She felt him come toward her and stiffened. Instinctively, she placed her hands on the girls' shoulders as they still sat at her feet. "I trust you enjoyed the recital, madame." Michael spoke with cold indifference.

"Very much so," she returned blandly, rising from her seat.

"Mesdames, the king's daughters, have expressed a desire to meet my children," the prince informed her. "You had better take them over and perform the introductions." He took a pinch of snuff, regarding his daughters with the same dispassion as they rose hastily at his approach and now stood attentively hand in hand. "Much as I disapprove of children in adult company, I suppose one must indulge a royal whim."

Cordelia dropped an ironic curtsy, took the children by the hand, and led them away to where Mesdames de France, the king's unmarried daughters, were gathered in a circle before the window, sipping champagne and nibbling savory tarts from a tray held by an immobile footman. He might just as well have been a stuffed dummy as far as the royal princesses were concerned. They turned in unison as Cordelia approached with the children.

"What dear little things," Princess Adelaide declared. "Such perfect identical little dolls. Have a sugared almond." She took two sweetmeats from the salver and popped them into the girls' mouths. Sylvie and Amelia looked startled but gratified. It seemed that since they'd arrived in this enchanted palace, they were always being fed sweetmeats from royal fingers. They sucked the sugary nut with solemn pleasure and received the shower of compliments from the princesses in wide-eyed silence, remembering to curtsy whenever it seemed required.

"Goodness me, how do people tell you apart?" Princess Sophie exclaimed, clapping her hands in exaggerated astonishment.

"With difficulty." Leo answered the question with light amusement. "Mesdames." He bowed to the royal sisters. "And my little mesdames." He offered the same courtesy to the children, who giggled, before turning to Cordelia. "The dauphine wishes to speak with you, Princess. May I escort you?"

"Leave the children with us while you talk with the dauphine," Princess Sophie insisted. "Come, my dears, would you like to see my songbirds?"

"And I have a pet monkey," Princess Louise put in. "A most amusing little thing, you'll love him."

It seemed that the princesses, always on the lookout for new amusements, had decided to vie for the attention of Prince von Sachsen's identical twins. The novelty probably wouldn't last long, but Michael couldn't object to Cordelia's leaving his daughters to bask in the royal competition to amuse them.

She put her hand on Leo's arm and allowed him to lead her away. "I have a plan," she said in a low voice. Large groups were ideal for exchanging secrets so long as one kept one's expression bland and one's voice an undertone. No one took a blind bit of notice of what anyone said anyway, unless it was the juiciest morsel of gossip. "I will bring the children to Christian's lodgings in Versailles on the pretext of their taking a music lesson. The Nevry woman will cooperate. I gave Christian a letter explaining the plan; I'm sure he'll agree to do what he can to help."

"Good. I want you and the children to leave the palace tomorrow afternoon. Take nothing with you and go directly to Mathilde and Christian. They will know what to do."

"But what are you going to do?"

They had reached Toinette, and Leo didn't answer; instead he said, "Madame, I bring the princess to you, as commanded."

"Oh, good, I wish to play piquet, Cordelia." Toinette flourished a pack of cards. "It's been ages since we played together."

"I wonder if you cheat each other as well as everyone else," Leo commented carelessly, drawing out a chair for Cordelia at the card table.

"What calumny, Lord Kierston," Toinette declared, quite pink cheeked. "Whatever makes you say such a thing?"

"A long journey in the company of the princess," Leo responded with an amused smile.

"As it happens, Toinette and I never have the slightest need to cheat with each other," Cordelia said with a dignified tilt of her head, slipping easily into the role he was dictating. Light, slightly flirtatious banter was enjoyed by everyone at court. "We developed the strategy, as I told you, to combat the underhand dealings of others. Fight pitch with pitch, my lord." She glanced over her shoulder as she said this, and her eyes held a very different meaning. Leo merely smiled, bowed, and moved away into the main body of the room.

Tables were being set up for gaming. The children seemed to have vanished with the royal sisters. Michael was sitting at a whist table. It seemed to Leo that the man was having difficulty sitting up straight in his chair. His shoulders kept slumping. For the first time, Leo remembered Mathilde's potion and how Cordelia had said it had kept Michael from the boar hunt. So many momentous things had happened since then, he'd completely forgotten.

There were as yet only three people at the table just behind Michael's. Leo went over. "May I join your rubber? Or are you waiting for someone?"

"Not at all, dear fellow. But all means, sit." A snuff-stained whist player waved jovially at the empty chair. Michael glanced over his shoulder and acknowledged Leo's smiling greeting with a stiff bow. He looked ghastly, Leo thought. And then he thought grimly that if Michael was ill, he couldn't be expected to fight a duel. Leo would be expected to hold his challenge until his opponent was fit and well.

But he could still issue it. Once the challenge was issued, Cordelia would be beyond danger. The matter would fall under the king's jurisdiction until it was resolved.

He picked up his cards and sorted them. He intended to make his accusation in the most dramatic way possible. The following afternoon, after the play, on stage, he would speak out. He had his speech prepared and it would create a stir that would live in the memory of this court into the next generation.

He laid an ace of spades on top of the ten and took the trick. A hand touched his arm. A tiny dimpled hand. "Monsieur Leo."

He looked down at the twins, standing together at this chair. They curtsied as his eyes fell upon them, and then they gazed at him solemnly, as if a little unsure of their welcome. "Madame Cordelia said we could come and pay our respects, sir. We have something most particular to ask you.

"These are your nieces, I understand, Lord Kierston." A dowager duchess put up her lorgnette and examined the children, who were so fascinated by the ostrich plumes in her powdered mountain of hair that for a moment they stared unabashed as the feathers bobbed perilously close to the rim of a glass of champagne.

"Make your curtsies," Leo reminded them softly, and they did so hastily.

"May we watch?" Amelia inched closer against his arm, gazing up at him with Elvira's eyes, where appeal and mischief mingled.

"If no one else objects," he said, glancing at Michael's back at the next table. He didn't seem to be aware of his daughters' somewhat unorthodox arrival.

"Not in the least," the duchess said airily. "Have a comfit, mes petites." She selected two chocolate dragees from a silver dish. The girls, experienced now, opened their mouths to receive the sweet and smiled politely at their benefactress.

"What's a passport, Monsieur Leo?" Sylvie asked when she'd swallowed her chocolate.

Leo's hand froze in the act of scooping up his new hand. "Why do you ask?"

"You said to Madame Cordelia that you were going to get us one," Amelia put in. "Is it a present?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Amelia," Leo said with a slight, dismissive laugh, examining his cards-"And children with big ears certainly aren't given presents.

They both looked crestfallen, but that couldn't be helped-

"Go back to your stepmother now," he instructed. "You're disturbing my play."

They curtsied disconsolately and scurried off, but recovered sufficiently to take strawberry tarts from a salver that a footman obligingly held down to them.

"pretty little things," the dowager duchess said. "So like their mother. The same eyes." She leaned sideways and bellowed at Michael's averted back. "I was just saying, Prince. Your daughters… such pretty little things… the image of their mother-may she rest in peace," she added piously, crossing herself.

Michael looked over his shoulder. His eyes were blank. "How kind of you to say so, madame." He turned back to his cards.

Chapter Twenty-three

Michael took a glass of burgundy from a passing footman and drank deeply. It was his fourth glass in an hour, but contrary to medical opinion it didn't seem to strengthen him after the bleeding he'd undergone that morning. He still felt weak and his hands had an uncharacteristic tremor to them.

"I trust you are feeling better, my lord." His wife spoke at his elbow. Her eyes were more gray than blue this evening, reflecting the almost opalescent misty gray of her gown. The side panels of the gown were drawn up over her hoop to reveal an emerald green undergown sewn with seed pearls. A tiara of emeralds nestled in the black hair, a matching collar was clasped at her throat, and on her wrist she wore the serpent bracelet; the diamond slipper, the silver rose, and the emerald swan caught the candlelight whenever she moved her gracefully rounded forearm.

Elvira had worn the intricate bracelet with its strange, almost sinister medieval design with flamboyance. She had worn it constantly and flourished it as she flourished the male admiration that flowed over her. Admiration that she had played up to with all her seductive wiles. Cordelia was also never seen without the bracelet. She touched it frequently but almost absently, as if it were a kind of talismanic ritual.