Chapter 10 – The Duchess of Andelin’s Salon #2
She made efforts outside the bedroom, sweetening herself to him in every way.
It was difficult. They lived in separate palaces; she could not offer the small, intimate attentions of a true wife.
But every time he laid eyes on her, she made sure she was dazzling.
Her voice was musical. Her compliments to him were elegant.
Her gifts to him were expensive, exotic, and extravagant.
She was courting the wretched man.
He never refused the gifts. A new horse. A new sword. Luxurious teas and gems and stunning jeweled chains that would complement his starry blue eyes. She delivered them herself and endured the wits of the court, laughing that the Empress had fallen in love with her husband.
That love was not requited. Bastin looked at her, listened to her small, graceful speeches explaining the latest offering, and set it aside.
But if he rejected her utterly, he would have sent them back, wouldn’t he?
The chain he wore to the Ispichov banquet was made of sapphires, but it was not one of the chains she had given him. A little after midnight, she extracted the Emperor from his throne and led him to her carriage.
He had consumed a fair amount of wine; Esmene made sure to keep his cup full.
And at the doorway of her bedchamber, she beguiled him to kiss her for nearly a minute before he remembered who she was.
Striding to the bed, he began to undress as he always did, refusing to look at her.
It only made her more determined. He would have it over as soon as possible, and she was not going to let him win.
“Wine,” she commanded, snapping her fingers for a maidservant.
As it was poured, she brought forth other things, oils and candies and oysters in sauce that she had ordered prepared for their arrival.
It had never been difficult to physically rouse him, but she wanted him to linger.
She needed him to seed her. And she would have done almost anything to make it hurt less.
“This is not necessary,” was all he said when she emerged from her dressing room in the scantiest of silks, so thin it left her nipples visible.
“I want to make it better for both of us,” she whispered. Was there a hint of interest in his wine-fogged eyes? She poured him another glass and fed him candies, pretending desire as she roused him with oil. After four years, his body was nothing but an instrument of torture to her.
One child. One child of the male line of Agnephus, for the glory of House Melun. Her child would give her a hold on the Emperor that he could never escape. She would leash him like a dog. Esmene would never have to humble herself again.
Steeling herself, she impaled herself on him.
She was utterly dry inside, but the oil at least made it easier to get him into her.
Some months she barely had time to heal before she had to take him again.
But it didn’t matter. Once she had a child, let him be banished from her bedroom forever. If only she could get him to respond!
Braced above him, she began to move, her hips gliding.
She feigned pleasure, hoping her noises would rouse him.
The lights in her bedchamber were low, a warm glow of candlelight, and perhaps he was intoxicated enough to forget himself.
She moved faster, panting and groaning as she attempted to stimulate him, and as she was working away above her motionless husband, Esmene looked up and chanced to see herself in the mirror on the other side of the room.
Dressed in those silks.
Her bare breasts bouncing. The vulgar motions of a whore, her lips blown out as she faked loud moans.
A sight instantly seared into her memory forever.
She froze. Her breath hitched.
And Empress Esmene of House Melun burst into tears.
“Go. Go,” she sobbed, falling onto her side and curling up in bed with one hand pressed between her legs. And he knew it, that hateful bastard knew she was hurting herself even as she was pretending to enjoy it. Bastin rose obediently.
“Your efforts are most gratifying,” he said, his starry blue eyes glittering with appreciation as he looked down at her. Even though she was mortified and in agony, she could see the hateful satisfaction in his face. “Good night.”
There was no question who had appeared the prostitute this night.
It was a humiliation she would never forget, and never forgive.
But that was not even the worst of it.
It tickled the back of her mind in the weeks that followed, an unsettling sense of some crucial detail overlooked. His smile haunted her. Why had he seemed satisfied? When had he begun to smile? When had his loathing transmuted to include that smirk?
It must mean something.
And it had been strange, to choose the night of the Ispichov banquet as the night when they would be together. It was inconvenient. The banquet was hardly unexpected; it had been planned months in advance, and there was no reason why the Emperor should choose that night to do his duty. Why then?
“Vironet,” Esmene called. Vironet was her Lady of the Bath, in charge of all matters relating to Esmene’s health and person, and had documented every one of Esmene’s monthly courses for the last four years.
Her Lady of the Chamber documented the dates of Bastin’s visits.
For an Empress, everything, no matter how intimate, was a matter of state.
“Leave me,” she said when these records were provided. She waited until she was alone in her bedchamber to open the thick books, a bedchamber from which every mirror had recently been removed. She already suspected what she would find.
As she matched up date after date, Esmene felt a heat rising to her head, a rage she had never felt before.
Not just with him, callous and manipulative, so determined to deny her that he would put her through unbearable torment for four years.
Esmene was livid that she hadn’t detected it sooner.
She could remember that damned Celestial Sister explaining fertility, delivering Ospret’s sacred revelations in the same way she might have chanted a segarde.
Esmene had listened and nodded and never dreamed that the Emperor would deny himself an heir rather than submit.
It was unthinkable.
It was blasphemous.
It was the duty of the House of Agnephus to replace itself.
That was the Covenant of Stars, and the reason the House of Agnephus lived in such luxury and splendor.
They had always been few in number, producing a child or two per generation when most women could have a dozen.
He was the Emperor. He must make an heir.
But every single one of his visits corresponded with her periods of lowest fertility.
From now on, she would have to endure the additional humiliation of checking to ensure he seeded her.
What could she do? Surely this deliberate, calculated refusal would not be permitted by the Temple. Marriage sanctioned the creation of children. It was the tree that sheltered those future babes. And it was a sacred duty of the Divine House of Agnephus to endure.
“Vironet!” she called again, thrusting aside the records. “Summon a cleric, and send a message to my father. Say—”
But there she stopped.
Say what?
Was she going to put the sexual behavior of the Emperor on trial before the Empire? There were decent odds that she would win; he could not deny the Empire its heir, and she was his wife. She was the only one with the right to bear his divine children.
But to put him on trial was to put herself on trial right beside him. And he would divulge everything. The blackmailed consummation. The pain. The gifts. The wine. The oils.
The scanty silk clothing.
Esmene scrambled to her feet and vomited in her chamber pot.
She could not blot that vision of herself from her mind. She would have paid any price to rip it out. She had been raised to be an Empress from the day Bastin was born. She had never known an ungraceful moment in her life. She had never known such humiliation. Except with him.
Slumping to the floor, she wiped her mouth, trembling.
Stars, would he do it? Would Bastin go that far?
Your efforts are most gratifying.
Her stomach heaved.
Her pain gratified him. Her humiliation would please him.
Oh, how he must have relished all of it, how she had humbled herself and chased after him and abased her own dignity to please him.
If she insisted on making this part of their lives public, he would make all of it public.
She would suffer for it far worse than he. He would absolutely go that far.
For the first time, as she crouched on the cold tile floor with the taste of vomit sour in her mouth, Esmene felt a chill of the same implacable hatred she had seen in her husband’s eyes for four miserable years.
Then she would go even farther.
* * *
Year 827 of the Divine House of Agnephus
It was fortunate that the Duchess of Andelin was wealthy enough to be regarded as eccentric.
Crouched between three burly masons by the hearth of the solar, she was a ludicrous little figure with her skirts dragging in the ashes as they explained the mechanics of a hearth.
Behind her, the fourth mason sketched industriously at the table, a rough schematic of the fireplace venting system for the main house.
And she was wearing such an elegant dress!
It had taken so much negotiation before Tiffen struck upon a style that offended no one: soft, comfortable clothing made of the finest silk, velvet, satin, and combed wool, exquisitely tailored and often with some innovation of bodice or sleeves to set it apart from Segoile.
If Mionet had been tied to a rack, she would have admitted that Tiffen was actually a quite capable tailor.
In the capital, he might have been a designer of note, barring his refusal to hold with some more impractical innovations of women’s dress.