Finding Emilie

by Laurel Corona

  A pretty young woman tugged on his coat to bring him back inside the coach. “You dolt! He doesn’t answer anybody that way.” Since getting out of the coach was unthinkable in the filthy and decrepit neighborhoods along the quays of the Seine, the young woman stuck her head a little way out and sang to the same window in a tipsy and off-key voice. “Monsieur Voltaire! Come down! Your public is waiting!”

  The window opened and a man in his midthirties leaned out. “Be quiet!” he said. “My landlady’s had enough of my so-called friends—” He looked up and down the street to see if anyone had noticed the commotion. “And I can’t have you up. I’ve nothing to eat here.”

  “Get dressed!” Jean-Luc leaned out again and called up to him. “Mademoiselle du Thil and I are taking a distinguished and beautiful guest to dinner, and if we don’t get out of this stinking cesspool of a street in ten minutes, you can stay home with your cheap wine and day-old bread because we’re leaving without you!”

  “He’s coming,” he said to his companions, even though the man at the window had not said so. Within a few minutes, the door flung open, and a man wearing a long, loosely curled wig, black trousers, and a lacy white shirt stepped inside the carriage, carrying a jacket he had not had time to put on. “Beastly hot for a coat anyway,” he said, piercing the air with hawklike eyes as he glanced at the twenty-seven-year-old stranger sitting across from him.

  “Madame, may I present François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire,” Jean-Luc said with a flourish. “Voltaire, this is our illustrious visitor from Semur—Gabrielle-Emilie, the Marquise du Châtelet.”

  “Enchanté.” Voltaire gave her hand a perfunctory kiss. Sitting back as the carriage moved forward, he took in the expensive fabric and perfect tailoring of her dress, and the rakish matching hat in the latest style. “You are from Semur?” The note of surprise made his contempt for small, provincial cities unmistakable.

  “Not at all,” Emilie du Châtelet sniffed. “I am from Paris. I have the bad fortune of being required to live part of the year where my husband is governor.” She composed her face in a practiced smile. “I am sure a gentleman such as you will not hold that against me.”

  The insult was subtle but clear. A marquise need offer no explanation of anything to an untitled commoner who lived in a rooming house.

  Salvaging what looked like the makings of a ruined party if they took a dislike to each other, Marie-Victoire du Thil intervened. “We decided that the marquise simply had to meet you, since you are the second-most-intelligent person in Paris.” She held up her fan and waved the air in a playful gesture over Voltaire’s damp forehead.

  “Second?” Voltaire said, putting his fingertips on the top of her fan and pushing it down so he could look in her eyes. “And what man, may I ask, is there to rival me?” A shrug of the shoulders and an arched brow were not enough to mask the hint of insecurity in his voice.

  Marie-Victoire du Thil giggled. “Jean-Luc and I want to spend the rest of our lives telling people we are the ones who introduced you. It is no man, monsieur. You are seated across from her right now.”

  1765

  “THEY CALL you ‘the little dévots,’ the way you walk around like you’re deep in prayer or something, not noticing anything else.” Delphine sat before the mirror in her dressing room, dusting her neck with powder in preparation for dinner. “I try to defend you, but you don’t know how silly it looks to spend all your time with a thirteen-year-old, even if he is the future Duc de Praslin.”

  “You spend all your time with Jacques-Mars,” Lili snapped, turning away so Delphine could not see the hurt on her face.

  “I don’t like him at all.” Delphine’s tone was haughty as she leaned in to examine a slight puffiness of her upper lip. “You would have noticed if you weren’t always so taken up by your little admirer.”

  “Was Jacques-Mars a bad boy?” Lili mocked.

  “Of course not!” Delphine’s arm jerked and she knocked her brush to the floor. She picked it up with an indignant sniff and slapped it down on the table. “How can you say such a thing?”

  “Well, Paul-Vincent may be thirteen, but that doesn’t mean he knows nothing.” Lili wanted to prove a point more than she wanted to keep her secret. “For example, he kissed me,” she said. “More than once. And I kissed him back.”

  Delphine swung her legs around on the vanity stool and stared openmouthed at Lili. “You kissed him? Paul-Vincent?” She raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We were standing close, looking at something with his microscope, and it just happened.”

  “And?”

  Perhaps it was still safe to confide in her. After all, Delphine really was her only friend. “Now he tries to do it every time I see him. I have to tell him to stop, that I only want to look in his microscope, but …” Lili sighed. “It’s not fair. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to look at little creatures wiggling in water without there being some sort of—some sort of price attached.”

  Delphine turned to the mirror again, and Lili watched her apply a dab of rouge to her mouth. When it was clear she wouldn’t reply, Lili shrugged and went on. “It’s not that I don’t like the way it feels, but he’s only thirteen and it doesn’t seem right to kiss someone who’s just a boy. Not that I want to kiss a man either, but it just seems as if once you’ve done it, you can’t go back to being someone who hasn’t.”

  “I know.”

  Delphine’s voice was distant, but she was looking down now, and Lili could not see her expression in the mirror. Maybe she’s just not interested because it’s not about her, Lili thought, but there’s no one else I can tell. “So I let him do it once every time I see him, just to use his microscope. But it’s making me not like him anymore because I feel so—” She sighed in frustration. “Do you know what I mean? Do you and Jacques-Mars—”

  “Perhaps you should ask Maman to get you a microscope,” Delphine interrupted.

  “Is that all you have to say? If it’s not one of your concerns, you’re not interested?”

  “That’s not what I meant. You know Maman would, if she thought Paul-Vincent could not be trusted to be more—more innocent.” Delphine got up from the dressing table and went to the chair where her dress was laid out. “Perhaps Maman doesn’t realize that just because Paul-Vincent and Jacques-Mars are too young to be suitable, that doesn’t mean they don’t have ideas. Do you mind if we do each other’s corset? I don’t feel like calling Corinne.”

  Delphine planted her hands around a bedpost, and Lili began tugging on the laces. “What ideas does Jacques-Mars have?” Lili asked, feeling Delphine’s body go rigid.

  “Worse ones than Paul-Vincent,” she said. “It’s embarrassing to say.”

  Delphine’s shoulders trembled, and she stood up. “Oh, Lili, please stop. I can’t bear it. This corset’s sucking the life out of me. Let’s plead cramps and stay in tonight. I’m desperate—”

  Julie de Bercy swept into the dressing room. “Not dressed yet?” she asked, stopping herself from chiding them when she noticed their serious expressions. “What on earth is wrong?” she asked.

  Delphine broke into tears. “I—I can’t say.”

  Lili stared at her. “It’s all right,” she said. “You can tell Maman about Paul-Vincent—”

  “It’s not about that.” Delphine’s voice was suddenly so hoarse it could scarcely break out of her throat at all. “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

  What is she talking about? Lili’s heart raced with worry.

  Julie came to stand behind Delphine. “Grab the bedpost,” she said. “I’ll finish lacing your corset while you tell me what this is all about.” Delphine braced herself, and Julie asked again. “Promised whom.”

  “Jacques-Mars,” Delphine whispered. “And Anne-Mathilde.”

  “And what, pray, would they feel was a secret between them and you?” She let go of the corset laces and turned Delphine around to face her. Delphine looked down to avoid her eyes.

 
; We’d been having a good grouse, like we used to on the way to the abbey, Lili thought, and all of a sudden she’s in tears and talking about something else entirely? Anne-Mathilde and Jacques-Mars? Secrets?

  Maman raised Delphine’s chin with her fingers to force her to look at her. “Is this about something Jacques-Mars has done to you? Has he …?” Lili’s memory flashed to the pictures in the book she had recently smuggled back to the library, and her body shuddered in revulsion. Not that. It can’t be. Please, not that.

  “Maman, I didn’t mean for anything to happen. Anne-Mathilde and Joséphine suggested we all go out to the grotto at the end of the gardens the day before yesterday, since it wasn’t so awfully hot. Jacques-Mars asked to go along, like he always does. When we got to the terrace above the canal—you know, the one they call the Poèle—Anne-Mathilde said she had a headache and asked a servant waiting in a carriage to make a quick trip back to the château with her, and of course that stupid Joséphine had to go too.”

  “That left you alone with Jacques-Mars,” Maman said. “You should have thought about how that might look.”

  “Yes, but I also thought of how rude it would be to say I wanted to go back without seeing what he had walked with us so long to get to. He pointed out the statues of the River Gods in the grotto on the other side of the Poèle, and said that the water sprays made it nice and cool there, and we’d easily find someone who could give us a ride back.” Delphine’s eyes welled with tears. “It all made so much sense.”

  “I’m not surprised you were persuaded.” Julie paused. “So you went to see the River Gods?”

  “Well, no. After Anne-Mathilde’s carriage was gone, we walked down the stairs to the canal. There was no place to cross, except much farther down, and I told him I didn’t want to walk that far. I was annoyed he hadn’t told me it was still a long way from where we’d left Anne-Mathilde, but I guess I know why he didn’t. He was trying to get me alone. It’s so obvious now.”

  “So you started back.”

  “We walked for a few minutes, and then he said I looked a little flushed with the heat, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to sit and cool off in a little alcove under some stairs. I said yes, because my stomach was feeling a bit upset and I did feel a little faint. But when we sat down, he started kissing me really hard.”

  Delphine touched her lip. “It hurt, Maman. My mouth is still raw inside. He pushed me back against the wall and started working his fingers inside my bodice. I tried to stop him, but he got my breasts pulled out, and he wasn’t even kissing them, more like bites so hard I thought my nipples might bleed. And then he was pulling up my skirt and trying to reach under it.”

  By now Julie had brought Delphine over to the couch and was sitting beside her while Lili sat on the floor clinging to Maman’s knee. “How far did his hand reach?” Julie asked.

  “Almost to the top of my legs. I pressed them together as hard as I could, and he said if I would let him show me where women most like to be touched, I wouldn’t regret it. Then he moved his hand lower on my mouth, and when I had the chance, I bit his finger hard, until I tasted blood.”

  She buried her head in Julie’s shoulder. “Then he grabbed me by the hair, saying the only reason he didn’t hit me was that it might leave a mark people could see, and that I had better not say anything to anyone, because he would make sure everyone thought the whole thing was my idea.”

  Lili rubbed her knuckles on her thighs so angrily that her skin grew hot under her skirt. I’m going to get him, she thought. I don’t know how, but I’m going to destroy him for this.

  “And what about Anne-Mathilde?” Julie asked. “Was she involved?”

  Delphine’s chest heaved. “When I said Anne-Mathilde and Joséphine would defend me, he just laughed. He said Anne-Mathilde had been planning the whole thing for days. The carriage was waiting above the Poèle because she had asked someone in the stables to meet her there.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Julie whispered, jumping up because she was too agitated to sit.

  “Anne-Mathilde wanted this to happen?” Lili’s voice came out in a barking sob. “Why?”

  “It was something about how Vaux-le-Vicomte was her family’s new possession, and I had been acting like I owned it.”

  Lili threw her arms around Delphine as she took Maman’s vacant seat. “Did you notice Jacques-Mars’s hand?” Delphine asked. “It’s bandaged. That’s the only good part.”

  She turned to Julie. “Did I do anything wrong, Maman? Other than being stupid?”

  “No, ma chérie. In fact I’m proud of how you handled him.” She came around to the front of the couch and helped the two girls to their feet. “But I’m not happy that you’ve hidden this from me. And from Lili.”

  “I should have noticed,” Lili said, pressing her fingers hard to her lips to stop the trembling.

  “It’s not your fault, Lili. I thought if I didn’t tell anyone, we’d go back to Paris and I could just pretend it hadn’t happened.”

  Julie was no longer listening. “I need to think about what to do, but for now, difficult as it may seem, you have to put on your dresses and go down to dinner.”

  “Oh no, Maman,” Delphine said. “My face is all swollen—and my eyes!”

  Maman silenced her by holding up her hand. “You hid this from us for two days, and you can hide it from everyone else for a few more hours.” She gestured across the room. “The bedpost,” she said. “If you don’t show up, they win. If you behave as if you have nothing to fear, you’re the conqueror—not forever, but for now.” She arched her eyebrows at Delphine and pointed again. “The bedpost.”

  DESPITE THE IMPOSING size of the château at Vaux-le-Vicomte, arrival at dinner did not involve grand entrances through hallways glittering with mirrors and glowing sconces. Instead, guests went through a side door off the main foyer of the house and made their way through the library and a bedroom furnished for use by the king when he visited. After passing through five or six richly appointed rooms, guests came to a bathroom and skirted around a large tub that was often still wet from its latest occupant, before entering a wood-paneled corridor so narrow that women’s panniers often brushed the walls.

  Lili cast a glance in a paneled mirror outside the dining room and saw a reflection of a stranger walking behind her. Delphine’s strawberry-blond hair had become a tangled mat from her tears, and since there was no time to fix it, she was wearing a white wig retrieved from Maman’s dressing room. Her eyes were no longer bloodshot, thanks to some drops that made them sparkle in odd contrast to a furrowed brow that even Maman’s secret remedies could not mask.

  At the door, Julie gave Delphine a little squeeze of the hand. “Be brave,” she said, before taking the honored seat next to the Duc de Praslin. “Come on,” Lili whispered. She took Delphine’s arm, remembering the little girl who had practiced curtseying until she fell over and then had gotten up to curtsey some more, the girl who believed that doing something perfectly was a talisman against something as powerful as an evil queen who could turn children to stone. Believe it again, Lili prayed. Walk into this room believing it again.

  Entering the dining room at Vaux-le-Vicomte was like stepping into a mosaic. Paintings of mythological scenes were inset in glowing wood-paneled walls decorated with carpetlike designs in blues, yellows, and greens. Gold moldings framed the doorways and divided the painted ceiling into quadrants that glowed in the sunlight streaming through large, oak-framed windows.

  Chairs upholstered in shimmering brocade lined a table set for the duke and duchess’s twenty guests. To Lili’s dismay the only seats that remained were on both sides of Jacques-Mars. Did he plan it that way? Lili wondered, as she sat down between him and Paul-Vincent. Directly across the table, Anne-Mathilde and Joséphine stopped talking to watch Delphine take her seat. Anne-Mathilde’s gown of golden brocade fit the colors of the room, and her elbow-length sleeves were tipped with several layers of lace so delicate they looked like froth. She was wearing a choker o
f pearls extravagant enough to settle any questions of rank at Vaux-le-Vicomte.

  Wanting to see if Delphine was all right, Lili turned as far as her corset and the frame of her panniers allowed. Immediately she sat back, startled by the proximity of Jacques-Mars, who had leaned in toward her. “You look lovely,” he said. His eyes lowered, resting on the tops of her breasts, pushed up into ample mounds but covered by a modest swath of nearly transparent white silk.

  “Where have you been hiding, Jacques-Mars?” A rat hole? Lili thought, as she pasted on a smile she hoped disguised the shiver of disgust that had traveled along her spine. “Still giving paille-maille lessons to pretty girls?”

  Jacques-Mars’s eyes flickered as she looked past him to Delphine. Much to Lili’s surprise, Delphine was already in deep and animated conversation with the younger brother of the rotten-toothed Comte de Beaufort, who was seated farther up the table near Maman. Apparently sensing Lili’s stare, Delphine turned to glance at her, revealing a glowing face that an hour earlier had looked trapped and near panic. I’m in worse shape than she is, Lili thought.

  “Lili?” The voice was Paul-Vincent’s, on her other side. “Aren’t you speaking to me?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just a little distracted.”

  “I just thought of an excellent experiment. Look at this.” He held up his wineglass. “Do you see?”

  “See what?” Not science. Not tonight.

  “The fruit flies. They’re everywhere. I think they like wine, but it looks as if something about it makes them act strange.”

  Lili dutifully held up her own glass, trying to catch as much light as possible from the candles. “I’ve got two of them sitting on the rim,” she said, “tipping down inside, like they’re trying to get whatever’s left there.”