The King's Women by Lake Deryn

Author:Lake, Deryn [Lake, Deryn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

He had resisted marriage to Marie as long as he possibly could but now the Dauphin was cornered. With the arrival of spring, living in as much luxury as the war would allow him, Charles suddenly had no further excuses left.

“The time has come,” Yolande had announced firmly, and the Dauphin had known that at long last his freedom was over.

Having arrived with her mother to celebrate the Christmas of 1420, Marie had remained with Charles when the Regent had finally departed for home, leaving a far from easy situation behind her. Naive and retiring as she might be, the Princess of Anjou was certainly not stupid, and her dislike of Madame de Giac had in its quiet way made life very difficult for the young lovers.

“I know she watches when I come to you,” Bonne had whispered in the darkness, guilty for the first time about sinfully sharing Charles’s bed.

“I’m sure you are mistaken. Marie retires early. She must be fast asleep by now.”

But the young woman knew that her lover was wrong, that a solitary candle burned in the girl’s apartments, that there was a rustling behind the door as Bonne, silent and small as a cat, walked past on her way to her paramour’s bedroom.

The situation between the two young people had settled into something almost like a marriage, de Giac long since passing up any claim to his wife in return for his high position at court. Added to this, of course, Pierre demanded complete privacy to practise his satanic rites and no questions asked about those who joined him in his unsavoury rituals. It did not seem a very high price to pay, and a relationship of live and let live had developed between the cuckolded husband and his wife’s royal lover.

Yet now there were other people playing this adulterous game. As Charles grew older and more poised, many young women cast their eyes on him, and he had several times allowed himself to be seduced by Eleanor de Paul of Anjou, a girl so stunningly beautiful that men actually wept in her presence. It had been a weakness of the flesh, no more, for his heart was set on Bonne, but Eleanor kept a voluptuary’s bed and the Dauphin had hot blood in his veins, a direct legacy from his lascivious mother.

If his mistress had ever discovered the truth about Madame de Paul, Charles never found out. But something around that time caused Madame de Giac to initiate a new routine, refusing to say when she was coming to visit him, thus making him careful about receiving Eleanor or even being absent. In the midnight darkness Bonne would creep along the corridor, pass by his bodyguards who, to a man, turned a blind eye, and get into bed beside the sleeping Dauphin. Thus he would wake to lovemaking, exciting and excited. As a result Eleanor’s nose had been put firmly out of joint, though very occasionally, in the greatest secrecy, she and Charles still shared an illicit night.

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