Racaut pressed Anne's palm in his hot hand, kissed it with damp lips. "It is an honour, your majesty."
Anne tried to withdraw her fingers but could not.
Around them the Duke's staff stood ever ready to serve him. In this case, they obliged him by keeping prisoner the Queen and her ladies in waiting. The Duke's chateau was old and solid, a stone lump of fortified house on a cliff above a ravine. High walls provided perfect privacy; steep drops on all sides ensured that guests must leave via the well guarded entry bridge or not at all.
"I wish to retire," said Anne. She had been here a week, and the Duke's behaviour had grown increasingly strange. At first she took him for a buffoon, with his odd double entendres and frequent insinuations of intimacy with many women. Yet when she tried to send Odette to the village with a letter for the King, Anne had learned that they were captives in Racaut's house. "I will go to my chamber."
"Perhaps later. For now I will enjoy your company." He brought her fingers to his face again.
"You presume to command your Queen!" She rose, but he had her hand, and did not allow her to leave. He did not get up.
"My queen," he murmured. "Ah, that sounds well."
"How dare you!"
"How? Quite easily, madam. I know you take lovers when it suits you. Your former paramours have been most forthcoming with the details."
Anne paled. "Cease speaking now."
"I decided," said Racaut, ignoring her, "that I would join their ranks, these lucky men who have tasted a queen."
"You are impertinent. You are treacherous!" She was running out of words, and the ones she had were affecting him not at all. She wrenched her hand free.
It was already beyond protocol that she be alone with her host and his guards. Racaut had confined the ladies to their suite of rooms. Any accuser, now, might step forward and claim that Anne had behaved inappropriately.
And the worst thing was that Racaut knew this, and was preparing to use it against her even as he abused his privilege as her host.
"Tell me,' said Racaut, "were any of your past lovers as rich as me?" He indicated the gilt furniture, the wine in crystal goblets.
"Only the King," said Anne, "and the King is my husband, and he will sever your head for this." She kept herself still and straight in her chair. A Queen commands. A Queen cannot be intimidated.
Racaut chuckled. He touched a strand of Anne's brown hair. "His majesty will do no such thing, for it is his own agents who procured this visit, and it is your head, I believe, which approaches the block. So say no more of the man who once called you his wife."
"Who once -" She felt her chest straining against her bodice. "I must rest," she said. "I am fainting."
"If you faint I will call one of your women," he said, waving a careless hand. "Until then, I plan to enjoy my jewel."
There was no other way out. Anne rolled her eyes up and slid gracelessly to the tiled floor. Through closed lids she saw shadows moving, heard Racaut curse, and finally his raucous voice, calling for Odette.
The ladies all came, weeping and shrieking as they saw her prone, and scooped her up, bearing her to the room they had been assigned.
As the door closed behind them Anne opened her eyes and said, "Well. We are in a very unpleasant situation."
"Majesty!" cried Odette, Anne's favourite. "You feigned unconsciousness."
"Hush," said Anne. "Let this monster think I am at death's door all night and tomorrow. I need to think, and his foul breath and impudent hands must be kept from my person."
They agreed. At a sign from Anne, Odette fetched wine, and all drank.
Anne pondered, having shared some of Racaut's comments. She left out the accusation about lovers. "We must find resources," Anne said. "We must make a plan!"
"What can we do, madam? We are all confusion." Odette squeezed Anne's hand and poured her more wine.
Anne drank, put down the goblet, then rose and paced about their richly decorated tower rooms, in an old part of the house, at the highest point above the ravine.
The so-called Red Guards had been Racaut's own men, placed hastily in position just before the assignment as Anne's escort. They had brought her here, and now prevented her departure. Anne thought she could guess whose work that was.
A harder problem was how she could escape. Racaut would soon force himself upon her, and without witnesses, far from the King, what could Anne say?
Her honour had suffered a blow the previous year, when a visiting English emissary had sought her attentions so blatantly the King had noticed. An unwise, unescorted walk in the Palais gardens had nearly led to war.
The bridge to Racaut's fortress was guarded and the walls were steep. On the other side of the ravine, sweet grass flourished in meadows which ran along the valley to the foot of wooded hillsides. But up here, that view was no more than a fantasy.
It struck Anne that the visit to Racaut had been of unspecified duration.
How long would it be, how ruined would she be, before someone in Paris realised that she was a prisoner?
That someone would have to notice, and also to be concerned, and also, crucially, to have the will and the means to do something about it.
"I know only one thing," said Anne grimly, looking from their window. "We need musketeers."