The book fell to the carpet with a thump as a loud bellow erupted from her bedchamber, a howl almost like an animal in pain. He knew. He knew that his chest had been violated. But how could he?

Dear God! She waited, frozen, for him to burst through the door to confront her. He would kill her. Another bellow crashed onto her ears, but he didn't come.

Slowly, she managed to move. She managed to stand up, although her legs were trembling so much they could barely carry her as she crept to the door to the bedchamber, opened it a crack, and peered around, her dread so profound she thought her heart was going to stop with fright.

Michael was sitting up in bed, his chest bare, his chamber robe fallen open to the sides. His eyes were wide open. They stared at the door, seemed to fix her on the dark points of his pupils. Cordelia trembled, her teeth chattering, nausea rising in her belly as she waited for him to do something. But he just sat there, staring. And slowly, very slowly, it dawned on her that he couldn't see her. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see her. He wasn't awake, he was in the grip of some ghastly nightmare.

Her relief was so great she almost collapsed to the floor. Mathilde's potion obviously did more than put a man to sleep. It must arouse the demons in the sleeper's soul. And Mathilde had chosen such a draught for such a man.

Again Cordelia shivered. Mathilde had a long reach and an uncanny instinct for appropriate punishment.

She returned to Michael's dressing room, picked up the fallen journal, and settled down on the carpet, leaning against the opened chest, to read. The ticking of the clock, the rustle of the pages as she read were the only sounds in the room. Slowly and in growing horror, she read through the events of 1764.

Her husband's documentation was meticulous. In February of 1764 he had begun to suspect Elvira of unfaithfulness. Each little detail was recorded, each hint of suspicion, each moment of conviction. His nightly attempts to dominate her were described with all the nauseating attention to detail Cordelia remembered from reading his description of her own ordeals. Elvira had suffered, but if Michael's entries were to be believed, she had taken her revenge with a lover.

The case against her was built up, pebble by pebble, day by day. Reading the journal was a horrifying excursion into the mind of a man obsessed to the point of dementia by his belief that his wife was making of him a fool and a cuckold. And yet, Cordelia could see no utterly incontrovertible evidence. Michael had seen it… or had he in his mad jealousy invented it?

Cordelia had forgotten the time, the place, all sense of danger. She replaced the volume for 1764 and withdrew the next year's. And she read about Elvira's death. Disbelief and then horror seeped cold and dreadful into the very marrow of her bones. Each stage of Elvira's decline was documented, the vomiting, the weakness, the loss of her once beautiful hair, the blurring of her vision, the dreadful bodily pains that racked her beyond even the help of laudanum. The descriptions of her symptoms were as cold and dispassionate as the descriptions of what had caused them-the poison and its relentless administration.

Each dose Michael had given to his wife was recorded. Three times a day right up to the hour before her death. Her death was simply stated. At 6:30 this evening, Elvira paid for her faithlessness.

Cordelia closed the book and stared sightlessly into the empty grate. The wick in the oil lamp flickered faintly, the oil almost gone. She replaced the journal and took out the book of poisons. With growing repulsion she flicked through it, looking for and yet dreading to find a description of the poison that had killed Elvira. But disgust became too much for her. She closed the book with another shudder of horror. Her hands felt dirty just by touching it. She felt soiled through and through by this journey into the dark vindictive soul of a murderer.

Only one thought filled her head now, as she replaced the book, checked with a cold pragmaticism that everything was in its right place, and closed and locked the chest. She had to get herself and the children away from Michael. Whatever the danger they faced in fleeing, it would be as nothing compared with the danger they all faced every minute they spent under the prince's roof. And all Leo's scruples about the kind of future they would have vanished in a puff of smoke when compared with the prospect of no future at all.

She cast one last look around the dressing room before turning out the dying lamp and creeping back to her own bedchamber. Michael was lying down again, on his back, his eyes once more mercifully closed. Cordelia slipped the key back beneath the mattress and drew the curtains around the bed again.

It was dawn. Leo and the male members of the court would be heading out into the forest for a boar hunt. Michael had been intending to join them, but she wasn't going to try to waken him. Part of her almost wished that she had given him an overdose of the potion, one that would ensure he never woke up. But he was sleeping too noisily for near death.

She wrapped herself in a chamber robe and curled up in an armchair, waiting until it would be a reasonable hour to summon Elsie and Michael's valet. Her mind was as cold and clear as a marble tablet on which every word she had read was engraved. And her problem was simple. How was she to face her husband when he awoke? How could she act as if she didn't know what she now knew? The least suspicion and he would kill her too.

Michael awoke to brilliant sunlight. His body felt leaden, clammy, his head thick as if he'd indulged too heavily the night before. For a moment he didn't know where he was. He blinked at the brightness of the light. Then he realized that he was in his wife's bed. He must have spent the entire night with her. He turned his head. The pillow beside him was vacant. He was alone in the bed.

He sat up… too suddenly for his head, which felt swollen, assaulted, as if it were a boulder being attacked by pickaxes. His eyes were raw, his mouth dry and foul tasting. He'd been drinking brandy freely before coming to bed. But surely no more than he was accustomed to. He buried his head in his hands, trying to think.

"You are awake, my lord." Cordelia's voice interrupted his desperate musing. "Are you ill, sir? You look most unwell." There was no hint of concern in the cold voice.

He raised his head painfully. Cordelia, in a pale negligee, her hair loose on her shoulders, stood at the end of the bed.

"What's the time?"

"Past nine. You have slept long."

"Past nine!" He had never slept that late.

"I think perhaps you are ill, my lord." Cordelia regarded him dispassionately. "You look a little heated. Could you have caught a chill?"

"Don't be absurd, woman. I've never had a day's illness in my life." He thrust aside the covers and stood up. Immediately, the room pitched violently and his legs refused to hold him. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and wondered if perhaps Cordelia was right. Could he be ill?

"I'll call your valet." Cordelia pulled the bell rope.

"What happened?" Michael demanded thickly. "Last night? What happened?" He had a vague sense of dread that permeated his mind. He didn't know where it came from, but he felt as if something dreadful had happened, leaving him clothed in sticky, cold strands of apprehension.

"Why, nothing out of the ordinary, my lord." Cordelia came back to the bed. "Except that you fell asleep afterward." She couldn't keep the contempt out of her voice, but somehow she knew that at the moment her insolence would pass with impunity. Michael was too wrapped up in his own ills to hear her tone.

He shook his head slowly. Something was wrong. Badly wrong. His valet knocked and entered. "Is something amiss, my lord? You were to join the hunt this morning, but you didn't ring for me."

The hunt. How in the devil's name could he have slept through the dawn? Missed one of the king's hunts? He'd never done such a thing in his life.

"Give me your arm," he demanded harshly. He stood up, leaning on the valet's stalwart arm, his face set in lines of grim determination to defeat this mortifying weakness. "I'll take a hot milk punch and a plate of sirloin. Then I'll have the leech to bleed me." He drew the sides of his robe together. He cast a look of bemused frustration at his wife, then staggered from Cordelia's room, supported by his valet.

Cordelia smiled grimly. She must discover from Mathilde how long Michael's weakness would last. If he was forced to keep to his bed for a while, then matters would be easier to arrange.

As she rang for Elsie the clock on the mantel struck the half hour. The men would return from the boar hunt at around ten. Four hours of that brutal sport was enough even for the king, who lived for the hunt.

"Put out the gray gown, Elsie," she instructed as the maid scurried in, looking as usual as if she'd run a marathon to get there. Her cheeks were scarlet, and her hair was escaping in a frizz from beneath her cap. She curtsied and smiled nervously as she set Cordelia's breakfast tray on the table. "Will that be the one with the heather-colored petticoat, m'lady?"

"Yes, the one you mended yesterday," Cordelia said patiently, dipping her brioche into the wide, shallow bowl of coffee.

"And you wear the blue silk shoes with it," Elsie announced triumphantly.

Cordelia couldn't help smiling. "Precisely."

With a pleased beam, Elsie filled the basin with hot water from the ewer and bustled over to help her mistress out of her nightgown, asking with an air of importance, "How will you be wearing your hair today, m'lady? Should I heat the curling iron?"