Free On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) by Kate Silver Page A

family honor was cold comfort for her in the dead of night, when all the world bar her was asleep in the arms of those they loved.  
     
    Henrietta jumped into sudden wakefulness at the sound of the timid knock on her chamber door.   She had retired for the night some time ago and was halfways into sleep by now.   She turned over grumpily and pulled her bedclothes up to her chin.   Maybe if she ignored the noise, whoever it was would go away.
    Tap tap tap, a little louder this time.
    She sat up and drew back the curtain around her bed a fraction, resigning herself to the annoying inevitability of being thoroughly woken up.   “What do you want?”
    Her maid opened the chamber door a crack and peeped through.   “You have a visitor, Madame Princesse,” she whispered.
    Henrietta frowned at her maid.   The girl, though not over bright, was not usually quite so dense.   “It is the middle of the night and I was asleep.   I am not in the mood to receive anyone.   Tell them I am not at home.”
    “But Madame…”
    “No buts.”   She waved her hand in the air to dismiss her maid.   “Tell whoever it is to go away.”
    Her maid squeaked with fright.   “Please, Madame,” she gabbled, tripping over her words in her haste to get them out of her mouth.   “Your visitor is the King.”
    Henrietta swore under her breath – in English.   In the crowded quarters of the palace in St-Germain-en-Lay one never knew who might be listening.
    The maid looked at her, her frightened face silently beseeching her mistress not to make her tell her King a lie.   He could have her whipped to death for less.
    Henrietta sighed.   She liked her little maid too well to give the King any reason to punish her.   “Show him in.”
    The maid’s face lost its terrified pucker and sank into its usual look of agreeable docility as she scuttled off to do her mistress’s bidding.
    Henrietta patted her hair straight and tucked the bedclothes securely around her.   Not for the first time she wished that her husband’s brother was not the King of France.   It would not be politic to offend the King, howsoever much she might be tempted to.
    At that moment, the door to her chamber opened with a flourish and King Louis XIV strode in, an ermine nightcap on his wigless head and a purple dressing gown loosely belted around his corpulent waist.
    He gestured to his young page, who pulled back the curtains from around her bed.
    She bent her head in a gesture of respect, shivering in the cold draft that tickled her shoulders.   “Your Majesty.”
    “You may call me Louis,” he said with a benevolent smile, as if he were conferring the highest honor of the land upon her.   Indeed, he probably thought he was, Henrietta thought to herself with a grimace.   He had always loved pomp and ceremony above all else that to voluntarily ask her to address him without his title was most likely a sign of greatest love.
    A great love from the King, however, she could very well do without.   “You do me too much honor, Sire.”
    He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it with his wet mouth.   “If the whole world came to pay homage to you, sweetest Henrietta, it could not give you more honor than you deserve.”
    She drew her hand away again and tucked it out of sight under the bedclothes.   “I trust Monsieur, my husband, is well?”   Perhaps he needed a timely reminder that she was his sister-in-law – married to his younger brother.
    He sat down on the side of her bed with an air of dignified complacence.   “Monsieur was perfectly well when I left him last.   He was quite surrounded by a peck of adoring boys.   You know how much he enjoys that.”   He gazed at her greedily, his beady eyes shining with desire.   “I know my brother is no fit husband for you, Henrietta.”
    She forbore to remind him that he had arranged the match himself, in full knowledge of his brother’s proclivities towards those of his own sex.   “I like my