."

There was a lifelessness in her voice. The Prince knew she would lock herself away from the entire world, even if it meant misery, if it was necessary to remain faithful to him. Finally, he saw her before him on her knees, her face drowned in tears. She had never been so beautiful to him, and she was trembling, waiting for him to say something. He reached down to lift her up into his lap.

When she hid her face in her hands, he kissed them until she began to calm. There weren't any words for what he wanted to tell her, that he was never angry, that the Duke and the rest of the court could burn in Hell, that all he really wanted was to sit by the fire with her and the Chevalier.

The Chevalier--his breath caught in his throat. She had not said anything of sending him away from her self imposed exile. He and the Chevalier were not as discreet as he thought they were; his wife knew of their affair.

"You said nothing of the Chevalier," he said. Before she could speak he covered her lips. "I know why you said nothing of him, as you are not the only one who has been unfaithful." He looked up into her eyes and they were warm. It was not love, but it was something. "If he could come with us, I would go where ever you wished."

She nodded her head. "Would that work, us sharing a confidante and lover? Has he told you, that he comes to see me sometimes."

The Prince stiffened. "When?"

"Don't be angry with him. At first, he loved me, now, I think he loves you more. More than anything, he wants to talk about you. I told him, that he makes you happy, and I thought he'd break his face smiling."

The Prince felt his jealousy retreating. He knew that his betrayal was as deep as his wife's. As he wondered what precipitated her flight from court, he recalled the words, to simply send the Duke away while the Marechal was to be given an apology.

Could he have been mistaken, could she have feigned love for the Duke to throw him and the Chevalier off the trail? Why wouldn't she simply fake love for him, her husband, or would it be too hard? It is easy to deceive a lover though, so the Duke may have only been a fool, playing a small role in a complicated scheme to secure Rosalind's freedom. For all the Prince knew, his words to the Marechal may be code to indicate their plans success.

His blue eyes clouded as a thought shocked him. What if the Chevalier was behind all of this?

No, this conspiracy was madness, but he doubted that it was the Duke who held her heart. What if it was the Chevalier? The thought would haunt him until he knew. He would have to pry that last secret from her, even if he had to be cruel. "From the first moment I saw you, I have burned with a passion which nothing could quench. When my hopes of marriage were dashed by my father's disapproval, I loved you still. Your coldness, your infidelity, could not dampen my love. Even taking you, living out my fantasies of being a cuckold..." He started laughing when she looked at him surprised. "Yes, people do desire such things. How can you be surprised, knowing the Marechal as you do?"

Rosalind blushed and tried to get away from her husband, but he only held her tighter, wracked with acrid laughter. He only calmed when he saw that she was frightened, her fingers not caressing his, but rather gripped tightly around his wrists.

He leaned his head against her shoulders, and she shivered. "I don't really want to talk about him," she said, her voice trembling.

He looked at her, the bewildered expression was familiar, yet he could not place it. Then it hit him like a bolt. "I cannot believe it, the last time you looked at me like this, Madame, was when your picture was lost." Now it was the Prince's turn to tremble. "You gave away that picture, that picture which was mine, that I loved, that you had no right to bestow upon another. Even worse, you gave it to the man who held your heart, the Marechal. That wretched, crooked, insidious man, he's been taking advantage of his position at court, and your naivety, from the start." He gripped the Princess's shoulders so she was looking into his eyes. "What did he do, tell me my Princess, my wife, what did he do that I did not to win your heart?"

"I...I didn't give away the portrait. Please let go, you're hurting me." There were tears falling down cheeks.

"Then what happened to the picture, because I know it was not lost."

When she saw the panic and the pain in the Prince's eyes, she understood that were she to keep the Duke's name from him, she would have to reveal other secrets. "It was not lost, it was taken."

"How do you know?"

"I saw it taken. I did not want to speak up then, for fear of making a spectacle in confronting the thief. I did not want to confront him privately either. I thought it best for me to feign ignorance of the matter."

"Is it this man, the one who stole your picture, the same as the one who stole your heart?"

She nodded, her breath sticking in her throat.

"Tell me his name."

She looked into the Prince's feverish eyes. It would be so easy to lie, to say the Marechal, and he would be bared from Colomiers. The Prince and Chevalier would keep the Duke away out of their own dislike. Then, they could make their preparations, and travel far far away from Paris and its court.

If she was honest with herself, she did not want to end her relationship with the Marechal. His friendship was invaluable to her, and he would be the one thing she missed about the court. "Please, Prince, this is something I cannot do." She took his hands and raised them to her lips.

He looked at her, and she was frail, her tears inflaming her face. There was nothing more to gain from her today; he would have to acquiesce with the intention of asking her again when she was calmer.

He caressed her face, drawing her mouth down to his. They were both flustered, and the Prince could think of only one thing to sooth his nerves. He looked around, and seeing the servants occupied with one another, he pushed up Rosalind's skirts and freed himself from his breeches.

* * * *

That morning, the Duke had gone hunting. He was separated from the main party when he went chasing after a large buck, and was soon happily lost in the woods. Coming across a stream, he followed it until he reached a road. He knew he was near Colomiers, and after pacing up and down the road for a minute, he choose what he believed to be the right direction. When he encountered a peasant, he asked for directions and was delighted to find himself on the right path. Soon, he came upon a manor: it must belong to the Cleves. He led his horse into the woods where he tied it to a tree, and ate the bread and cheese Lignerol had stuffed into his pannier. The Duke frowned, thinking his favorite would be concerned, but Lignerol was used to his disappearances. It was stupid of him to worry, he knew that, but he could still envision Lignerol's expression when the others arrived without him. They would be together again tonight.

He started through the woods to the manor, and was surprised to find the Prince and Princess strolling the gardens with a train of attendants. Tucking himself in a bower, he looked around for somewhere to hide, and crouched in the hollow of a bush. He was getting ready to make his escape, when the Prince and Princess moved closer to him, while the servants moved, blocking off his retreat.

He was trapped, but trapped close enough to overhear the couple's conversation. Rosalind looked ill, and the food he had eaten before seemed to come alive in his stomach. He grimaced, and to distract himself he focused very intently on them.

His heart leapt into his mouth when he realized she was talking to her husband about leaving the court. When he heard her curt instructions for his dismissal, his chest tightened, and then burned as he learned the Marechal was to be sent away with a few parting words. It was a small kindness, a kindness he, as the man she claimed to truly love, had not warranted. Inwardly he vacillated between believing it was a mark of her indifference, or that it was really a signal of her true love for him, just as her coldness was.

When their conversation turned to the Chevalier, he was shocked to learn that the man was carrying on an affair with both of the Cleves. He knew that the Chevalier had somehow become a confidante of the Prince, but he had never guessed the means the Chevalier had used to achieve this. No, but that wasn't right. He had seen the two men together, and always felt like there was some secret between them. Both men were in love with each other, and Rosalind as well. He had to stifle a laugh--what a mess that woman had made. The gallants hounded her with such fervor that her husband had been caught as well.