Pam Rosenthal (5 page)

The heroine of the new story he’d been scribbling, the object of several months of tumescent fantasies.

Oh, and the girl I rather insulted as well. Don’t forget that part, Joseph.
He’d been nasty and patronizing, simply because she’d read Monsieur X’s book a bit too perceptively for his comfort. Of course, he’d intended to beg her pardon before he’d left. But Baptiste—who’d been searching the streets for him—had arrived with Madame de Rambuteau’s coach while Marie-Laure had been out at the market.

Perhaps, he’d thought then, it had been just as well. For his response to her had been so strong (how touching she’d looked when she’d stalked out of the room, head high, back straight and proud) that he might well have given in to temptation and risked a broken tooth of his own.

But to find her here this afternoon! At first he hadn’t been able to believe it. He’d needed to look into her eyes. No wonder she’d almost dropped the cup and saucer—the gaze he’d directed at her had been the most charged he could muster. Of course, once he’d ascertained her identity, he’d been obliged to feign disinterest.

But then, what could he have done? Ravish her in full sight of his family? Or—far more inappropriate—shake her hand and ask after her father’s health?

One could hardly breach the rules of conduct between master and servant, noble and commoner, all based, he thought, upon some noodleheaded assumption of aristocratic superiority. You’re bathed and dressed, fed, flattered and—if you like—serviced by your inferiors.

The thought made him dizzy: part of his brain swooning with images of intimate conversation with her; the other part wanting only to drag her into a dark hallway, raise her skirts, and get it over with quickly. Take what he wanted and move on; liberate himself from his complicated feelings for her. Assert his right to her as some of the worst of his peers might have done—the vile old Baron Roque, for example.

“Time for supper, Monsieur Joseph.”

“Thank you, Baptiste.”

“I know how to get to her room, by the way, Monsieur Joseph. She’ll be the only one sleeping there tonight, with Louise away.”

“You know I don’t take advantage of servants, Baptiste.”
Hypocrite, you’ve thought of little else for an hour.

“No, Monsieur Joseph.”

“Well, not for a very long time anyway.”

“That’s true, Monsieur Joseph.”

His eyes strayed to the notebooks spread out on his desk. Boyish yearnings and libertine cynicism cobbled together with a bit of wit and a lot of salacious detail. Rather a pathetic little body of work, really. And the story he’d been writing these past months, about the sultan and the gray-eyed harem girl—embarrassing stuff, especially under the current circumstances.

“But…Monsieur Joseph?”

“What
is
it, Baptiste?”

“Well, when I was sniffing around for information down there, I kept bumping into your father’s valet Jacques. And Jacques was asking a lot of the same questions I was. Especially about where she sleeps.”

If it had been any other girl, he might have been amused. The rule about keeping pretty servants away was his sister-in-law’s invention, a straitlaced and rather spiteful way of imposing authority over an anarchic household.
Let the old man do as he wants
, he might have thought.
Let him live as he always had—selfishly, reprehensibly—in the little time left to him.

If it had been any girl but this one.

He hadn’t a clue what to do. But he knew he was going to do something.

“Suppertime, Monsieur Joseph.”

He supposed the food was quite good. His parents had always set an excellent table, even as his father’s debts eroded the family fortune, weeds choked the chateau’s moat, and the mistral blew shards of slate off the roof and stone from the battlements. He sipped his soup, a chilled sherried consommé with morels. He was too agitated to taste it, but he suspected that it was splendid. All the food was probably splendid now that his sister-in-law was in charge of things. She’d brought an immense dowry with her, along with an ironclad determination to restore the family to its former glory. There were plasterers and carpenters everywhere, busily transforming the rough-hewn thirteenth century chateau to a mini-Versailles.

An easier job, Joseph thought, than making an elegant gentleman out of Hubert. His brother—six years older and a head shorter—had never been much for social graces, or even simple table manners. Joseph watched a tall, muscular footman refill his plump brother’s wineglass and then his soup bowl. Hubert proceeded to slurp one and slop the other; his lace cuffs would be a multicolored marvel by the time the meal was done.

“And do tell me all the news of Madame de Rambuteau.” Amélie leaned solicitously toward him, the better to hear what he might say, and to give him a closer look at a not-unreasonable bosom. She had sharp greenish eyes and pointed features, excellent height and carriage, and no family to speak of. Her father’s title had been all too recently purchased, with an obscene fortune bled from sugar plantations in Haiti. His sister-in-law was rather a joke with the family’s oldest intimates—Madame de Rambuteau had entertained him more than once with her devastating parody of the lady’s arriviste affectations. “Ah, well,” his mother had sighed this morning in the coach, “she was the best we could find for Hubert.”

He hoped that Hubert was less inept in bed than he was at the table. But he doubted it, his own particular theory being that while a hearty and gourmandizing eater was a good lover, a helpless glutton was not. All of which made him more sympathetic than he might otherwise be toward the Comtesse Amélie, this high-strung, energetic woman whom the marriage market had placed in such an awkward position. If only she wouldn’t take out the frustrations of her situation on her servants. He’d seen the way she’d glared at Marie-Laure this afternoon, and heard the cold, threatening tone in which she’d ordered “Marianne” to serve the family their tea.

She was still waiting for an answer from him, bosom still thrust under his nose.

“Madame de Rambuteau is gracious as ever,” he told her. “She spoke often of you, too, and the pleasure she takes in your company.”

She returned a gratified (if somewhat surprised) nod. “She must have been sorry to have to let you go.”

He smiled. “Actually, Madame, my departure was most felicitously timed. Well, perhaps just a
trifle
belated…” He turned toward Hubert, hoping to slip in a barbed reference to all the anxious months spent waiting to hear that it was safe for him to venture outside of Madame de Rambuteau’s protection. But Hubert had sunk blissfully into an enormous wedge of beef and seemed quite oblivious to the conversation.

Joseph caught the misdirected anecdote in midair and gracefully tossed it to the table at large. “Because toward the end of my stay she conceived an intense desire to learn to play the clavichord, having been quite profoundly moved by the work of a young virtuoso who’d performed for us one evening. In fact, she’d been so enamored of the gentleman’s, ah, fingering, that, quite unbeknownst to me, she’d entered into a passionate correspondence with him, and had finally convinced him to stay a few months with her, for an extended course of instruction.”

It was true. Madame de Rambuteau liked variety. She would have tossed him out in a few weeks even if he’d had nowhere to go. Well, at least it made a story you could dine out on. A pity, he supposed, that he thought of eating with his family as “dining out.”

The anecdote was a success, anyway. His father rewarded him with a high-pitched giggle, and even his pious, overbred mother allowed herself a bit of a guilty smile. As for his sister-in-law, she was virtually transported by his performance, laughing heartily enough to set her bosom heaving and—was it possible?—thrusting it even farther forward.

“It will be delightful to share your wit and spirit with my guests tomorrow evening. And so we must all get plenty of rest tonight, to be
fresh
for the festivities…”

He nodded absently.
What was his father planning tonight, and how could he be stopped?

But she hadn’t finished with what she was saying.

“And so
I
,
at any rate, will be abed
quite
early, all safely tucked away between sheets perfumed with heliotrope. And I
know
my dear husband will be getting a much-needed rest as well.”

Her instructions couldn’t have been clearer if she’d posted them on a cathedral door.
Not tonight, Hubert. Tonight I’m hoping for a visit from somebody with a little wit and spirit.
Poor woman, she seemed to think this was how such things were done.

He might have blushed for her if he were given to blushing. His mother had rolled her eyes to heaven, and his father—impossible to tell what he was thinking, but his small blue eyes shone with keen malice. Hubert shrugged. Even the footman—rather a good-looking fellow, Joseph thought, and oddly familiar, as though he’d once seen him in a dream—seemed a trifle mortified.

He supposed it was up to him to put an end to this. Feigning an ostentatious yawn behind a fluttering hand, he murmured, “I fear this morning’s coach ride was too much for me, Madame. A long sleep sounds exactly like the prescription I need. You’re a wise physician.”

She bowed her head, her smile threatening at any moment to become a nasty scowl. Baptiste had told him that her servants called her the Gorgon.

The silence at the table continued halfway through the strawberry tart, which was good enough, in any case, to claim everyone’s attention.

And then there was a crash.

A much louder crash than the one he’d averted this afternoon in the library, it seemed to carry with it a sense of inevitability, as though everybody had been waiting since then for
some
crash to happen. It sounded quite beautiful really, as expensive lead crystal does when it shatters. The Duc had chosen to drop an enormous faceted decanter full of old brandy. It wasn’t a decanter Joseph recognized—Amélie must have brought it with her.

Bravo, Monsieur, got her
there
, Joseph thought. But he’d savor the moment—and the look on her face—later, at his leisure. Now it was time to act.

For the Duc’s move, planned to get him away from the table early, had been slightly miscalculated. He’d dropped the decanter a bit closer to his leg than he’d intended, and Joseph could see that a few shards of glass had penetrated his calf, drawing a little blood through the stocking.

“Monsieur!” He jumped to his feet. “Monsieur, you’re hurt!”

The old man threw him a furious look. “Not a bit of it,” he snarled. “I’m fine. Just need to wash off this brandy I’ve spilled on myself. If you all will excuse me.”

Joseph was at his side, pulling out the glass, perhaps a little more roughly than was quite necessary. “Can you walk, Monsieur? Or should I carry you? That’s right, lean on me, good, good, we’ll get you to your room, perhaps call the doctor…”

What was the handsome footman’s name? Ah yes, Arsène. “Arsène, can you help me get the Duc to his room? Thank you, thank you…”

The anxiety in his voice sounded convincing even to himself. Well, this gambit had better work.

“I’m perfectly
fine
, Joseph,” the old man sputtered.

“Of
course
you are, Monsieur, and very brave as well.” He and Arsène strong-armed the struggling, protesting Duc from the room and up the corridor to his bedchamber, where Jacques was just laying out a handsome dressing gown.
Vain old coot; it was what he’d planned to wear when he made his visit to Marie-Laure.

“A bit of a mishap, Jacques. A bit of a different evening than perhaps he’d planned. He needs to be put to bed, after you give him a good long bath and soak that leg.

“And you will stay with them, Arsène, that’s a good fellow, in case he needs any help? While I, um, while I, go, uh…”

Arsène was looking at him strangely. Well, he supposed his act was wearing a bit thin. His powers of invention certainly were. And as he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he simply quit the room without finishing the sentence. Where the devil was Baptiste?

Luckily, he was in Joseph’s own room, seeing to his linen.

Joseph tossed off his coat. August was so unbearably hot in Provence. And he didn’t have much time before his father got back on his feet. But at least he knew what he was going to do—in its general outlines, anyway, if not in every particular. He grinned.

“Quick, Baptiste. Take me to where she sleeps. And not a word out of you.”

Chapter Five

It was as hot and airless in her little garret bedchamber as it had been in the kitchen.
Go to bed
, Marie-Laure told herself,
go to bed and get some sleep.
At least she’d have the mattress to herself tonight, and for once she’d be free of Louise’s snoring.

But instead she paced the tiny room as though pursued by fleeting images and fragments of memory. She needed only to blink to set his image shimmering at the margin of her vision. In some ways he’d changed enormously since Montpellier: the legs that had flopped around in ragged trousers were graceful and well turned in fine faille breeches; the lanky frame that had slumped in Papa’s armchair stood poised and balanced, legs angled in a dancer’s perfect fourth position.

And yet in the essential, infinitesimal particulars—a torque of muscle at the small of the back, a whimsical tilt of the head, a few loose strands of silky black hair escaping from the velvet ribbon at his nape—in every way that mattered, he hadn’t changed at all.