Merde, he’d been in here too long if he’d begun to ogle the ankles of page boys.
He cleared his throat again, turned back to Jeanne.
“Yes, well, about what du Plessix said…”
His throat was dry. He hadn’t noticed how warm it was in here. As he poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, he felt his eyes stray back to the boy’s ankles.
Upward a bit now. To his legs.
His pretty yellow velvet thighs and neat waist.
The boy parted his legs a bit. Joseph felt a disturbing response between his own legs. He calmed himself by noting that the youth was somewhat oddly built above the waist. A bit bulky, a bit puffy in the chest—as though he were trying to hide or smuggle something under his coat…
Fanning herself slowly, Jeanne had begun to chatter in a low, comforting voice. Something about having taken tea with a distant cousin last Friday.
“A surprisingly cultivated woman, well read in the classics. I confess I’d expected rather less from her, with those hordes of children she’s raising. Which goes to show that one should never depend upon one’s preconceptions…”
Marie-Laure stared at the floor in front of her. It was stone, covered with overlapping Oriental rugs the Marquise must have sent him. Perhaps he should roll up some of the rugs to make the cell cooler.
She raised her eyes an inch or two to the table, to his hands folded upon it.
Her stomach tightened, trembled; her skin tingled as though he were touching her with those deft magician’s hands. But the only way he was touching her was with his eyes. She hadn’t dared look at his face, but there was no mistaking the force of his casual, interrogatory gaze at her thighs. Almost involuntarily, she parted her legs (just the tiniest bit) wider. And yes, she could feel his response—a glinting, glancing warmth, a quickening pulse—his gaze making its curious, delighted way between her legs, up along her belly, around her waist. Suddenly befuddled, his eyes flickered for a moment, his perceptions rendered uncertain by the clumsy shape of her bound breasts.
Think, Joseph. Remember what I wrote. And how you answered. “I held it in my hand all night. Kissed it, fondled it, flicked my tongue over it…”
I imagine your tongue there now. And in another moment I shall scream, I think—I’ll bellow with frustrated desire, to be so visible and yet so hidden away from you like this.
She sighed a tiny inner sigh and lifted her chin. Help me, Joseph. Raise your eyes. Please. I want—I need—to feel your eyes on my neck, my throat.
The Marquise had begun a long story—Joseph couldn’t follow its logic but it seemed to have something to do with the Persian Wars. The warden raised his head: prisoners and their visitors weren’t supposed to discuss politics.
“Those wars were fought a long time ago, Warden.” Jeanne smiled gently. “In Greece, more than two millennia ago.”
The warden shrugged suspiciously, but seemed reassured by names like “Leonidas” and “Thermopylae.” He tried to keep a stern eye on the Marquise, but her voice was monotonous, the motion of her fan hypnotic, the air in the room still and humid.
The boy had tied his cravat around his graceful throat with great elegance, Joseph thought. How smooth his freckled cheeks were, how flushed and downy.
His freckled cheeks indeed.
Look at me, mon amour. Raise your eyes. Part your lips.
He’d have to wait. Her eyes—slower, more persistent than his—had only reached his chest. His shoulders now. Measuring their span. Remembering, tracing the lines of muscle and tendon stretched across them. Caressing him. Patiently, languorously, possessively.
He moved his chair a few inches, to the end of the table, to allow her a better view. For the smallest of instants, he leaned back, miming a yawn, stretching his legs and hips under her gaze. Silly, he supposed, but how delightful to be so silly—like a peacock spreading his tail for his mate. You see, mon amour, how profoundly, how painfully, how massively and spectacularly I want you.
Her lashes flickered, her mouth curved to reach a tiny dimple near its corner. Her cheeks grew pinker; she was sharing his giddy delight as though it were a kiss. Her pelvis, in its lemon-yellow velvet, tilted forward an inch or so. To meet him, to welcome him.
He moved back behind the table. Enough. He couldn’t risk any more of this.
The Marquise had begun a secondary narrative. A few decades of ancient history had passed, it seemed, and now the Greek states were fighting each other in what came to be called the Peloponnesian Wars. On and on she droned, about Athens and Sparta and the demagogue Alcibiades. One could be lulled to sleep by it, Marie-Laure thought, if one didn’t have something wonderful to concentrate on. Like the little notch at Joseph’s upper lip. So like Sophie’s and so unlike anything else in the world. Or the lines at the corners of his mouth, the planes of his cheekbones, the black silk of his hair as it swept behind his ears.
Her eyes widened. There were a few silver strands—just a very few—where before there had only been black.
It wasn’t that they were unattractive. On the contrary, they were devastating; they made him look more elegant, less boyish. But she hadn’t expected them, hadn’t supposed that time could change him in any way.
He shrugged, unsure of what she’d made of his altered appearance. He locked his eyes on hers and stared full out.
She could drown in those black depths, she thought.
He could fly, he thought, through the transparent skies of her eyes.
I love you.
He’d shaped the words inaudibly with his lips, but for Marie-Laure it was as though he’d shouted them from the rooftop. She sighed a tiny rapturous sigh, which would have been just loud enough for the warden to hear if he hadn’t just that moment woken himself from a sound sleep with his own snoring.
“No matter, Warden,” the Marquise assured him with breezy condescension, as though he’d dribbled his wine at a formal dinner party. “Perhaps it’s really too hot a day for ancient history. Still, it remains a joy for some of us, and perhaps I’ll be able to interest you in it on another visit.”
She glanced at her pocket watch. “My word, it’s been more than an hour. How good of you, Monsieur, to allow me the extra time with my husband today.
“But I won’t presume on your hospitality. And so…” She rose and kissed an exhausted-looking Joseph on the cheek.
“Au revoir, chéri. No, don’t get up. I’m sorry to have interrupted your account of Monsieur du Plessix’s visit, but he’ll be coming to dinner tomorrow evening in any case, and of course I’ll see you next week.
“Do try the cherries and triple-time cheese in the little basket, they’re delicious. And all my best to Monsieur le Marquis de Sade. Come, Laurent.”
Graciously, she allowed the blinking warden to lead her and a dazed Marie-Laure through the Bastille’s dark corridors and out into the humid, filthy, and never more glorious streets of Paris.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Her elation ended abruptly when she, along with the Marquise and Mademoiselle Beauvoisin, heard Monsieur du Plessix’s somber news at supper the following night.
For not only had the judge rejected their petition to subpoena the booksellers’ records, he’d forbidden any appeals. So they had no evidence to corroborate Joseph’s account of his whereabouts at the time of the murder—and no possibility of obtaining any.
“It’s a serious blow to our case,” the Marquise said faintly.
“I can’t deny it, Madame.”
“And the only stone left unturned,” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin added, “was the girl who committed suicide.”
“But in the end all we could find out,” Monsieur du Plessix said, “was that she had a brother in service at Carency. Which at first had seemed hopeful—”
“…but came to nothing, since Inspector Lebrun had already established that no one had been away from the chateau on the date of the murder.” The Marquise preferred to finish Monsieur du Plessix’s sentences w
hen it seemed likely he’d draw them out past usefulness.
A gloomy silence descended upon the table.
The only other news—which no one really cared about—was a letter from the Duc and Duchesse de Carency Auvers-Raimond, smugly announcing the birth of a son, Alphonse Louis Charles François, Comte de Carency Auvers-Raimond, and adding that the Duchesse, who was relocating to new apartments at Versailles, would be enchanted to receive the Marquise there, after the tenth of the month.
So she managed that part of her plan even without me, Marie-Laure thought. She shrugged. It wasn’t important. Except as they figured in her nightmares, the Duc and Duchesse didn’t matter anymore.
“Not a word about Joseph,” the Marquise looked up from the letter with a sour face. “But just listen to her going on about her ‘duty,’ as she puts it, ‘to represent her family at the King’s court.’”
Marie-Laure’s stomach suddenly turned queasy, as though hit by an unexpected whiff of peppermint. But there was no peppermint on the table, only a smooth, splendid, ginger-flavored pot de crème and a pot of excellent Chinese tea.
Anyway, she thought, it was clear that her sudden disorientation was intellectual rather than visceral. Some phrase or self-serving tonality in the Duchesse’s letter had set it off. Some stray word had sparked a memory; like electricity trying to jump between two bits of metal.
But what word, what hint, what clue?
I truly believe, Joseph had written in one of his letters, that there’s something I should be remembering. At the time she’d dismissed this as mere anxious muddleheadedness, rather lovable in its way and brought on by the exigencies of their situations. He’d been right, though. And there was something she needed to remember as well.
Because when she did, everything else would make sense.
“I think,” she announced, “that if you all will excuse me I’ll go see to Sophie.”
The Marquise’s eyes were gentle. “Of course, chérie.”
She walked slowly up the stairs, her fingers trailing over the iron balustrade’s intricate convolutions. Twists and turns. Reflections and repetitions.
A clever reader could tease out a story’s subtlest meanings, distinguish figure from ground, discern an urgent message from frivolous chatter.
She hoped so, anyway. Her head began to ache with trying to sort it out; so many people had said so many things since she’d ventured outside the walls of Montpellier.
Mustering as much calm as she could, she forced herself to listen to the clamor of voices in her memory. To hear it dispassionately, and to try to catch the pattern.
I should have killed him, someone had said.
While someone else had reported having taken care—completely taken care—of what? Whatever it had been, Nicolas had entered it into his meticulous double-accounting system.
Follow Nicolas’s example, she told herself. Read events as Nicolas recorded them—with a double meaning, a true one for yourself and a sham one for the enemy. Without a double set of meanings, there was nothing but endless, fathomless repetition.
She grimaced, passing through a mirror-lined corridor.
But if one could grasp the pattern…
If one could find the thin thread to lead oneself out of the maze…
Louise had said something.
No.
Louise had almost said something. And then she’d clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from telling Marie-Laure what Marie-Laure wasn’t supposed to hear.
In the blue bedchamber, Claudine had been listening for Sophie’s cry. She helped Marie-Laure unfasten her dress and stays.
“Thank you,” Marie-Laure said, pulling on one of Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s hand-me-down silk peignoirs, “And you can go now, Claudine. Sophie and I will be fine.”
Last winter she hadn’t cared what Louise had almost said. She’d only wanted to be reassured that Joseph would still want her.
It was a relief to be out of her stays. Her breasts were uncomfortably hard and taut; the baby would be waking soon. She allowed herself to be lulled by familiar natural sensations—those mysterious compounds of instinct, desire, and practice that people liked to call “natural.” She corrected herself: nature was a matter of instinct, desire, practice, and luck; other scullery maids mightn’t be lucky enough to keep their babies.
Which made it all the more infuriating that the Duchesse had chosen to desert poor little Comte Alphonse Louis whatever-it-was. And that she’d had the gall to announce that “duty” compelled her to go to Paris, with only Arsène and Hortense for support.
With only…
Sophie began to cry.
“Yes, yes,” Marie-Laure called to her.
“Absolutely, chérie,” she cooed as she lifted her from the white basketwork cradle where she slept, “just as soon as we let a little air into this stuffy room.”
Opening the doors that led out to the balcony, she caught a vague glimpse of something stirring in the shadows.
Some leaves, perhaps. The Marquise had said the wisteria needed trimming. The vines had become almost tropical in this hot weather; someone could climb the walls by holding on to their woody stems.
And someone had.
A tall, dark-haired man stepped in from the balcony.
For a dazed moment she thought it must be Joseph. But of course it wasn’t Joseph. It was—ah, a tall, dark man. Of course. The Baron’s murderer.
And what Louise had been going to say was: “We wondered how long you’d pretend it wasn’t so, like Arsène’s sister.”
Arsène’s sister Manon.
All the servants at the chateau must have known about Manon, she thought. All of them except for the literate girl from the city, the one who wasn’t party to their secrets—and who had been too absorbed in her own romance to notice what was going on.
If I’d been wiser, Marie-Laure thought guiltily, I might have been able to help Joseph.
Arsène looked dreadful. She could hardly recognize the handsome, circumspect footman from the chateau. His skin was livid, cheeks sunken, teeth bared. A knife blade glinted at his hand.
Clearly, his revenge on the Baron hadn’t satisfied him. Holding the baby close, she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Nothing good, she decided.
His eyes seemed to soften for a moment, though, when they fell on Sophie. Thank heaven, she thought. Somehow she was sure he wouldn’t harm Sophie.
“The baby’s hungry, Arsène.” She tried to keep her voice casual, offhand. “Let me feed her.”
He nodded.
“But don’t try screaming for help.” He locked the door to the hallway.
She shook her head, sat in her rocking chair, loosened her dressing gown, and lifted Sophie to her breast.
Too restless to sit, he planted himself a few feet in front of her, a dark looming presence, his knife and eyes glinting unsteadily, like the light of a guttering candle.
“And so you’re installed at Versailles with the Duchesse?” Absurd, she thought, to be making polite conversation. Still, perhaps he needed to talk. The trouble was that she’d never really spoken to him before. Among the clatter and hum of the dessert kitchen, he’d been a silent, circumspect, and rather straitlaced presence.
“Versailles must be quite a change for you,” she added. “A change from the chateau at Carency, I mean.”
He shrugged. “No change. Just a deeper circle of hell.”
He cast a contemptuous glance over her pretty dressing gown. “But you’ve done rather well for yourself, haven’t you?”
“The Marquise is very generous.” She stroked Sophie’s flower-petal cheek with a fingertip.
“Her.” He sneered. “I’ve heard the gossip about her. Her and the other one, too. What sorts of filthy things did you have to do with them to get them to be so generous?
“But perhaps you enjoyed it,” he continued. “Perhaps you were as shameless with them as you were with your precious Vicomte.”
She supposed she h
ad been shameless with Joseph. Well, love was shameless, wasn’t it?
“My sister wasn’t like that,” he told her.
He stopped, his eyes betraying the awful fear that perhaps his sister had been like that—perhaps she’d been worse—with the Baron Roque. Marie-Laure kept her eyes on his face, waiting until he could speak again.
“But at least,” he continued, “Manon had the…the decency…the modesty…the respect for a brother who loved her more than anything in the world…”
He seemed to have lost the ability to speak.
“To kill herself.” Marie-Laure finished his sentence when it became clear that he couldn’t.
“To kill herself rather than tell you that the Baron Roque had gotten her pregnant.” She said it as gently as she could, allowing herself to feel something of the grief beneath his hatred.
For a moment he looked almost grateful that she’d said it. And then a shudder of unspeakable rage contorted his features.
“She wasn’t a whore like you,” he said, “flaunting your happiness for everyone to see and then—even after he deserted you—still so proud of carrying his bastard.”
“He didn’t desert me. He would have come to help me. If…if you hadn’t planted the ring on him.” She felt rather foolish, having taken so much time to figure that part out.
He chuckled. “When the inspector came to search us, Nicolas told me to hide it in the forest. All right, I said, all right, it’s all taken care of. He’d be furious—all those silly fools would be furious to know what I really did with it.”
Ah. Somehow it mattered to her, that only Arsène was responsible for Joseph being in the Bastille. Not Nicolas, Bertrande, Louise…
He snorted; her relief must have been obvious. “Oh yes, they all wanted to help you. They’d sit around the dessert kitchen, jabbering about you and your Vicomte like it was a fairy story with a happy-ever-after ending. I kept trying to make them understand that anybody who consorts with aristocrats is a fool or a traitor.”
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