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had loved the man who’d brought her and her sisters to court as if he were his own father.
    The beauty always made him want to stutter. He didn’t have a true stutter, just a slight stalling of words that he had conquered during childhood through sheer willpower. It unnerved him when he felt it in his throat, swelling his tongue. Those around him would laugh, as they’d done when he was a child, and the laughter hadn’t been kind. A king couldn’t afford to be laughed at. It had been part of his father’s downfall, his nervous, limping, coughing father, who twitched when he was upset and stammered spit when he was angry and trusted no one and loved only brightly, briefly, and very dangerously. Somehow those whom his father had loved ended up dead—his father had always believed they’d betrayed him in the end.
    Had they? What was betrayal and what was simple human error and what was suspicion sickened to insanity, coloring even good with its darkness?
    “She’s up early,” he said to Olympe, ignoring the beaming beauty, who lost some of her shimmer. But the young men following Louis smiled and nodded at her, showing their approval in every way save stomping their feet, so it didn’t take long for her to brighten back to full power.
    Louis walked with Olympe through several other rooms, high ceilings, huge fireplaces, intricate woodwork and molding and inlay, thick rugs, big tapestries on the walls, until finally they were in the queen’s bedchamber, the ornate and curtained bed at one end. It was the fashion to have a series of rooms called antechambers that led to the bedchamber, and even the bedchamber wasn’t private. For strict privacy, a person of high birth had to retreat to a room called a closet, where, finally, he or she might be alone. Just as there were layers of chambers between him and his wife, there were layers of people, and, at this moment, he was glad of it.
    “So, she slept well?” he asked as they walked through the antechambers, and women fell into curtsies wherever his glance moved. I do care about her, he thought. I do.
    “I don’t think so, and she woke irritable. However, the Viscount Nicolas’s gift cheered her.”
    “The viscount sent a gift?”
    “You know how generous he is, sire.”
    “Does that mean you received a gift, also?” Louis was ironic.
    Naughty dimples appeared in Olympe’s cheeks. That and her sullenness had kept more than one man awake at night. “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
    Louis pinched her arm. “You will. You always have.”
    Olympe winked at him, and Louis’s queen, sitting up in her bed, excited as she always was that Louis was visiting her, gave a little sigh. Some of the radiant happiness faded from her square, rather fleshy face, but no one noticed. All eyes were on the king, on Olympe. There were wicked rumors about the two of them, but the queen didn’t know of them. Surrounded by a soft bubble of privilege and royalty and lack of speaking French, she was the last to learn of any scandal. Her jealousy was more instinctive. The king was so lean, so grave, so dark-eyed, so kind, that it was impossible not to see other women’s notice of him, and this wasn’t Spain, where young noblewomen were kept in strict seclusion until their marriages, and where even after their marriages they were kept cloistered with other women. This was France, where women were quite amazingly—to her eyes—quite extraordinarily bold. And no one here seemed to mind it.
    Dwarves she’d brought with her from her home saw the hurt that moved over her face before she gathered back all of her smile. The dwarves served as her jesters and soothers. Philippe couldn’t stand them, but Louis was more tolerant. His and Philippe’s mother was fond of dwarves. They were a reminder of the strange and intricate and still medieval court both women had left behind forever when they married and journeyed to France. Maria Teresa, who had been the foremost