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Mother’s ladies-in-waiting. She had returned to Orléans near Fontainebleau at the personal request of her blood aunt, Duchesse Dushane. Madame Dushane had requested the Queen Mother to release Claudine from her “favored position.”
    “Non! It was a frightening position,” Claudine had whispered to Rachelle before she left Chambord. “I shuddered whenever I was in her presence.”
    Rachelle never fully learned the reasons for Claudine’s unexpected departure for Orléans, except that she had become frail in health — a curious incident over which Rachelle sometimes pondered, for Claudine had been robust in health.
    Rachelle entered the Macquinet chambers.
    Her older sister Idelette was sitting at the long cutting table. She looked much like their maman— tall, fair, with a slender, pious face, and pale blue eyes. She was working on a difficult sleeve for one of reinette Mary’s white satin gowns. The upper sleeve near the shoulder needed to be bunched into a pleated fan, and it took masterful fingers to manage it with artistic perfection. Idelette was two years ahead in the steps to becoming a couturière, and Rachelle had not yet progressed so far.
    Idelette turned her head toward Rachelle. “Oh, Grandmère is not with you?”
    “Non. I have just left Princesse Marguerite’s chambers.”
    Idelette set aside her work and stood up from the chair and table, with hand at her lower back. “I shall grow old very quickly, I vow it. One would think I was old and vagrant at twenty.”
    Rachelle proudly displayed the burgundy gown on the mannequin and arranged each fold with her fingers, smoothing them.
    Idelette nodded approvingly. “You did well, ma petite. Oh, I shall never weary of gazing at those colors. I think of sparkling grapes effused with golden sunshine.”
    “Mmm. It looks well on the princesse with her dark hair.” She glanced about the busy-looking chamber with its work materials here and there. “I am anxious to win Grandmère’s approval. My hem and the gauging of my lace is perfect.”
    “La, la, so you think. It is Grandmère’s eye that is perfect. Wait until she gauges your lace.”
    Rachelle frowned critically at the hem, though she could find no fault in her work. “It was most difficult measuring the princesse. I have never seen a mademoiselle more restless, I promise you. She talked incessantly of Monsieur Henry de Guise. It was not until he rode into the courtyard with his père, le duc, that the princesse grew happy.”
    “Pouf, happy for le moment , that is all. It is the mind of the haute
    monde . Wanting more, always more, and never satisfied. What is the verse in Ecclesiastes? ‘The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing’?”
    Rachelle turned her mouth in rueful agreement. “It is sad, but Marguerite will never be satisfied with one man.”
    “It is so with all of them, all the girls. The nobility are notorious for their greed.”
    I, myself, would be happy with one particular man , Rachelle
    thought.
    “I do not envy you working with Princesse Marguerite,” Idelette said.
    “And la Reinette Mary?”
    “So charmante, and so generous in her behavior too. She talked of the masque that was to be held tomorrow night, but she believes it might be put off until later, though no one knows when.”
    “But how strange. I was musing over how entertaining it would be for us if Grandmère would attend.”
    Idelette laughed. “Grandmère . . . or you? I vow, sister, you never give up on these matters of frivolity. It is all such nonsense.” She drew her brows together and jabbed her sewing needle into her pincushion.
    “La, la. I should still like to go but once, if only to see what it is like.”
    The court, consisting of ducs and duchesses, comtes and comtesses, had assembled here at Chambord for several months of entertainment.
    The courtly elite were expecting a time of bonhomie among themselves, of fêtes , musicals, royal hunts, and even a