Pam Rosenthal (44 page)

“It’s the little Duc de Carency Auvers-Raimond,” Joseph had whispered. He’d found him half-starved in a wet nurse’s shabby cottage after he’d attended Hubert’s funeral. A hunting accident, near Versailles. People suspected the Duchesse’s lover, a foppish courtier, but the King had refused to investigate.

“We don’t have Ducs in America.” Sophie had had sharp ears, even at two and a half.

“Sophie’s right,” Marie-Laure had said. Softly, she’d told the little boy that they wouldn’t be calling him “Monsieur le Duc.” But, she’d added, they were very happy to have him with them; perhaps he’d like to come down to the kitchen with her and Uncle Joseph (he was clinging to Joseph desperately) and choose what he wanted to eat for dinner. And so she’d wound up caring for the Duchesse’s son after all, while the Duchesse flitted about the gardens of Versailles, a rising favorite of the Queen herself.

Three-year-old Benjamin had flung away his sword and was shouting encouragement to Alphonse from midway up the bookshop ladder.

“Not any higher, Ben. If you climb any higher, I’ll lift you down entirely, do you hear me?”

Normally she would have left the children with Tabitha, who’d been helping with the housework since Joseph, Marie-Laure, and baby Sophie had arrived on this continent. But Tabby had gone, at Marie-Laure’s urging, to apprentice to a local midwife. Even if it meant losing cherished household help, Marie-Laure was determined that Tabby, the intelligent and hardworking daughter of former slaves, become an independent woman with as much of a profession as she was allowed to have. Her little sister Sarah would be taking her place in Marie-Laure’s house, starting tomorrow.

She comforted herself that the shop wasn’t really in bad shape. Business was steady and growing; she hoped she would soon be able to hire an assistant to help her catch up on her inventory. And to rearrange the shelves: she didn’t like the way the pious books were creeping into the Shakespeare collection.

But she’d have to find time to write to the supplier who’d sent the hopelessly garbled order she’d received yesterday. Amazing, she thought, how many details there were to a business most people thought was a simple matter of sitting magisterially behind the counter among neat rows of books.

She’d wanted to get a head start on at least one of her chores before Joseph returned from France. His impending arrival was the real source of the children’s wild exuberance. And perhaps why she was finding it difficult to keep her mind on her work as well.

He’d be bringing important news. For in July the common people of Paris had taken history into their own hands and stormed the Bastille, freeing the few prisoners still locked up in the hated fortress. In some ways the act was only symbolic, but its audacity and ferocity had made it clear that France would never be the same.

And one of the newly freed prisoners was Arsène.

Monsieur du Plessix had used an ancient legal ploy in his defense. Even though he was a commoner, Arsène had escaped hanging for the Baron’s murder because Monsieur du Plessix convinced the judges that he’d been “maddened by the mistral.” But Marie-Laure suspected that Arsène’s own simple testimony of his sister’s sufferings had swayed the judges as well. Joseph had visited him several times in prison; it hadn’t been easy, but they’d managed to forge a wary relationship over the last few years.

Of course, Joseph would have a lot to say about the current political scene in Paris. Marie-Laure had read everything she could in the newspapers: everyone agreed that change was inevitable, but nobody agreed on the form change would take. As an intimate of the present American ambassador, Mr. Jefferson, Joseph would know as much as anybody could about the situation.

He’d been successful in his work at the consulate. He’d brought his native impetuosity to the position, approaching it with the pent-up enthusiasm of a talented late starter. Just as he’d promised himself that morning on the bank of the Seine, he’d
“become
good at details.” He’d become such a meticulous administrator that Mr. Jefferson had come to rely on him, demanding that he work with him in France from time to time. Marie-Laure wasn’t fond of these periodic absences, but she’d never forgotten Doctor Franklin’s appraisal of her husband: he thrived in the clash of old and new worlds, negotiating their differences and trying to help each side understand the other.

He was a good enough diplomat even to have made friends with Gilles. Marie-Laure was looking forward to his latest reports of Gilles, Sylvie, and their household full of tiny children as much as to the news of the political situation in Paris.

And so she’d reconciled herself to the separations. When your happiness spanned two continents and encompassed three clamorous, demanding, and highly individual children (but were there any other kind?) you learned to make the best of life’s imperfections.

She’d come to terms with other imperfections as well—like the differences between her and Joseph that simply wouldn’t go away. Try as she might, Marie-Laure would inevitably become befuddled by Joseph’s accounts of the diplomatic intrigues that so captivated him.

“But why do grown men act so foolishly?” she’d ask. “Can’t they just compromise and make peace, as I insist the children do?”

While for his part, Joseph would yawn discreetly when Marie-Laure launched into a disquisition on typefaces and bindings—the relative virtues of morocco leather and tooled calf; the inferior new thread some of the bookbinders were using lately.

It was the price you paid, she thought, for loving someone so different from yourself. But a small price: when each of you woke up in the morning eager to get to the work you loved—and when only the other’s touch was enough reason to stay in bed…

But if she thought too hard about
that
she wouldn’t get any work done at all. She smiled to think of how often her mind had strayed in that direction this week. At least as often as she’d thought of Gilles or Sylvie or the street riots in Paris.

The crash had finally come. She turned back to the miniature riot raging round her feet.

“Sophie, Alphonse, pick up those books immediately! Yes, I can see they’re not creased, but you knocked the stand over, didn’t you? And
Benjamin—Benjamin Alexandre Joseph
—didn’t I tell you…”

The shop suddenly grew dark. Someone standing in the doorway had blown out the candles. Perhaps he’d done it on purpose, as a reminder of how far they’d come since Montpellier. Or perhaps he’d simply blown them out by his hearty laughter at the domestic disorder that meant
home
.

“Joseph!”

“Papa, Papa!”

“Hooray, it’s Uncle Joseph!”

He swept Benjamin off his ladder as Sophie and Alphonse flung themselves at him. His skin was deep olive from his weeks on board ship, and he looked just a little more French than when he’d gone away, for he’d visited his tailor in the rue Saint-Honoré.

His hair had a few more streaks of silver. But his grin was as crooked and infectious as ever. He looked worldly, substantial, competent. And as lithe and mischievous as the night he’d pounded on the door of her attic room in the chateau.

He’d grown up. He hadn’t changed in the slightest.

“Papa, I can read now!”

“I have a new kite, Uncle Joseph. Will you fly it with me?”

And inevitably, “What did you bring me?”

She lit the lamp while he untangled himself from the laughing, chattering knot of children. He stroked Benjamin’s red hair as he set him onto the floor.

She gazed at him, for the moment or the heartbeat or the eternity before his eyes met hers. Before he was beside her, gathering her into his arms and pressing his mouth to hers.

And the news, and the children—even America and France—would all have to wait. Now that Joseph was home and Marie-Laure was at the center of the world.

Afterword and acknowledgments 2003

I like to include real historical personages in my romances. In
The Bookseller’s Daughter
you met notable figures like Benjamin Franklin and heard about notorious ones like Joseph’s prison dinner partner, the Marquis de Sade. But the book’s central historical figure is one you probably took for my own invention: the predatory bookseller Monsieur Rigaud of Montpellier, who slyly remains off stage but who had a good deal to do with this book’s creation.

The actual historical Isaac-Pierre Rigaud made a good living selling books (smuggled and not) during the second half of the eighteenth century. His business correspondence survives in the archives of his Swiss suppliers, and these archives constitute the core of Robert Darnton’s wonderful historical study,
The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
.

Darnton tells us that in the decades preceding the French Revolution, a remarkable selection of literature was smuggled over the French borders and past the censors—to be sold “under the cloak” by booksellers bold and shrewd enough to do so. Rousseau’s
Confessions
made its way into France this way, among other famous titles we credit with creating the intellectual ferment of the time. But so did many lesser, smuttier works, especially erotic (or “libertine”) fiction. Eighteenth-century French booksellers didn’t distinguish between different orders of subversive literature: they called them all “philosophical books.”

Darnton doesn’t draw easy conclusions about the political effects of reading. His arguments and speculations are subtler, and I recommend his book to anyone interested in how history works and ideas change, day by day and on the ground. I especially recommend his explanations of the mechanics of book smuggling—since I’ll confess (with some embarrassment) that my own account is tailored to the requirements of my plot and highly simplified.

I’m not embarrassed, however, by my simple emotional response to
The Forbidden Best-Sellers
, which my husband and I both read when it came out in 1994. My husband’s interest was as an independent bookseller, mine as an erotic writer. But I’d spent some time in the book trade myself, and the early ’90s were a time of energetic and baleful concentration in our industry, as large chains began forcing smaller independents out of business.

As I followed Rigaud’s cutthroat strategies and watched him buy up his competitors, I started to resent him—and to imagine another competitor, someone poor but honest, with a fetching bookish daughter. And once I’d caught an imaginary glimpse of Marie-Laure’s ink-stained fingers, it was easy to see Joseph’s crooked grin.

And what (I asked myself) if the smuggler with that captivating grin were actually a libertine writer himself? What if he were the son (the second son,
naturellement
) of the meanest duke in the Provence? And so I
what-if’d
myself into
The Bookseller’s Daughter
. I’m sure I wouldn’t have bothered if I hadn’t been so personally ticked off at Rigaud—so you can thank or blame him as you please while I do my own thanking and blaming.

Well, not a real blame, but I do have one long-cherished comment: to an early reader (and contest judge) who thought Marie-Laure made an undue fuss when Joseph shorted her order: Honey, you should hang out with some booksellers when
they
get short-shipped.

There, I feel better now.

Otherwise I have only my most grateful thanks. To my best and toughest critics, Ellie Ely and Michael Rosenthal, for forcing me to fix gaffes and problems I would have preferred to ignore. To my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for never losing her resolve that we’d see an ISBN on this thing someday. To the folks who insisted on this book’s virtues: Ellen Jacobson, Robin Levine-Ritterman, Jesse Rosenthal, and Jeff Weinstein. To my brothers, Doctors Jeff and Ricky Ritterman, for their respective advice about wounds and preeclampsia.

Thanks also to the whole, supportive Ritterman-Bard-Krasner clan. And to the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Romance Writers of America; the Unreadables (thanks especially to William de Soria); my colleagues at the San Francisco Fed who came to my booksigning and bought up every copy of my book; my fellow Welloids; Michael’s colleagues in the San Francisco independent bookselling community who buzzed
Almost a Gentleman
so enthusiastically; and my talented web designer, Emily Cotler at Waxcreative. Come visit me at www.pamrosenthal.com and see Emily’s gorgeous handiwork.

And—most importantly—to a reading community every bit as avid as Rigaud’s: thanks and thanks again to the romance readers who said such great things online and the ones who took the time to write to me ([email protected]). I can’t tell you how much I value you.

Author Note 2013

Perhaps she’d slept…or perhaps she’d simply been wandering in the new country whose citizen she’d become, the republic of love and pleasure…

She was different. Everything was different now.

You never forget your first time. And so, some dozen years ago when I wrote about Marie-Laure’s first time in Joseph’s bed, I was also celebrating my own first reckless, headlong plunge into romance writing.

I’d been published before—essays, reviews, even a pair of sexy novels. Under the slightly silly pseudonym of Molly Weatherfield, I’d concocted two books of edgy, very explicit feminist erotica, which have found their cult audience and which are still in print. But romance? A genre I hadn’t read since my teens? Those heavy-breathing clinch covers, all heaving bosoms and sculpted pecs? How uncool. How ordinary. A romance, really?