Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  What she liked best about this downstairs world was its undisputed ruler, Monsieur Colet. Marie-Laure had always enjoyed cooking. After Mamma’s death she’d almost memorized her copy of The Modern Kitchen; she’d been comforted to see it here, on Mr. Colet’s shelf. And when the chef caught her looking at it one morning before work, instead of punishing her he quizzed her on it, nodding approvingly as she recounted its sound principles.

  A generous teacher, he encouraged her to learn all she could from his example. He’d even suggested that she become a cook herself rather than live with Gilles and Sylvie. A paid servant, he’d told her, was always better off than an unpaid one, which was what a spinster sister would be, even with the best of brothers.

  Marie-Laure was still pondering his advice, as well as some tentative, secret plans of her own devising. For if she could earn an independent living here in the middle of nowhere, why couldn’t she also do so in a city—one with theaters, cafés, and bookshops? A cook, even for a bourgeois family, could make a decent living. And maybe, if she were a good enough manager, and if she sacrificed and saved her money wisely…maybe she wouldn’t have to be a cook forever.

  And so, she concluded, things really hadn’t turned out so badly. The smuggler-Vicomte hadn’t really cheated her; it was time she stopped blaming him for unwittingly teaching her what physical arousal was all about. Grimy, exhausting, and déclassé as her life now was, she was lucky to have escaped a passionless marriage.

  Perhaps she’d find someone else someday: someone who’d stir her desires without confounding her affections, someone with the Vicomte’s magnetism but without his rude emotional volatility. And—as long as she was wishing—someone of her own station in life. Yes, she told herself firmly, she’d find that someone someday. The same someday she was done with washing pots and back in the world of books and letters.

  She nodded, as though she’d been persuaded by impeccable logic rather than stubborn optimism. Well, if no one else was around to remind her of what was just barely possible, she’d simply have to do it herself.

  Time for bed, she told herself. Tomorrow would be a hard day. But just one more thought before sleep. She sighed and shook her head: even she couldn’t convince herself that this last thought was a logical argument. It was only a slim, rather pathetic hope, a final little request to the fates. Please, oh please, she whispered to whatever powers might be listening, please make his visit a brief one.

  She’d just reached to loosen her dress when someone began a thunderous pounding at her door.

  Chapter Six

  In future years Marie-Laure would never be quite sure what had really happened during the next moments. Of course she’d recall it with vividness and clarity, joy and delight. But she’d never truly be able to separate perception from imagination or distinguish memory from surmise. For how could she possibly have experienced every astonishment, decoded every sign, interpreted every wonder of that first embrace?

  He’d mumbled something when she opened the door and looked up into his dark eyes. Pardon me, Mademoiselle Vernet, I’ll explain all this later, was what she thought she heard; perhaps he’d also said something about “danger” or “protection.” But the only words she could be sure of were “Mademoiselle Vernet,” the only emotions she’d be able to swear to were giddy delight and delirious elation—silly, selfish relief and prideful vindication, in truth—that he hadn’t forgotten her name after all.

  He wasn’t wearing his coat or waistcoat. She’d caught a quick glimpse of his hips and thighs in pearl-gray velvet breeches. The lights and darks of the velvet, illuminated by her flickering candle, revealed rather more than she was prepared to admit she’d understood.

  Nonsense, she’d think later. Of course she’d seen the bulge between his legs. After all, she wasn’t a child or a fool—the velvet was definitely stretched by the tumescent flesh beneath it. And even if she’d been embarrassed to bring it to consciousness upon first observation, there could be no doubt of what she’d felt a moment later, no mistaking the urgent press of him against her own hips and thighs. And no use pretending that she hadn’t been thrilled by it.

  The weave of his linen shirt had grazed her chest and shoulders; his hand cradled her breast. She’d gasped with surprised recognition: somewhere, in some secret place at her center, she’d wanted his hands on her breasts ever since she’d watched him pile books onto Papa’s desk.

  Was that the sound of cloth ripping? It was hard to discern behind the sound of her heartbeat and her breath, hard to concentrate with his mouth against hers, opening it, probing and teasing it with his tongue.

  His other hand was tight at the small of her back. Well, it had been tight at first. Yes, she was sure of that. He’d held her closely—for a moment. And…she was pretty sure of what had happened next, almost certain that his hand had loosened, had become more adventurous. It had moved downward, slowly but confidently lingering over the curve of her buttock, while it gathered her skirt and petticoat out of the way. And as for where his hand was poised to go next, and where he might put his fingers…

  She’d marvel, later on, that she hadn’t been shocked or frightened by how indecently he was touching her. But wasn’t she also caressing him under his shirt at the back of his waist? How could she take offense at his wandering hands, when her own hands were touching him everywhere she could reach? She could feel the ache starting up in her belly, the trembling, like that night in Montpellier…

  Such a jumble, such a torrent of sensation. And such a mystery, for she couldn’t think how they’d come to be in each other’s arms in the first place. It didn’t seem quite accurate to say he’d “swept” her into his arms—or, for that matter, that she’d “rushed” into his embrace. If there had been a crucial gesture, a shy or importunate first touch, she couldn’t specify what it had been or who had made it. The embrace had simply…happened, like a bolt of summer lightning.

  It ended just as quickly.

  The door rattled. She realized with a start that nobody had locked it. But who else could possibly be coming here at this hour?

  She blinked in the sudden glare of another candle. A short man had flung open the door. He wore a quilted satin dressing gown, open at the front, his wattled neck purplish against the ruffled shirt below.

  The Vicomte took his hand from her breast. He dropped her skirt but kept an arm around her waist. She tried to pull away from him and discovered that she needed his help to keep steady on her feet.

  She heard laughter. High-pitched, ironic, and oddly affectionate. The Duc’s crazy laugh.

  “But I thought you were too much the egalitarian to take advantage of a servant, Joseph.” The old man was shaking his head in mock exasperation.

  His mouth hung slackly, but his small blue eyes were sharp, even proud.

  “The first pretty girl they’ve hired in ages,” he sighed. “Well, the race goes to the swift, no denying that.” His narrow, bluish lips curled into a satyr’s grin.

  “But I’m glad you learned something during your time away. About seizing…dammit what’s the expression? Seizing the moment? No. Ah yes, seizing the time, that’s it.” He laughed again. “Or seizing…well, whatever there is to be seized.” He leered at Marie-Laure’s torn dress and the bit of breast it revealed.

  “I’ll beat you at chess tomorrow though,” he declared. “Cold consolation, but at least I’ll get you there.

  “You could have latched the door,” he muttered before he slammed the door behind him.

  But he wasn’t gone yet. His laugh rang out again, followed by another voice, in a shamed-sounding mutter. “You here too, Hubert? Too bad—little Joseph has beaten us both. You’d better try a visit to your wife instead and see if you can finally make us an heir. Maybe if you’re good she’ll reward you with a whiff of heliotrope.”

  His disconcerting high-pitched giggles receded down the corridor with him.

  And I, Marie-Laure thought, have been playing a role in a comedy entirely beyond
my own devising.

  Joseph dropped his hand from around Marie-Laure’s waist. At least, he thought, the illness hadn’t robbed his father of his spirit. He grinned, savoring the nastiness with which the old rascal had spat out the word heliotrope.

  But it was a guilty pleasure; he tried to suppress it. And merde! Who’d have predicted that slug-like Hubert would grope his way to her room as well?

  He looked down at the girl at his side, her flushed face a study in embarrassed bewilderment, her arms tight around herself as she endeavored to hide the tear in her dress. Her eyes were wide and startled, shading from gray to blue and then to gray again as she sought to understand what had happened.

  He clenched the hand that had caressed her breast, the hand that wanted desperately to hold and caress it again. His hand could probably deliver a treatise in natural philosophy on her breast’s size and shape, softness and firmness, its nipple hard as a cherry stone between his fingers. He wasn’t sure what had transpired, but it had been as though his hands and mouth had known exactly where to go and what to do—as though, unbeknownst to him, they’d been planning this for months.

  The embrace hadn’t gone as he’d intended; he’d planned something a great deal more polite yet also more theatrical. Something to signal to his father that she was taken, but to reassure her that it was all a bit of an act.

  He certainly hadn’t intended to become so absorbed by the encounter, so caught up by the banal fact of desire. Mon Dieu, he thought, I must have terrified her.

  But she hadn’t seemed terrified.

  What had she thought he’d meant, he wondered. And, for that matter, what had she meant during that moment she’d been in his arms?

  He must have taken her by surprise. Perhaps she’d been half asleep when she’d come to the door. Yes, he told himself, there’d been that dreamlike quality to it, that sweet trustingness. It had felt familiar, inevitable: they’d reached for each other like longtime lovers in the middle of the night.

  Not, he supposed, that any of it mattered. The moment was past, whatever he or she had intended. What was important was that he’d succeeded in protecting her.

  He handed her a shawl hanging from a nail in the wall. She took a deep breath, smiled ruefully, and wrapped it around herself.

  “Thank you.” Her voice had a tremor in it.

  He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  “No,” she said in a firmer voice, holding out her skirt with her free hand as she curtsied, “it’s everything.” She laughed. “Because if you hadn’t come and put off Monsieur le Duc like that, I would have had to punch him. Which would at the very least have cost me my job.”

  He laughed too. But his relief, he realized, was laced with disappointment. In truth he would have liked her to be a little more flustered, even overwhelmed by what had passed between them. As he had been.

  Doubtless, he thought now, all the surprise had been on his side. He’d so wanted her to want him that he’d imagined all sorts of things once he’d had her in his arms. But really, he told himself, it was better that things had worked out this way. And it was clever of her to have figured it out so readily and to have gone along so enthusiastically.

  “My father would have looked most unducal with a broken front tooth,” he said.

  Flushed and breathless, separated by a comfortable twenty inches or so of space, they smiled at each other like actors taking their bows after a successful performance.

  “I apologize,” he said, “for tearing your dress, Mademoiselle Vernet, but I needed evidence that my father would find absolutely convincing. And not having time to arrange things with you beforehand, I worked for economy of detail.”

  Liar, he chided himself. Of course he’d had absolutely no intention of reaching so hungrily and oafishly for her. He adored buttons and laces, intricate hooks and eyes; deftly undressing a lady was one of his specialties. But the provocative little rent in the fabric of her dress—shorter than the length of his thumb—had turned out to be an eloquent piece of stagecraft. It was a clear message in his father’s code, communicating impatient, proprietary desire: a master wouldn’t admit to impediments like a servant’s clothes. A master would simply rip away whatever was in the way of his pleasure, before tossing her on the bed, raising her skirt above her face, and…

  But that was his father’s idea of a tumble with a servant, not his. Of course it wasn’t. He’d torn her dress as a clever theatrical gesture. He’d done what he’d needed to do, and it was time he left off this useless self-scrutiny.

  She nodded thoughtfully.

  “But your brother.” She frowned. “Had you thought that the Comte Monsieur Hubert would also be here?”

  He hadn’t. And he couldn’t have foreseen his father’s nasty comments, echoing down the corridor, in the wing where all the servants slept. He grimaced. She was right to be worried; by morning every servant and peasant within a league of the chateau would know the story.

  And since they were probably already laughing at Hubert’s evident inability to get his wife pregnant, this latest round of jokes would hardly help matters. Poor, prickly Amélie, already so insecure of her authority, would imagine sneers and snickers every time a servant bowed or curtsied to her.

  And she’d blame it all on Marie-Laure.

  “No,” he said, “I hadn’t thought that the Comte would be here. Nor about the, uh, complications for you. I would imagine,” he added, “that even under the best of circumstances my sister-in-law wouldn’t be the easiest person in the world to work for.”

  “She said I could be dismissed for lewd behavior.” Marie-Laure’s voice wavered.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.” A little courtly politesse was all it would take, he thought. “But I’m afraid I can’t transform her into a pleasant employer.”

  She shrugged and he felt a bit abashed. “Pleasant” conditions of employment obviously weren’t uppermost among her concerns right now.

  “Don’t worry,” he repeated, “I promise you won’t lose your job. After all, it’s the least I can do for someone who saved my life.”

  She wished he were not being so courteous, so understanding of her situation. She’d vastly prefer it, she thought, if he were as ill-tempered as he’d been last winter, when he’d lectured her about reading what wasn’t on the page. That unpleasant man might well have taken physical advantage of her. If that man were here with her, the only emotion she’d have to admit to would be outrage.

  But as things stood—with him being so kind, and smiling so affably—well, there was no getting around it: she knew how enthusiastically she’d responded to his caresses. No evading responsibility: her body had been suffused by the same desire she’d felt the night she’d watched him sleep, only—even worse—this time without any of the guilt or surprise.

  He must have felt how much she’d wanted him, she thought, no matter how tactfully he now chose to ignore it. Well, she supposed she’d just have to ignore it as well. Like him, she’d have to pretend it hadn’t happened that way at all.

  “We could hardly let you die on our floor.” The words came out a bit more sharply than she’d intended. “And anyway, it was my brother who saved you.”

  “I hope he’s well,” the Vicomte said. His polite disregard of her bad manners felt like a reproach. “And is he still studying medicine?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “And your father, I trust his health has improved? And what of the bookshop?”

  “My father died last May, Monsieur Joseph. As for the bookshop,” she added, “well, Papa was rather in debt, as it turned out.”

  He grimaced. “Something we have in common. Our fathers being in debt, I mean. But I’m sorry about the loss of your father, Mademoiselle. It seemed to me from my brief stay in your home that you were a very loving family—which, as you can see, is something we do not have in common.”

  She looked away.

  “And you didn’t marry your brother’s
friend after all.” He sounded almost accusing.

  She shook her head. “My father didn’t leave me a dowry.” Which was true enough, if not the real reason she hadn’t married her brother’s friend.

  The real reason she hadn’t married her brother’s friend nodded sympathetically.

  But he wasn’t addressing her properly, she thought.

  “Pardon me, Monsieur Joseph, but perhaps you shouldn’t be calling me ‘Mademoiselle,’” she said. “Now that I work for your family, I mean. Perhaps you should be calling me—”

  “Marie-Laure.” The lines around his mouth deepened as the sounds issued from his lips.

  Oh yes, much better, she thought. Especially the way his tongue had rolled itself around the final r.

  “Marie-Laure,” he repeated firmly, “Marie-Laure and not Marianne. And you don’t have to call me ‘Monsieur Joseph’ when we’re alone together. ‘Joseph’ is fine.”

  “But I might forget myself and call you, uh…‘Joseph’ when others are around.” What a soft, liquid sound it had when you said it slowly.

  “In fact,” he said thoughtfully, “now that we’re lovers, it might be effective if once in a while you forgot yourself in public and did simply call me Joseph.”

  “Now that we’re what?” Her voice rose a full octave; so much for soft, liquid sounds.

  “In effect, I mean.” His eyes danced with pleasure above his smile. He looked like Gilles, she thought, describing a new and wonderful medical procedure.

  “Because now that they’ve noticed you, the only way to keep my father and Hubert out of your bed is to convince them that you’re regularly in my bed.