Chapter 4: The King's Claim
The door to the King’s private chambers shut behind them with a soft, definitive thud. The public world, with its hissed accusations and stunned silence, was sealed away. Inside, the air was still and warm, thick with the scent of beeswax from the polished floors and the faint, ghostly perfume of lavender sachets. A fire crackled in the grate, casting long, dancing shadows over tapestries of hunting scenes and the serene, painted faces of past kings.
Louis leaned back against the heavy oak, his eyes closed. For a moment, he was just a man, exhausted. The lines of command and fury softened into pure fatigue. Sabine stood in the center of the cavernous room, her body humming with the echoes of the gallery, the alcove, the crushing weight of the emerald on her finger. The space felt less like a sanctuary and more like a beautifully appointed cell.
He pushed himself away from the door and walked toward her, his boots silent on the Savonnerie carpet. He stopped an arm’s length away, his gaze traveling over her face as if memorizing a map.
“Say something,” he murmured.
“I feel like I’ve been thrown from a horse,” she said, the words surprising her with their blunt truth. “Everything hurts. And everything is… terribly clear.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “The clarity is the pain.” He reached out and brushed a thumb over her lower lip, where she’d bitten it during the confrontation. “You bled.”
“So did she,” Sabine replied, thinking of Montespan’s shattered composure.
“No. She merely hemorrhaged influence. It is not the same.” His hand moved to cup her cheek. “You stood your ground on ground I gave you. It was…” He searched for the word. “Astonishing.”
His praise was a warmth in the cold, vast room. She leaned into his touch. “Le Nôtre spoke for me.”
“He spoke for the integrity of the work. Which is, in his world, a holy thing.” Louis’s other hand came up, framing her face. “But it was you they saw. You, who did not crumble.”
His mouth found hers, not with the desperate hunger of the alcove, but with a slow, deep reverence. It was a kiss of ownership, yes, but also of awe. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark. “I need to wash the court from my skin,” he whispered. “I need to wash it from yours.”
He led her not to the bed, but through a small, discreet door to an adjoining cabinet. It was a bathing room, tiled in cool blue and white Delft. A large copper tub, already filled with steaming water scented with rosemary and verbena, stood in the center. He dismissed the waiting valet with a curt nod.
Alone, his hands went to the fastenings of her gown. His fingers, which could sign treaties and condemn men to death, fumbled with the simple hooks. Impatient, he gentled himself, letting out a slow breath. “Turn,” he said, his voice rough.
She turned, presenting the back of her neck, the vulnerable line of her spine. He worked the laces loose, his knuckles brushing her skin with each pull. The moss-green velvet sighed open and slid from her shoulders, pooling at her feet like a shed skin. Her stays followed, then her shift, until she stood shivering in the steam-filled room, bare but for the emerald ring.
He didn’t speak. His hands settled on her bare shoulders, his touch warmer than the air. He turned her back to face him. His eyes drank her in: the pale curves of her breasts, the shadow between her thighs, the subtle, still-soft swell of her belly that spoke of her secret. There was no lust in his gaze just then, only a profound, humbling study.
“My beautiful heresy,” he murmured.
He undressed himself then, his movements efficient. The blue just coat, the waistcoat, the fine linen shirt. The king disassembled, leaving a man of solid muscle and old scars, of power held in the very bearing of his shoulders. He took her hand and guided her into the bath.
The water was scalding, a blissful ache. She sank into it with a gasp, the heat seeping into her bones, melting the rigidity of fear. He stepped in behind her, the water rising and sloshing over the rim. He settled, drawing her back against his chest, her body cradled between his thighs.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their breathing and the gentle lap of water. He picked up a sponge, soaked it, and squeezed the hot water over her shoulders. The stream traced her collarbone, the slope of a breast. He soaped the sponge and began to wash her, his touch methodical and tender. He washed her arms, her neck, the space between her shoulder blades. As if by washing her, he could purify the day’s poison.
His hand slid down over her belly, his palm spreading wide. He said nothing of the change there, but his touch lingered, a silent conversation with the life beneath. She leaned her head back against his shoulder, her eyes closed.
“They will call our child a bastard,” he said quietly, his lips against her wet hair. “Before we can marry. They will say it is proof of your witchcraft, or my decadence.”
She placed her hand over his on her stomach. “We know the truth.”
“Truth is what the crown says it is,” he replied, but his voice held a new edge of defiance. “And I will say my heir is conceived in love, and welcomed with joy.” He nuzzled her neck. “My only regret is that I must share you now. Even this part of you.” He kissed the pulse point beneath her ear. “But especially this part of you.”
His hand drifted from her belly, down through the warm, soapy water. His fingers combed through the dark hair at the juncture of her thighs. Then he dipped lower, finding the slick, hidden folds beneath. She jolted at the intimate contact, a shock of pure sensation in the languid heat.
“Louie…”
“Shhh,” he whispered, his fingers beginning a slow, circling exploration. “This is my worship. Let me.”
He explored her with a focused, unhurried intensity. He learned the texture of her, the softness of her inner lips, the hard nub of her clit that made her hips jerk when he grazed it. He watched her face in the reflection of the copper side of the tub, her eyes fluttering closed, her mouth falling open as he slid a finger inside her, then two. The water muffled the sound, but the sensation was magnified—the stretch, the slow, pumping glide of his fingers, the rough callus on his palm rubbing against her as he worked her.
“You see?” he breathed, his own breath growing ragged. “This is my kingdom. This hot, tight fucking sheath. Mine.” He added a third finger, stretching her exquisitely, his thumb now rubbing firm, insistent circles on her clit. The combination was relentless. Her head rolled back against him, a low moan tearing from her throat. The water swirled around them. Her thighs trembled. The pleasure built, a coiled, torturous spring within her pelvis.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice guttural in her ear. “Come on my hand. Let me feel you shatter.”
The command, the possessive gruffness of it, undid her. Her climax ripped through her with a silent, breathless violence, her body arching, clamping down on his invading fingers in rhythmic pulses. He held her through it, his other arm tight around her ribs, his teeth gritted as he watched her fall apart.
When the last tremor subsided, he slowly withdrew his fingers. He brought them to his mouth, his eyes locked on hers in the copper reflection, and sucked them clean with a slow, deliberate obscenity. “Even your taste is wild,” he said. “Like rain on earth.”
He lifted her from the water as if she weighed nothing, water cascading from their bodies onto the tiles. He wrapped her in a huge, warmed linen sheet and carried her, dripping, to the bed. He laid her down on the coverlet and stood over her, a water-slicked giant outlined by firelight. His cock was hard, jutting out from his body, flushed and needy.
“On your hands and knees,” he said, the command softened by the raw want in his eyes.
She obeyed, the linen falling away. The fire warmed one side of her body. She felt exposed, offered. He knelt behind her on the bed, his hands smoothing over the curve of her backside. He leaned down, his mouth finding the base of her spine, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down the crease of her ass. She shuddered, still sensitive from her climax.
“I need to be in you again,” he growled, his voice muffled against her skin. “I need to fuck the memory of their faces out of my head. I need to mark this place, our place, so all you think of is me.”
She felt the broad, blunt head of his cock nudge against her entrance, still slick and relaxed from the bath and her release. He didn’t ask. He pressed forward, a slow, inexorable invasion. She cried out, her fingers twisting in the bedclothes as he filled her, deeper this time, a claiming that reached into her very core.
“Oh God, Sabine,” he groaned, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “So deep. Taking all of me.”
He began to move, and it was nothing like the frenzied pace in the alcove. This was a deliberate, powerful possession. Long, dragging strokes that pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in to the hilt. Each thrust jolted her forward, a relentless, perfect punctuation. The sound of flesh meeting flesh, wet and rhythmic, filled the room, accompanied by his ragged grunts and her stifled cries.
He leaned over her, his chest pressed against her back, his mouth at her ear. “Tell me who you belong to,” he demanded, his voice a harsh scrape.
“You,” she gasped.
“Louder.”
“You!” she cried out, the word torn from her.
“And this cunt? This sweet, perfect cunt I’m fucking?”
“Yours! Only yours!” The filthy words, spoken in the heart of his power, thrilled her even as they shamed some distant, proper part of her mind.
“Yes,” he hissed, driving into her with renewed force. “My queen. My whore. My Sabine.” The words were a litany, a blasphemous prayer. His hand snaked around her hip, his fingers finding her clit again, rubbing in time with his thrusts. The dual assault was too much, too intense. A second, sharper climax began to spiral up from where his fingers worked, merging with the deep, full feeling of him pounding into her.
“I’m… I can’t…”
“You will,” he snarled, his rhythm becoming erratic, brutal. “Come with me. Now.”
It was an order she had no choice but to obey. Her world dissolved into a white-hot sheet of sensation, a clenching, mindless release that pulled a raw scream from her lungs. He shouted her name, a broken, triumphant sound, as his own release followed, pumping into her in hot, pulsing streams. He collapsed over her, his weight pressing her into the mattress, his sweat-slick skin glued to hers.
They lay like that for a long time, joined, spent, breathing in ragged unison. The fire popped. A log shifted, sending up a shower of sparks.
Slowly, he softened and slipped from her. He rolled onto his side, pulling her with him, tucking her back against his chest. His arm wrapped around her, his hand splayed once more over her belly. He kissed her shoulder, a soft, lingering press of lips.
The silence was complete, broken only by the crackling fire. The ghosts of the court were banished, for now. Here, in the rumpled sheets smelling of sex and verbena, there was only this: his breath on her neck, the protective curve of his body, the secret life stirring invisibly beneath his palm.
“I will build you a real garden,” he murmured into the quiet dark. “One with walls so high no one can see in. Just for you. For us.”
She laced her fingers with his over her stomach. The emerald caught the firelight, a green glint in the gloom. A wild thing in a gilded cage. A root finding purchase in stone. She closed her eyes.
Outside, Versailles slept, dreamed, and plotted. But inside, for these few stolen hours, the only kingdom that existed was the territory of their intertwined limbs, and the fragile, ferocious future they were making together.
But inside, for these few stolen hours, the only kingdom that existed was the territory of their intertwined limbs, and the fragile, ferocious future they were making together. That future arrived not with the blare of trumpets, but with the scratch of a pen on parchment in a small, overcrowded chapel at Vincennes, two weeks later. It was a swift, private ceremony, witnessed only by a pale Le Nôtre and a handful of stunned, sworn-to-silence ministers. Sabine wore not green velvet, but a simple dress of dove grey. Louis’s hand was steady as he slid a wedding band, a plain band of gold, next to the wild emerald on her finger. When he kissed her, it tasted of resolve, not fire.
A few months later, the secret garden in her belly had blossomed beyond concealment. The gentle slope of her stomach was now a firm, undeniable curve beneath her gowns. They had stopped trying to disguise it with layers of silk. “Let them see,” Louis said one morning as she dressed, his hand resting on the mound where his child turned. “Let them count the months on their jeweled fingers and choke on their own calculations.” His tone was light, but his eyes were hard, the look of a general choosing his battlefield. “The math is ours.”
Sunlight, thick and honeyed, poured through the windows of the Grand Apartment. Sabine walked with him now as he took his lever, the morning ritual of rising and dressing. It was her new, jarring normalcy: to stand among the select few while the King was presented with his wig, his shirt, his sword. The courtiers bowed lower to her now, their eyes always flicking to her midsection before darting away. The whispers were a constant, sibilant stream just beneath the music of the violins.
“They say you bewitched me with potions made from that thorny bush you love,” Louis murmured to her one afternoon, not looking up from a dispatch. They were in his study, a relatively plain room where the scent of ink and ambition replaced perfume. “The one with the blue flowers.”
“Forget-me-nots?” Sabine asked, looking up from a sketch of a water feature for the Bosquet de la Surprise, which was now ‘Their’ bosquet. “Hardly potent. Unless the potion was for causing mild dampness and a propensity to spread where you’re not wanted.”
He snorted, a genuinely undignified sound that made her smile. “Precisely. You have spread most formidably.” He finally glanced at her, a quick, warm look. “You look like you’ve swallowed a very contented pumpkin.”
“I feel like one,” she grumbled, shifting in her chair. “A pumpkin that kicks. Here, feel.” She took his hand and pressed it against the side of her belly. They waited, his diplomatic papers forgotten. A soft, but definite, thump pressed against his palm.
Louis’s breath caught. Every time it happened, the wonder on his face was new, utterly unguarded. “Christ,” he whispered. “He’s building a siege engine in there.”
“Or she’s practicing her fencing,” Sabine said, leaning back.
This public acknowledgment of her condition was a calculated gambit, a stone thrown into the still pond of the court. The ripples were immediate and varied. Some, like the young Duc who had nodded in the gallery, offered quiet congratulations. Others, the old guard, treated her expanding figure as a temporary architectural folly, one they politely pretended not to see. The most dangerous ripples were invisible, moving in the depths.
Madame de Montespan was gone from court, officially ‘retired’ to the Cluny hotel. Her absence was a cavity that ached differently for everyone. For Sabine, it was a relief laced with cold unease. A removed enemy was still an enemy, just one you couldn’t watch.
Le Nôtre’s approval was practical. He arrived at their shared chambers one evening, unrolled a set of plans on the gilded table, and tapped a section with his finger. “The East Parterre,” he stated. “It gets the morning sun, but is shielded from the worst of the afternoon wind by the Orangerie wall. We will re-grade it. Install a small, meandering stream. The child will need a place to run that is not a straight line.”
Sabine looked from the precise lines of his drawing to his impassive face. “You’re designing a garden for a baby?”
“I am designing a garden for the Dauphin,” he corrected, his voice devoid of inflection. Then he met her eyes. “And for his mother, who understands that paths do not always need to be rectilinear to have purpose.” It was as close to a blessing as he would ever give.
The true test came on a bright, bitingly cold day in February. Sabine, her body feeling increasingly unfamiliar and cumbersome, had taken to walking the long Gallery of Mirrors to ease the ache in her back. She moved slowly, her reflection multiplied a thousand times in the glass: a plainly-dressed, rounded woman amidst a panorama of painted ceilings and military triumphs. She was alone, for once; Louis was in council. The click of her heels echoed in the vast space.
She turned a corner and found her path blocked by a small group of courtiers. They were exquisite, shimmering, and still as herons. At their center was the Princesse de Soubise, a woman whose beauty was as sharp and cold as cut crystal. Her eyes, like everyone else’s, went directly to Sabine’s belly.
A beat of silence hung in the air, thick and viscous.
“Madame,” the Princesse said, her voice sweet as poisoned syrup. She did not curtsy. “We were just admiring the… robust… progress of the spring plantings. One can see the natural influence everywhere now.”
The women around her tittered, gloved hands fluttering to lips. Sabine felt the old instinct to shrink, to make herself small and unseen. The child within her kicked, a sharp, rebellious nudge. She placed a hand over the spot, drawing strength from its stubborn vitality.
“The natural influence, Princesse,” Sabine replied, her voice clearer than she felt, “is rather persistent. It tends to grow, regardless of the season or the commentary.” She began to move forward, forcing the group to part or be gently shouldered aside. “If you’ll excuse me, the Dauphin and I require some air.” She used the title deliberately, a cannonball of a word.
She felt their stunned stares on her back as she walked away, her heart hammering against her ribs. It wasn’t a grand victory. It was a simple, daily assertion of existence. She crossed the length of the gallery, each step a quiet rebellion, her shadow stretching long and distorted in the afternoon sun streaming through the windows.
Louis found her later in their chambers, staring out at the geometric tyranny of the Northern Parterre. She hadn’t told him about the encounter. She didn’t need to; the court was a whispering gallery, and he had better ears than anyone.
He came to stand behind her, his hands settling on her shoulders, then sliding down to cup the full, heavy weight of her pregnancy. He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Soubise is a fool,” he said quietly into her hair. “Her husband’s debts could fill the Grand Canal. She parades her virtue because she has nothing else to sell.”
Sabine leaned back into him, the solid reality of his body a bulwark against the sea of hidden knives. “She wasn’t entirely wrong,” she sighed. “I am… robust.”
He turned her gently to face him. His gaze was earnest, stripped of all kingly artifice. “You are carrying my child. Our child. You are the most beautiful, formidable thing in this entire gilded prison.” He kissed her forehead. “And I have decided something.”
“Oh?”
“We are having a picnic.”
She blinked. “A what? It’s February.”
“A winter picnic. In the Bosquet. Tomorrow afternoon. With musicians. And warmed wine. And every single courtier who matters.”
She saw the plan in his eyes. It wasn’t about food or music. It was a tableau. The King, his pregnant commoner wife, lounging on furs in the ‘rustic’ garden she had designed, visibly happy, visibly together. A living, breathing portrait of the new order. It was brilliant, and terrifying.
“They’ll stare,” she said.
“Let them,” he countered, a sly smile touching his lips. “They’ll see a king who is happy. They’ll see a queen who is unafraid. And they’ll see the future,” he placed his hand on her stomach, “kicking under a blanket. It will be a performance, yes. But it will be our performance. On our ground.”
The following day dawned clear and cruelly cold. Braziers were placed throughout the Bosquet de la Surprise, their coal-fed hearts glowing orange against the grey. Thick furs were laid over the frozen ground near the laughing fountain, which was silenced for the winter. The court arrived, swaddled in wool and spite, their breath pluming in the air.
Sabine, wrapped in a cloak of dark sable, sat propped on a mound of cushions. Louis sat beside her on the ground, not on a throne, his posture relaxed. He poured her a cup of spiced, steaming wine himself. He laughed, loud and unguarded, at something Le Nôtre said about the difficulties of transplanting mature hawthorn. It was a staggering display of casual intimacy.
All eyes were on them, on the obvious shape of her beneath the furs. Sabine felt the weight of their judgment, but also, for the first time, a sliver of something else. Curiosity, perhaps. A reluctant fascination. The Princesse de Soubise stood at the periphery, her face a mask of frozen displeasure.
Then, as a musician plucked a quiet tune on a lute, Sabine felt a fierce, rolling movement within her. The child was active, turning, pushing. Without thinking, she grasped Louis’s hand and placed it firmly on her belly.
His conversation with Le Nôtre halted. He looked down at his hand, then at her face. There, in front of everyone, the baby delivered a powerful, unmistakable kick. Louis’s eyes widened. A genuine, surprised laugh burst from him, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy that cut through the icy air and the brittle courtly chatter.
“Good God,” he announced to the frozen assembly, his voice ringing with delight. “A future cavalry officer! Or a particularly ambitious ballet dancer!”
The courtiers stared, caught between protocol and the undeniable humanity of the moment. A few of the younger ladies let out nervous, charmed giggles. Le Nôtre allowed himself a thin, approving smile. Louis kept his hand right where it was, his thumb stroking the curve of her belly through the cloak, his own performance forgotten in a wave of real emotion.
Sabine met his gaze, and in that look, everything was communicated. The fear, the defiance, the weary pride, the ferocious love. The court saw it too. They saw the crack in the perfect façade, not as a flaw, but as an opening where something real and tenacious had taken root. It was just a picnic, on a cold day. But as Louis helped her to her feet, his hand lingering at the small of her back, Sabine knew the battle had shifted. They were no longer just defending their ground. They were building upon it, stone by stubborn stone, while the whole world watched.