He was mocking her and Sheena attempted to annihilate him with a glance and failed.
Mary Stuart laughed.
“How ridiculous you are, Your Grace” she exclaimed. “You make a joke of everything. But what a glorious idea. If we could be carried about by eagles, think how swiftly we could travel. Even swifter than your chestnuts can convey us. And that is saying a great deal.”
“Do not speak of his chestnuts,” the Duchesse appealed. “The King is wild with envy and you know that he longs to buy them. Can I not plead with you once again to sell them to him?”
The Duc shook his head.
“What money could compensate me for the loss of such perfect animals?” he enquired. “They should not be the objects of sale and barter. But, madame, may I not present them to you as a tribute to your beauty and because, above all things, I enjoy your mind?”
“No, no, it is just impossible,” the Duchesse said and then added with a sudden smile, “I really believe you mean it. I warn you, if you make the offer again I shall accept if only to make the King happy.”
The Duc made a little gesture with his hands.
“They are yours,” he declared.
Sheena looked at them both with contempt.
So he was toadying now to the King’s mistress, this man she hated and despised, this man who she felt should have no contact with the child Queen who she had come to protect and help.
Eagles indeed! He had laughed at her and made her feel a fool. Now he was making an extravagant gesture that would ingratiate him with the King who would be, whether he liked it or not, in his debt.
“Are you not lucky?” Mary Stuart was saying enviously. “Oh, madame, I wish the Duc had given the horses to me.”
“You shall share them with me,” the Duchesse said generously. “When you want to use them on any special occasion, come and ask me. I will see that they are put at your disposal.”
“Oh, thank you,” Mary Stuart said excitedly.
She put her arms round the Duchesse and gave her a hug.
Sheena could not help but shudder at the sight of such beauty and innocence embracing a woman who was old and steeped in sin.
“And now will you show Mistress McCraggan, you will not mind if I call you ‘Sheena’, will you, dear, to her rooms?” the Duchesse said. “They are on your corridor and I am sure that you girls will have much to talk about.”
“Come, let me show them to you,” Mary Stuart said, holding out her hand to Sheena.
At the touch of her fingers Sheena felt that her cup should be full of happiness. She was in France, hand in hand with the Queen. They were going away together, leaving behind them for a moment at least the wicked courtesan who had seduced the King and the Duc, who she knew without the shadow of doubt, was a bad and evil influence.
How much there was for her to do for the Queen!
And yet, as they moved towards the door, she was conscious that it was Mary Stuart who led her. She was slower, less sophisticated and less assured than this elegant beautiful girl who was talking to her with an easy charm that was in itself irresistible.
“Your rooms are delightful,” she was saying. “The Duchesse de Valentinois allowed me to choose the furniture for them myself. I will show you – ”
They had reached the door and were just about to pass through and as they did so Sheena heard the Duc saying something to the Duchesse. He spoke in a low voice, but she caught the words quite clearly.
“You had better get the child some clothes, she needs them!”
CHAPTER THREE
The Duc de Salvoire climbed the twisting stairs that led from one part of The Palace to another. The candles had burned low in their sconces and, where one had flickered out, he banged his knee against a protruding pillar in the darkness and swore beneath his breath.
‘I am getting far too old at twenty-six for creeping along passages in the middle of the night,’ he told himself wryly with a twist of his lips that his enemies would have recognised as being an expression of his most caustic mood.
As he reached the wing that led on to the Queen’s apartments and those of her suite, he hesitated and for a moment considered returning the way he had come. And then with a shrug of his shoulders he realised that René would be waiting for him. It would be churlish and discourteous to cancel his appointment when he had not seen her alone for nearly three weeks and had been away at Anet for part of the time.
There were only two more passages, mercifully empty at this hour of the night, although he could hear the footsteps of a sentry in the distance. And then he was knocking on her door, two long knocks and a short staccato one, before it was opened swiftly by a maidservant who kept her head down and did not raise her eyes from his feet when she dropped him a curtsey.
The Duc walked past her without a word and then was in the small fragrantly scented boudoir which stood adjacent to a larger and more impressive bedchamber.
The Comtesse René de Pouguet was waiting for him. As he entered the room and closed the door behind him, she rose from her chaise-longue and came towards him eagerly.
She was most attractive with raven hair and slanting green eyes that gave her a seductive mysterious expression which, however, was belied by her lips and about them there was no mystery, only the hunger and yearning of a passionate woman.
“Jarnac!” she then exclaimed. “I have been waiting so long. I thought that perhaps you had forgotten me.”
“How could I do that?” the Duc enquired, bending his head to kiss the long white fingers of her left hand on which glittered an enormous emerald ring.
As she moved with a serpentine grace, her robe of satin trimmed with ribbons and lace revealed that underneath it she wore very little and there were tantalising glimpses of softly rounded breasts and beautifully shaped legs.
She used a heady and very exotic perfume, which seemed to permeate the whole room and mingle with the fragrance of lilies and tuberoses. There was also the hint of some other scent, something Oriental, which made the Duc feel as if his senses were swimming a little.
Only a few tapers were lit and so most of the light came from the half-open door of the bedchamber.
“You have missed me?”
It was a conventional question and now, with her lips parted, she looked up at him, her dark eyes glinting behind the incredibly long black lashes.
“I was about to ask you that same question.”
“Why did you spend so long with the Duchesse de Valentinois this evening?”
The Duc straightened and there was a sudden guarded expression on his face.
“Ma foi, René!” he exclaimed. “Is anything hidden from you? Have you an ear at every keyhole in The Palace?”
The Comtesse threw back her head and laughed.
“But, of course, mon brave!” Do you not know it is why I am so completely useful and indispensable? If I was not, do you know what my Fate would be? To be sitting with my husband in the country looking at the crops and my only outing a drive to Church on Sunday with my children grouped around me. It is a pretty picture, but not one to my liking.”
The Duc knew that it was the truth. The Comte de Pouguet had retired from the Court a year ago, ostensibly to see to his estates in the Chambord district, but in reality as he could no longer afford his wife’s extravagances or continually to turn a blind eye to her excesses.
The