“Seriously?” I say. “Why can’t she just tell him thank you?”
Sam shrugs, neutral. She’s a natural diplomat. Unlike moi.
“I’m sure your mom doesn’t mean to be rude,” said Sam. “She’s just been through a lot.”
“She is rude, whether she means to be or not. She’s just like her older sisters. Heaven forbid my aunties should ever owe anyone for anything.”
“So I guess this means you’re stuck here in France with me for a few more days,” says Sam, tactfully changing the subject.
It works. She’s introduced a subject that makes me smile.
“I prefer to think of myself as stuck in France with Hunkalicious from the seventeenth century for a few days.”
And then it occurs to me Sam might be intending to hang out with him, what with Will knocked out on pain killers. Sam and Chrétien are long lost cousins, after all. “You’re not planning on spending every hour commandeering Chrétien’s time, are you?”
“Me? No. Will’s still a little … sensitive about me and Chrétien. Which is ridiculous.”
Will stirs but he doesn’t wake up.
“Ridiculous,” I agree, nodding like a bobble-head toy.
Sam laughs. “It is. Chrétien is like … he’s like the brother I always wanted.”
“Not remotely attractive to you.”
“Afraid not,” said Sam.
“Not is good.” Not makes me smile again. A self-satisfied cat smile. “Not is excellent. So let’s plan operation Gwyn Catches Chrétien.”
Sam laughs. “Let’s not.”
I give her puppy eyes, for which she is a total pushover. Will always has puppy eyes, which is fine, I guess, if you like that kind of thing. Myself, I prefer manly I am a knight from the seventeenth century eyes.
“Come on, Sam. I need your help here. How do I get Chrétien to notice all this?” I run my hands over my chest and down to my hips. “Okay, so maybe there’s not a lot to notice up top, but I could get a push-up bra. You think they sell those in France? They have to, right? The French probably invented the push-up bra.”
“If you believe the new Victoria’s Secret ads,” says Sam, shrugging.
“Great! Let’s go bra shopping,” I say, standing up. “Actually, I could use an overhaul in the panty department too. And these jeans? The button’s loose and, ugh! They do nothing for my assets.” I slap my hands on my backside.
Sam shakes her head sadly. “Chrétien would rather die than let his eyes rest on your, um, assets. Of any size or location.”
I exhaled heavily. “You are no help at all.” She’s also dead wrong. I’ve seen Chrétien examining my assets. It makes my insides go all soft like melting ice cream.
“I hope my passport gets lost in the mail,” I say. “A few weeks with Chrétien sounds heavenly. Even in the Castle de Kidnap.”
The sound of Chrétien’s voice from inside the kitchen catches our attention. He must have come in by the service door.
“Croissants!” says Sam. “Yummy!”
“Chrétien!” I say. “Yummier.”
Sam’s eyes fly to the ceiling. “You’re hopeless.”
“Au contraire, my friend. I am full to the brim with hope when it comes to your hot-tastic cousin. Speaking of which, why are we in the Chamber of Guns and Needles when Chrétien is in the kitchen?”
Sam’s eyebrows pull together. “You need to stop referring to this room as ‘the Chamber of Needles’ and stuff like that around your mom, okay? She’s freaked out enough as it is.”
“I know. That’s why I’m doing it around you.”
Sam rolls her eyes.
“Cut me some slack, girlfriend,” I say. “I’m the one stuck here with a parent.”
I tug my shirt down, give the girls a bit of a lift, and generally prepare to make an entrance into the kitchen.
“Are your folks enjoying their second honeymoon or whatever?” I ask as Sam tries to get up without waking Will.
Sam nods. “It’s actually their first honeymoon. They didn’t want to leave me alone when they got married.”
Sam’s lucky. Her dad and step-mom are more or less cool with her missing school to stay behind while Will recovers. Of course, bad guys burned her house down, so she doesn’t really have a home to return to at the moment.
From the kitchen, I hear Chrétien’s laughter, throaty and very sexy.
“Come on. Let’s go grab those tasty buns,” I say, waggling my eyebrows.
Sam shakes her head. “Really?” is all she says to me.
For the record, I may be guilty of exaggerating my intentions for the sake of shocking my best friend. It’s just so much fun. Like what I said about little boys and sticks.
We don’t actually make it to the kitchen, though. Sir Walter strides toward us, saying, “Sit, sit. My son brings the croissants in a moment. Coffee, as well.”
He coaxes the fire back to a four-foot blaze. Smoke from a fire that hot would bring the Las Abs Volunteer Firefighters to your door stat. And, speaking of le hot, here comes Chrétien, bearing a tray with croissants and coffee.
Fresh from an hour outside, his face is all strawberries and cream. Someone: give me a spoon. Maybe it’s a seventeenth century thing to have that alabaster skin, those bright red cheeks. I remember thinking some of the portraits in the Louvre exaggerated the pale skin and red cheeks, but maybe that’s just what everyone looked like. In which case, give me a spoon and a time machine.
Ma accepts a croissant while telling me to do my homework. She waves her phone at me. “Your teachers forwarded another assignment.”
“Oh, goodie,” I say, checking out someone’s derrière as he leans over to pour coffee. My. Just … My.
Sam elbows me. She’s so protective of Chrétien. Honestly, what does she think I’m going to do to him?
I hold out my hand for Ma’s cell and glance through the email. “I did this assignment early. Sorry, Ma. Afraid I’m still caught up. Except for that French paper Madame Evans assigned a month ago. Ugh.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” says Sam. She’s already done hers.
“I hate that assignment,” I reply. Then I have an idea. “Do you think Madame would accept a report on ‘What I Did During My Enforced Stay in France’ instead of the history paper?”
“No,” says Sam. “And it’s not like you’ve been getting out and trying to speak French, either.”
“I offered to go undergarment shopping, but someone wasn’t interested,” I say. I glance at Chrétien, but he must not know the English word “undergarments.” Or he’s too polite to acknowledge my use of the word.
“Anyway,” I continue, “why should we have to re-write history? It’s a stupid assignment. History’s already been written. By definition.”
On the other side of Sam, Will shifts. Opens his eyes.
“It’s an easy paper,” says Sam.
“Did someone say ‘history’?” he asks.
I smile and shake my head at Will. “Do you have any idea how much of a cliché you are?” I ask him.
Sir Walter hands him a croissant. Will grins. I don’t know if it’s for my remark or for the breakfast.
“Anyway,” I say, “there’s nothing easy about this paper. There is no way I finish it on time.”
“Yeah, if you don’t start, it’s kind of hard to finish,” says Sam.
I stare at her. Sarcasm is like this new hairstyle Sam’s trying on lately. I’m not entirely sure it looks good on her. “You are a cruel friend, Samantha Ruiz.”
Sam just sits there looking smug.
I guess she’s right about the paper. It’s not an awful project, like the annotated bibliography for American Literature or the AP Biology project we worked on with Will earlier in the year.
No, the French class paper is simple, comparatively speaking: find something interesting about a French king or queen and turn it into a four page paper. Sam wrote hers on Marie Antoinette and what parts of the Sofia Coppola film were accurate. She consult
ed Sir Walter, so she didn’t have to visit a bunch of moldy internet history sites.
I look over at Chrétien. He’s done with his croissant, and now he’s licking his personal fork and knife clean. Apparently, in his day, this was good manners. You carried your own knife and fork in a box everywhere you went. The habit bugged me at first, but I have to confess, there is something about watching him tongue that flatware clean that shivers my timbers.
And just like that I’m struck with a brilliant idea. I could totally interview Chrétien about whoever was king in the bring-your-own-flatware era. There are probably a million things I could ask Chrétien about. Sixteen hours a day’s worth, easy, for the next week or two while I’m stuck in France. I feel very warm inside in a way that has nothing to do with the hot coffee in my hands.
I shoot Sam a text.
What historical era is Chrétien from? I’m going to ask him to help me with my paper.
She looks down at her phone and reads what I wrote. Then she looks back up to me, mouthing the word pathetic to me. She texts me a non-response.
I’ve told you Chrétien’s not looking for a relationship right now.
I respond right back.
And who says I am? Maybe I just want a way inside his—
Beside Sam, Will leans in to read over her shoulder, and I see Sam hastily deleting my message. She also tucks her phone in her jeans, ending the conversation.
“What was that you were saying about your homework?” Ma asks me, brushing croissant crumbs from her lap.
“Gwyn was just texting me about getting started,” says Sam.
“Gwyn was most certainly not,” I retort.
Sam smiles and shakes her head.
“Gwyn had best remember who provides her with food and shelter and get busy,” says Ma.
“Anyway,” I say, ignoring Ma, “I still need to pick a king. A good one. A hot one who had lots of hot royal assignations.”
This makes Chrétien’s face flush, and he rises, gathering empty croissant plates and napkins.
Ma speaks in rapid, angry-sounding Chinese.
“Just kidding, Ma,” I say, sighing. Then I rise and give her a hug. I really shouldn’t provoke her right now. She’s been through a lot.
But then, so have I.
“How about the prince who married Cinderella?” I ask.
It’s my peace offering to Ma. My mom and I have a Cinderella-palooza every Valentine’s Day where we watch all the different movie versions of the Cinderella story. We eat chocolate and hug and cry a lot and it’s sort of when we hit the “reset” button on our relationship for the year. We missed out this year, obviously, because: kidnapped. But, by mentioning Cinderella, I’m reminding her I still love her.
“What have you got for me, Will? The story’s French, right? La Cendrillon?”
“The story of Cinderella is make-believe,” says Will.
“It must have been based on something historical, though,” I say.
Beside me, Sam murmurs, “Drop it.” Her face is serious. She really means it.
I give her a look that says, The heck, Sam?
Ask me another time, she texts me, her eyes fixed on Chrétien.
My eyes narrow. Chrétien takes the plates and the tray to the kitchen.
“If you want a good paper topic,” says Will to me, “you should pick Louis Quatorze, le Roi-Soleil. The Sun King. He and Chrétien were born in the same year,” he adds.
“Tell me more about le Roi-Soleil,” I ask Will, just as Chrétien comes back to the great hall.
Chrétien is preoccupied, leafing through an old book with a worn leather cover.
“Well,” says Will, “The Sun King ruled seventy-two years although technically his mother was regent for the first—hey—” Will interrupts himself and opens his computer. “There was some big breaking news about his mother the day before yesterday. Some scandal about her maybe abducting or poisoning her son Louis’s lovers….” He breaks off and searches for whatever he found the other day.
“Yuck!” I say. “I’m not doing a paper on abductions. Too close to home, much?”
“It was really interesting,” Will says.
“No,” I reply.
“Okay. Well, if you want to start with the basics on the Sun King himself, this is a good site,” he says, passing me his computer.
“I’ll go work over there,” I say, indicating the massive table running the length of the room. I wonder how I can get Chrétien to come join me.
Sam rolls her eyes at me. I swear she reads minds.
As I stand, I flip my black hair dramatically behind my shoulders. Chrétien looks up from his book. He loves my hair. He said so. He called it the color of ravens’ wings.
“Time for homework in the Chambre de la Morte,” I say as I cross to the table.
Sam shakes her head at me.
I hold my hands out in a silent gesture of “What?” It’s not like Ma knows what I said is French for Chamber of Death.
But as I stand to go to the big table and study, Karma pays me back for being a disrespectful daughter. The formerly loose button on my jeans pops clean off and goes skidding across the stone floor, coming to rest under the chair Ma is sitting in.
“Great,” I mutter, grabbing at the waist of my jeans so they don’t fall down. I must have lost some weight during the day and a half when The Hans and Franz Show didn’t feed me anything but snooze-inducing drugs. I walk over to retrieve the button.
“Ma, do you mind?” I point under the chair. “My button?” I can’t get under the chair unless she gets up.
“If you please,” says Chrétien. He sets his book down and totally dashes to my side. Dashes. “Be so kind as to allow me to retrieve what has been lost.”
Oh, you can retrieve anything you want with that accent and that dashing.
“Not necessary,” murmurs Ma, shoving the chair back a few feet.
But Chrétien bends over and retrieves the errant button, holding it out like a prize he’s just won.
“If you will permit,” he says, “I can sew the bouton for you.” He’s already reaching for his cadena, the little box where he keeps his personal knife and fork along with a needle and thread, wrapped in a thin piece of leather. Chrétien was training as a tailor when his dad came and claimed him and introduced him to life at the French court, and he said keeping the needle and thread helped him remember where he was from when he sat down to lunch with royalty.
I murmur something grateful to Chrétien. I am all for him sewing me back into my jeans. I mean, in theory, I’m all for him getting me out of them. But when he has his needle all ready, he stares at the button like it’s something written in a foreign alphabet.
“This is no bouton,” he says, finally.
Ma takes it from his hands and examines it. “It’s a snap,” she says. “You would need a rivet press machine to fix this.”
I groan. “Of course it couldn’t be a simple button. Anyone have a belt I can borrow, because, hello, there’s a little too little Gwyn to hold these jeans up.”
“I didn’t pack one,” Sam says.
Ma shrugs. “Me neither.”
Of course no one has a belt. But then I smile, a tiny gleam in my eyes. “That’s it. I’m going shopping. Ma, I need euros. Sir Walter, I need car keys.”
“You are not going shopping by yourself,” says Ma, rising like she’s coming along.
Now, I love my ma, but I have been on enough shopping trips with her to know she is the last person I want to go shopping with in France.
“Sam can go with me,” I say. “Ma, you owe Sir Walter those chocolate chip cookies. After he bought all the ingredients.”
Ma frowns. Like I said, she hates owing anyone anything, so I’ve totally got her. The frown becomes a glower, and she strides off to the kitchen. So I am down one interfering mom. Yay! But I’m also minus any cold hard cash. I consider reengaging The Ma. However, my mom’s stingy. It will be easier to get her to pay someone back a large amou
nt than to get her to give me a large amount up front.
“Can I borrow a hundred euros?” I ask Sam.
She reaches for her money.
I ask Sir Walter again for car keys.
“Let’s go,” I say to Sam.
Only, Will has drifted off to sleep again, his head in her lap. Disgustingly sweet. She looks at me with a face full of apologetic.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go alone.”
Sir Walter clears his throat. “Perhaps,” he says, “considering your mother’s concern as well as … our general circumstances and your own, ah, less than complete command of the national language …” He looks pointedly from me to Chrétien.
Chrétien nods like he’s agreeing with something.
I bristle. “My French is totally adequate.” But then it occurs to me Sir Walter was implying Hunktastic should come along with me.
Oh.
Oh, yes, please.
“Of course,” I add quickly, “it probably would help my mom to worry less if I had someone along who could help out in a pinch.”
Chrétien bows. “It would be a great honor to accompany you upon your visite to the tailor of the local … how is it you say village in English?”
“Village,” Sam and Sir Walter say together.
“Right,” I say. “Let’s go find us a tailor.”
“Wait a sec,” says Sam. She fiddles with something on her bag and then holds a safety pin out to me. “A quick fix. You’re going to need both hands to drive.”
She’s right, actually. Chrétien doesn’t drive. And Sir Walter’s car has a clutch, which means I’ll need both hands and both feet to drive.
“Good thing I know how to operate a stick,” I mutter as we take off.
“To my great shame, Mademoiselle,” says Chrétien, “I understand not the operation of the horseless conveyance.”
“I could totally teach you to drive, you know,” I reply.
He does a little bow but doesn’t say anything.
We reach the bottom of the marble staircase where I pause before the front door because the stupid safety pin doesn’t want to go through all the layers of jeans, and I figure I should probably secure my jeans before venturing out of doors. “Give me a quick second,” I say. I manage to stick myself in the thumb. “Ouch!”
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