Chapter 11 – An Experiment in Lace #2
“…big as apples,” Mionet finished, without a flicker of reaction. Well, she had suspected something like this. It would be useful knowledge if she intended some harm, but Duchess Andelin could hardly visit the baths of Segoile if she was going to curl up like a snail.
The duchess flinched at Emi’s hand, and Mionet’s eyes went flinty.
“Emi. Peri. Please mind your hands,” she said, as if they were at fault. “Her Grace is very fine boned. I assure you I will note the least scratch. My lady, I hope you will speak if there is any discomfort. Perhaps Emi and Peri are too used to scrubbing floors.”
Emi stiffened with outrage, and Peri’s mouth dropped open.
“Oh, no,” Duchess Andelin said, sitting up at once. “They’re not, it’s not—it’s fine.”
Over her head, Peri met Mionet’s gaze for a long moment, and then there was a flash of understanding. She had always been the more quick-witted of the two maids.
“It’s all right, my lady, please say if you don’t like it,” she said, and the rest of the bath went much more smoothly.
How was Mionet ever going to sell Duchess Andelin on the delights and luxuries of Segoile when she knew less about these things than her servants?
It was a tricky prospect already, managing access to Princess Ophele with only a few months’ notice, but it would come to nothing if she spent all that time acquainting the lady with basic cosmetic alchemy.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, that man was showing up in the solar even in the morning, and apparently not one other person in Tresingale had the sense to know that the absolute last thing the young Duchess of Andelin needed was a connection with Sir Miche of Harnost.
“You almost had it, Ophele, or would if Davi weren’t such a clod,” Miche said during one of her dance lessons, depositing his quill into an ink pot.
“Here, Tounot, give us that bit again. My lady,” he said to Ophele with a bow, and she laughed as he took her hands and led her through a difficult part of the dance, to demonstrate for Davi where he had gone wrong.
There was something there, but Mionet still couldn’t put her finger on it.
It did not seem anything as obvious and vulgar as an affair; the stars knew she had seen ample evidence that there was a great deal of love between the Duke and Duchess of Andelin.
The duchess would no more betray him than she would fly.
But this was Miche of Harnost. He looked every inch the libertine with that long blond hair: dangerously beautiful, heartlessly charming, and absolutely nothing but trouble.
“Right foot, right foot,” Miche was saying, and the duchess moved with more speed than grace to follow, her face glowing as she successfully executed the tricky maneuver.
“Oh, I did it!” she exclaimed, and then burst out laughing as he took her through it again. “No, you can’t switch feet that fast, I can’t keep up!”
“Sure you can, left foot, there you go,” he encouraged. His dimples flashed as he smiled. “Ready to try it again?”
“Yes. No. Wait, I’m on the wrong foot!” she wailed, but they were all laughing now, and after a little skip, she was quick to catch up, sailing about in his arms with skirts fluttering and perfectly content.
She was far too familiar with him, and far too comfortable in his company. And Miche himself was worse, calling her by her first name and teasing her even with other people about. More than once, Mionet caught a flicker of trouble in Leonin’s face that meant he had noticed it, too.
What was the relationship between them, exactly?
No one would ask, in Segoile. It was Sir Miche of Harnost. They would leap straight to one ruinous conclusion.
“And there!” Miche exclaimed as he landed her directly in front of Davi.
Catching her hand, he bowed to press a kiss to the back of her knuckles, a gesture that would have been awkward from any man less infernally graceful.
“You cannot complain of your pupil, Leonin. Light on her feet as anyone could ask.”
It was just poor timing that he did this as Emi was ushering a batch of farmwives through the door.
“No, I have more often complained of her partner,” Leonin replied dryly, but his eyes found Mionet’s across the room.
For heaven’s sake, they might just start assuming things in Tresingale.
“Sir Miche.” With a smile fixed on her face, Mionet sidled across the room to stand beside him, speaking through her teeth. “I would like a private word with you. Tonight.”
“Would you?” His face was pleasant, but his eyes chilled.
“Yes. Please see that you will not have other company,” she said shortly, and went to wrangle the farmwives.
It was all she could do to keep from thundering warnings into the Duchess of Andelin’s innocent ears.
But it was not fair to blame her. By now there was ample evidence that Duchess Andelin had been very, very poorly raised, without even the most rudimentary warnings a noblewoman heard from the moment she could toddle out of her mother’s line of sight.
But what was Miche’s excuse? What was wrong with these idiot men?
Did they really not understand how this could be perceived, or turned to the lady’s detriment?
Of course not. Because it was never men that paid the price for these things.
It was wildly hypocritical and unfair, but it was innocents like Ophele that suffered the most for these scandals.
And to be just, it was not only men who were immune; there were Segoile matrons who entertained a new lover every Tuesday and managed to brazen it out, and certain debutantes could sail through four engagements in a single season and come out the other side without a scratch.
The stars knew Miche of Harnost would hardly be affected by one more scandal.
But the Exile Princess, Duchess of Andelin, wife of Remin Grimjaw…
Once that wheel started turning, it would never stop.
Seething, Mionet made her way to Miche’s cottage later that night, angry all over again that she must resort to subterfuge and resentful that His Grace, Remin of Andelin, had no idea the lengths she was going to, to look after his na?ve wife.
Steeling herself, she knocked on the door.
They had parted after supper only minutes before; just long enough to ensure the servants were busy with clearing away. Firelight glowed on Miche’s face as he opened the door and stood aside.
“I know you are accustomed to company at night,” Mionet said scathingly, moving quickly through the door. “But I would like to be circumsp—what under the stars are you doing?
His fingers were working the laces of his jerkin free in a businesslike manner, baring an expanse of broad pectorals.
“You don’t want to?” he asked, lifting one blond eyebrow.
“What—you—not every woman in the world wants to sleep with you!” Mionet spluttered, outraged.
“Oh. In my experience, they do,” he said diffidently, and sat down on the end of his bed. “What do you want, then?”
“Ironically, to beg you to be a trifle less scandalous,” she spat. “For your duchess’s sake, if not your own.”
“Since when have you cared about what’s good for her?” he retorted. “Aren’t you just trying to figure out how to use her once you get her to the capital?”
Miche was giving her too little credit. Mionet had decided long ago exactly how she could use the Exile Princess once she got her to the capital. But she was not about to tell him that.
“The trouble with men like you,” she began, “is that you never consider the damage you do to others. To Her Grace, if you are as open with your affections in public as you are in private.”
“This is not the capital, where servants so freely betray their mistresses,” he said coldly, with a warning flash in his tawny eyes.
“It doesn’t matter what’s true, it matters what it looks like,” she snapped, exasperated. “Surely you are aware of your reputation?”
“It certainly seems you are.”
“Well, I must ask. Ignorance is the only reason I can imagine why you would not already take steps to remedy it.” She cast a contemptuous look at his open shirt, which he had still made no effort to close in the presence of a lady.
“You may choose to bed half of Segoile and all the laundresses in Tresingale if you wish, but could you not at least be discreet? There is a reason no decent woman in the capital would allow herself to be seen with you.”
He scoffed. “Fortunately, Tresingale has different standards of decency.”
“I daresay you would think so, for you would otherwise have been dismissed long ago,” she shot back.
“How are you not ashamed to so disgrace your lord? Even Duchess Ereguil has despaired of making a match for you. No lady could show her face in the capital, if every third woman there might tell her bed stories about her husband.”
“How you presume, madam,” he protested, his eyes glittering. “To think that I would ever choose one, and break so many hearts.”
“Do you know what they say of you? Women talk, just as men do.” Fury fizzed in her temples, but her face was cool and smiling.
“Among themselves, they speak of Miche of Harnost like a new attendant at the Candle Street baths. Oh, my dear, you must try the blond one. So clever with his hands, and even better with his tongue.”
“And yet here you are, with my scandalous self,” he drawled, sprawling back on his bed with a provocative roll of his hips. “Sure you don’t want to see what the fuss is about?”
She would sooner have set the bed aflame with him in it. How many women had accepted that invitation? How many women had been ruined by this man?
“Even if you care nothing for your own reputation, you might at least have a care for Ophele—”
He was on his feet and had her pinned to the wall in a sudden snap of fury, his beautiful face snarling an inch from hers.