The empress of ice cream

Carlo

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An ice, properly stored, will keep for a month without spoiling.

The Book of Ices

The effort it was costing her, I was all too aware of. At the balls and ballets and suppers she smiled and joked and you would not have thought anything wrong - not unless you saw her, after the carriages had all departed, and the laughter left her eyes as abruptly as a candle being snuffed.

‘What must I do to regain his favour?’ she asked me wearily one evening, when I was clearing the ice goblets away from her apartments.

‘Nothing at all.’

‘You think it impossible?’

‘On the contrary - I simply meant that to do nothing is the best course. I think Charles is divided within himself. There is a part of him that would like to stop wanting you. But there is another part that knows he cannot. So he is angry, not with you for being virtuous, but with himself, for caring so much.’ I avoided her eye as I spoke. ‘Sooner or later that battle will be over, and then he will know what he feels.’

Her voice when she spoke was quiet. ‘And what is that. Carlo? What will he feel? Will the king love me, or hate me?’

I shook my head. ‘He will not hate you.’

‘I wish to God it could be neither,’ she muttered. ‘Oh, for a world without all this love.’