Before Versailles by Karleen Koen Read Free Book Online Page B

fill my joy in brimming measure, he could have said as he touched her, but he didn’t love her that way. He’d made this marriage out of duty and hoped that love would grow. And now he was beginning to understand it never would, not that he didn’t respect her—her nobility was of the highest—not that he didn’t like her. She was an obedient, pious wife. But he didn’t love her. The thought twisted his gut.
    Something drove him. Where? To whom? It seemed to him women were everywhere, following him with their eyes, curtsying to him, the tops of their breasts defined and soft above their tight bodices. Why didn’t he just take one of them and satisfy this need the way he had once done with Olympe? What was he longing for? Some spark? Some tenderness? Some depth to answer the depths in his own heart? Where was there a woman whose price for him was above rubies?
    “Write to his majesty the king of Spain and beg him to send young cup-of-gold cuttings. Tell him it would be a favor to me if his gardeners sent cuttings from vines that have grown under the windows her majesty once looked out from,” he told his secretary, never pausing in his restless stride. “From those vines only.”

    B RIEFLY SNEAKING AWAY from the flutter that was the dressing of her majesty, the sullen Olympe and the beauty, whose name was Athénaïs, leaned out opened windows in a nearby chamber to watch the king stalk through his courtyard.
    “Did you see him ignore me? I might as well not exist. I don’t think he likes me.” Athénaïs was truly astonished.
    “He’s ripe,” said Olympe. As the queen’s superintendent, she was an important figure at court. But her power was deeper than that. She was among those few whom Louis counted as true friends. And once upon a time, before his marriage, she’d been more than friendly with him in bed. “There is going to be a mistress soon. I can feel it. There’s something around him I sense, a heat.”
    “I wish it were me!” Athénaïs brought hands to her mouth as if she’d said something wrong. “Oh, I’m terrible. Not that I would yield; I’m saving myself for marriage, of course. But he is enthralling.”
    There was no dishonor in becoming a king’s mistress. In this, as in other things, the court was clear-eyed and unsentimental. It was longstanding tradition that there be one.
    You would yield, thought Olympe, with a sharp glance at the maid of honor, younger, fresher than she, but not by much. You would yield, and me, well, I have nothing to save. When he falls, and fall he will, he’s going to be mine.

Chapter 2

    OUIS DISMISSED HIS COUNCIL AND WHISTLED FOR HIS DOGS . His valet said his favorite dog wasn’t acting in her usual manner, and he wanted to see for himself.
    “Belle,” he called and stroked her sleek head when she appeared, ahead of the pack, as always. “That’s my good girl. Are you sick, my sweet one, my mighty hunter?” He knelt on one knee to take her handsome head in his hands and examine her face. He could see nothing different.
    “Your majesty, just a word, if I might.”
    He started. He hadn’t realized he’d been followed. He kept his hands on Belle’s head a moment or two longer, his mood suddenly irritable. Business for this morning was over. This man who broke into his privacy could just as easily have spoken to him this afternoon, for he met with his council twice a day, in the mornings and in the late afternoon, had done so since the death of Cardinal Mazarin. Now was his time for pleasure; in his mind he was already atop his horse, riding to the river, to gaze on the guise pleasure had taken, lily-white skin, chestnut hair, an enchanting laugh. A king’s business is never over, he heard his beloved cardinal’s voice echo in his mind, so he stood and pretended that he hadn’t been caught murmuring to a dog by the one man he most wanted to impress.
    That man bowed. It was the Viscount Nicolas, his superintendent of finance, whom the court