Pam Rosenthal (14 page)

She was trembling.

He looked down at his hands and discovered that they were shaking as well. He balled up his fists.

Should he apologize?

No, he was still too angry. Too ashamed. Too paralyzed by the skewed emotions that had seized him.

Whatever he was feeling, though—at least it wasn’t desire.

You’re a liar, Joseph.
Mixed in with all the other uncontrollable feelings was the strongest desire he’d ever felt for anyone.

She was sitting up very straight and staring at him with eyes that had dulled to the color of lead. Her freckles were dark on her pale cheeks.

He stared back at her, feeling his face contort, his entire body stiffen with rage.

No, not only with rage. It wasn’t rage that was doing its work, down there between his legs.

It was humiliating. It was—
mon Dieu,
it was fantastic. And she was so close by, just a step or two away. He need only grasp her shoulders…

She was speaking now, in so low a voice that he had to lean forward to catch it.

“Yes, perhaps he was right about you after all. And perhaps I was wrong. Wrong to like and trust you and to hope that you might earn a place for yourself in the world. Like my papa did. Or Gilles or Augustin. Or any decent, ordinary man I might love.”

She’d slid off the window seat and was standing in front of it. He could probably reach out an arm and pull her to him. But he didn’t. He sat still, his hands still balled into fists.

“Any
man
,” her voice was disdainful, “with the self-respect to try to make the world a better place than he’d found it. But I guess
you
wouldn’t know about such things. And I’m only sorry…”

Her voice caught. She paused to collect herself, but she continued to stare at him with eyes like storm clouds.

He hadn’t known her eyes could look like that. There was heat lightning behind the clouds.

You’ve lost her, Joseph.

You never had her, idiot.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “that I ever left my old way of life. Sorry I ever met you. Or wanted you.”

She looked away for a moment.

She
had
wanted him. He
hadn’t
merely imagined it. And now he’d ruined any chance he had of…
of what,
Joseph?

“They’ll put me in prison if I don’t go along with this marriage.” The words slipped out before he could stop them.

She touched his shoulder. So quickly and lightly that he didn’t believe it was happening.

“I know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Joseph.”

And then she was gone.

She couldn’t remember how that awful night had come to an end. Or even how the next day had begun. But she didn’t suppose there’d been anything special about it; everything must have gone as it usually did.

Baptiste must have led her back through the dark corridors and up the stairs. She must have tiptoed into her garret room, slipping silently into bed beside a snoring Louise.

The sun must have risen this morning, she thought. She and Louise must have washed and dressed. She suspected that she’d drunk some coffee before getting to work, though her throat was so clogged with unshed tears that she couldn’t have eaten anything.

She saw his taut, white face in the bottom of every pot she scrubbed.

Why had he wanted to hurt her so deeply?

And why had she responded so harshly? It should have been obvious how aching and needy he’d been, how furious and alone. At the moment when he’d most needed comfort she’d responded by telling him that he wasn’t a man that she could respect. He’d never want to see her again.

Well, he shouldn’t have made that horrid joke about the fleas. He shouldn’t have pretended to be everything she loathed—and everything he loathed as well.

The next pot had so much grease burnt onto it that it took all her concentration to get it clean. She grimaced with bitter satisfaction as she put it aside to dry.

Of course, she thought now, it would be stupid to delude herself about who had actually set the evening’s combative mood. She remembered her stiff posture, the aggrieved look on her face as she’d marched into his bedchamber, her curt answer when he’d asked whether her work had been too hard.

But that was different. I was angry at him because he’s leaving me. And I didn’t want him to know how much it hurts.

I’ve ruined everything
, she thought as she brushed her hair that evening.
He’ll never want to see me again. It’s hopeless, impossible. Baptiste won’t be knocking on my door tonight. Or ever again.

She continued, nonetheless, to brush out the tangles, to toss the ringlets down her back.
I’ll
go to bed in a
minute.
In five. In ten. She smoothed her skirt and straightened her apron.

Baptiste’s tap was so soft she couldn’t hear it at first. Belatedly, she flew to open the door.

Monsieur Joseph’s apologies, Baptiste told her, but he’d be spending tonight at his father’s bedside.

For the Duc’s illness had taken a definite turn for the worse.

Chapter Eleven

He remained at his father’s bedside for the next three nights and days, with the Duchesse, who wept continually, and Monsieur Hubert, who dozed over his brandy-laced coffee. The Duc was in pain a good deal of the time. He was angry and rebellious—especially, according to his valet Jacques, when the Duchesse would begin the next round of prayers for his soul.

“He told them he wasn’t interested in the next world, that he was too angry at
this
world, which had never admired him and never would.”

“Well,
I’ll
admire him,” Jacques told the group in the dessert kitchen, “if he leaves me a year or two’s wages, to tide me over while I look for a new job. For I can already see that bitch Madame Amélie sizing up my skinny arse and wondering who else will fit into my livery breeches—to save her the expense of buying somebody else a new pair this year.”

Nicolas nodded. “We’re going to see a lot of changes around here, once that harpy takes over.”

“Those she doesn’t fire,” Bertrande added dolefully, “to replace with staff from her parents’ mansion in Avignon.”

If any servant were likely to be replaced, Marie-Laure thought, it would probably be the irksomely pretty scullery maid whom the Duc and his older son had tried to visit—to everybody’s great amusement.

And if by chance she weren’t fired, there would be the new Duc’s advances to worry about. She knew she could defend herself; well, she’d made forcemeat of Jacques, hadn’t she? Fighting off Monsieur Hubert would be easy: he wasn’t very big and he was usually drunk. But the pleasure of seeing him with a black eye (or worse) would be short-lived. She’d be dismissed instantly, and without her twenty
livres
half-year wages. She could only hope he’d lost interest in her by now.

In truth, though, she was grateful for these worries, for they were more bearable than the dumb, dazed panic that engulfed her whenever she tried to imagine her life without Joseph in it.

The funeral was adorned with every pious detail money could buy: the army of paupers carrying candles, the deafening tolling of church bells. The servants followed at the back of the procession, all of them maintaining a very sorrowful demeanor, until it was time to scurry back to prepare the sumptuous supper the new Duchesse had ordered for the local worthies who’d attended the ceremony. All Marie-Laure had seen of Joseph was the back of his head, towering above the other members of the procession, just behind the coffin.

“He’ll stay for a month of mourning,” Louise told her, “and then he’ll escort his mother back to the convent.”

“And then?” Marie-Laure prompted her.

“And then,” Louise hesitated, “oh, just some legal business that they’re working on…I don’t really understand it, these nobles are always petitioning the King for something…imagine my family petitioning the King not to conscript my brothers to build his roads during the harvest season, when they’re really needed on the farm. Oh yes,
we
might as well petition to raise the dead or stop the mistral. I don’t know anything else, Marie-Laure.”

“Yes you do,” Marie-Laure said. “What is it?”

Louise’s voice dropped to a harsh, sad whisper. “They’ve decided to settle it quickly. He’s going to Paris, with Monsieur Hubert—I mean the Duc—and with the new Duchesse too. He’s going to be married.”

Marie-Laure nodded, her face expressionless, her chest as tight as if it were bound with steel bands.

“Come to bed, Marie-Laure,” Louise said.

But she found the air in the little attic room impossible to breathe—and Louise’s snore absolutely insupportable. She slept fitfully, trying not to fling herself about the bed. And at the first gray dawn, she stole down the stairs and across the fields to the river, where it would be cool.

She stood on the hillside and looked down at the water. It was not really so much a river at this point as a brook, gurgling as it swept over the rocks in its path. The autumn sun was just beginning to show over the eastern hills, its slanted rays outlining each needle of the pine trees and illuminating the little yellow leaves of the poplars.

About a mile to her right, the brook met up with other streams, and the river widened, flowing through fields and farmyards, past barns and hayricks and noisy squadrons of ducks and geese. Marie-Laure turned to the left, through a small wood, where the water formed pools bordered by ferns. A large, flat rock overlooked one of the pools. She’d sat there and dreamed away many a spare moment; it would be a good place for weeping as well. This morning, she intended to weep until she couldn’t weep anymore.

The path through the woods was stony and narrow; she had to watch where she stepped. Tiny lizards skittered from rocks that the sun was just beginning to warm up.
The sun will be shining on my own rock
, she thought.

She’d discovered this spot during her first month at the chateau, reveling in the stillness and solitude before hurrying back for breakfast and the day’s work. Not recently, though; these past few weeks she’d been staying so late in Joseph’s room that she could barely drag herself out of bed in the mornings.

The fluttering wings of a startled grouse distracted her attention; she almost slipped on a loose stone. Her rock was just around the bend. She steadied herself and hurried toward it.

To discover that someone had gotten there before her.

Wide shoulders strained against his dark waistcoat; his silky black hair threatened to escape from its queue. When he turned at the sound of her footsteps she could see that his eyes were moist and his mouth freighted with grief.

“Oh,” she stammered, “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to bother you.”

He tossed a stone into the stream, skipping it lightly across the water’s surface.

“No,” he said, “please stay. There’s room for both of us, I think, if I move over a little. Yes, there,
voilà
, please stay.”

She slipped timidly beside him. Yes, if she situated herself very carefully there would be just enough room. She concentrated on the slender margin of space between his body and hers; she gazed at his profile, dark against the sunlit water, and at a stray wisp of black hair fluttering in the breeze. Her attention thus monopolized, her only problem was remembering to breathe.

They sat silently as the sun crept higher and the water’s surface turned from silver to palest gold.

“I’m… I’m…”

“Sorry,” one of them, both of them, stammered.

“I…”

“…was rude, thoughtless…”

“…didn’t mean to hurt you…”

“…that night.”

She couldn’t identify which words had issued from his mouth and which from hers, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Another stone skimmed across the pond, four hops before it dropped below the surface.

“My father taught me to skip stones,” he said, “on a spring morning, right at this spot.”

He rose abruptly, startling a rabbit that had been watching them from the underbrush.

“Let’s walk,” he said, reaching down a hand to help her from her seat. “Shall we?”

Silently, in single file, they threaded their way along the sun-dappled path. But she had no memory of beginning to walk; she had no thoughts or feelings at all except in the hand he’d held, his touch rippling along her nerves’ trajectories. And when the forest path widened to allow them to walk side by side it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take her hand again. They stepped into the clearing.

“I thought I had nothing but bad, angry memories of him,” he said. “But now that he’s dead, I’m suddenly recollecting other things.”

He reached into a pocket to scatter some breadcrumbs for the ducks.

“Mostly he was away. But there were a few weeks once…I was seven…he and my mother were both visiting the chateau, and I got scarlet fever. And astonishingly, my mother sent the maids away and stayed with me all night. Do you know, it was the only time I’ve ever seen her with her hair tumbling down her shoulders, not combed and puffed, powdered and swept up. I thought she looked like a saint, and I remember my father standing behind her, stroking her hair. And she reached up and held his hand, while she continued to smile her sweet, worried smile at me.”