Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  Hideous to contemplate his father pawing at her. But how had she kept herself safe from that lecherous old goat? If she had.

  “And don’t forget the rosemary and lavender for my room.” Since last winter he hadn’t slept a night without the two herbs perfuming the air.

  Chapter Three

  Supper’s lateness wasn’t merely due to the preparations for tomorrow’s banquet. There’d also been an argument between the chef, Monsieur Colet, and the wife of the Duc’s older son—Madame la Comtesse Amélie, better known to her servants as the Gorgon.

  Marie-Laure had found the proceedings vastly entertaining. As usual, Monsieur Colet’s kitchen had produced a masterwork of a meal, from the hors d’oeuvres and foie gras to the ducks and glazed shell of beef. But for dessert the Gorgon had insisted on a towering confection of spun sugar, though the day’s weather was far too humid for the spinning of sugar. Monsieur Colet had shouted and sputtered at his employer as only a master chef—one who was entirely indispensable—could do.

  He’d been even more voluble after the Comtesse had stalked away in defeat. He’d paced and declaimed, waving his arms and thundering about idiot bosses who knew less than drooling infants about running a kitchen and hadn’t the savoir faire to appreciate his strawberry tart properly anyway. It wasn’t until Nicolas opened a very old and dusty bottle of the Duc’s Chateauneuf-du-Pape that the chef ceased his tirade and waved his minions back to work.

  And so supper had finally been served, both upstairs in the dining salon and downstairs in the dessert kitchen, a dry, sweet-smelling room where baking supplies were stored and the servants took their meals. Marie-Laure squeezed onto the edge of a bench at the long table and picked at the food on her plate, glad at least to stop working for a while. And to have a moment—while the argument between Monsieur Colet and the Gorgon was recounted with great hilarity—to remember more about her first meeting with the Vicomte.

  The next morning had started out pleasantly enough. She heard conversation downstairs; the tone was companionable, though she couldn’t make out the words. He must be feeling better.

  Papa was better too: sitting up in bed, eyes bright behind octagonal Franklin-style spectacles, engrossed in a pamphlet about the Americans’ victory (with French help, of course) over the English General Cornwallis.

  “You must check on the smuggler,” he told her. “Poor fellow, doing his part to bring brave and original thought to France.”

  She nodded abstractedly as she straightened his bedclothes and opened the window to let in some air. Reluctant to face the man who’d caused her to…well, to feel that way last night, she looked around for ways to make Papa more comfortable.

  But nothing presented itself and Papa needed his coffee. She couldn’t hide up here all morning. And anyway, she told herself on the stairs, doubtless he’d seem quite ordinary this morning; last night’s emotions had probably only been a trick of the light, a mood shift brought on by the mistral. Peasants, after all, believed that a strong mistral could drive you mad.

  He was lying on his side. At first she’d thought he was asleep, but as she came a bit closer she could see that he was staring fixedly at the crayon drawing that hung next to her bed.

  “Monsieur?”

  “He left off the freckles,” was the odd, abstracted reply. “He got the eyes right. But the mouth is completely wrong. What could you have been thinking?”

  For a moment, she wondered if he were delirious. And then she began to laugh.

  “But it’s not a picture of me, Monsieur. It’s my mother when she was my age. It’s…well, it’s not me at all.”

  Looking up from the portrait, he laughed too.

  “No,” he agreed, “it’s not you at all.” His voice was still hoarse but not as raspy as it had been yesterday.

  “She was pretty, wasn’t she?” Marie-Laure asked. “She died when I was twelve.”

  He nodded, his expression sympathetic, respectful. Such a mercurial face, Marie-Laure thought. More human, more playful than the fiercely sculpted visage she’d contemplated while he’d slept. This morning he seemed quite friendly. And almost boyish: she judged that he was in his late twenties—perhaps five years older than Gilles or Augustin, but less serious-looking, less settled, as though he’d never quite found his place in the world. She cut him another slice of bread, and some cheese as well. He wasn’t as formidable as she’d feared; he was simply hungry.

  She brought Papa his breakfast upstairs, and then came back down to eat, while she and the smuggler talked.

  Well, mostly she talked. About everything and nothing. About Papa’s passion for America, Gilles’s vocation for medicine. About how Papa had taught her and Gilles to speak English after Mamma’s death: he’d thought they could bear their grief better in the beginner’s phrases of an unfamiliar language, and he’d been right. She was fortunate now, she told him, to be able to read the novels of Richardson, the plays of Shakespeare, and the humorous essays of Ambassador Franklin in their original tongue. And particularly fortunate to spend her days surrounded by the books she loved so well.

  Of course, she added quickly, she was also lucky to have Gilles and Papa. But sometimes—she’d hesitated a bit here—it was difficult to explain, but sometimes she wished she could be somewhere, anywhere but within the walls of the city where she’d been born. Sometimes she dreamed of Paris or Peru, Persia or Philadelphia, someplace new and different, where she could find whatever it was that was missing from her life.

  She paused, abashed by her volubility. She hadn’t meant to rattle on like that; no one could really be interested in her petty confidences. But his steady black gaze had seemed to encourage her. If he’d found her tedious, he’d certainly hidden it well.

  She corrected herself: eyes couldn’t really be black; his eyes must really be a very dark brown. But she felt blackness when she looked into them; she felt something undefined, restless, unfinished. A hunger, as though he could swallow her words and thoughts whole.

  He bit his lip as he propped himself higher against the pillows; it must hurt him to move his leg, she thought, disconcerted by the sudden thrill of sympathy she felt.

  What she’d experienced last night hadn’t been a trick of the light.

  She looked away from his face and then quickly looked back: better to stare at his face than his shoulders straining at Papa’s old nightshirt or his hands grasping her quilt. Especially when all he’d noticed about her were her least favorite features, her freckles and less-than-refined mouth. Oh, and her ink-stained fingers. Charming.

  “You’re indeed fortunate in your family,” he said. “Your brother’s very fond of you. He warned me that if I touched you, he’d rip my leg back open.”

  But you have touched me, she thought. You lay in my lap and squeezed my hand. Of course you don’t remember any of that.

  But Gilles had remembered. Damn him and his protectiveness anyway.

  “My brother takes his responsibilities very seriously,” she replied.

  “But did he also tell you how he happens to have a broken front tooth?” She raised her arm and made a fist, showing that she knew how to put her shoulder behind a blow. Gilles had taught her to fight like a boy and she’d been better at it than he’d expected.

  The man laughed.

  “No,” he said. “He didn’t tell me that. He told me that you read too much, that your head was crammed with books and stories, and that you needed looking after.

  “And he also said that you were as good as engaged to his best friend.”

  Marie-Laure blushed. She made a noncommittal gesture, sort of a nod but a little like a shrug as well. One didn’t have to explain everything.

  The silence between them grew awkward.

  “That book,” he asked now, nodding at Monsieur X’s memoirs on the little table next to the bed. “I’ve delivered quite a few copies to booksellers. Is it interesting?”

  She nodded eagerly, glad to talk about anything besides being as good as enga
ged.

  “Oh yes,” she said, “you should try it sometime. Well, that is, if you, uh, enjoy reading.”

  He did a clever imitation of her nod and shrug combination.

  “What’s it about?” he asked.

  “It’s a satire,” she replied, “on the aristocracy, and on the corruption of life at court.” The author had charmed her by his readiness to laugh at himself. He’d also—though she didn’t usually dwell on it—excited her by the sly sophistication with which he recounted his amours.

  “What happens in it? What’s its…” He searched for the proper word. “What’s its plot?”

  “Ah, well,” Marie-Laure began, “let’s see…there’s a young military officer, an aristocrat but a poor one, posted at Versailles. And he’s immediately taken up by a very elegant lady.”

  “And then?”

  Belatedly, she realized that the opening episode was one of the raciest in the book. “The lady was the mistress of the Baron Roque, the gentleman who was murdered yesterday, you know,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Yes, but what happens?” His dark eyes were mischievous, daring her to continue.

  “Well, the Baron would receive his mistress in a bedchamber the size of a ballroom. So there would be room for a small orchestra, off on one side, playing sweet airs while the mistress entertained the Baron in bed.

  “What’s usually done, according to Monsieur X, is to hire blind musicians. But the Baron was different. His musicians saw everything, having been sworn to secrecy and also knowing that during the Baron’s travels he’d had his bodyguard educated in the cutting off of hands.

  “And when the mistress began secretly to visit Monsieur X in his much smaller apartments, well, she’d become used to music, you see, and so she’d often break out in song, when…aroused.”

  She felt her cheeks grow hot under his keen gaze.

  “But I wouldn’t want to spoil the story for you, Monsieur,” she said quickly. “So you must read it yourself, to find out what happens next.” And too bad, she thought, if that embarrassed him.

  He didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. He nodded and settled back against the pillows.

  It seemed that it was up to her to pick up the thread of the conversation.

  “He wounded the Baron in a duel,” she told him, “later in the book. It’s rumored that this actually happened, along with many other duels and skirmishes—even a brief imprisonment. It’s said that the author insulted so many people that he was forced to flee abroad.” Well, it didn’t embarrass her to say this, anyway.

  “Monsieur X gets away with a lot,” he said.

  “Yes and no,” she answered. “His love affairs always end with what he calls a slightly metallic taste, when the artificiality of the liaison overwhelms the pleasures. He says it’s the way of the world. His book is a chronicle of love’s impossibility.”

  She stopped to take a breath.

  “Well,” he said, “if I were to look at a book I might try that one. You have a talent for summing up a man’s beliefs in a very few words, Mademoiselle.”

  She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment.

  “Do you agree with the author’s conclusion?”

  And she certainly hadn’t expected to be asked for her opinion.

  But since he had asked…

  “No,” she said, “I don’t. Of course I’m no authority, especially compared to Monsieur X. But no, Monsieur, I don’t believe that passion is based upon artifice, or that real sympathy or constancy is impossible between lovers.”

  He was nodding slowly, smiling his devastating crooked smile; she guessed that he approved of her sentimentality, her optimism.

  She cleared her throat.

  “And furthermore, I don’t think that Monsieur X really believes it either.”

  His eyes froze, his smile turned angry.

  “I should think that if an author says he believes something, a reader ought to accept him at his word.”

  Marie-Laure frowned. These were difficult ideas to explain. “I think,” she said slowly, “that an author sometimes leaves out bits and pieces—things that were too difficult or painful to think through all the way. And somehow, with Monsieur X, I think there’s another story there, one that happened perhaps before the book began.”

  “So,” he said sharply, “you’re telling me that when you read a book you read what the author didn’t write, as well as what he did.”

  Put that way she had to admit that it sounded farfetched.

  “Well, it was just a thought.”

  “Not much of one.” His voice was frigid and his eyes glittered like black ice. How in the world, she wondered, had she come to be discussing the art of letters with this fellow? And what gave him the right to criticize her so high-handedly?

  “Your brother is right,” he added. “You do read too much for your own good. But at least you should stick to what’s on the page.”

  Absurdly, she felt as though she were being dismissed from her own bedroom.

  “Perhaps I’m tiring you, Monsieur.” She stood up with as much dignity as she could muster. She wore an old pair of Gilles’s breeches under her dress, for climbing the bookstore ladder, and she smoothed her skirt clumsily down over them. “Well, I must be getting to work and so I’ll leave you now. And—there’s no rush of course—but please do remember to sign this receipt for the books.”

  What had all that been about? She’d liked him so much before the conversation had taken that turn. Still, there was work to be done. Disciplining herself to maintain an unhurried pace, she quit the room. The shop’s doorbell was ringing. It was time to open up for business. And that had been the last she’d seen of him until this afternoon in the library.

  Chapter Four

  Baptiste returned to the Vicomte’s chamber just before it was time to go down to supper.

  “She arrived last May, Monsieur Joseph. Works in the scullery. Recommended by a woman in Montpellier—her brother’s sweetheart’s mother is Nicolas’s cousin.”

  Joseph shrugged, a bit befuddled. But after all, he thought, why shouldn’t common people take their family connections as seriously as aristocrats did?

  “In May, Baptiste?”

  “Oui, Monsieur, just two months ago, while we were at Madame de Rambuteau’s, and you were making…your recovery. Martin, in the stables, fetched her off the night coach. Said he’d felt sorry for her, she’d looked so thin and pale and tired. Of course everybody looks awful after that journey, but Martin says she was sick before she came here. Typhus. His sweetheart, Louise, shares Marie-Laure’s bed, you see.”

  “You spoke to Louise?”

  “She’s away, Monsieur, at her mother’s funeral. It’s she who usually serves tea in the library’ She’s got a bit of a harelip, you know, so the Duc’s not interested in her. Sometimes it’s Bertrande who serves the tea—well, she’s fifty if she’s a day. But Bertrande has a sprained wrist, due to an unfortunate argument she and Nicolas…”

  “Yes, I see, Baptiste.”

  Typhus, mon Dieu. And then she came here. Pale and tired-looking enough to be hired despite the chateau’s rule, but growing prettier and healthier every day, until…

  His father hadn’t seemed to notice her this afternoon. But Joseph suspected that his father was capable of more coherence—and more guile, too—than people generally thought. I get that from him, he thought, that flair for playacting. For certainly no one in the library could have suspected that I’d ever seen her before.

  He was sure of his performance. He’d been calm, amused, distant—even while his heart had swooped in his breast like a hawk ranging the thin mountain air.

  He’d turned from the bookshelves and there she’d been, cup and saucer in hand. The girl who’d held him in her lap, who’d sat at his bedside and confided her impatience with a circumscribed provincial life. The girl who’d thought she understood Monsieur X—and who’d struggled so charmingly to tell Monsieur X’s lewd story.

  The heroin
e of the new story he’d been scribbling, the object of several months of tumescent fantasies.

  Oh, and the girl I rather insulted as well. Don’t forget that part, Joseph. He’d been nasty and patronizing, simply because she’d read Monsieur X’s book a bit too perceptively for his comfort. Of course, he’d intended to beg her pardon before he’d left. But Baptiste—who’d been searching the streets for him—had arrived with Madame de Rambuteau’s coach while Marie-Laure had been out at the market.

  Perhaps, he’d thought then, it had been just as well. For his response to her had been so strong (how touching she’d looked when she’d stalked out of the room, head high, back straight and proud) that he might well have given in to temptation and risked a broken tooth of his own.

  But to find her here this afternoon! At first he hadn’t been able to believe it. He’d needed to look into her eyes. No wonder she’d almost dropped the cup and saucer—the gaze he’d directed at her had been the most charged he could muster. Of course, once he’d ascertained her identity, he’d been obliged to feign disinterest.

  But then, what could he have done? Ravish her in full sight of his family? Or—far more inappropriate—shake her hand and ask after her father’s health?

  One could hardly breach the rules of conduct between master and servant, noble and commoner, all based, he thought, upon some noodleheaded assumption of aristocratic superiority. You’re bathed and dressed, fed, flattered and—if you like—serviced by your inferiors.

  The thought made him dizzy: part of his brain swooning with images of intimate conversation with her; the other part wanting only to drag her into a dark hallway, raise her skirts, and get it over with quickly. Take what he wanted and move on; liberate himself from his complicated feelings for her. Assert his right to her as some of the worst of his peers might have done—the vile old Baron Roque, for example.

  “Time for supper, Monsieur Joseph.”

  “Thank you, Baptiste.”

  “I know how to get to her room, by the way, Monsieur Joseph. She’ll be the only one sleeping there tonight, with Louise away.”