The King's Official Mistress

Before he set out, Eugene had advised Cinderella not to fuss or fret.

That was easier by far for him to say than for Cinderella to do. Though safe within the palace she could hear the thunder rolling outside, see the flashes of lightning illuminate her bedroom and reach even into the sitting room beyond. She could hear the rain slamming against the gallic windows that led out onto the balcony. And Eugene was out in such weather, and His Majesty too and General Gerard and all the others. And so no matter how much Cinderella's ladies tried to keep her distracted, no matter how loudly Marinette played the piano to try and drown out the sounds of the tempest beyond, Cinderella couldn't help but fret.

I hope they're all alright.

Hope was all that she could give them. As with Jean, so now with Eugene, there was nothing that she could do to help him in this.

All she could do was sit in her sitting room, listening to the conversation go on around her more than she could really be said to be taking part in it, thinking about Eugene and his father and hoping they were both fine despite the roaring tempest.

If anything should happen to them... Cinderella flinched from the mere thought. To lose Eugene would be the end of her, her heart would not be able to bear it, but even if anything were to befall His Majesty the King...she had been nine years without a father, she was...it was horribly impertinent even to think this, and Cinderella would never have dared to say so out loud, but she was just getting used to having one again and it felt so wonderful. As selfish as it sounded, she didn't want that to be ripped away from her a second time. She didn't want Eugene to suffer as she had.

The balcony doors rattled under a gust of wind.

"Blow winds and crack your cheeks," Christine murmured.

"For God's sake don't bring King Lear into this," Augustina replied.

They waited, and as they waited the skies began to clear as the rain eased off and the thunder ceased, but by that time the evening was gathering on and the gloom of cloudy skies was merely replaced by the gloom of the setting sun and still no word. Cinderella ate in her room, joined by all her ladies - even Angelique, who had come up from Jean's sickroom with a curious look on her face, and who had said nothing - and waited for word.

Partly because it was unusual for her to be so quiet, and partly because by this point Cinderella was getting desperate for anything, anything at all to distract her from worrying about why Eugene hadn't returned yet and what might have happened to him or his father in the storm, but after dinner she asked the other ladies if they mightn't excuse her for just a moment so that she could have a word with Angelique in private.

"Well if you want to talk privately why don't you leave the room and...I mean, certainly Cinderella, whatever you say," Drizella said, as the other ladies took their leave.

Cinderella smiled as the door shut, enclosing she and Angelique alone in the sitting. "She really is trying, don't you think?"

The absence of any sarcastic remark on the subject of Drizella from Angelique would have been unexpected at the best of times, now it was more evidence of something strange going on.

"Angelique?" Cinderella asked. "Angelique, are you alright?"

"Hmm?" Angelique looked up. "What? What's the matter?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me," Cinderella said. "There's...is everything alright with Jean?"

"I...I think so. I think he might be getting a little better. I hope he is," Angelique said, her voice sliding down into a mumble so that Cinderella couldn't hear the last thing he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"He said he loves me," Angelique repeated. "He...he told me so. Except he didn't tell me he told his mother only...he was a bit delirious. But...but that doesn't mean it isn't true, does it?"

Cinderella couldn't help it. She had to laugh. She covered her mouth with one hand but that didn't stop the laughter falling from her lips like the peeling of bells.

Angelique's expression slipped into one of some degree of affront. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Cinderella said. "It's just that, well, I've known that for a long time. Almost as long as I've known you."

"Really? You could have said something."

"It wouldn't have been my place to say what Jean wouldn't or couldn't, don't you agree?" Cinderella replied. "And besides - and this is why I had to laugh, I'm so sorry - I thought you knew. I thought...well, it seemed obvious, really."

"Obvious," Angelique said flatly. She wrung her hands in front of her. "I suppose you knew that I loved him as well, didn't you?"

"Don't you?"

"Yes, but he doesn't seem to know that!" Angelique snapped. "He told his mother that I don't love him. Why is it that you can see it but we couldn't?"

"Why could you see Serena and Grace for what they really were and I couldn't?" Cinderella replied.

"Because you're too nice for your own good?" Angelique suggested.

Cinderella rested her fingertips upon her knee. "I was going to suggest that perhaps we find it harder to see things closer to us."

"Well, maybe that too."

Cinderella smiled fondly. "So how does it feel, now that you know?"

"I have to find some way to tell him when he's conscious enough to make sense of it," Angelique said. She smiled, but it was fleeting and departed from her face as quickly as it had come. "I'm...mostly I'm a little surprised."

"That he loves you?"

"I suppose that must be it, but that isn't how it really feels," Angelique said. "I...I don't know how to say it."

Cinderella gestured to the seat next to her on the settee. "Why don't you sit down?"

Angelique did so, looking down at her own feet for a moment. "I thought it would feel different, you know? Being in love or being loved or whatever. But I don't feel any different at all. Is that normal? Is that how it was for you?"

"No," Cinderella admitted. "But I don't think there really is such a thing as normal when it comes to love."

"But you felt different?"

Cinderella sighed, and one hand flew to her heart and rested there just at the recollection of it. "I...I really don't know if I can put into the words the way I felt that night. I was so enthralled at just being there that I'd completely forgotten where I was or what I was doing; I'd almost forgotten that there was anyone in the room but me so when I felt his touch on my hand it startled me so much...but then I turned around and I looked into Eugene's and I just felt...oh, I can't describe it but it was so wonderful it...I think must have been what they were thinking of when they came up with the word heavenly." A fond smile played across Cinderella's face. "And then he took my hand, and kissed it, and I thought I was going to melt into a puddle there on the floor. But, to be perfectly honest Angelique, I wouldn't expect it to be the same for you."

"Really? Why not?"

"Because I'd never seen Eugene before that night, I had no idea who he was and...there was a spark between us, something telling us that, well, we were meant to be I suppose. Also, I'll be honest, nobody had ever treated me the way that he treated me that night, and I'd be lying if I said that didn't have something to do with it. But you and Jean, you've known each other for a long time, and so I wouldn't expect you to suddenly feel something new that you've never felt before. Are you honestly telling me you've only just fallen in love with him? Or have you only just realised it, or admitted it?"

"That makes a lot of sense," Angelique said. "I don't suppose you have any equally wise advice on how to tell him. I can't very well admit I heard it when he was babbling...can I?"

Cinderella smiled. "Just tell him how you feel, Angelique; once Jean knows, I'm sure he'll be able to be honest with you as well. That's the most important thing, keeping things from one another never did Eugene or I any good at all. Nor General Gerard or Lucrecia for that matter."

Angelique nodded. "You make it sound so easy...so why do I feel so nervous?"

Cinderella put one arm around Angelique's shoulders. "I'll do whatever I can to help you, Angelique, the way that you've done so much to help me."

She heard the sounds of footsteps running up the stairs and across the bedroom floor before Constance threw open the door into the sitting room. "Begging your pardon ma'am, but His Majesty has returned and he's asking for you immediately."

Cinderella rose to her feet. Asking for her immediately? That could mean anything, even something terrible. She felt her heart begin to beat more fiercely. "Is Prince Eugene with him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Cinderella sighed with relief. Thank God. She glanced at Angelique. "Angelique, will you come with me?"

Angelique nodded, and the two of them descended the many layers of stairs down from the top of the Queen's Tower down to the great hall, where Eugene and the King were waiting, both dripping wet but otherwise not the worse for wear.

"You're back, both of you," Cinderella cried as she made her way quickly over to them, her footsteps quickening the closer she got to Eugene until she threw her arms around him and kissed him, relief making her careless of the fact that His Majesty was right there and Angelique not much farther away. "I know you told me not to worry, but I couldn't help it."

"You and my son are well matched in being incurable worrywarts, it seems," the King declared, with more than a hint of grumbling in his voice. "In any case, Cinderella, there is someone I would like you to meet."

Eugene's expression took on an air of some disgruntlement as he gently removed Cinderella's arms from around his neck, and stepped aside to reveal Vanessa, the girl who had saved Cinderella and Philippe from the bear in the forest.

"Mademoiselle Vanessa," Cinderella said. "How are you, and what brings you here again?" She wondered if she had saved either His Majesty or Eugene from more rampaging wildlife.

"My darling Vanessa is here to stay," His Majesty declared. "From now on she will live here in the palace with us, as my official Mistress."

Surprise robbed Cinderella of the power of speech. She stood there like a fool, staring at Vanessa while the King's words echoed in her mind.

Mistress? Cinderella was not stupid. She was an ingénue, not an idiot. She knew that some men had affairs, but she knew in her heart that it would never happen to her and, honestly, she didn't think it was particularly naive of her to believe that none of the men she knew well were capable of such behaviour. Of course His Majesty was widowed, not married, and so it involved no betrayal on his part and Cinderella might even have said that he was welcome to whatever happiness he could find, but it was the sheer baldness of the statement that astonished her and stole all speech away from her. She had never heard it put so bluntly before.

Vanessa laughed. "Oh, look what you've done, Louis! You've stunned the princess."

"I...I'm sorry, please forgive me," Cinderella said. "Your Majesty caught me by surprise, that's all."

Vanessa laughed. There was something familiar about that laugh, but though Cinderella felt it reminding her of something, she wasn't able to put her finger on precisely what or who it was reminding her of.

"I suppose it comes as a bit of a shock to you, your highness," Vanessa said. "You must have gotten used to being the only woman in the palace."

"That's not really why I-"

"Never mind, I'm sure that you'll get used to me soon enough," Vanessa said.

"Oh, I'd like us to do much more than that," Cinderella said with a smile, because however much the way His Majesty phrased it might have surprised her, however much the idea might seem bizarre to her, none of that was Vanessa's fault and none of it changed who she was: a newcomer to the palace, exactly as she herself had been not so very long ago, a girl from the sort of place and background who wouldn't normally be expected to reach the palace, and who didn't know all the sorts of things that girls like Augustina and Christine learnt when they were young. She would need help, just as Cinderella had needed help, and if Cinderella could help her then, well, wasn't she obliged to do so? She held out her hands to the other girl. "If there's anything that you need, or anything that I can help you with at all, please don't hesitate to ask."

"Your highness is far too kind."

"Cinderella, I insist," Cinderella said. "There's no need for us to stand on ceremony is there, Vanessa?"

"You see, son, they're becoming fast friends already," the King declared.

"Hmm," Eugene said, with a look as though something was stuck in his throat.

"One thing you can help me with right away, Cinderella, is my wardrobe," Vanessa said in a slightly embarrassed whisper. "Louis has reminded me that none of it is really fit for my new station in life."

"Oh, I understand completely," Cinderella. "I'll arrange an appointment for you with my dressmaker; she's extremely talented and works very quickly, too."

"That's so kind of you. Isn't that kind of her, Louis?"

"It is, it is indeed. Now, if you'll excuse us," His Majesty said, stifling a yawn with one hand. "Vanessa is very tired and so am I. Come, my sweet, I'll show you to your room before we retire, I mean I retire, I mean, ahem, come sweetheart."

"Oh, Louis, I can't wait," Vanessa said, slipping her hand into the crook of the King's arm, and exclaiming in an awed whisper at how large and grand the palace was as he led her away.

Cinderella turned to face Eugene. "I'm glad that everything was alright," she said.

"Was it?" Eugene asked. He frowned. "I...I wish that you hadn't been so familiar with her."

It was Cinderella's turn to frown back at him. "Familiar? You mean friendly?"

"You can call it what you like," Eugene replied. "I've never said anything about the fact that you allow your ladies-in-waiting to use your first name, even though they shouldn't, because I want you to be happy and I know you need real friendship around you. But that woman isn't one of your ladies, she's my father's...mistress; and there's no call for you to try and befriend her like that, or cede your status to her."

"She's a young woman who is all alone here and utterly unprepared," Cinderella said. "I don't expect you to understand what that feels like but I've stood in those shoes and-"

"She isn't you," Eugene said, with vehemence in his voice that took Cinderella back a little. "You're my wife, a princess of this country and that woman ought to respect that without being able to behave as though you're on an equal footing."

Cinderella pursed her lips together for a moment. "Eugene," she whispered. "Why do you dislike her so much?"

Eugene took a deep breath. His hands, Cinderella saw, were balled together into fists. "When your father brought home a new woman to be his wife, and new children to be his daughters, how did you feel?"

"I was happy," Cinderella said. "Daddy had been so sad, quiet, sighing all the time since Mama died. I thought that Stepmother was going to make him happy, and the thought of that made me happy too."

Eugene looked intensely chagrined. "Well, I'm sorry if I'm not such a kind and considerate person as you, darling," he said, but without any real malice in his voice; in fact he almost sounded amused for a moment. A degree of anger, however, swiftly returned to his tone as he continued. "I'm afraid that I can't be as generous as you. Mother's been gone for years, but when I think of him...with that woman, sharing a bed, flaunting her in front of me...the way she calls him Louis as though he were a plough-hand not a king, it...it's maddening! God knows what the country will say."

Cinderella hadn't considered that at all. When she and Eugene got engaged there had been no shortage of people and newspapers willing to say unkind things about her, to look down upon her, to imply or baldly state that she was not fit to wed the heir to the throne. Was Vanessa about to suffer the same fate? "How bad do you think it will be?"

"He isn't proposing to marry her, thank goodness," Eugene said. "So no one will really rage about it. But they'll laugh. They'll laugh at my father and they'll have a point, he's making a fool of himself."

"But does that really matter, so long as he's happy?"

"He wasn't unhappy before all this."

"No," Cinderella admitted. "But you know what I mean, you must."

Eugene stared at her, almost glared at her, for a moment, before his shoulders sagged as he let out a sigh. "Yes. Yes, I suppose I do. But...I'm afraid I can't agree with you about this, Cinderella, not about her. It rankles too much in my heart. But I don't want to argue with you about it, so can we put this aside, please?"

"Of course," Cinderella said. "I'm sorry if I upset you."

"You didn't," Eugene assured her. "I just...I can't help but hope that Father will tire of this soon, and of her; I cannot but hope that in a few weeks we'll have forgotten that all this ever happened."

"His official Mistress?" Augustina repeated.

"Yes," Cinderella said. She was back in her sitting room after a dinner at which Vanessa had joined them for the first time; all her ladies-in-waiting were ranged around her on the various chairs and settees as they discussed this rather surprising and somewhat momentous turn of events. "Is that some kind of title, I've never heard of it before."

"Technically, yes, although it's largely defunct now," Augustina said. "It was the practice of kings in the past to keep such a woman – you wouldn't have read about it, it's not the sort of thing that gets into the kind of history books given to princesses - but it hasn't been done for years; the idea is practically medieval."

"Actually," said Christine. "The last recorded use of what might be called the position comes in the seventeenth century-"

"Yes, I'm sure it did, I merely meant- oh, never mind," Augustina said. "The point is it's very bold of His Majesty to try and bring it back like this. Bold, and quite possibly ill-advised. I wonder what he's thinking."

"He's thinking of her," Marinette said softly.

One of Augustina's eyebrows rose. "Marinette, was that a joke?"

Marinette blinked. "No. Was it funny?"

"Not really, but it was a little more waspish than we've come to expect from you, well done," Augustina declared. "And you're probably right, His Majesty was almost certainly thinking of his new mistress when he decided to proclaim her his mistress. Heaven knows what people will say when they find out."

"Eugene was worried about that too," Cinderella murmured. "Will it be bad?"

"It won't be good, your highness," Christine declared. "All folk of good conscience will be outraged, this sort of thing just isn't done any more. Or at least it is not done openly. I marvel that His Majesty thought he could get away with it."

"Well, standards are slipping all over the place," Drizella said. "Once you let one slide, they all start falling down." She seemed oblivious to a glare from Angelique.

It was Angelique who spoke next. "I don't know about any of you but this is making me want a bath. I mean...how old is this woman, she's about our age, right? Your age, anyway; does that mean that whenever His Majesty looks at us he's been...? Eugh, what a dirty old man."

"Now, Angelique, that's not very kind," Cinderella said, with just a touch of sharpness. "Or very polite either, we are talking about His Majesty; the King."

"I know," Angelique said. "And I liked him as well."

"I would hate for anyone to judge him harshly on account of this," Cinderella said firmly. "He is still the man he was, the man you came to like and I to love. We can't abandon him, and we have no reason to."

"None?" Angelique wrinkled her nose. "Doesn't the fact that she's your age bother you at all?"

"If it doesn't trouble Vanessa why should it trouble me, or any of us?" Cinderella replied. "If His Majesty is content then all the better for him. I'd just like to ask that you all be considerate of Vanessa, if you can be, over the next few days, because I'm afraid she might need it, and because it feels like the very least that we can do."

Author's Note: This chapter is a lot shorter than most, for the simple reason that it isn't supposed to exist. I was going to just give a line in the next chapter to the effect of 'Cinderella was very surprised when the King had introduced Vanessa as his mistress the night before' when I decided that was the sort of thing that should probably be shown, and then before I could get to that I ended up writing the Angelique stuff and here we are.

I'm slightly curious: if you didn't know that Vanessa was actually Grace (if you can imagine not knowing) would you be more on Cinderella's side or Eugene's. Because until tonight I thought Cinderella had the stronger arguments but now…I can see where she's coming from, and I absolutely think that she would sympathise (or should that be empathise) with someone like Vanessa from the basis of her own experience, but now that Eugene has actually explained himself a bit…just because it doesn't make sense doesn't make it any less heartfelt. So please let me know what you think about that if you think anything.