Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  “You know I don’t take advantage of servants, Baptiste.” Hypocrite, you’ve thought of little else for an hour.

  “No, Monsieur Joseph.”

  “Well, not for a very long time anyway.”

  “That’s true, Monsieur Joseph.”

  His eyes strayed to the notebooks spread out on his desk. Boyish yearnings and libertine cynicism cobbled together with a bit of wit and a lot of salacious detail. Rather a pathetic little body of work, really. And the story he’d been writing these past months, about the sultan and the gray-eyed harem girl—embarrassing stuff, especially under the current circumstances.

  “But…Monsieur Joseph?”

  “What is it, Baptiste?”

  “Well, when I was sniffing around for information down there, I kept bumping into your father’s valet Jacques. And Jacques was asking a lot of the same questions I was. Especially about where she sleeps.”

  If it had been any other girl, he might have been amused. The rule about keeping pretty servants away was his sister-in-law’s invention, a straitlaced and rather spiteful way of imposing authority over an anarchic household. Let the old man do as he wants, he might have thought. Let him live as he always had—selfishly, reprehensibly—in the little time left to him.

  If it had been any girl but this one.

  He hadn’t a clue what to do. But he knew he was going to do something.

  “Suppertime, Monsieur Joseph.”

  He supposed the food was quite good. His parents had always set an excellent table, even as his father’s debts eroded the family fortune, weeds choked the chateau’s moat, and the mistral blew shards of slate off the roof and stone from the battlements. He sipped his soup, a chilled sherried consommé with morels. He was too agitated to taste it, but he suspected that it was splendid. All the food was probably splendid now that his sister-in-law was in charge of things. She’d brought an immense dowry with her, along with an ironclad determination to restore the family to its former glory. There were plasterers and carpenters everywhere, busily transforming the rough-hewn thirteenth century chateau to a mini-Versailles.

  An easier job, Joseph thought, than making an elegant gentleman out of Hubert. His brother—six years older and a head shorter—had never been much for social graces, or even simple table manners. Joseph watched a tall, muscular footman refill his plump brother’s wineglass and then his soup bowl. Hubert proceeded to slurp one and slop the other; his lace cuffs would be a multicolored marvel by the time the meal was done.

  “And do tell me all the news of Madame de Rambuteau.” Amélie leaned solicitously toward him, the better to hear what he might say, and to give him a closer look at a not-unreasonable bosom. She had sharp greenish eyes and pointed features, excellent height and carriage, and no family to speak of. Her father’s title had been all too recently purchased, with an obscene fortune bled from sugar plantations in Haiti. His sister-in-law was rather a joke with the family’s oldest intimates—Madame de Rambuteau had entertained him more than once with her devastating parody of the lady’s arriviste affectations. “Ah, well,” his mother had sighed this morning in the coach, “she was the best we could find for Hubert.”

  He hoped that Hubert was less inept in bed than he was at the table. But he doubted it, his own particular theory being that while a hearty and gourmandizing eater was a good lover, a helpless glutton was not. All of which made him more sympathetic than he might otherwise be toward the Comtesse Amélie, this high-strung, energetic woman whom the marriage market had placed in such an awkward position. If only she wouldn’t take out the frustrations of her situation on her servants. He’d seen the way she’d glared at Marie-Laure this afternoon, and heard the cold, threatening tone in which she’d ordered “Marianne” to serve the family their tea.

  She was still waiting for an answer from him, bosom still thrust under his nose.

  “Madame de Rambuteau is gracious as ever,” he told her. “She spoke often of you, too, and the pleasure she takes in your company.”

  She returned a gratified (if somewhat surprised) nod. “She must have been sorry to have to let you go.”

  He smiled. “Actually, Madame, my departure was most felicitously timed. Well, perhaps just a trifle belated…” He turned toward Hubert, hoping to slip in a barbed reference to all the anxious months spent waiting to hear that it was safe for him to venture outside of Madame de Rambuteau’s protection. But Hubert had sunk blissfully into an enormous wedge of beef and seemed quite oblivious to the conversation.

  Joseph caught the misdirected anecdote in midair and gracefully tossed it to the table at large. “Because toward the end of my stay she conceived an intense desire to learn to play the clavichord, having been quite profoundly moved by the work of a young virtuoso who’d performed for us one evening. In fact, she’d been so enamored of the gentleman’s, ah, fingering, that, quite unbeknownst to me, she’d entered into a passionate correspondence with him, and had finally convinced him to stay a few months with her, for an extended course of instruction.”

  It was true. Madame de Rambuteau liked variety. She would have tossed him out in a few weeks even if he’d had nowhere to go. Well, at least it made a story you could dine out on. A pity, he supposed, that he thought of eating with his family as “dining out.”

  The anecdote was a success, anyway. His father rewarded him with a high-pitched giggle, and even his pious, overbred mother allowed herself a bit of a guilty smile. As for his sister-in-law, she was virtually transported by his performance, laughing heartily enough to set her bosom heaving and—was it possible?—thrusting it even farther forward.

  “It will be delightful to share your wit and spirit with my guests tomorrow evening. And so we must all get plenty of rest tonight, to be fresh for the festivities…”

  He nodded absently. What was his father planning tonight, and how could he be stopped?

  But she hadn’t finished with what she was saying.

  “And so I, at any rate, will be abed quite early, all safely tucked away between sheets perfumed with heliotrope. And I know my dear husband will be getting a much-needed rest as well.”

  Her instructions couldn’t have been clearer if she’d posted them on a cathedral door. Not tonight, Hubert. Tonight I’m hoping for a visit from somebody with a little wit and spirit. Poor woman, she seemed to think this was how such things were done.

  He might have blushed for her if he were given to blushing. His mother had rolled her eyes to heaven, and his father—impossible to tell what he was thinking, but his small blue eyes shone with keen malice. Hubert shrugged. Even the footman—rather a good-looking fellow, Joseph thought, and oddly familiar, as though he’d once seen him in a dream—seemed a trifle mortified.

  He supposed it was up to him to put an end to this. Feigning an ostentatious yawn behind a fluttering hand, he murmured, “I fear this morning’s coach ride was too much for me, Madame. A long sleep sounds exactly like the prescription I need. You’re a wise physician.”

  She bowed her head, her smile threatening at any moment to become a nasty scowl. Baptiste had told him that her servants called her the Gorgon.

  The silence at the table continued halfway through the strawberry tart, which was good enough, in any case, to claim everyone’s attention.

  And then there was a crash.

  A much louder crash than the one he’d averted this afternoon in the library, it seemed to carry with it a sense of inevitability, as though everybody had been waiting since then for some crash to happen. It sounded quite beautiful really, as expensive lead crystal does when it shatters. The Duc had chosen to drop an enormous faceted decanter full of old brandy. It wasn’t a decanter Joseph recognized—Amélie must have brought it with her.

  Bravo, Monsieur, got her there, Joseph thought. But he’d savor the moment—and the look on her face—later, at his leisure. Now it was time to act.

  For the Duc’s move, planned to get him away from the table early, had been slightly miscalculated. He’
d dropped the decanter a bit closer to his leg than he’d intended, and Joseph could see that a few shards of glass had penetrated his calf, drawing a little blood through the stocking.

  “Monsieur!” He jumped to his feet. “Monsieur, you’re hurt!”

  The old man threw him a furious look. “Not a bit of it,” he snarled. “I’m fine. Just need to wash off this brandy I’ve spilled on myself. If you all will excuse me.”

  Joseph was at his side, pulling out the glass, perhaps a little more roughly than was quite necessary. “Can you walk, Monsieur? Or should I carry you? That’s right, lean on me, good, good, we’ll get you to your room, perhaps call the doctor…”

  What was the handsome footman’s name? Ah yes, Arsène. “Arsène, can you help me get the Duc to his room? Thank you, thank you…”

  The anxiety in his voice sounded convincing even to himself. Well, this gambit had better work.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Joseph,” the old man sputtered.

  “Of course you are, Monsieur, and very brave as well.” He and Arsène strong-armed the struggling, protesting Duc from the room and up the corridor to his bedchamber, where Jacques was just laying out a handsome dressing gown. Vain old coot; it was what he’d planned to wear when he made his visit to Marie-Laure.

  “A bit of a mishap, Jacques. A bit of a different evening than perhaps he’d planned. He needs to be put to bed, after you give him a good long bath and soak that leg.

  “And you will stay with them, Arsène, that’s a good fellow, in case he needs any help? While I, um, while I, go, uh…”

  Arsène was looking at him strangely. Well, he supposed his act was wearing a bit thin. His powers of invention certainly were. And as he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he simply quit the room without finishing the sentence. Where the devil was Baptiste?

  Luckily, he was in Joseph’s own room, seeing to his linen.

  Joseph tossed off his coat. August was so unbearably hot in Provence. And he didn’t have much time before his father got back on his feet. But at least he knew what he was going to do—in its general outlines, anyway, if not in every particular. He grinned.

  “Quick, Baptiste. Take me to where she sleeps. And not a word out of you.”

  Chapter Five

  It was as hot and airless in her little garret bedchamber as it had been in the kitchen. Go to bed, Marie-Laure told herself, go to bed and get some sleep. At least she’d have the mattress to herself tonight, and for once she’d be free of Louise’s snoring.

  But instead she paced the tiny room as though pursued by fleeting images and fragments of memory. She needed only to blink to set his image shimmering at the margin of her vision. In some ways he’d changed enormously since Montpellier: the legs that had flopped around in ragged trousers were graceful and well turned in fine faille breeches; the lanky frame that had slumped in Papa’s armchair stood poised and balanced, legs angled in a dancer’s perfect fourth position.

  And yet in the essential, infinitesimal particulars—a torque of muscle at the small of the back, a whimsical tilt of the head, a few loose strands of silky black hair escaping from the velvet ribbon at his nape—in every way that mattered, he hadn’t changed at all.

  Why had he undertaken to act the role of a smuggler? Had it been a sort of holiday from the poise that an aristocrat puts on along with garments of velvet and lace?

  She could only suppose he’d done it for the adventure. Yes, she decided, he’d smuggled the books across the border as a reckless, dangerous diversion. And—she set her mouth in a hard line—she probably hadn’t been the only woman to help him.

  She thought of the banquet she and her colleagues in the kitchen had been preparing. All the noble families of the region would be here tomorrow, bringing daughters decked out in pearls and plumes, towering hairdos and skirts so wide they’d have to skitter sideways through the doors like crabs. She hoped he’d choose one quickly and take her far away.

  Of course, last December she’d merely shrugged when she’d come back from the market and found him gone, leaving only a receipt initialed with an X.

  Goodbye and good riddance, she’d told herself. He was nothing but a drain on her emotions, a useless distraction from her perfectly acceptable life.

  Which continued, busy and bookish, innocent and safe. The holidays came and went; when Augustin kissed her under the mistletoe at the Rigauds’ extravagant New Year’s fete, she flashed a sidelong look at his dreadful cousin—the one who’d been flirting with him all evening—and smiled modestly.

  Papa ceased his coughing, though Gilles had given her a sober assessment of his condition. But he seemed well enough; she enjoyed their days together as winter became spring.

  The Societé typographique de Neuchâtel sent replacement copies of the short-shipped books, with their apologies. The squint-eyed, bandy-legged porter who brought them had been most polite and respectful.

  She even caught up on the sewing she hated; it was something to do with her hands when Augustin came to call in the evenings. She smiled at him over the sheets and towels she hemmed and embroidered—for the future.

  And then Papa died and she became ill. And suddenly she had no future.

  In the end, it hadn’t been her father’s weak heart that killed him. It was typhus, doubtless contracted at a ratty inn during the spring book fair in Lyon. She and Glues nursed him for two weeks, bathing him with alcohol, feeding him broths when he could take them, trying not to squabble with each other. Papa rarely was conscious, though she once heard him muttering a few cryptic phrases to Gilles: “Rigaud” and “taken care of” were all she could make out.

  Her own illness waited politely until after the funeral. She collapsed and lost consciousness, awakening drenched and exhausted a week later to see a pale, relieved Gilles at her side. She’d passed the crisis, he told her in a shaky voice.

  Only to encounter the real crisis.

  For when Augustin came to her bedside and at long last proposed a formal engagement, she didn’t murmur the expected “yes” but stammered a tearful “no.”

  She was as surprised as everyone else. What more could she possibly want, Gilles and the Rigauds demanded. But what she wanted—who she wanted—was too preposterous to be admitted, even to herself. So she simply wept and shook her head, looking dimwitted and disagreeable, until they explained her financial situation to her and left her to contemplate it.

  The house and books were mortgaged to Rigaud. It had been foolish of her, she thought, not to realize where Gilles’s school fees had come from. Gilles owned the furniture, such as it was; the sale of it would support him through his last year of medical training. But except for sentimental knickknacks (she’d insisted on keeping Papa’s spectacles as a remembrance), Papa had left nothing to Marie-Laure. Well, there was nothing to leave; there hadn’t had to be. The Rigauds had wanted her even without a dowry, Augustin because he loved her and Monsieur Rigaud because she’d be an asset to his business.

  You could say that Papa had mortgaged his daughter to pay for his son’s education. But that would have been putting too calculating a face on it. Papa had thought she’d be happy with Augustin and the paradise of books he’d someday inherit. Marie-Laure knew he’d intended the best.

  Whatever face you wanted to put on it, though, the fact was that she was destitute. She’d have to live with Gilles after he set up a practice and married Sylvie next year. But in the meantime?

  The job in the scullery was the best solution, even if it proved how far she’d come down in the world. Still, she thought, at least she’d gotten to see something of the world outside the city walls of Montpellier.

  Of course she missed her family. Gilles’s regular letters weren’t very satisfying; he’d never grasped that writing might be more than a vehicle for the communication of facts.

  But what she missed even more was life among the crowded bookshelves. She ached for intellectual stimulation, and for something else as well: like all true booksellers, sh
e felt herself incomplete outside of a community of book lovers. Tedious day-to-day work is a small price to pay for the joy of matching a book with its ideal reader; slender profits don’t matter when readers hurry back to tell you how much they loved your recommendations. Marie-Laure’s customers had relied upon her, rewarding her with their confidences, their respect and trust.

  A servant, on the other hand—well, she’d known that a servant wouldn’t command anyone’s respect. But it had still been a harsh thing to experience, immediately upon her arrival at the chateau.

  Exhausted by her journey, she’d been handed over to the Gorgon’s poking and prodding, her furious scowls and angry mutterings that “Marianne” was prettier than Madame Bellocq had let on in her letter of recommendation. Marie-Laure had almost been fired on the spot for daring to correct the lady about her name.

  What had saved her—though she hadn’t know it then—was the tantrum Monsieur Colet had thrown the day before, threatening to quit if he didn’t get more help. So Madame Amélie had to satisfy herself by slapping “Marianne” several times with a folded fan and commanding her to stay downstairs in the kitchen.

  Luckily, she liked the kitchen. And she liked the other servants, too—except for one crude fellow whose advances she’d had to fight off her first week. She’d managed quite well, though, first using her fist and then—for Gilles had also taught her some dirtier techniques—her knee, which had left him howling in the corner of the storeroom.

  The rest of the household staff had treated her with a certain degree of formality. At first she thought it was due to her success in the storeroom, but little by little she realized she’d always be an outsider here. For everyone else had grown up in tiny Provençal mountain villages, sharing superstitions and secrets forged by isolation and blood feud.

  Wisely, Marie-Laure didn’t pry. Respectful of the sudden silences that sometimes greeted her entrance into a room, she was awarded a grudging approval in return. She was different, people decided, but not a bad kind of different; one or two of them even approached her and shyly asked her to teach them to read. What mattered was that she could be trusted in the unceasing silent war between servants and masters. The welts she’d received from the Gorgon’s fan sealed her acceptance into the world downstairs.