Free Courtesan by Diane Haeger Page A

husband had died, secured with his estates, and then, as brazen as a common strumpet, had strolled back into Court to finish what they had begun. There was no point in denying the accusation. Montgommery was drunk. He would probably not remember having said it in the morning anyway. Diane simply stared at him a moment longer, watching him sway back and forth. Her silence drew more frustration from him, but then, before he could act on it, she turned away.
    “I am going to bed. Alone! Good night, Monsieur!”
    He grabbed her arm again and pulled her forcefully back to face him. “Very well, then. Go off to your cold empty bed! But for all of your righteousness, you shall soon be just like all the rest of us. It is part of the plan. Eat, drink and be merry, says our good King. I simply thought you might as well initiate yourself sooner than later.”
    “Well, clearly, Captain Montgommery, you thought wrong!”
    And so the scene between them had gone. Diane had left him standing bleary-eyed at her doorstep. She had heard him rustling about for some time in the hallway before he finally went away.
    “Who was that, Madame?” Charlotte asked as she rubbed a thick finger across her cheek and met her at the door.
    “It was no one, Charlotte. No one. Go back to bed.”
    This definitely was not the refined Court she had known with Louis, she thought, as she rubbed her red and swollen feet against the edge of her bed. But so far, the unpredictability intrigued her. It was a side of courtly life that she had not been permitted to see before. There was so much about life in general that she had not been permitted to see. She would need to use great caution here, but for the time being, Diane had decided to stay.
             
    T HE K ING PULLED his head slowly from the pillow as Anne slept motionless in his arms. He was restless. Bedding the ambitious Comtesse de Sancerre the night before, with Anne in her apartments just down the hall, had done little to stave off the wanderlust that grew to nearly violent proportions within him.
    Anne had known where he was and what he was doing and yet she had said nothing. It had spoiled the fun of being bad. Now, all that he felt as he lay in her arms was the dull ache of being unfulfilled. But since women were not the real problem, neither were they the answer. The real issue was power. François wanted Italy.
    He would never forget his disastrous defeat at Pavia. . .the price he had paid. He had been forced to marry the Emperor’s ugly sister. It had been part of the bargain for peace, and for the safe return to France of his sons. François burned to make the Emperor pay for their imprisonment; François burned again for war. He could not help it. He could not deny it. The desire coursed through his blood; through his body; searing him; taunting him. If he could just gain Italy then he, not the Emperor Charles, would dominate the Christian world. It would be a fair trade for what he and his family had been forced to endure.
    He tossed fitfully in his bed as his mind raced, his body wet with perspiration. Opening his eyes, he stared up at the painting by Andrea del Sarto called
Caritas
that graced a wall near his bed. Never in his life had he seen art as beautiful or as moving as he had in Italy. He wanted it. He needed it. He would find a way to have it at any cost; any cost but that of the life of the Dauphin. Nothing would be worth selling the joy of his life, his eldest son, to marriage with a merchant’s daughter. It seemed that there were times when the only thing in his life he had done right was to sire that boy.
    But in trying to gain the return of Milan, there was something else to consider: the delicate balance between England and France. There was not only the Emperor, but there was Henry VIII. François detested his English counterpart, finding him unprincipled and uncivilized. But he knew that, at the very least, a broad-based civility between them was essential. The