Free Before Versailles by Karleen Koen Page A

stepped out of a cramped box into an enchanted, open-ended fairy tale, like the ones an admirer of Madame’s told them, about sleeping beauties and maidens sitting in cinders before they wore glass slippers or kissed frogs who became princes.
    And so, to honor the enchantment of the moment and how beautiful all the compliments and attention made them feel, as well as to make certain such admiration didn’t disappear, Louise redid certain key curls for Fanny, and Claude lent small pearl earrings that heightened the beauty of Louise’s lithe, incandescent fairness, and even self-absorbed Madeleine offered to share from among her many bracelets.
    Bracelet on an arm, long curl on a shoulder, Fanny opened the chamber door, unfurled a fan, stamped a foot encased in smooth, colored leather and announced, “Hearts will be broken tonight.”
    “Ours,” Claude said with a laugh.
    “Only if we’re stupid,” answered Fanny.
    A girl must keep her wits about her. Choisy had been right about that. Many of the gallants who courted and flirted and plied them with admiration were married. This was where the fairy tale showed its dark side. Louise and Fanny discussed it endlessly. What if one of them should fall in love with a married man in spite of herself? It happened. And while this court seemed to regard fidelity casually, Louise had taken in the priests’ strictures with her wet nurse’s milk: to stay pure, to save herself for marriage. But already, she could see how easily a girl could slip and fall before the ardent persuasion of a man who said he loved her. She thought of true love as something unalloyed and grand, something larger than the two people it bound. Absolute idiocy, was Fanny’s opinion. Look around you, for heaven’s sake. Is that what you see? We’ll marry whoever our families approve, and we’ll be lucky if he has a kind word for us, and I, for one, intend to take my fun where I can find it.
    Giggling over nothing, the way women will when they’re young and lively and in a cluster together and life is alluring in all its unspoken promise, they hurried downstairs to Madame’s apartments and sailed through the door, giggles preceding them, and an arrogant princess, who served as Madame’s lady-in-waiting and who they secretly had named the gargoyle, looked down her nose at them.
    “Late,” she said.
    She was in her early twenties, the daughter of a duke and a marshall of France, as well as the wife of the crown prince of the small nearby kingdom of Monaco. She was only four years or so older than they were, but in sophistication and certainty, the span might have been a hundred.
    It’s clever of Madame to have taken her on, Fanny had announced, because the princess was one of the leaders at court. And of course there did need to be an older woman among them as a kind of duenna or superintendent. Madame was no older than they were. But this princess didn’t care to supervise. She only cared about how quickly one or another of them could leap up to perform some small task, and it was never quickly enough.
    Beautiful and proud, the gargoyle rose from her chair to touch the knot of ribbons at Louise’s shoulder. “And what’s this?” she asked, scorn clear in her tone.
    Looking like an angel in her gown of silver, the red in her hair made even more pronounced by the shade of her dress, their bright-faced new Madame, the Princess Henriette, answered. “A whim of mine. Does it please you?”
    “Most charming, of course,” the gargoyle answered.
    “But not as charming as those who wear it.” This was the gargoyle’s brother, Guy-Armand, the Count de Guiche.
    If the gargoyle—Catherine was her given name—was lovely, her brother was magnificent. Their sophistication made their place at court gilded and glinting, always. Of an old and honorable family, both brother and sister carried themselves with a haughty certainty that reduced the maids of honor into speechless puddles. The other three thought