Elena blushed and nodded. She glanced sideways at the Queen. “The old stable there is nothing compared with your own stables today. But please understand, we’d never seen anything like it.”

“Well, the genius behind it,” said Alexi, “was Sonya, and Sonya, a niece of the mayor, was one of the fairest women in the village. She had mountains of wavy black hair and bewitching eyes, not to mention a lovely voice, and she was madly devoted to her fillies.

“A single look passed between Sonya and Lexius and both were undone. But more of that shortly.

“Lexius returned to the castle after two months as the Queen demanded, and knelt at her feet and accepted her pronouncement. He should be stripped of his finery and once more serve her in her private chambers.

“I was very glad to see him come back as I missed our secret meetings. And the Queen again thought nothing of this except that he was to prove his undying devotion.

“Well, Lexius very respectfully and with his Eastern polish made a proposal to Her Majesty. Let him go every month for at least two nights to the inn, once more clothed and with gold in his pockets, so that he might check on his charges. And would not this back and forth, he asked, serve to make him even more keenly aware than ever of his devotion to his queen?”

Beauty smiled. “And no one had ever thought of such a thing before?” she asked. “Of a slave dressed and given privileges and then broken down to servitude for the greater appreciation of his own helplessness?”

Laurent smiled at her. “I don’t remember anyone ever doing it,” he said.

“No, no one had ever proposed it,” said Alexi. “But the Queen with a toss of her head, said, ‘Oh, do go, yes.’

“And Lexius was stripped right there at Court, all his accoutrements of authority taken away, and put back into the lowliest service.

“And that night, when the Queen slept, I had him to myself again.”

“And that was when, let me guess,” said Laurent, “he confessed to you that he was mad for Sonya.”

“Exactly!” said Alexi. “He dissolved into tears in my arms. He could not live without Sonya. Sonya had mastered him in such ways that the Queen had paled in his heart. He was living now for the two nights when he might go to the inn only to sneak off from it to Sonya’s cottage behind the mayor’s little manor house.

“I told him this was a dangerous game. He’d be caught, and if the Queen discovered this, that he in clothes of rank and privilege had stripped himself for a village woman to whip, she’d be furious. It would offend every principle she maintained. Yet even then I did not guess how much the Queen actually loved him.

“He told me he knew it was dangerous, and more than for himself he feared for Sonya. But he carried out his plan, and for months on end he accomplished his secret and heated rituals with the merciless Sonya.”

“And you and Lexius, during this time,” asked Beauty. “Did you continue with your embraces?”

“Yes, but they became more loving, more tender. I didn’t seek to make him my little puppy anymore. I merely loved him. And frankly, I was so afraid for him, I was hoping we’d be caught before he and Sonya would be caught, thinking that would be more tolerable for him, and the Queen in punishing him would extinguish his passion for sneaking off with Sonya.

“As the months passed, he fell deeper into the thrall of Sonya, and at last he was in perpetual agony. I could no longer really comfort him. Finally I resorted to trying to frighten him, reminding him what the Queen might do, that he was not highborn, that she might strap him to a wall naked for the next ten years if she chose, only taking him down for feeding and grooming a few hours out of every day. Did he not realize her power?

“And then he confessed to who he really was. Not royal? No. I was mistaken. Indeed, he said, he was from a great and noble family in India, and he had never been the Sultan’s servant. On the contrary, he’d been sent by his family as a guest to the Sultan to learn the ways of the Sultan’s type of pleasure slavery. He’d assumed the role of steward for the Sultan to perfect his learning. His family was rich, powerful, and could ransom him anytime he fell into difficulty. He had only to get a letter to them, and this he could do easily from the inn. He also told me he had gold aplenty hidden in the woods near the village. This he had taken from the doomed sultanate, but it was no more than he’d possessed when he had arrived there.

“‘But Lexius,’ I’d said to him. ‘What if you have no opportunity to defend yourself, to say who you are, to write a letter, to get to your gold?’

“He paid no attention to me. He went on with his ‘two lives,’ serving the Queen and loving Sonya.

“At that time, my family sent for me. My brother had died, and my nephew needed my guidance for a few years before he would ascend the throne. My clothes were brought to me, and because I’d served the Queen for so long and so well, I was given a luxurious apartment in the castle to rest before my long journey.

“Of course, ingrate that I am by nature, I smuggled Lexius in to see me. But I had to do it. I had to hold him in my arms before leaving him forever.

“And so we wept and talked together and went over all the many aspects of his dilemma. He told me he was from the city of Arikamandu, a port city in the southern part of India. And though he would not tell me his family’s name, he spoke of their dedication to a cruel goddess of love to whom they’d pledged eternal service.

“‘Perhaps I am ready now to return,’ he told me, ‘if only I can take my beloved Sonya with me. Alexi, will you help me? Your father’s soldiers are here. You are free. You are leaving. If I can get down to the village now and retrieve my gold and persuade Sonya to leave with me, will you help us go? Will you explain to the Queen who I am and that she cannot hold me?’

“I was horrified, but more to the point, I thought his plan was doomed to failure of another sort. ‘How will you and Sonya live and love without this kingdom?’ I asked him. ‘Don’t you see, your devotion to Sonya flourishes here in this atmosphere but likely will wither in no time outside of this unique realm.’”

Beauty smiled. How well she understood. The sanctuary of the bedroom, no matter how opulent and protected, was not the great engulfing world of the kingdom. The great world had a way of working itself into any bedchamber outside this kingdom, as she and Laurent had always accepted and always known. She’d loved Laurent with her whole soul since the day they married, but the heated embraces and rituals of mastery and submission they enjoyed in their bedroom were not really the glorious and luminous ways of the kingdom. And a conjugal love had been their everlasting defense.

Alexi had come to a stop.

“Well?” Beauty prodded.

Alexi swallowed and looked up. “Lexius said something strange in answer to this, that Bellavalten was not the only kingdom of its sort, even with the sultanate obliterated. He said he would handle the matter of where to go, where to take his cruel mistress, Sonya, and how his love for Sonya would flourish.

“And before I could answer him, or learn more, we were undone. The Queen appeared. She had been listening to everything we had said to one another from a small antechamber behind a curtain.”

There was an audible gasp from Lady Eva. But Beauty could see that none of this was news to Dmitri or Rosalynd or Elena, and the King merely waited attentively for the rest of the story. He had turned a little in his chair and rested his chin on his fist, studying Alexi, but plainly not seeing what was before him, but rather what might have happened long ago.

“We were confronted with our disobedience of course. I was denounced in the most vile terms and told to turn my back on the kingdom in the morning. But over Lexius’s deception, his failure to tell her who he really was, and his devotion to Sonya, she went mad with rage and grief. I had never seen her shed such tears. She smashed the mirrors of the room. She sent pitchers and goblets and plates crashing. She tore the necklaces from her throat, she rent her clothes like someone in mourning.”

He stopped. He shook his head. He looked stricken.

Beauty realized that Rosalynd and Elena had tears in their eyes, but Laurent and Lady Eva were merely fascinated. Had they really loved the old queen? It didn’t seem possible to her. No, they had loved Lexius.

“Well, what happened?” asked Lady Eva. She was bright and curious as always, fresh as if she’d stepped from a mountain waterfall, her quick green eyes filled with the usual optimism—that things could be known and understood and made better. How Beauty loved her.

“I had no choice but to appeal to her,” said Alexi. “I was no longer a naked slave. I was wearing the clothing brought to me from my father’s house. I was the regent of my own land, and wore the ring of regent brought to me by my father’s soldiers. I had not even undressed for bed. I wore my full attire, such as it was. Of course one doesn’t really emerge from naked pleasure slavery in a matter of hours, or days, or even perhaps months. But the point is, I was a royal guest in Queen Eleanor’s castle now, not a naked sacrifice on the altar of her desire. And I had to speak for Lexius. I had to. I loved Lexius. I would have spoken even if I had not been lately restored to my old status. But of course I knew as a guest that I’d wronged the Queen in her house. Of that I was painfully aware. I remember feeling a certain shame that I had deceived her, even as a guest, as I had done as a slave. Whatever the case, I drew myself up and spoke to her as a mighty prince might speak.