“Don’t you play billiards, Count Lucien?” Marie-Josèphe asked.
“I have done,” he said. “Tonight, I forgot my billiard cue.” In a voice as dry as the Arabian desert, he added, “The one with the curve.”
He sketched the long curve in the air, the shape of a stick that would allow him to reach the table.
Marie-Josèphe’s face flushed. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I am so sorry — I didn’t mean —”
“Mlle de la Croix.”
She fell silent.
“Mlle de la Croix, it was years ago that I noticed I’m a dwarf. It’s common knowledge. You needn’t be embarrassed to notice it yourself.”
She had feared she had offended him once more; now she feared he would laugh at her. He took another sip of wine, savoring it, gazing up at her over the rim of his silver cup, never gulping it as Chartres did. He stood quite steady. Only the deliberation of his movements revealed the effect of the wine. His heavy sapphire ring glowed against the silver of his goblet.
“May I draw you?” Marie-Josèphe asked.
“For a gallery of oddities? Shall my likeness hang among ape-men and sea monsters?”
“No! Oh, no! Your face is beautiful. Your hands are beautiful. I would like to draw you.”
Count Lucien drank the last drops of wine; a footman appeared from nowhere to take away his goblet. The count waved away another glass.
He will refuse me, Marie-Josèphe thought, and once again I’ve said the wrong thing.
“Your time is otherwise engaged,” Count Lucien said. “And His Majesty’s bedtime ceremony occupies mine.”
Lucien bowed to Mlle de la Croix and limped away.
Sieur de Baatz’ salve will soothe the wound, Lucien thought. Exercise will loosen my joints and ease the ache of my back.
The Marquise de la Fère caught his gaze as he passed; he paused to kiss her hand.
Speaking to him alone, she was not so self-conscious of her marred complexion.
“My carriage waits on your pleasure, my dear Juliette,” he said.
“And yours.”
“I must ride Zelis home,” he said. “I’ll follow when we’ve put His Majesty to bed.”
“Your groom can ride — But I forget, no one rides your favorite desert horses but you.”
“My groom could lead Zelis home, but I’ve stood in Diana’s Salon all evening. My groom cannot shake the kinks out of me.”
She smiled at him, her vast brown eyes limpid in candlelight.
“Of course not, my dear,” she said. “That’s my task.” She fluttered her fan and her eyelashes elaborately, mocking coquettes. He laughed, kissed her hand again, and joined the group of nobles who would see His Majesty comfortably put to bed.
oOo
Yves wrenched his attention back to Mme de Chartres, wondering how anyone so young and of such questionable birth could be so arrogant. She demanded more royal prerogatives than the legitimate members of the royal family. His Majesty was good manners incarnate, the grand dauphin became invisible in his self-deprecation, and His Majesty’s grandsons behaved like any little boys, only better dressed.
“You brought me bad luck tonight, Father de la Croix, and I demand that you make amends for it.”
“I don’t believe in bad luck, Mme de Chartres,” he said. “Or in any kind of luck at all.”
“You stood with me at the card table, and I lost — so I place my losses at your feet.”
“Would you place your winnings at my feet, if you had won?” he asked.
She closed her Chinese sandalwood fan; she stared at him with a straightforward gaze. Golden Chinese ornaments glittered and dangled in her hair, their pendants touching delicately, ringing faintly.
“Why, Father de la Croix, I would place anything you asked at your feet — if you only would ask.”
She behaved as if he were flirting, though he had meant the question in the most straightforward way. He had been among men, sailors or other Jesuits or university students, for so long that he had forgotten what little he had ever known about polite conversation in the society of women. Mme de Chartres gave a second meaning to his every courtly compliment.
Despite the honors His Majesty had shown him this evening, despite the admiration of the courtiers and the attention of the beautiful women — he could appreciate their beauty, could he not, for God had created it, after all — Yves wished he were back in his room. He had notes to write up from the sea monster dissection. He must be sure Marie-Josèphe did not neglect the sketches. And he must get some sleep, during the dark hours, so he could use the hours of daylight to complete his study of the carcass.
The Master of Ceremonies strode into the room, clearing the way for His Majesty.