The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover. Victoria Janssen

first she could not speak, only nod. She swallowed and said, “Now.”

      Arno moved aside, though he still held her thighs apart. Kaspar oiled the carving, knelt between her knees, and eased its rounded head inside her. When her breath rushed out, he sheathed it fully in her passage. Her bodily tension was such that the stimulation was sweet to the point of pain. She could wait no longer.

      “Quickly,” she commanded. Kaspar gave her short, harsh thrusts with a twisting motion that in moments had her back arching off the bed, straining with her whole body toward her climax. Soon she could strangle her cries no longer as she shuddered in release, gasping with each fierce spasm.

      Arno leaned to Kaspar and kissed him, at first gently and then hungrily. Camille might have wondered at it, had she not been so limp with fatigue and afterglow. She held out her arms, and was soon surrounded by their warmth and comforting bulk. Each kissed her in turn, a brief, warm pressure. She slept then, deeply, and woke to find Kaspar kneeling beside the bed, dressed again and weaponed, waiting for her to awaken.

      “Your Grace,” he said. “Sylvie is here. I have sent Arno for a few small items, and to dress in ordinary clothes.”

      Sylvie wore only a robe, her long hair escaping from a messy braid, her cheek creased from her pillow. “Madame,” she said. “What is this that Kaspar tells me? We are to bring the stableboy with us?”

      “Yes. He offered his services of his own free will. You are to tell him, for me, that I have need of him now. He is to bring the horses, and a pack mule, and all necessary supplies for them. You recall I mentioned the breeding barn as a good hiding place before we can set out. He will know the best ways to conceal us there, and will be useful in other ways, as well.”

      “Other ways—madame—”

      “Do not forget yourself, Sylvie. You knew I might not get immediately with child.”

      Sylvie flushed. “Yes, madame. I will do as you’ve ordered. I worry, however—”

      “I will worry for all of us.”

      As soon as Sylvie had dressed and slipped out to find Henri, Kaspar draped Camille in a hooded cloak. “Could you run while wearing it, Your Grace?”

      She tested the drape, then gathered up swaths of fabric. Beneath it, she wore a riding habit with a man’s jacket to conceal her shape. She felt confined, but she could move. “I will do what is necessary,” she said, as Kaspar shrugged on a shirt over his knife harness and fastened its ties up the front. He looked different with his hairless chest covered: bigger and more solid. Arno came back into the room, pushed up Kaspar’s sleeves, and strapped on wrist harnesses for a pair of short-bladed knives, while Kaspar gave him what seemed to be a long catalog of instructions, delivered in so low a murmur that Camille could not discern his words.

      She turned away from their colloquy and cast a final glance around her rooms. She might never return here again. She might be caught and killed on the journey. If she could not unseat Michel, she might die while facing him. It ought to be better, she reflected, to know one might die while in the midst of action, better than by being passively led to the block, but she could not muster any pleasure at the thought of simply avoiding execution to die in some other way. Dying was dying, and she did not want to die. She’d just begun to have a stirring of hope that life could be better.

      Arno removed his nondescript soft cap and came to kneel before her. She kissed the top of his head and drew him to his feet, tugging his head down to kiss each of his cheeks then, formally, his mouth. She said, holding his gaze, “I do not want you to die for me, Arno. You will take care.”

      “I will, Your Grace,” he said. “I should go now, when I will not be remarked.”

      Camille took his hand and folded his fingers over her signet ring. It looked like a doll’s jewelry in his enormous hand. “You will do well,” she said. “You may go.”

      After Arno had gone, Kaspar slung the larger of their bags across his massive shoulders. He reached for Camille’s smaller bag, but she forestalled him. “I would prefer your hands be ready for weapons,” she explained, taking her own bag herself. “We cannot stand on ceremony for the entire journey, not without drawing attention to ourselves.”

      “Very well, Your Grace.” Kaspar laid a hand on her shoulder, guiding her toward the concealed door used by her maids. Camille’s heart sped up. She was truly leaving.

      She had not traveled these corridors since her youth, when she’d snuck all over the palace for assignations with Maxime. The servants’ paths seemed smaller and darker now than they had then, and unnaturally silent as her riding boots tapped the scarred wooden flooring. The walls between these corridors and the chambers beyond were, by design, thick enough to conceal sounds as loud as rattling carts of porcelain dishes, so she did not need to feel nervous, but logical thought didn’t ease her mind. The air felt close, thick with the reek of burning tallow candles. Their smoke lodged in her throat.

      Kaspar’s voice startled her. “Thérèse will not come to make up the fires for another hour,” he said. “Until then, these corridors are usually deserted.”

      “And the paths leading outside the walls?” she asked. Even as a young girl, she had not slipped out of the palace at night, thanks to the guardianship of the eunuch Jarman.

      “Those paths are less safe,” Kaspar admitted. “Sometimes they are quite busy with guardsmen and courtiers returning from the Dewy Rose, paid companions going back to their homes, and the like. I will guard you, Your Grace.”

      Camille wished she could guard herself; she chafed at the need for circumspection. It felt cowardly, and she’d had enough of being a coward. She hadn’t been brave enough to confront Michel; she’d had the opportunity, but done nothing to take advantage of it. Next time, she told herself, she would not be so cautious. Next time, she would work from a position of strength.

      Kaspar led her on a direct route to the palace’s main rear entrance. At the door, he reached to readjust the hood of her cloak. Camille brushed his hand away. “I am not a child,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. Kaspar inclined his head, then loosened his right-handed sword in its sheath. He pressed his ear to the door before easing it open.

      Darkness and cool air rushed in, carrying a rich scent of damp earth and crushed grass. Camille inhaled deeply, feeling the outdoors like a tingle of freedom on her skin. She fought a sudden urge to run full tilt into the starlight and roll in the greenery. Instead, she tried to steady her breathing as she stared beneath Kaspar’s massive arm and into the darkness. Distantly, she heard voices, resolving into a rumble of male ribaldry. Three men? Four? She heard a distinctive jingle—a chain-mail hauberk—and shrank back.

      Kaspar tugged her forward. “Come. We must be out before they enter.”

      Camille let him pull her out the door and to the left, staying in the wall’s shadow. A stretch of open grass, punctuated by a few sleeping cows, might as well have been a moat; they would easily be seen crossing it. The rear boundary wall reared beyond. In the illumination cast by their lantern, the shadows of four guardsmen loomed black against the wall’s gleaming white marble.

      “Hold still,” Kaspar murmured, pressing her into a crouch next to the palace wall. Her dark cloak would melt into the dark granite, she hoped. He let his bag slide off his shoulder, next to her, and stepped into the light.

      Trembling, Camille watched from beneath the hood of her cloak. Eunuchs were forbidden to venture outside the palace alone, and though she’d bent that rule before, there was no guarantee the guardsmen would do the same. If they decided to imprison Kaspar for the night, she could still make her way to the breeding barn alone, but retrieving Kaspar would be difficult, and delay their departure significantly. If the guards decided to escort him back to her chambers, and found her gone, it would be a disaster.

      “Ho!” the smallest of the guardsmen called. “Kaspar!”

      Worse and worse. Camille recognized the voice—Léopold, one of Michel’s personal honor guard, who