Pam Rosenthal (20 page)

She could tell him that “it does no good, you know, to pretend to be a nasty, shallow person, just because you’re frightened that you might actually
be
that sort of person. Because you’re
not
, even if you’re not sure exactly who you really are.”

Worse and worse. Facile and preachy.

And so she said nothing at all. And did nothing except hold him tightly and mourn with him, until the sky had gone from black to blue and it was time to kiss each other good night.

Chapter Fifteen

They didn’t speak of it again, at least not in so many words. In fact, the next night they hardly spoke at all, so eager were they to taste and touch, to kiss and stroke and fuck and fondle and hold each other—to make up, in every way they could, for an evening’s lost lovemaking.

Of course, after hearing the story of Claire, Marie-Laure knew that there could be no possibility of unprotected lovemaking. Although, as Joseph suggested quietly a few nights later, if she wanted to feel him discharge within her she could always learn to take him in her mouth.

“You want me to,” she said, “don’t you?”

He lay on his back, naked, loose limbed, open and unguarded, with one arm lightly about her shoulders. He laughed as he prodded her to sit up beside him.

“Well, yes,” he replied. “I rather do want you to.”

She reached to touch him, but the expression on her face was a bit dubious.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems to me that you’re too big to fit in my mouth. Even…now.”

His penis was soft, spent, still moist with his semen of an hour ago. She cupped his scrotum, stroking the shaft with the fingers of her other hand, giggling with anxious pleasure as it rose and stiffened at her touch. “You were too big a moment ago, Monsieur. And
now
…”

I’m teasing him
, she thought,
I’m teasing him just as I’m teasing myself.

For the truth was that she’d wanted to try it for some time—if she could only get herself beyond a certain lingering shyness.

He sat up slightly against the pillows, reaching to touch her face.

“Gently, gently,
doucement
. Don’t fret,
chérie
. We’ll simply see how far we get.”

Bending his knees and widening his legs so she could kneel between them, he continued to croon encouragement as he stroked her eyelids, her cheeks and jaw. His fingertips traced the outline of her lips, swollen with his kisses. He grasped her head and guided it downward.

“Breathe,” he told her.

And so she did. She breathed him past her lips and against her tongue, past the soft liquid insides of her cheeks and down into her arching, widening, opening throat. It was a new sort of opening and relaxing, she thought, another way of dropping the barriers between yourself and someone you loved. She gagged a little; he’d continued to grow since he’d entered her mouth.

“Breathe.” His voice trembled and commanded at the same time.

Yes, she definitely needed to breathe.

But how?

With your
nose
, idiot.

The draughts of air she took in were freighted with precious private smells. No wonder she’d felt shy about it, she thought: the intimacy and audacity of the act were dizzying, overwhelming. As was—she realized a moment later—her growing sense of her power over him.

She sucked and pulled. Teasingly, she flicked at him with her tongue as she loved him to do at her breast.

He groaned. She moved her mouth, her lips, her tongue over him more confidently. Quickly at first, and then as slowly as she was able. And then quickly again—rhythmically, she could feel her breasts bouncing—until he began to buck his hips and to cry out. He’d taken hold of her hair to guide the movement of her head, but there was nothing he could do, she thought, to control her wanton, arrogant tongue.

Scenes from his harem story flashed through her mind. Was she leader or follower, imperious lady or humblest concubine kneeling abject on aching knees? She couldn’t tell. Perhaps it simply didn’t matter. Or perhaps—in certain circumstances—it was possible to be both at once.

His cries became louder, harsh now. She gasped and shuddered, her body locked between his thighs, his sex buried deep at the back of her mouth. She hugged his waist and widened her throat just the slightest bit more—to receive, to swallow the hot, salty fluid that exploded from him.

She collapsed on his belly.

“Oh Marie-Laure,” he sighed, reaching down for her, drawing her beside him on the pillows, and cradling her in his arms. “
Oh
Marie-Laure.”

“A letter for you, Joseph,” Hubert announced at tea a few afternoons later, “with a very impressive seal on it. And nothing”—he barely looked at his wife—“for you, Madame.”

Nodding curtly, he took the letters from the silver tray the tall, silent footman held out to him. “That will be all. You needn’t stand here gawking.”

“The one addressed to me looks official,” he added with a frown, “and will probably oblige me to do something tedious.”

Joseph recognized the familiar handwriting on the letter his brother handed him.

“It’s from Jeanne,” he said.

“The Marquise de Machery,” he added a moment later when it had become clear that his brother and sister-in-law had forgotten the Christian name of the woman they’d betrothed him to.

“Ah.” The Duchesse’s saccharine smile did little to mask her disquiet. Joseph knew she wouldn’t sleep easily until he’d been delivered to his fate, reciting his marriage vows at the large ceremony in a Paris cathedral, with some of the highest members of the King’s court in attendance.

“How congenial,” she said, “a letter from the bride. I remember how nervous I was, after the contract had been signed, sending my first little scented note to my intended husband…”

Her anxiety made her voluble. The wedding would mark her debut in Parisian society; she was having elaborate gowns prepared, and new suits for Hubert as well.

Joseph thought she’d probably make a success of it. Although still a harridan at home, nowadays she was quite presentable in public, having picked up some social graces from her friends—or allies—among the local gentry. Whatever her private struggles with Hubert, it was clear that she’d gained in confidence and social stature since becoming Duchesse. Hubert had been right about her will and energy No doubt she’d exploit every social opportunity this Paris wedding provided; perhaps she’d even manage an invitation to Versailles.

He nodded politely while Hubert grimaced at the memory of the “little scented note.”

Of course, Jeanne’s letter wouldn’t be a shy missive from a terrified girl being bartered into marriage. It would be an easy, erudite communication from an old friend.

He broke the seal and unfolded the heavy paper.

The letter was written in a large, clear, schoolgirlish handwriting, with ornate, imperiously drawn capitals.

Mon cher ami
,

I miss you and so does all of Paris. How delightful that you’ll be among us again so soon…

He smiled. Her writing style was unmistakable: hyperbolic, magisterial, and always entertaining. An astute political observer and a waspish gossip, she always knew what the leading intellectual lights of the city were talking about. And she liked to pepper her news with bits picked up from her actor friends at the
Comédie-Française
.

…
no one knows whether the company will be permitted to perform this marvelous play. The King changes his mind every day, it seems. Some mornings he wakes up emboldened to allow an entertainment that dares to make the same jokes everybody makes (only, of course, with a great deal more flash and brio). And sometimes he’s sure that a simple comedy will bring the walls of the Bastille crashing down. And so he renews his censorship of
The Marriage of Figaro
yet again.

Ah yes, he thought. It would be amusing to be in Paris again. Oh no, he thought next. He winced. No. He didn’t want to go. Not now, anyway.

He’d expected to be ready to leave by now. After all, it had been four weeks (four weeks and a day!) since that delicious morning in the barn.

Absurd—four weeks was a lifetime in a libertine’s career, even a libertine who’d broken the rule against revealing his inner thoughts to the woman he was bedding. Four weeks with the same woman was a disgrace; certainly by now the inevitable slaking of desire ought to have set in.

For the last night or two he’d been examining himself for signals; like an imaginary invalid obsessed with bad humors, he’d been sure the decline was imminent. Pacing the floor or leaning back among the disheveled bedclothes, he’d scanned his emotions for the familiar signs: a creeping sense of tedium, a deadening of affect, a nagging feeling that he would have been better entertained spending the evening with a good book. In short, the complex of symptoms that Monsieur X had described as “the metallic taste of a stale affair.”

But he hadn’t found any of that (and anyway, if he were to read a good book, he’d surely want to know Marie-Laure’s opinion of it). His mouth didn’t taste anything like metal—it tasted like young red wine. His desire hadn’t weakened. If anything, he wanted her more than he had before.

None of which made the least bit of sense to him; the storms of emotion he weathered these past weeks had left him stranded, marooned without a compass on the shoals of his desire. He ought to take a leaf from Monsieur X’s book, he thought.
Cut off the entanglement—and while you’re at it, Joseph, trim that awful metaphor about shipwrecks and compasses
. Of course, the entanglement would end soon enough in any case. Shrugging away his confusion, he turned back to Jeanne’s letter.

…the prospect of our marriage has made my life a great deal easier; Uncle still frets about the reputation I’ve earned, but even he has become convinced that we’ve contrived a way to silence the gossips—or at least divert them to more acceptable slanders. It’s humiliating to have one’s affairs dictated in this way, but I confess that I’m in your debt,
mon vieux,
and will do whatever I can to make your life as agreeable as possible. We shall have to find someone for you to amuse yourself with, of course. Or is a series of someones still more your style? Well, even if it is now, it won’t be so forever.

Could it be true, he wondered, that he no longer wanted “a series of someones”?

And naturally
(the letter continued)
I look forward with keen anticipation to the moment when Monsieur X stops being the proverbial bad boy and succumbs, like the ordinary run of frail humanity, to love’s exigencies…

Damn Jeanne anyway. He was happy that things were working out so well for her, but even so, it didn’t give her license to tease him.

Even if she’d meant it fondly.

And expressed it with such infuriating precision.

He looked up from the letter and stared into the fire.

“Nothing wrong, I hope?” His sister-in-law had been watching him while he read. He pretended not to hear her. Let her worry, he thought, at least for a few moments more. Let her fret that her scheme might be encountering some resistance.

“Well, there’s a great deal wrong with the communication
I’ve
received,” Hubert burst in. “This damn police inspector has come all the way from Montpellier and insists upon seeing me early tomorrow morning—can you believe that the incompetent ninnies still haven’t found the Baron Roque’s killer? At the height of grouse-hunting season, too: the weather will be perfect.”

His voice had risen to a high whine. “What’s the use of being Duc,” he demanded, “if I can’t hunt when I want to?”

The Duchesse swiveled her head toward her husband. “I’ll receive the inspector, Monsieur. By all means, do go kill a few more little creatures tomorrow morning. But about your fiancée, Joseph.” She turned to him again. “I do trust that she’s well.

“You needn’t be troubled,” she continued, “if she seems a bit hesitant. A little nervousness, you know, even a hint of vaporishness, is quite normal for a girl in her situation.”

Amusing to try to imagine Jeanne with a fit of the vapors.

“She’s quite well, Madame,” he murmured. “In fact, she’s in excellent form—at least in her letter.”

“Whereas, when it comes to her
real
physical form,” Hubert crowed, “we know she’s somewhat
less
than excellent.”

Delighted that nothing would interfere with his grouse hunting, he tried to extend his witticism. “Or
more
than excellent, I suppose one could say. Well, she’s
fat
anyway.” His braying laugh was loud enough to compensate for his companions’ embarrassed silence.

“Give me the inspector’s letter,” his wife said, “so I can see what he wants of us. You say he’s investigating a murder? Well, it might be a diversion at least.”

…but I must go, dear Joseph.
(It was the final page of the Marquise’s letter.)
My garden needs hoeing and this evening Madame Helvetius has planned a gathering in Ambassador Franklin’s honor. A charming man, one is tempted to call him “Papa” as his intimates do…