The French Mistress Read Online Free PDF

peace with Monsieur, while Monsieur himself looks away to avoid risking the loss of his own favorite love. Round and round and round we all must go, yes? There may be no secrets at Court, but there is much willful blindness.”
    She laughed, and there was something to that laughter that made me uneasy. Was my unwitting ignorance the true source of her amusement?
    “What secrets do you have, Louise?” she asked, her manner merry despite the sordid nature of her revelations. “I can tell already that you’re one of those determined to be virtuous, rather than a favorite. At least you will at first. That’s the way it always is with country virgins.”
    “Not with me,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound so priggish. “I’ll not give myself to any gentleman save the one I wed before God.”
    “I wish you well of that, if that is what you wish.” She laughed again and winked, I suppose, to show she believed in neither virtue nor wishes. “But if you do preserve your innocence and remain a true maid of honor to Her Highness, then you’ll find Madame will love you all the more. Here are our quarters.”
    Relieved to put aside our scandalous conversation, I followed Gabrielle past more guards, and into the quarters for Her Highness’s youngest attendants.
    “There are six of us maids of honor,” Gabrielle explained, “as is proper for a royal princess. Madame du Frayne is the lady who is supposed to advise us, and keep us from mischief, and a dragon she is, too. You won’t want to cross her. Of course there are servants to tend to our hair and others to look after our clothes and help us dress. You’ll meet them all soon enough. This small parlor is for the maids to share in common.”
    The parlor was small, scarce more than a closet with a table and several straight-backed chairs. In one corner was a tiny shrine to the Virgin Mother for us to say our rosary, or other prayers. The single window opened onto a courtyard and faced the gray stone wall of another wing of the palace, with only a single slanting ray of watery Paris sunlight making its way into the room. I couldn’t help but recall the window in my bedchamber at home and the sweet breezes and endless view of the countryside that I’d had there, and with that memory came a sharp, sudden pang of longing for everything I’d so blithely left behind.
    “That door there leads directly to Madame’s quarters,” Gabrielle continued. “We’re only to use it when she summons us to her. I know it all likely seems mean and low to you—I know it did to me, when I first arrived—but lodgings are at such a premium here at Court that they say there are marquises living beneath the garrets of the Louvre, and grateful for that. Here’s the chamber you’ll share with me.”
    I would have called it an alcove, not a room, and one without any windows or a door for privacy. For all that we were within a palace, it was not so very different from the pupils’ quarters at the nunnery in Lesneven. Two narrow beds—mere cots, really, without proper bedsteads or hangings—were set against the walls, with two chamber pots, two washstands, two chairs, and a single looking glass on the wall between. Of more importance were the pair of tall wardrobe chests that held our clothes. A maidservant had already unpacked my trunks and hung my gowns on the pegs within, leaving the doors open for my approval.
    I unfastened my cloak and hung it inside. I knew I was supposed to wait for the maidservant to appear again, that no real lady would tend to her own clothes, but a lifetime’s habit was difficult to break, and besides, the simple act was one I could perform without fearing I’d misstep.
    “Ooh, let’s see your gowns,” Gabrielle said, opening the wardrobe’s doors more widely. “I’m so weary of the same ones here among us. This blue wool is rather fine, isn’t it? But then, if my skin were as clear and white as yours, I’d wear blue, too.”
    She held out the skirts of