Finding Emilie (13 page)

Lili lifted her hand to her nose. “They smell like the woods,” she said, pinching the leafy top off the first berry and putting the fruit in her mouth. The tiny, soft skin broke between her tongue and palate without her needing to chew, releasing an explosion of musty sweetness so intense, she shut her eyes to savor it better.

“If you don’t eat faster, you won’t get your share,” Paul-Vincent said. Lili opened her eyes and tossed the remaining berries into her mouth, mashing them with her tongue against the inside edges of her teeth, and letting the spicy tang work through to her cheeks.

Nice, she thought. So nice. The taste of strawberries lingering in her mouth, the light shimmering in the glade, birdsong in the trees, the wisp of a breeze on a warm afternoon …

The good company. She looked at Paul-Vincent, who was sorting through the remaining berries. No point in letting her imagination go. He was three years younger than she was, and the suitable mate for him was probably asleep in a cradle.

A dragonfly buzzed by her head, pursued by a second one. Paul-Vincent gave a whoop of excitement, and within a few seconds he had trapped one in his net. “I was hoping for this,” he said, decapitating the insect with a quick motion and securing one of its wings to the microscope. He went a few steps to a better lit spot in the clearing and held the microscope up to the light, adjusting the screws until he had it right. “Come take a look,” he said.

Lili peered through the lens and gasped. The wing burst out before her like a leaded glass window in a cathedral, translucent and radiant as a drop of oil on water, held together by a lattice of rectangles and hexagons, no two alike. “Spin this screw like this,” Paul-Vincent said, showing her how to twirl the specimen to see it at different angles.

Lili was vaguely aware of his hand on the small of her back as she looked through the lens, but when she turned to comment, his face was so close she almost brushed his cheek with her nose. She shifted her weight back to pull away, but without knowing quite how it happened, his lips were on hers. They were warm and wet, and softer than she imagined possible, but she was too startled to linger. She pulled away, pressing her fingers to her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Paul-Vincent said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

No you shouldn’t, Lili thought, not sure if she believed it. But I think I’m glad you did. “It isn’t proper,” she said, trying to sound indignant. “And it shouldn’t happen again.”

And then it did. This kiss, longer and more confident, set off an odd but not unpleasant twinge in her belly that inched toward her groin, fading only when a hard click of teeth caused her to startle and pull away. Just then the sound of horses’ hooves crackled through the twigs on the forest floor, and Jacques-Mars burst into the clearing.

“Where in hell have you been?” he said. His horse whinnied and tossed its head at the yank of the bit when Jacques-Mars pulled up next to them. “We were about to send out the guard.” He tossed his head in Lili’s direction. “Help her on behind me,” he said to Paul-Vincent. “I’ve tied up your horses back at the trail.”

Jacques-Mars looked back and forth between Lili and Paul-Vincent, with an expression unnerving enough to make her feel as if her chest were folding in half. Do men just know when some things happen? Is it that obvious?

Paul-Vincent made a stirrup with his hands and helped her up behind Jacques-Mars, whose body under his riding jacket felt as uninviting as a statue.

“Did you notice that family stealing strawberries just up the trail?” Jacques-Mars asked. “I drove them off. Gave one of their dirty little brats a whack to let them know I meant business.”

Their horses were tied up only a few minutes away, and Lili avoided Paul-Vincent’s eyes when he helped her back down from Jacques-Mars’s horse and onto her own.

“You’re going to have to start paying attention, Paul-Vincent,” Jacques-Mars said. “If you don’t, hundreds like them will think your lands are the solution to their empty stomachs, and soon they’ll be so bold it won’t be safe for you to be out here.” His eyes pierced Lili with a now-unmistakable leer. “Especially with a young lady.” Then Jacques-Mars kicked his horse’s flanks and galloped down the trail to the château.

Lili followed, forgetting Jacques-Mars’s expression and thinking of nothing but the lingering taste of strawberries and soft lips, the secrets of dragonfly wings, and what Paul-Vincent must look like riding behind her.

F
RANÇOIS!” JEAN-LUC
Valmont steadied himself as he leaned out of the coach and stared up at a third-story window. “François-Marie Arouet!” he called up again in the blaring tone of a drunken reveler. “Get yourself down out of that rat hole you live in! I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

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

“T
HEY 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.”