The Queen and the Courtesan by Freda Lightfoot Read Free Book Online

will not be ignored! ’ And falling into his arms she began to sob. Her distress was such that Henry had not the first idea how to deal with it. Fortunately, on hearing the disturbance, her maid came running and he made good his escape.
    Henriette was not a woman to give up easily. She thought perhaps her tantrum had been unwise on this occasion, and as her sobs had failed to move him she sent for her father and brother, certain they would be on her side. They listened in horror to the awful news.
    Auvergne was outraged. ‘He cannot be allowed to get away with this. Do you still have the King’s signed promise of marriage?’
    â€˜I have it safe. He demanded I return it but I refused.’
    â€˜Very wise. We must guard it well. Surely such a promise is equally binding in law as any contract that Rosny could produce?’ He looked to his father for an answer.
    Balzac, equally alarmed by this threat to his carefully devised plan, promised to secret it away where it could not easily be found, and hurried off to discuss the matter with lawyers forthwith.
    â€˜If the document has indeed been drawn up in proper form, it might well invalidate any marriage agreement between the King and Marie de Medici, certainly in the eyes of the Church,’ he assured them on his return some time later. ‘So if the proxy wedding could be delayed on the grounds of your needing to comply with what is stipulated in that document, and you do successfully present the King with a son, then he could do naught but comply with it and make you his queen.’
    â€˜Then all we have to do,’ Auvergne agreed, ‘is to devise some way to delay the proceedings until Henriette has given birth. In the meantime, sister, you must keep the King content. Make yourself indispensable to his happiness.’
    Henriette had sat avidly listening through all of this, growing increasingly certain of success. How could she fail? Did she not have the King eating out of her hand? She would not allow her resolve to weaken. But her brother was right, she must make more effort to behave with proper decorum, and to please him.
    Going at once to Henry she sank in a deep curtsey before him. ‘Sire, I have come to prostrate myself before you. I fear I may have offended you by my reaction to your glorious news. In my own defence I can only say that the shock I displayed was born out of my great love for you. I cannot think what I would do were I to lose your love.’ She allowed tender tears to slip down her pale cheeks and Henry’s heart softened, as always at sight of a woman in distress.
    â€˜My love, the fault is mine, I should not have told you so bluntly.’ He’d been miserable these last days without her. She so livened his life with her risqué jokes, her indiscreet gossip, love of dancing and derring-do attitude to life. ‘There will always be a place for you in my life, and in my heart. Come, let us not consider the matter again. It is forgotten.’
    But not by me, Henriette thought, as he raised her up to kiss her and led her to his bed. Even as she let him peel off her silk stockings and pleasure her beneath her skirts, her mind was busily devising how to dispose of the Italian threat.
    Assistance came in the shape of Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, a son-in-law and ally of Philip II of Spain. He arrived at Fontainebleau on the fourteenth of December with an entourage of his most important ministers and nobles, and twelve hundred horse. Henriette took a dislike to him on sight.
    â€˜What a strange little man he is,’ she whispered to her brother as the court gathered in the cold courtyard to receive him. ‘Like an ugly dwarf with that humpback, and overlarge head with its abnormally broad brow.’
    â€˜Hold your waspish tongue, sister. He is a powerful man, and whatever his deficiencies, rumour has it that he has enjoyed as many mistresses in his time as Henry of Navarre, and consequently