“Why, that’s wonderful!” Martine clasped her hands. “You must be so relieved. I’m so glad for you.” She narrowed her gaze. “And yet you don’t seem altogether pleased. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Only what you already know.” Vivienne crossed to the bureau to retrieve her brush and pulled it through her hair.
“Ah. Let me guess. You met people who support the bloodshed we escaped, for the cause of liberty. Yes?”
Vienne returned to the bed. “Complete with cockades and hateful songs. One of the men whacked the head from a lobster-shaped ice cream to prove his point.”
A giggle burst from Martine’s lips. “No.” She covered her mouth. “Truly? He beheaded—an ice cream?”
“And it made me furious!” The corner of Vivienne’s lips twitched up as she set down the brush. The act that had so disturbed her now seemed ridiculous beyond words.
Martine’s shoulders bounced with quiet laughter until tears streamed down her cheeks. “He killed an ice cream! Such villainy! Oh, la! Did it bleed very much?”
“Just picture it, if you please, melting from its severed neck! Ghastly!” But Vienne was laughing, too, until her sides and cheeks ached.
With a shuddering breath, Martine wiped the tears from her face. “We had the most delicious ice cream you can fathom at Versailles. You’ll think me petty indeed when I confess I miss it. Of all the things to miss. Well, so ice cream is among them. The real question is . . . how did it taste? Tell me you at least sampled some.”
“The lobster? I couldn’t possibly. I doubt you would have, either, had you been there.” Combing her fingers through her hair, Vivienne separated it into sections and began plaiting it for the night.
“No, no, something else. Surely they had more than one flavor.”
Indeed they had. “French vanilla with caramelized banana and Jamaican rum—Thomas Jefferson’s favorite, I’m told. Pineapple. Strawberry. Pistachio.”
“Ah. The queen’s favorite.” And suddenly the levity leaked from the room. “Well. Which did you try?”
Vienne tied a ribbon around the end of her braid and tossed it over her shoulder. “None. I don’t care for it.”
“You what! Then you must never have had the good kind.”
But she had. The very best, in fact.
Ever since she’d learned Tante Rose was her aunt and not her mother, she’d begged her for the chance to meet Sybille. When Vivienne was eight years old, they agreed that a brief visit would be acceptable. So Sybille treated them to ice cream at Le Caveau in the Palais-Royal.
Vienne was awestruck as soon as she met her mother. Every detail remained embroidered onto her memory. The ankle-baring robe à la polonaise in pink-and-white-striped silk, her white-powdered pouf towering above her head. Sybille was in the prime of her years at twenty-five, and she struck Vienne as the most beautiful woman in the world. She was determined to be so well behaved that Sybille would find her irresistibly charming. That she would love her. Want her. This was before she knew her mother was a courtesan, of course.
In her nervousness, Vienne had allowed her ice cream to melt, and it dripped all over her new gown, including the lace trim at the neckline, which Tante Rose had made for the occasion. She was devastated.
Vienne’s childish voice still echoed between her ears. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! I’ll do better, I promise. Please, can’t I live with you anyway? With Tante Rose, too? Don’t you want me?”
Sybille’s laughter was the bright tinkling of bells. “Want you?” She paid the bill and sailed away, leaving Vienne, the jetsam in her wake, rubbing hopelessly at the dark chocolate on her lace. It was a very long time before she did not feel stained herself.
It was the end of her love for ice cream, the start of her devotion to lace. And the more pristine the white, the better. Failing to capture Sybille’s affections, she committed herself to pleasing Rose—and her patrons—with her handiwork.
“Vienne?”
Rain coursed down the lead window panes in silver streams. Outside, lanterns smeared the dark. “Forgive me. I was a world away.”
“What will you do, once your lace is sold?” Martine asked. “I have no doubt that Mrs. Bingham’s friends will purchase whatever you show them. So what then? How will you fill your time?”
It was a question that had needled Vienne, as well. But she did not want to just fill time. “I want to work.”
Martine leaned forward, inclining her ear. “To work, you say?”
A small laugh bubbled in Vivienne’s chest at the look of confusion on her friend’s face. Martine clearly had no such desire, but Vivienne itched to be industrious. There was comfort in an orderly routine, joy in seeing a task done well. When she was a girl, she had once complained of the concentration required to learn her trade. In that gentle way of hers, Tante Rose served her a cup of sipping chocolate along with the reminder that creating was a form of worship. “God is the Creator, is He not?” she had said with a smile. “So when we create, even if it is a mere length of lace and not the stars in the heavens, we honor Him. We bear His likeness when we work.” That truth had lingered in Vienne ever since. When the government turned cathedrals into houses of reason, and when the church bells ceased to ring, Vienne had still quietly honored the Lord with the work of her hands.
“You will make lace again, then,” Martine offered.
Vienne curled the end of her braid around her finger, twirling it in circles. Outside, the rain softened to a low hum at the threshold of her hearing. “I doubt it. Making lace is so tedious, and the market for it here so small. Besides, for the past several years, my income was not from the actual craft, but in managing a network of hundreds of laceworkers in my manufacture. I assigned and delivered orders to dressmakers and fashion moguls like Rose Bertin.”
Martine smiled. “How I miss Madame Bertin and her fashions. She styled all of us at court.” With fresh animation, she talked of card parties and tables piled high with the most decadent desserts, of trips to the opera and theater.
Only half listening, Vienne looked toward the window, her own reflection blinking back at her. The past suited Martine, but Vienne could not content herself on reminiscences, or even with her previous trade. It was time to lay aside the shape of her old life.
Chapter Nine
Aside from leaving Tara and Finn, parting with Philadelphia was as easy for Liam as retiring from the Binghams’ party. He didn’t belong beneath painted ceilings and crystal chandeliers, just as Jethro didn’t belong caged behind his bar. Nature’s beauty outshone any man-made ornamentation, and the drink Liam craved most flowed from the spring on his land.
The month of June passed as quickly as it had bloomed, thanks to Jethro’s company as they worked, watering the earth with their sweat. By the time it was Liam’s turn to deliver the mail from the settlement to Philadelphia again, summer’s heat and humidity were at full boil.
It was worse in the city, where paved streets and brick buildings made him feel positively oven-baked. Were it not for the chance to see his sister, the trip would be more trouble than the extra income was worth.
“Ach!” Tara wrinkled her freckled nose as soon as she saw him dismounting his favorite mail-run horse, Cherie, behind the tavern. But after he handed the reins to the stableboy, she hugged him all the same. Apparently, she’d forgiven him for “stealing” Jethro away from her employ.
“That’s the smell of my devotion to you, it is!” Grinning, he flapped his hat at the shirt sticking to his chest. “Nothing else could compensate for this.”
“You flatter me, sir.” She hooted in laughter, then dug a key from her pocket. “Wash up and change into something less . . . devoted-smelling. Then meet me downstairs.”
After a little bow, he was only too glad to obey.
A quarter of an hour later, he descended the steps clean, dry, freshly shaved, and in desperate need of coffee. It was only midmorning, but since he’d risen well before dawn to finish the journey, h
is body needed a little convincing.
Though the dining room was all but empty, the lingering aroma of eggs and potatoes cramped his hollow stomach. Sunshine turned the creamy walls a friendly, golden hue and bounced off the hardwood floor in stabs of light. As he strode to the bar to place his breakfast order, he wondered whose face would greet him, now that Jethro was gone.
“Uncle!” Finn O’Brien slapped the bar, his greeting ricocheting off the tavern walls. This room had been their informal parlor once, where Liam coached Finn with his early reader, following in his schoolmaster father’s footsteps when he was fifteen and Finn seven.
Laughing in surprise, Liam grasped Finn’s hand and shook it. “I thought you were going back to Washington County right after Jethro and I took off.”
“I thought better of it. Tara needed a barkeep in a hurry, thanks to you.” The shallow box Finn stood on behind the bar allowed the men to see eye-to-eye.
“So you signed up for the job?”
“I couldn’t very well leave her alone until she could hire a replacement. What would she do if a man became unruly and she couldn’t wrestle him out the door herself? She’d lose her license to run the tavern, and perhaps more than that.” He shook his head. “Perish the thought. It takes such little effort on my part to keep an eye on the rowdies.” He glared at Liam with his one eye to demonstrate.
“I see very well. You’ve been a better brother to Tara than I have in this. Well done.”
Finn’s cheeks turned ruddy with satisfaction.
“But what of your own crops?” Liam asked. “Do you have a hand to help tend them while you’re away?”
“The barley grows whether I’m there to stare at it or not. And no one would bother stealing it before it’s good and ripe anyway. It’ll be ready for harvest at the end of this month, though, so I’m on my way back soon. Tomorrow, actually. The new barkeep starts this afternoon. You can meet him. Providential that you came today.”
“Providence, is it?”
“We’ll call it God, if you like.”
Liam nodded, pleased to hear Finn make even the slightest reference to the Almighty. During the war, young Finn had been so taken with the brotherhood of his fellow soldiers that he was less than discerning in the company he kept at camp. For a time, he fell under the influence of those keen to pull the impressionable off the straight and narrow. It had taken all of Liam’s powers of persuasion and even more prayer to draw him back. Even now, he wondered how God and Finn were getting along out in Washington County. Some of those rough-and-tumble soldiers were now his neighbors and fellow whiskey rebels. The sort that defied all authority, God and governments both. Providential, indeed, that Finn was back here, away from all that, for this long.
Tara swayed into the room, strands of russet hair sticking to her glowing cheeks. Her work-worn hands carried a steaming tray of breakfast, including a tall mug of coffee, bless her. “Sit.” She stopped at a nearby booth. “Finn, join us.”
Gratefully, Liam obeyed, thanking God for the food and his family before diving in. “Well? Have you been pushing your famous Monongahela rye on Tara’s patrons?” he asked between bites.
“If they order whiskey, I can only give them the best. If that happens to be mine, then . . .” Finn spread his hands, smiling broadly.
“He’s been good for business, he has.” Tara picked a fried potato off Liam’s plate and popped it into her mouth. “Despite what he’d have you think, he never oversells the drinks. Keeps the gentlemen in line.” She palmed the roll from Liam’s plate and knocked it on the table. “Hard as a rock, as usual. You’ll break a tooth on it.”
“The rest of the food makes up for it, though.” Liam savored a swig of coffee, the pewter mug nearly burning his hand. Flies buzzed in through open windows, circling and swooping about his eggs. He waved them away. “Any update on the whiskey tax?”
Finn shifted in his seat. “The papers say the federal courts here issued writs for the arrests of those who won’t pay.”
Liam eyed him. “You seem relatively unconcerned.”
“It’s more hot air. We sent tax collectors back empty-handed often enough, didn’t we? Whoever is fool enough to bandy about a writ will meet with the same amount of success. None.” A shadow passed over his face as crowds formed on the sidewalk outside.
“Perhaps.” Liam brought his coffee to his lips, aware he was about to sound like the schoolmaster once again. But so be it. “Let’s talk it through. You’ve protested the tax, sent letters to your government—and tarred and feathered tax collectors, along with those who’ve given them quarter. The tax still hasn’t been repealed. It was made into law by the government elected to represent the nation’s interests as a whole. For better or for worse, they’ve decided this tax is a reasonable way to bring in income. At what point do you submit to the law?”
The corners of Finn’s mouth pulled down. “We’re the patriots, remember? King Washington and Hamilton are the tyrants. They want a monarchy for us, wait and see.”
Rising, Tara retied her apron strings behind her waist. “Not this again. Have fun, boys. I have work to do.” She slid away, taking Liam’s dirty dishes with her.
“For the sake of argument, Finn, humor me. Is it right to only submit to laws you like?”
“It’s never right to submit to injustice. You used to know that. Has Hamilton been bending your ear?”
Ignoring the jab at Alex, Liam leaned back. “What I know is that America is still in its infancy. It would not take much to destroy her, and I don’t want to see that happen.”
“I’m not talking about destroying the nation. I’m talking about my rights.”
“My point exactly. Perhaps you ought to spend less time talking about your rights and more time considering what’s best for our country as a whole. You’ll have plenty of time for that on your ride back west. Put some thought into the balance between government law and individual freedom—before you’re back with the rest of the whiskey rebels.”
Finn’s eye darkened. “Before they can do the thinking for me, is that it?”
Actually, it was. “I don’t want you to get caught up in escalating violence.”
Grunting, Finn pushed himself out of the booth. “Still trying to keep me in the rear of the action after all these years, are you?” He chuckled. Outside, voices gathered and crescendoed on the street. At Liam’s questioning look, Finn said, “It’s Independence Day, remember? They’re waiting for the parade.”
Liam had completely forgotten the date after four days on the road. Standing, he held his mug aloft. “To independence, a war nobly fought and won.”
“Indeed. To independence.” Finn swiped up his tankard with a smirk and drank.
Sun streamed through the branches above, warming Vivienne’s straw hat and the brick sidewalk beneath her feet. Beside her, Sebastien Lemoine matched his long stride to her pace. But she paid little mind to his attentions, nor to Martine and Henri, who walked behind them, so immersed was she in her thoughts.
Though her feet moved her forward, she felt for all the world like she was stuck. Weeks had passed since she’d sold her lace to Anne Bingham’s friends, and she still had not found employment. The shops in the French quarter had already hired more than they really needed. Other émigrés taught fencing or dancing lessons to Philadelphia’s elite. One former nobleman had opened his own ice cream shop on Front Street, and another now sold books. But Vivienne had yet to find a new occupation.
Refusing to be idle, if not employed, she gave herself to learning from Paulette in the kitchen until she’d acquired enough skill to actually be of help.
When she was not kneading bread or rolling pastry crusts, she made it her personal mission to coax Martine and Henri from their isolation. The first time Vienne convinced Henri to leave the pension, it was only to catch fireflies in the rear yard. Enthralled, he at first cupped only those insects that flew near him, but eventually followed their glowing paths. He added a few steps to his delicate ch
ase every time, until he forgot or simply ignored his pains. The dark grew less frightening as he learned to look for the light.
In the heat of the day, Martine often found reason to stay inside with her cards while Vivienne took Henri for brief walks. When he circled the entire block, they celebrated with crepes at the café. So far, his record was three laps, which would make today’s outing a victory.
“Can we slow down? He’s not very strong.” Martine made no effort to lower her voice.
“Bah. He’s stronger than you think. And so are you.” Vienne stepped aside and motioned to them to walk in step with her, offering a hand to Henri. He took it with fingers cool and thin, and kicked a crumpled newssheet in his path.
Roses swooned on a windowsill behind an iron gate, bringing a smile to Vienne’s lips and sweetening the breeze that ruffled the hem of her cotton round gown. Her blue-and-white-striped dress was not nearly so fine as Martine’s painted silk, but far cooler.
“Are we almost there?” Shading his eyes with one hand, Henri peered toward Market Street.
“Don’t pull ahead, Henri,” Martine warned, though he was doing no such thing. She twisted the handle of her parasol in her white-gloved hand. “Ghastly hot. I don’t know if this is a good idea after all. All these people, too . . .” Her voice trailed away. Flapping a hand to fan herself, she resembled an exotic bird among the Quakers that peppered the streets.
“She hates crowds,” Henri supplied matter-of-factly.
“And you aren’t much for walking,” Martine inserted, “so we make a fine pair, no?”
Vienne squeezed Henri’s hand to reassure him. Odd that Martine had pointed out his weakness when she could have cheered his progress. “One more block, and it will be worth it. The parade honors an important event for both this city and America. Did you know, Henri, it was right here in Philadelphia that the American Declaration of Independence was signed?”
“And that’s what started the revolution?” Uncertainty threaded his tone.
A Refuge Assured Page 10
