At Our Wedding Feast, My Husband Introduced His Mistress, So I Asked the Bishop for an Annulment novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Bed for Two

Isaline takes the poison to Sidonie and the two women share a bed, the drunk duke finds them and swears before his valet he hasn't touched his wife, and at dawn her father arrives with a physician to have her declared mad.

Isaline read the letter three times, standing by the cold bed.

Then she folded it into her bodice.

In the novel, they had found the duchess at dawn with this letter in her hand.

Nobody had asked who wrote it.

She had a little crystal scent bottle in her trousseau, a wedding gift, still empty.

She tipped the wine from the goblet into it, slowly, without spilling.

She corked it and wiped her fingers on the bedcurtain.

Then she picked up her candle and walked back down the cold corridor in her wedding gown.

The duchess's rooms were in the south wing, over the garden.

They were supposed to be hers.

She knocked.

"Go away," said a voice.

She opened the door.

Sidonie was sitting on the end of the big bed in her shift, scrubbing at her red sleeve with a wet cloth.

The gown lay in a heap on the carpet.

She looked up and went pale under her paint.

"If you've come to finish it," she said, "I'll scream. I've a very good scream."

"I've come to show you something."

Isaline held out the little scent bottle. Then the letter.

Sidonie took the letter and read it slowly, her lips moving.

Her face changed halfway down.

"That's your hand," she said.

"It's my hand. I didn't write it."

"Who did?"

"Somebody who wanted me found with it at dawn."

"It says the shame. That's me. I'm the shame."

She put it down on the bed.

"If you die tonight with that in your fist, they'll hang me for it."

"Or burn you. I've never asked which."

Sidonie stared at her. "You're very calm for a woman who nearly drank it."

"I'm terrified," Isaline said. "I just do it quietly."

Sidonie laughed. It came out loud and surprised, a real laugh, nothing like the one on the dais.

Then she stopped.

"I didn't do it," she said. "I want you to know that. I don't even like you, but I didn't."

"I know."

"How?"

"You picked up the cup."

Sidonie thought about that. Then she shivered.

"So what do you want?"

"A bed," Isaline said. "This one. With you in it. I'm not sleeping in a room where the wine pours itself."

Sidonie looked at her for a long moment.

"You're the strangest duchess I've ever met."

"How many have you met?"

"You, tonight." She shifted over to the far side of the bed. "Don't kick."

Isaline took the pins out of her veil and dropped it over a chair.

Sidonie helped with the forty buttons down her back, swearing at every tenth one.

"He paid a woman to sew these on," she said. "He hasn't paid my brother's tailor since spring."

"Your brother?"

"Twenty. A lieutenant. Very handsome, very stupid with dice."

She tugged a button free.

"Three thousand crowns. Lothaire pays it off a little every month, and I live in his north wing."

"That's the whole romance," she added. "Sorry if you thought it was a love story."

"I don't think anybody's in love in this house," Isaline said.

"Lothaire is. With Lothaire."

They got under the covers in their shifts with the candle still burning.

Sidonie kept to her edge. Isaline kept to hers.

Isaline slept with the scent bottle in her fist.

The door crashed open at midnight.

Lothaire stood in it with his collar open and his hair in his eyes, swaying.

His valet stood behind him holding up a candle, looking at the ceiling.

Behind the valet stood one of the house guards.

"Sido," Lothaire said thickly. "Sido, darling, I've come to..."

Then he saw two heads on the pillows.

He stopped.

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and looked again.

Sidonie sat up and pulled the sheet to her chin.

"Good evening, Lothaire."

Isaline sat up beside her.

"Good evening, husband."

His mouth opened and shut.

"What," he said. "What is this?"

"A bed," Isaline said. "Since you're here, would you mind settling something for your man?"

The valet's candle shook.

"Have you touched your wife tonight, Your Grace?"

"Touched her?" Lothaire pointed at Isaline with his whole arm. "I wouldn't touch you with a pair of fire tongs."

"Not tonight, not ever?" she asked.

"Not ever!"

"Thank you." She looked at the valet. "You heard His Grace. So did the guard."

The valet made a small sound that might have been yes.

"That's one day," Isaline said.

Lothaire looked from her to Sidonie, betrayed.

"You'd rather sleep with her?"

"She doesn't kick," said Sidonie. "Good night, Lothaire."

He stood there swaying for one more breath.

Then he turned and walked into the doorframe, and the valet steered him out, and the door shut.

Sidonie fell back on the pillow and laughed until she cried.

Isaline lay beside her and laughed too, quietly, into her hand.

Then she lay awake until the windows went grey.

At dawn someone knocked.

A young footman put his head in, bright red, not looking at the bed.

"Your Grace. His Grace asks you to come down to the hall."

"At this hour?"

He swallowed.

"Your father's here, Your Grace. With a physician. They say you're unwell in your mind, and you're to be treated."

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