With your nose, idiot.
The draughts of air she took in were freighted with precious private smells. No wonder she’d felt shy about it, she thought: the intimacy and audacity of the act were dizzying, overwhelming. As was—she realized a moment later—her growing sense of her power over him.
She sucked and pulled. Teasingly, she flicked at him with her tongue as she loved him to do at her breast.
He groaned. She moved her mouth, her lips, her tongue over him more confidently. Quickly at first, and then as slowly as she was able. And then quickly again—rhythmically, she could feel her breasts bouncing—until he began to buck his hips and to cry out. He’d taken hold of her hair to guide the movement of her head, but there was nothing he could do, she thought, to control her wanton, arrogant tongue.
Scenes from his harem story flashed through her mind. Was she leader or follower, imperious lady or humblest concubine kneeling abject on aching knees? She couldn’t tell. Perhaps it simply didn’t matter. Or perhaps—in certain circumstances—it was possible to be both at once.
His cries became louder, harsh now. She gasped and shuddered, her body locked between his thighs, his sex buried deep at the back of her mouth. She hugged his waist and widened her throat just the slightest bit more—to receive, to swallow the hot, salty fluid that exploded from him.
She collapsed on his belly.
“Oh Marie-Laure,” he sighed, reaching down for her, drawing her beside him on the pillows, and cradling her in his arms. “Oh Marie-Laure.”
“A letter for you, Joseph,” Hubert announced at tea a few afternoons later, “with a very impressive seal on it. And nothing”—he barely looked at his wife—“for you, Madame.”
Nodding curtly, he took the letters from the silver tray the tall, silent footman held out to him. “That will be all. You needn’t stand here gawking.”
“The one addressed to me looks official,” he added with a frown, “and will probably oblige me to do something tedious.”
Joseph recognized the familiar handwriting on the letter his brother handed him.
“It’s from Jeanne,” he said.
“The Marquise de Machery,” he added a moment later when it had become clear that his brother and sister-in-law had forgotten the Christian name of the woman they’d betrothed him to.
“Ah.” The Duchesse’s saccharine smile did little to mask her disquiet. Joseph knew she wouldn’t sleep easily until he’d been delivered to his fate, reciting his marriage vows at the large ceremony in a Paris cathedral, with some of the highest members of the King’s court in attendance.
“How congenial,” she said, “a letter from the bride. I remember how nervous I was, after the contract had been signed, sending my first little scented note to my intended husband…”
Her anxiety made her voluble. The wedding would mark her debut in Parisian society; she was having elaborate gowns prepared, and new suits for Hubert as well.
Joseph thought she’d probably make a success of it. Although still a harridan at home, nowadays she was quite presentable in public, having picked up some social graces from her friends—or allies—among the local gentry. Whatever her private struggles with Hubert, it was clear that she’d gained in confidence and social stature since becoming Duchesse. Hubert had been right about her will and energy No doubt she’d exploit every social opportunity this Paris wedding provided; perhaps she’d even manage an invitation to Versailles.
He nodded politely while Hubert grimaced at the memory of the “little scented note.”
Of course, Jeanne’s letter wouldn’t be a shy missive from a terrified girl being bartered into marriage. It would be an easy, erudite communication from an old friend.
He broke the seal and unfolded the heavy paper.
The letter was written in a large, clear, schoolgirlish handwriting, with ornate, imperiously drawn capitals.
Mon cher ami,
I miss you and so does all of Paris. How delightful that you’ll be among us again so soon…
He smiled. Her writing style was unmistakable: hyperbolic, magisterial, and always entertaining. An astute political observer and a waspish gossip, she always knew what the leading intellectual lights of the city were talking about. And she liked to pepper her news with bits picked up from her actor friends at the Comédie-Française.
…no one knows whether the company will be permitted to perform this marvelous play. The King changes his mind every day, it seems. Some mornings he wakes up emboldened to allow an entertainment that dares to make the same jokes everybody makes (only, of course, with a great deal more flash and brio). And sometimes he’s sure that a simple comedy will bring the walls of the Bastille crashing down. And so he renews his censorship of The Marriage of Figaro yet again.
Ah yes, he thought. It would be amusing to be in Paris again. Oh no, he thought next. He winced. No. He didn’t want to go. Not now, anyway.
He’d expected to be ready to leave by now. After all, it had been four weeks (four weeks and a day!) since that delicious morning in the barn.
Absurd—four weeks was a lifetime in a libertine’s career, even a libertine who’d broken the rule against revealing his inner thoughts to the woman he was bedding. Four weeks with the same woman was a disgrace; certainly by now the inevitable slaking of desire ought to have set in.
For the last night or two he’d been examining himself for signals; like an imaginary invalid obsessed with bad humors, he’d been sure the decline was imminent. Pacing the floor or leaning back among the disheveled bedclothes, he’d scanned his emotions for the familiar signs: a creeping sense of tedium, a deadening of affect, a nagging feeling that he would have been better entertained spending the evening with a good book. In short, the complex of symptoms that Monsieur X had described as “the metallic taste of a stale affair.”
But he hadn’t found any of that (and anyway, if he were to read a good book, he’d surely want to know Marie-Laure’s opinion of it). His mouth didn’t taste anything like metal—it tasted like young red wine. His desire hadn’t weakened. If anything, he wanted her more than he had before.
None of which made the least bit of sense to him; the storms of emotion he weathered these past weeks had left him stranded, marooned without a compass on the shoals of his desire. He ought to take a leaf from Monsieur X’s book, he thought. Cut off the entanglement—and while you’re at it, Joseph, trim that awful metaphor about shipwrecks and compasses. Of course, the entanglement would end soon enough in any case. Shrugging away his confusion, he turned back to Jeanne’s letter.
…the prospect of our marriage has made my life a great deal easier; Uncle still frets about the reputation I’ve earned, but even he has become convinced that we’ve contrived a way to silence the gossips—or at least divert them to more acceptable slanders. It’s humiliating to have one’s affairs dictated in this way, but I confess that I’m in your debt, mon vieux, and will do whatever I can to make your life as agreeable as possible. We shall have to find someone for you to amuse yourself with, of course. Or is a series of someones still more your style? Well, even if it is now, it won’t be so forever.
Could it be true, he wondered, that he no longer wanted “a series of someones”?
And naturally (the letter continued) I look forward with keen anticipation to the moment when Monsieur X stops being the proverbial bad boy and succumbs, like the ordinary run of frail humanity, to love’s exigencies…
Damn Jeanne anyway. He was happy that things were working out so well for her, but even so, it didn’t give her license to tease him.
Even if she’d meant it fondly.
And expressed it with such infuriating precision.
He looked up from the letter and stared into the fire.
“Nothing wrong, I hope?” His sister-in-law had been watching him while he read. He pretended not to hear her. Let her worry, he thought, at least for a few moments more. Let her fret that her scheme might be encountering some resistance.
“Well, there’s
a great deal wrong with the communication I’ve received,” Hubert burst in. “This damn police inspector has come all the way from Montpellier and insists upon seeing me early tomorrow morning—can you believe that the incompetent ninnies still haven’t found the Baron Roque’s killer? At the height of grouse-hunting season, too: the weather will be perfect.”
His voice had risen to a high whine. “What’s the use of being Duc,” he demanded, “if I can’t hunt when I want to?”
The Duchesse swiveled her head toward her husband. “I’ll receive the inspector, Monsieur. By all means, do go kill a few more little creatures tomorrow morning. But about your fiancée, Joseph.” She turned to him again. “I do trust that she’s well.
“You needn’t be troubled,” she continued, “if she seems a bit hesitant. A little nervousness, you know, even a hint of vaporishness, is quite normal for a girl in her situation.”
Amusing to try to imagine Jeanne with a fit of the vapors.
“She’s quite well, Madame,” he murmured. “In fact, she’s in excellent form—at least in her letter.”
“Whereas, when it comes to her real physical form,” Hubert crowed, “we know she’s somewhat less than excellent.”
Delighted that nothing would interfere with his grouse hunting, he tried to extend his witticism. “Or more than excellent, I suppose one could say. Well, she’s fat anyway.” His braying laugh was loud enough to compensate for his companions’ embarrassed silence.
“Give me the inspector’s letter,” his wife said, “so I can see what he wants of us. You say he’s investigating a murder? Well, it might be a diversion at least.”
…but I must go, dear Joseph. (It was the final page of the Marquise’s letter.) My garden needs hoeing and this evening Madame Helvetius has planned a gathering in Ambassador Franklin’s honor. A charming man, one is tempted to call him “Papa” as his intimates do…
His eye slid down the page of last-minute exclamations and well-wishes. And then back up to her observations about Monsieur X and “love’s exigencies.”
He stood up, bowing to his brother and sister-in-law. “A thousand pardons, Monsieur and Madame,” he murmured, “but I must leave you to each other’s charming devices. I need to…”
He didn’t know what he needed to do. Walk, ride—or plunge into the river and swim until the cold water calmed his blood. For he’d just had an idea that was either completely wonderful or entirely crazy. He wasn’t sure which, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to puzzle it out among the present dreary company.
As though drunk on his thoughts, he stumbled out of the room, after waiting what felt like a week for an uncharacteristically slow Arsène to open the door for him.
The impending journey—just three days hence now—meant an enormous amount of packing for the servants, not to speak of washing, ironing, and mending. Madame Amélie’s wardrobe would fill seven trunks. Small items like jewelry needed to be inventoried and packed carefully. The necklace the old Duchesse had promised for the bride would be carried in Monsieur Joseph’s pocket during the nine-day coach ride to Paris. Lisette, the old Duchesse’s chambermaid, had invited Louise and Bertrande for a glance at it that morning while her mistress was at her prayers—for she’d be returning to the convent the next morning.
“The colors, the sparkles,” Louise marveled later in the dessert kitchen, “it’s like bits of a cathedral window I once saw in Aix. Those blue stones are like wearing a piece of paradise against your throat.”
Even Bertrande was awestruck. “I should think that if you sold it you’d get enough to feed all of France.”
“It’s too beautiful to sell,” Louise said dreamily. “It’s something for a man to give to someone he loves.”
“Instead of to a fat old thing he’s been forced to marry,” Bertrande snapped.
“Shhhhh!” It sounded rather harsh in Louise’s mouth, but the other two women knew what it meant. And sympathetic silence reigned as a pale, exhausted-looking Marie-Laure came in from the scullery for a cup of reheated coffee to help her through the workday.
Poor thing, thought Louise, I wish she’d confide in me, but she thinks I’m too pious to bear hearing the truth of these past weeks. And perhaps she doesn’t know how she weeps in her sleep, the hours before daylight.
She’ll get over him, thought Lisette, and all the better for her, too. And next time she’ll be wiser and get more than a few scraps of lace and velvet out of Monsieur Whoever-It-Is.
As long as she’s been careful, thought Bertrande, letting herself remember, just for an instant, the child she’d left, one gray early morning long ago, on the steps of an orphanage. But the memory was too sharp to be endured for more than an instant, so she stood and quit the room, dragging Louise with her, and scolding her soundly for the poor state of the carpets in the chateau’s north wing.
It’s ending. Perhaps it’s already over.
The flat words seemed to accompany every breath Marie-Laure took, lodged like something hard in her chest. Was it her imagination, she thought as he had something difficult to tell her?
Perhaps, she thought, he doesn’t want to see me anymore—perhaps, in his mind, he’s already living with his new wife in Paris.
Well, she could hardly disapprove of that. He should be thinking of her and not of me, she told herself; even a loveless, arranged marriage deserves some respect.
Not that he hadn’t been ardent or energetic last night. On the contrary: he’d plowed her until she was raw. Which was exactly the trouble. Whatever else was inspiring him, his lovemaking didn’t have the esprit she’d become accustomed to, the sweet attentiveness or sly wit.
He’s not thinking about me anymore, she thought. Perhaps I shouldn’t visit him tonight.
But she knew that she would. For at this point in time—only two more nights before his departure—she’d settle for whatever she could get.
The interview with the police inspector had been as diverting as the Duchesse had hoped: diverting and even—in a louche sort of way—rather exhilarating. “Yes, Monsieur Lebrun,” she’d murmured, “of course my husband and I knew the Baron Roque. A very old family you know. It was a great shock.”
She’d allowed her shoulders to slump, as though weighed down by the magnitude of the crime. It was difficult, she told him, for a person of sensibility to hear such sordid things, from someone so close to the official investigation.
And was it true about the blood in the crème brûlée?
The inspector nodded gravely. Mais oui, Madame, in that respect it had been just as the scandal sheets had reported. But in other ways it was even more interesting…
Basking in her attention, he’d painted a vivid picture of the crime, pausing only for sips of coffee and bites of excellent pastry. Horrible, the Duchesse agreed, to think of the Baron gagged and bound to his chair as he slowly bled to death from a hideous stump of a wrist; his murderer had severed the hand from his right arm.
She nodded. The Baron had been the vilest of old-guard snobs, with a corrosive sense of humor. His jokes about her own less-than-aristocratic forebears had been repeated in high circles, and everyone (though not a common police inspector, she suspected) knew that he’d sworn never to call upon her.
“Didn’t he have a bodyguard?”
“Yes, and a huge hulking professional of a fellow too. Who’d suddenly been taken ill that day. They’d even had the doctors—the bodyguard had been vomiting horribly.”
“And the hand was never found?”
“No, Madame la Duchesse. Which may provide a clue, for he always wore a brilliant ruby ring on that hand—we’re expecting the ring to turn up at a fence sooner or later. We suspect a crime of passion, given the Baron’s record of amours, but we’re not ruling out simple theft. It’s a most valuable ring.”
“But how does one cut off a hand?”
“Slowly and most painfully in this case, Madame. With a knife, it seems, though the weapon has never been found. All we know is that a tall, da
rk man was seen fleeing the Baron’s Montpellier townhouse soon after the murder.”
The truth was that the police had made no progress at all. The case, which had dragged on now for more than half a year, had become a severe embarrassment.
It didn’t help matters that the Baron had been hated by his servants and peasants. The murderer must have had some help from the household staff; at the very least, the police surmised, his servants had looked the other way. Nobody had been very forthcoming under interrogation, but they’d all worked up convincing alibis nonetheless.
The Baron had no close family. And his distant relatives, all of them squabbling to lay claim to his property, could all prove they’d been many leagues away from Montpellier the day of the murder. A chambermaid had died a week or so before, but that had proved to be a suicide, not a murder, and didn’t seem to have any bearing on the case. So there were virtually no clues to what looked embarrassingly like a miniature revolution.
“Which is why, Madame la Duchesse, we’ve been investigating common people who might have a grudge against the Baron. And given our suspicions of complicity by his household staff, we’re particularly interested in servants.
“Of course,” he added apologetically, “we hadn’t thought we’d have to take the investigation to this side of the Rhone, but…”
Unfortunately she’d had no information for him. No, all her servants had been accounted for, the day of the murder. Well, surely she’d know, Monsieur, if any of them had been off to visit family members or anything like that. And the only newcomer to her household was an insignificant girl in the scullery—quite common enough, but certainly not the tall, dark man he was looking for. But she’d certainly keep a sharp eye out—and yes, it would be quite permissible to interrogate the household staff. He might even search their quarters and their possessions. She, and of course her husband, were leaving for Paris, quite soon—a wedding, very charming, yes, another very old family—but she’d tell her general manager to cooperate in any way he could.
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