“My brother,” she heard herself saying pleasantly, “is in complete agreement with you.
“But Nicolas supported you, in any case,” she added. “At least enough to lie about where you’d been at the time of the murder.”
He nodded. “He wrote down in his records that I was sick that week. Other fellows did my work for me. They’re good, I’m not saying they’re not, but they’re weak. They understood my business with the Baron Roque, but they were soft on their own precious Vicomte. I couldn’t make them understand that it’s all the same thing.”
For a moment there was just the sound of her chair rocking back and forth, while she shifted Sophie to the other breast.
“And so you think I should suffer as deeply as your sister did,” she said.
“You’ll never suffer as she did,” he told her. “You’ll die quickly. I don’t have time for anything else.”
She tried to concentrate upon the chair’s comforting rhythms, and on keeping her breathing slow and even. Sophie continued to suck, her big trusting eyes trained steadily on Marie-Laure’s face.
Oddly, even Arsène calmed down a bit.
“She was a bit feebleminded, you know, though by and large people didn’t notice it.” His voice became confiding, conversational.
“They only saw how beautiful she was. Statuesque, I guess you’d say. I was proud of her, of course, but I was scared too. I didn’t want her to work for the Baron; I tried to get the Gorgon to hire her, but of course she wouldn’t, and of course the Baron wasn’t going to hire me—he wouldn’t want anybody to look out for her… I learned later,” he said flatly, “that the Baron used to joke about her with his cronies. Said he’d found the perfect woman—no mind at all to interfere with his pleasures.”
She must have made some sort of outraged sound. He paused, stone-faced.
“But when her pregnancy began to show more than he found attractive”—his voice became harsher—“he gave her a gold louis and threw her out. She used the money to buy arsenic.”
She stopped rocking and stared at him, ignoring Sophie’s restless whimpers.
“The baby’s had enough,” he told her then. “Burp her and put her in her cradle.”
She looked down at the baby in surprise. He was right; Sophie had had enough.
“I learned all about babies,” he told her, “when I was eight. I fed Manon with a bottle of goat’s milk after our mother died. She wouldn’t have survived without me—not that our father would have cared, or even noticed.” He shrugged. “And not, I suppose, that it mattered in the long run.”
Absurdly, he handed her a towel to protect the shoulder of her robe. “I’ve been a servant for too long,” he said with a grimace, “but I’m finished with all that now.”
Hearing his story had drained her of energy. But it seemed that her only hope was to keep him talking.
“And then what will you do?” she asked. “Besides be a servant, I mean.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached out a powerful hand. She shrank back and held the baby tightly, while he methodically stroked an index finger along Sophie’s little spine, bringing a string of bubbles up and out of the baby’s mouth.
“Now put her into her basket and kiss her good night,” he said.
His voice was cold, final, and quiet.
Good night.
Slowly crossing the room to Sophie’s basket, she breathed the clean, innocent baby smell, all milk and lilies of the valley. Good night, Sophie Madeleine, little cookie, cabbage, angel—funny, all the names you gave a baby when you cuddled and cooed to it. She knelt to kiss the little face, already half asleep; to stroke, one last time, the tiny eyebrow with its precise flaring arch. She felt his eyes on her from across the room. She heard his shallow, excited breathing—his eagerness to destroy the girl who’d gotten away with what his sister had died for.
Good night, Sophie.
All over Paris, bells tolled eleven. Sophie stirred, whimpered a bit, and then closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Marie-Laure raised her head from the basket and turned back to face Arsène. Was she imagining it, or was there a shadow on the balcony behind him?
She had to keep his attention fixed on her.
She spoke more loudly. “The misery won’t go away after you kill me, you know. You won’t bring her back.”
Yes, there was definitely someone out there. A man had climbed up while the bells had been ringing. Clever of him, she thought wildly; no one had heard him over the sounds of the bells. But how ever had he managed to escape? No matter. She was sure. The shadow that was rapidly becoming flesh and creeping silently behind Arsène, raising his knife (but how had he managed to get a knife?) was clearly…
“Don’t kill him, Joseph!”
It must have been me who screamed that, she thought.
For a tiny slice of time, she could see a spark of surprise in Joseph’s eyes—before Arsène whirled around, all a blur, to lunge for him. Joseph leaped back. They circled each other warily, thrusting with their knives, knocking over furniture as they went. Sophie began to scream, and Marie-Laure ran to the basket, pushing it into a corner and shielding it behind her.
Advance and repel. Thrust and parry. Joseph fought coldly, elegantly, his moves like dance figures, while Arsène lumbered about, single-minded, outraged. Their styles were so ill-matched that she couldn’t tell which of them had the advantage.
She heard cries and pounding at the door Arsène had locked. The Marquise, Mademoiselle Beauvoisin. And every servant in the house.
She inched away from her corner, carefully drawing Sophie’s basket with her. But it was a slow business, because the two men were moving closer to her now and she needed to keep herself between them and the screaming baby.
A surprisingly quick move from Arsène; a thin red slash appeared on Joseph’s cheek.
Was it deep? Was Arsène gaining ground?
Joseph’s expression was impassive. The pounding at the door had stopped. Perhaps—she hoped—they’d gone to get the police.
The two men were on the floor now, wrestling, grunting, both of them smeared with blood, their knives terrible at such proximity. There must be a way to help Joseph, she thought: perhaps a well-placed vase to Arsène’s head, as in a comedy. No, this wasn’t comedy. She saw Joseph’s hand squeezing Arsène’s wrist, trying to get him to drop his knife. Was he strong enough?
An angry grunt from Arsène now—Joseph must know something about dirty fighting, she thought—and the knife clattered to the floor, with a bloody, panting Joseph pinning Arsène beneath him and clearly possessing the advantage.
The relief that flooded through her was oddly shaded with resentment. Of course he has the advantage, she thought, he was born with the advantage.
She picked up Sophie and opened the door. Not a moment too soon: a police inspector was aiming his pistol at the lock. The Marquise had a poker in her hand, while Mademoiselle Beauvoisin had armed herself with a curling iron. There were a few more policemen, Monsieur du Plessix cowering behind them.
“Arsène has confessed to killing the Baron Roque,” she told the police inspector quietly. She opened her mouth again, to say something else, she supposed, but there were no more words. Just tears—for Manon and the brother who had loved her so much.
The other policemen were leading him away now. He stopped in front of Marie-Laure for a moment.
“She was afraid to tell me that she was pregnant.” His eyes, in his crumpled face, were dark and half-dead with awful guilt. “But I wouldn’t have minded,” he said. “I would have forgiven her, I would have cared for her and the baby too. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Arsène,” she answered. “I know that absolutely.”
He turned and allowed them to lead him down the corridor.
Flanked by the Marquise and Mademoiselle Beauvoisin, Joseph stood with the inspector in the center of the room. It seemed that he’d figured out the story for himself, in the Bastille, aft
er Jeanne’s last visit with (he glanced at the inspector), with her new footman.
“I have to arrest you again, of course,” the inspector told him, “for escaping. Cleverly done, by the way—they’ll have to do something about the inadequacy of their procedures.
“And you’re damn lucky you didn’t kill that fellow, Monsieur le Vicomte, because his confession will quickly get you off.”
“I was frantic when I realized my sister-in-law was bringing him to Versailles,” Joseph said. “My plan was to come and warn you, Jeanne, so you could keep Marie-Laure safe. But then I saw the vines, growing up the wall to Marie-Laure’s room and…” He grinned. “She and I have rather a tradition of late-night visits, you see.
“I’d have killed him for sure”—the grin half disappeared into the handkerchief Joseph held against his bloody cheek—“if Marie-Laure hadn’t screamed not to.”
“But you’ll have to excuse me for a moment, Inspector,” he said now, “while I’m properly introduced to my daughter.”
He peered down at Sophie, but she’d fallen back to sleep, and he had to content himself with a few shy kisses on the top of her head, gently wrapping his arms around mother and baby both.
The solidity of his body was overwhelming. She pressed against him, almost horrified by the thrill of arousal that shot through her belly and thighs even as she wept.
The Marquise seemed to have ushered everyone else out of the room.
“Shhh, shhh, mon amour,” Joseph murmured, “it’s over, it’s all over.”
But it wasn’t over.
Don’t kill him! Everyone would think how clearheaded she’d been to warn Joseph not to kill the man whose confession would prove his innocence. Only she would know that at that moment she’d had no thought except to protect poor Arsène.
It goes deep, she thought, this solidarity with common people like yourself—and this resentment of aristocratic privilege.
Could it go deeper than love?
She stood alone with Sophie in her arms, long after the tears had dried and the inspector had taken Joseph away.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Stop fidgeting, Marie-Laure,” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin scolded her. “Just hold your arms out, to get them out of the way, oui, comme ça, while Claudine reties the bows down the front of your gown.”
She spread her arms obediently, wondering whether she could raise them higher than shoulder level and finding that she couldn’t. The stays Claudine had laced her into were too constricting, compressing her waist and shoulders while they lifted her breasts like cream cakes on a tray.
She surveyed herself in one of the blue bedroom’s tall mirrors. At least one lifelong wish had been granted her. Her freckles had quite disappeared; the layers of powder and rouge had transformed her face into the cool, pleasant countenance of a doll.
A more interesting wish was soon to come true as well. She was going to meet Ambassador Benjamin Franklin. Well, if he really showed up at the reception the Marquise was giving this afternoon. He’d promised to try his best to attend, if his gouty leg and the stone in his bladder were not too painful.
The party was for Joseph, who was due to be released from the Bastille today. The state had withdrawn its case against him, but he’d still had to go through a small trial and acquittal for having escaped. The Marquise thought he’d be home by early evening, to join the celebration.
“We’re going to invite everybody,” she’d proclaimed, “who is anybody. And everybody we like as well. We’ll begin in the late afternoon, we’ll have a good, light supper, and then fireworks in the garden.”
But Ambassador Franklin would outshine even the fireworks—or Doctor Franklin, as people liked to call him in Paris, in deference to his scientific achievements. The flirtatious ladies who surrounded him wherever he went also liked to call him Papa. Marie-Laure thought of her own papa. How thrilled he’d have been to meet the great man, she thought. And how amazed by the gown she was wearing. If you could really say she was wearing it; perhaps the complicated construction was wearing her.
Mademoiselle Beauvoisin had announced a few days ago that she was dissatisfied with the light silk ensemble she’d ordered.
“The apricot color does strange things to me.” But perhaps Marie-Laure would like to try it. Marie-Laure supposed this was as tactful a way as any to supply her with clothes for the reception. Or perhaps simply to keep her busy, so she wouldn’t expire of the fidgets while awaiting Joseph’s release.
She’d already spent two hours under the hands of the hairdresser, part of the time with Sophie at her breast, while he gushed over the Rousseauesque charm of coifing a nursing mother.
“And your hair, Mademoiselle…”
He’d have given anything, he told her, to arrange it in one of the grand high styles of a few years ago, when he’d used a portable ladder to get to the top of the soaring edifices he’d erected upon women’s heads. Ah, the accessories, such a shame that they were no longer à la mode—the plumes, the flags, the clipper ships riding high atop towering waves of hair; he remembered with particular pride a lady who’d carried an entire village at the crest of her mountainous coiffure.
He swept some of Marie-Laure’s hair up—not too high, he assured her, merely a little tease, a hint of nostalgia, une bagatelle, une petite plaisanterie—in order to set off the long curls around her neck and shoulders. Very jeune fille, girlish and ingenue, he declared. A veritable milkmaid’s coiffure: the Queen herself was wearing just such simple styles these days. “So fresh, so naive, so…” he hesitated, pondered, gave a final, expert twist to one last flirtatious spiral of hair and brought his fluttering hands down to rest at his sides.
And as he’d clearly exhausted his store of adjectives, he concluded by repeating the very first one he’d used. “Voilà, Mademoiselle, it’s so, so very…Rousseauesque, n’est-ce pas?”
Mademoiselle Beauvoisin had pronounced the “milkmaid’s coiffure” a great success. And perfectly in keeping with a gown that might seem monstrously elaborate to Marie-Laure but was actually quite a bit simpler and more girlish than last year’s styles.
At any rate, the dressmaker had endeavored to create that impression. The apricot silk opened below the waist to reveal cascades of dazzling white ruffled underskirt, with only a whisper of embroidery at the bottom to echo the blue of the big floppy bows that closed the bodice.
“Just what every milkmaid in France tosses on in the morning,” Marie-Laure murmured, “when she sallies forth to bid the cows bonjour.”
She turned carefully in front of the mirror. The blue satin slippers pinched just a little—hardly enough to distract her from the iron constriction at her waist and belly—but she adored their high spool-shaped heels and delicate buckles.
“I do look nice,” she marveled, “and not so dwarfish as usual. But what a lot of work it took.”
“Too much work,” the Marquise appeared in the doorway, rather grim-faced under her own layers of rouge and corseting, but imposing in deep green silk with a faint pink Oriental print woven through it.
“I’ve got to attend to the food,” she said, “which is much more rewarding than all this tiresome primping, but I wanted to see how pretty you looked before I went down to the kitchen.”
“And I’m going to be late,” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin interjected, “unless I simply toss on my own gown. Come help me, Claudine. No, don’t feel guilty, Marie-Laure,” she called over her shoulder. “An actress can always dress quickly.”
Marie-Laure smiled shyly at the Marquise, who was studying the details of her attire with unusual interest.
“Very nice indeed. But you need something bright at your neck.”
Something winked and sparkled between her fingers. “Try this. It was a gift from Joseph’s mother.”
Marie-Laure stared at the finely wrought chain and its graceful pendants of starry diamonds, cloudy opals, and sapphires like the sky an hour before dawn. “Oh no, Madame,” she whispered, “I couldn’t
.
“I mean,” she added, trying to turn her confusion into a joke, “do you think it accords with the simple jeune fille effect I’m supposed to be creating?”
“That, I couldn’t possibly tell you. But I think it accords extremely well with the depth and resolve of your character. So you will please oblige me by wearing it.”
“Of course, Madame,” she turned, bending her head so the Marquise could fasten the clasp. “Thank you, Madame.”
“It’s yours, Marie-Laure, in exchange for what you’ve taught me about love.”
Of course she couldn’t really keep it. Still, it was a thrill even to borrow such a necklace.
Alone in front of the mirror, she took a last, long, appraising look at herself. How lovely to be slender around the middle again. Her waist rose from the profusion of silk skirts and petticoats like the stem of a flower. It seemed almost too narrow, too delicate to support the swell of her all-but-bare breasts, the jewels blazing coldly at her throat, the copper curls spilling down her naked shoulders to her ruched and ruffled sleeves.
Cinderella dressed for the ball. She shrugged her shoulders (the tightly laced stays allowed one to do that, at any rate) and grimaced at her fanciful idea. She might imagine herself a Cinderella, but she’d never marry her prince.
Because life wasn’t a fairy tale—nor were wishes granted in threes. She’d been given a day without freckles and a chance to meet the ambassador, but as for happily ever after (Don’t kill him, Joseph!)—well, the truth (Gilles’s truth, Arsène’s truth) was achingly clear.
And the truth was that it wasn’t enough simply to love someone. Not when so much hatred and injustice stood like the walls of the Bastille between the two of you.
She smiled sadly into the mirror. Tomorrow was going to be difficult. But she’d think about tomorrow…tomorrow.
“Monsieur de Calonne. Madame Helvétius. The Abbé Morellet and the Marquis and Marquise de Lafayette. Monsieur Caron de Beaumarchais. Monsieur and Madame Lavoisier… May I present my houseguest, Mademoiselle Vernet.”
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