The Duchess was careful to have her maidservant present in the steam room to act as chaperone. She needn’t have bothered. Although the serving girl was shocked – or pretended to be – at the idea of a three- quarters naked man working his hands over the body of her completely naked mistress, Jules was the only one in the room who was, apparently, unaffected by the entire process. He was merely an expert masseur working at his profession, nothing more.
This procedure went on daily for about a week. Jules now left Yvette back at the office because, as he said, ‘I think I can get further along with her if you’re not around to inhibit her.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Yvette winked at him, even though she knew Jules considered the lovely Duchess a duty and nothing else. Since the Duchess was actually a strong, healthy, athletic girl, splendidly built and agile both physically and mentally – despite. ducos’ derision- she learned fast and developed fast. But for the first time in her life, she had struck a man and bounced. He seemed disinterested in either her title or her manifest physical charms. It was, to her, an intolerable situation – and a situation that got no better at all as time and their relationship progressed.
Even after more than two weeks he stayed coldly impersonal and more than somewhat contemptuous. He was, and he remained, a master wasting his talents on material entirely unworthy of his skill. He paid no attention whatsoever to any of the little flirtatious ploys she made in his direction.
One day, however, when she had become a pretty fair gymnast and was very proud of her accomplishments, her maidservant disappeared before the massage was to begin. ‘We don’t need her any more, I don’t think,’ she said softly. Lying back on the massage table with her wispy garment draped only loosely over her breasts, she shot him a seductive glance calculated to arouse even a statue to passion. ‘Do we?’
It is an enormous tribute to Jules’ nobler instincts- and to his love for his darling Vonnie – that he was able to conquer the basic animal urges that were coursing through his body at that moment. ‘I don’t, that’s for sure,’ he said with his familiar sneer. That expression had become so maddening to her over the past few weeks that she wanted to bash it back into his skull with a sledgehammer. ‘And if you are trying to seduce me you’re wasting your time. You are a lump of unfinished plasticine that I am trying to mold into something halfway worthwhile. You mean nothing else to me. I’d no more consider intimacy with you than with any other warm mass of poor-grade clay – or ten kopeks’ worth of cat meat, for that matter.’
That did the trick admirably. The Dowager Duchess’s temper blew sky high, and the fire in her eyes could have melted steel. ‘You clod!’ she screamed. ‘You common oaf! You base born peasant! I should have you staked out and flayed alive for treason like that. I could…’She stopped her screaming suddenly and her eyes widened just the tiniest bit. The expression in them was unreadable.
‘Shut up, bitch!’ he snapped back at her, timing his interruption so perfectly that she knew he could not have been paying attention to what she’d been saying. ‘My birth, high or low, has no bearing in this matter. I am ducos. I am trying to mold you into what our Creator intended you to be: His instrument to beget men, not the milksops and flabs currently infesting this sinful planet Earth.’
‘Oh? Don’t tell me you’re a Puritan!’ she exclaimed, very glad indeed to change the subject. Her outburst of anger was almost completely forgotten. ‘I should have known it, though, by all that hair.’
‘An ex-Puritan,’ he corrected her. ‘1 differ from my former colleagues in that I don’t believe that everything pleasant is sinful. But neglect of that Divine instrument known as the human body most certainly is. Lie back and I shall continue the massage. 1 will ignore your display of temper, provided it does not happen again, in the light of the progress you have made to date.’
Work went on, exactly as though nothing had happened. Four days later she graduated into the House of Strength itself, doing as well there as could be expected from a native of a one-gee planet.
And she managed to convince herself, quite easily, that she had not revealed any hint of the secret that had been held silent for sixty-seven years.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – THE FORTRESS OF ENGLEWOOD
As an example of the traditional loyalty of the Navy: When Empress Stanley Five, her husband and four of their five children were assassinated in 2299 their youngest child, Prince Edward, escaped death only because he, then an ensign in the Navy, was being guarded as no other person had ever been guarded before. Fleet Admiral Simms – who ironically had performed the same service for Edward’s mother nine years earlier – declared martial law and, in the bloodiest purge in all recorded history, executed not only all those found guilty – including the late Empress’s brother and sister-in-law – but also their entire families for good measure. He then made himself regent and ruled with an iron hand for six years. Then, to the vast surprise of all (and the relief of many), he relinquished his regency on the day that Prince Edward came of age. it was he himself who crowned the young prince Emperor Stanley Six.
(Farnham, The Empire, Reel 2, slot 784.)
‘You’re positive she said “treason”?’ Yvette reiterated. They couldn’t afford any slipups at this stage of the game. ‘I couldn’t have missed a word like that, Evie.’
Both of them knew what the Duchess’s use ofhat word meant. The crime of treason was an act against either the Empire or the Emperor. Crimes against the lesser nobility were considered civil crimes, and tried accordingly. For Duchess Tanya to accuse ducos of treason meant that she considered herself to be of imperial rank. And, since there was no known Stanley blood in her heritage, there was only one place she could have gotten such a lineage – from Banion the Bastard.
‘We can’t hang her on the basis of that one word, you know.’
No,’ Jules admitted, ‘but it gives us the wedge we need. We now know where to look- and if we look hard enough we’ll find what we want. Nobody can cover their trail that completely.’
He paused. ‘Damn it, and I was just starting to like that girl, too. She was almost behaving herself.’
‘Save your sympathy,’ Yvette said coldly. ‘If she’s not executed outright for treason, she’ll certainly be banished to Gastonia for her complicity in the matter.’
‘I know, I know. Hand me her father’s file, will you?’ He took the reel Yvette handed him and fed it through the viewer. ‘Grand Duke Nicholas Otamar. Born a commoner in 2382, according to the birth certificate listed here; that would make him two years younger than Banion is supposed to be.’
‘Birth certificates can be forged,’ Yvette said distractedly. Her mind seemed to be on something else.
‘And something that long ago would be almost impossible to verify now,’ Jules agreed. ‘Usual school records and such. He gained his current title by marrying Grand Duchess Olga Ferensky in 2410. That’s kind of unusual, for a grand duchess to marry a commoner. Not impossible, of course, but it would certainly have helped him woo her if he could have shown her the Patent of Royalty his mother hid away for him …’
‘That’s it!’ Yvette shouted suddenly, slapping her palm down hard on the table in front of her. Her action was so abrupt that Jules jumped involuntarily.
‘What’s what?’ he asked.
‘A piece just clicked into place. We get so used to calling nobility by title, first name and territory that we usually ignore the last name. Papa, for instance, is usually just called Duke Etienne of DesPlaines; the d’Alembert is understood. We’ve been calling this guy Grand Duke Nicholas of Twenty so long that we’ve totally missed the point of his last name!’
‘Otamar?’
‘Don’t you see? It’s an anagram of “Amorat”. Aimee Amorat, the Bastard’s mother.’
Jules now pounded his own fist on the table. ‘Eve, you’ve nailed him. He’s got to be our man.’ He turned the reel in the viewer to a picture of Grand Duke Nicholas and stared hard at the man’s face. ‘You know, now that we know his identity for a fact, you can see the Stanley lineage in his face. Long and angular, sort of squared-off chin behind that goatee of his, the same bushy eyebrows…’
‘We don’t know it for a fact, though,’ Yvette reminded him. ‘All we have is one wrong word from his daughter and a name that could be an anagram. If the Head is going to present this case to the Emperor, he’ll need a lot more substantial evidence he’ll need the Patent itself.’