Read The French Mistress for Free Online Page A

had pointed out to me earlier. “Should I use the direct passage?”
    Madame du Frayne nodded with curt approval. “Go now, mademoiselle.”
    “You’re quick to learn, Louise, aren’t you?” Gabrielle whispered grudgingly behind me.
    I didn’t answer, but hurried to join my mistress. But Gabrielle was right. I was quick to learn, and already I’d learned the most important lesson of any court, and one I’d never forget or ignore: trust no one but yourself.

Chapter Three
    PALAIS-ROYAL, PARIS
October 1668
     
     
     
    T he back passage to Madame’s bedchamber was much shorter and more direct than the hall that Gabrielle had taken me through earlier. I’d no need of a guide here: the plain plastered passage led in only one direction.
    The narrow arched door at the end stood ajar for me to enter, and I paused for a moment to smooth my skirts before I presented myself to Her Highness. I could hear her voice within, likely addressing a servant. I stepped forward, my hand on the latch to open the door fully. The princess stood with her back to me, her carefully arranged curls, threaded with blue silk ribbons and falling over her shoulders, and the sapphires hanging from her ears winked in the light from the fire.
    Then the gentleman with her moved into my line of sight behind the half-open door, and I stopped with uncertainty.
    He was the same height as Madame, but where she was slender, he appeared inclined to a plump softness, his doublet and sleeves pulling too snugly around his body. Yet it wasn’t only his form that had a womanliness: his dress was the most extravagant I had ever seen on a man, fair erupting with hundreds of pale green and pink ribbon galants at the hem of his short doublet, at his elbows, and around the knees of his breeches. His stockings were embroidered with golden lilies, and topped by flopping cuffs of rose point lace. More lace formed his collar, stiffened and starched so high that his chin seemed propped up on a froth of white.
    His black wig curled in ringlets to his waist, with more ribbons tied into lovelocks, and heavy rings glittered on half his fingers. But it was his face that made me gasp, an exclamation I barely smothered behind my hand. Gabrielle had not exaggerated. The gentleman was painted as garishly as an actress, his skin whitened to gleam like the shell of a goose’s egg, his cheeks and lips reddened with cerise, his eyelids languidly darkened and lined with lampblack, with more to mark his brows into ink black arches. Yet despite so much womanly artifice, his features remained those of a man’s, with a long nose and a firm, if pointed, jaw, and hard black eyes that would miss nothing.
    Monsieur . I realized his identity with a start, remembering Gabrielle’s description. The brother of the king, the husband of my lady mistress. Philippe, duc d’Orleans.
    Though I knew it was wrong of me to remain and spy on them like this, however unintended it might be, I also realized that if I tried to leave I might be discovered by Monsieur and that would be infinitely worse. My only recourse would lie in remaining as still as I could until he left Madame alone and I could join her as I’d been bidden, and thus I waited.
    “So it is true, Henriette?” Monsieur asked. “You have been plotting again with my brother without either my knowledge or my consent?”
    Though I could not see Madame’s face from where I stood, there was no mistaking how her shoulders tightened and narrowed, or how she clasped her hands together before her, as if to gird herself for his attacks.
    “There are no plots, Philippe,” she said, her words brittle, and without any of the lighthearted charm I’d heard earlier. “There never are, save the ones of your own invention.”
    “I do not invent, my dear, only perceive,” he answered. “And what I perceive is a plot to undermine my authority, contrived by the two people that heaven orders I must trust the most.”
    Pointedly not looking in his