Finding Emilie (39 page)

Inside the house, two letters from Paris, one for Voltaire and
one for her, lay on a tray. She examined the seal on her own. The Academy of Science! “We understand that, despite the anonymous nature of the submission, you are the author of a paper submitted to the Academy for its annual competition,” it read. “We are pleased to inform you that it has received an honorable mention.

“We found your ideas promising enough that we are taking the unusual step of publishing your paper in addition to the three winning entries, so it may receive the attention it deserves and begin the discussion it will most surely generate. By separate letter we are sending Monsieur Voltaire his results as well. His work received the same special commendation as your own, coming as it does, most unusually, from a man of letters. The Academy wishes to encourage the pursuit of science by all those inclined to it. However, since there are some notable errors in his data and concerns about the validity of his conclusions, we have told him if he wishes to publish it he must do so on his own.”

Emilie held the letter to her chest. “I won!” she whispered. That was what the Academy was really telling her. If she weren’t a woman, she would have won.

“What did you say?” Voltaire came to the door, dressed for a walk. Emilie’s hand trembled as she gave him his letter.

He scanned the terse message on the single sheet. “Honorable mention?” he sniffed. “Well, I suppose it’s a good start.” He looked at Emilie. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, handing him her own letter. Voltaire’s face grew scarlet as he took in the meaning. “You submitted your own paper without telling me?” Emilie’s heart pounded with fear as he tapped his finger on the words. “And it’s being published?”

Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “Well, this could be quite good!” he announced. “Cirey just became the most famous laboratory in France. People will beg for an invitation to visit. I’ll buy more instruments and every book on physics that’s ever been published.” He danced a circle around her. “Just wait and see. In two years I’ll be one of the most celebrated scientists in Europe!”

Emilie’s heart sank. Hadn’t he read the letter? Didn’t he understand the greater honor had gone to her? Voltaire saw her stricken face. “Of course I’ll never forget to point out how intelligent you are,” he said, “and don’t worry—I’ll always say I wouldn’t have achieved nearly as much without you.”

1767

S
UNLIGHT POURED
through the windows onto the yellow walls of the music room at Hôtel Bercy. Delphine sat on a fauteuil next to Lili while a new dog, a bichon frise like the one they had when they were little girls, sat between them on the carpet.

Lili watched as the little creature tugged the lace on Delphine’s slipper to get her attention. “Remember Tintin, how he would take over the whole bed while we played with each other’s hair?”

“And you’d tell me stories,” Delphine added.

Lili gave Delphine a fleeting smile. “About dresses. Lots of them for Princess Delphine.”

Delphine sighed wistfully. “I used to think princesses went around—well, just being princesses.” She thought for a moment. “Marriage makes me appreciate Maman. She seemed to do everything so effortlessly, but being the lady of the house is more work than I thought.”

Lili barely heard. “I wonder which one she would tell me to marry.”

“You wouldn’t be forced to marry anyone, not even the King of France,” Delphine retorted.

In the three months since the marquis’s letter giving Baronne Lomont permission to see to Lili’s marriage, several men had approached Baronne Lomont to express interest. One was from an impoverished family with excellent ancestry, noblesse d’épée on both
sides. He was thirty, a good age for an aristocratic marriage. Lili would be distressingly poor, the baroness pointed out, but her children could hope to do better, because they would bear his name. Though he was reasonably attractive in appearance, simple-minded jokes caused him to laugh until he passed gas or gave himself the hiccups. Lili and the baroness visited the home where he lived with his mother, and when Lili wandered into the library, she had been amazed to find it nearly empty of books.

“But he has a regiment,” Delphine offered as consolation. “That means he’d be gone a lot. You could take over the library for yourself and buy all the books you want with your stipend.”

“And talk about them with whom?” Lili raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t seem to have a brain at all.” Lili stood up and walked nowhere in particular before returning to sit down in the same spot. “I just don’t want to hate my life,” she said. “I wonder how many women dread having their husbands at home.”

“Probably quite a few,” Delphine said. “I’m fortunate not to be one of them—although Ambroise will soon be among those not at home, I’m afraid, since he’s required at Étoges soon. I’m supposed to go with him, but I’m so nauseous all the time.” She stood up and touched her stomach lightly with her fingertips. “It’s supposed to pass in the next few weeks, but for now, the idea of an endless coach trip on those bumpy roads is just unbearable.”

Lili smiled. “In a few months you’ll be round as a ball. And by—when, March?—you’ll have a baby. It’s just so hard to believe.”

Delphine looked at her dreamily. “If it’s a girl her name will have to be Julie. And what do you think of Jules for a boy?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone by that name,” Lili said. “Maybe that’s good. It hasn’t been ruined by someone awful.” Her smile faded. “All right, we’ve decided I can’t marry Charles Laroche, so I guess that leaves Édouard de Rabutin.”

Delphine made a sour face. “That’s enough to make me throw up again right now. Just the thought of having to kiss that—that lizard.” Seeing Lili’s stricken face, she went back to the bed and
sat down next to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot you might have to.”

“Maybe he’ll turn into a prince.” Lili tried to smile. “I told Baronne Lomont I needed another month to decide, and she’s told me that’s all I have. She says if these two offers slip away due to my stalling, she’ll arrange to have me committed to the Abbaye de Panthémont.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad, would it, compared to marrying either of them?”

Lili grimaced. “She’d have me living in poverty on the nun’s end, just to punish me. I can’t be forced to take vows, but I’d have to live as if I had, not in the nice wing where you were. The baroness said commital is the only thing left to do when a family decides a girl is incorrigible.” Her voice trembled, and she looked down at her hands to try to force herself not to cry. “She keeps reminding me I made a promise before God, and it makes me feel so—so obligated.”

“Nonsense!” Delphine retorted. “Did you ever ask God if he accepted your promise? Maybe he was waving his hands telling you to say no, or maybe he covered his ears at just that moment and didn’t hear you.”

Lili smiled. “I suppose you could be right. Maybe a promise before God really is no different from any other. After all, I didn’t exactly give my word to God himself, just to another person, and there are good reasons to break promises sometimes.” Her voice drifted off. “I just wish I could be sure it wasn’t wrong this time.”

“Of course it’s not! We simply aren’t going to have you marry either of them, promise or no promise!” Delphine’s eyes flashed but her brow quickly furrowed. “But what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Lili’s words barely came out.

“You sound just like I did when I thought Ambroise was going to marry Anne-Mathilde, and I flopped around like a limp old petticoat about it.” Delphine picked up the dog and nuzzled its soft coat. “You wouldn’t let me get away with it, remember? And I am going to do the same for you.”

Delphine stared so intently at the white moldings on the music room walls, it seemed as if she might be expecting a secret message to materialize in their frostinglike designs. “Have you ever considered trying to talk to your father yourself? If he won’t come to you, perhaps you could go to him.”

“How would I know if he’s even in Paris?”

“That’s easy enough to find out. I’ll ask Ambroise to inquire.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Well,” Delphine said, “I think you’ll just have to go and pay him a visit at Cirey.”

“Of course!” Lili said. “I’ll just ask the baroness if I can borrow her coach. Or maybe ride there on Comète.”

“No—I mean it!” Delphine put the dog back on the carpet. “Baronne Lomont wouldn’t have to know. We’ll all go together to Étoges, or at least that’s what she’ll think. You’ll say good-bye to her and tell her you’re going to decide on a husband at Étoges and be back in a month. We’ll put you on a coach for Cirey and go on to Étoges ourselves.”

“But you’re having a baby! You just said you couldn’t bear the trip.”

“I don’t care if I throw up along the entire road from here to there,” Delphine said. “I said on my wedding day that it was your turn to be happy, and as long as there’s one thing left in my power, you’re not going to marry someone who would—” Her eyes filled with tears. “Who would destroy the person I love most in the whole world.”

LILI’S COACH LEFT
the station in the Rue du Braque shortly after dawn the following Saturday. For three days, as the coach continued eastward, the towns had gotten smaller and the estates dotting the countryside became increasingly modest. Late on the third day, Lili stepped down in the tiny village of Bar-sur-Aube and watched as the coach made its way out of the sleepy village in Champagne and disappeared down the road toward Geneva.

“How far is Cirey from here, I wonder?” she asked aloud, although the valet and maid sent with her from Hôtel Bercy were as much strangers to the place as she was. No need to worry, she told herself. Ambroise had been a willing conspirator, outlining exactly what Lili was to do when she arrived. “Take a room for the night,” he told her, “and use my family’s title. Pretend to be married, and have the valet make it known in the town that Madame d’Étoges has arrived from Paris.”

Ambroise had written to a friend who lived not too far from Cirey, asking him to send a carriage and driver to Bar-sur-Aube to meet her. The plan left a great deal to chance, and Delphine was so fretful that she had been unable to sit down for more than a few minutes without jumping up to pace the floor. What if his friend was away and couldn’t help? What if the letter was lost? What if something terrible happened to Lili on the way?

“Quite frankly,” Lili had told Delphine, “getting my throat slit by a bandit would be preferable to marrying anyone Baronne Lomont chose for me.” There hadn’t been any bandits, or breakdowns, or depraved fellow passengers, as Delphine had imagined, only mile after mile of fields and poor roads. And now, here she was.

The Marquis du Châtelet had not been informed she was coming, for fear he would write to Baronne Lomont and ruin everything. No one at the château would pick Lili up, and she was to stay at an inn until someone came for her, or a letter arrived from Étoges telling her of a change in plans. If necessary, Ambroise would rescue her himself.

Stephane, the valet, arranged to have her trunk sent up to her room before going to see if there was a letter for Lili anywhere in town. They had not gotten off the coach since daybreak, but only when her maid, Justine, went upstairs to unpack what they would need for the night did Lili realize how hungry she was.

The inn was unlike any place she had been—a dark, timbered room with low ceilings and a large stone fireplace that gave off the sour smell of cold, blackened wood. A few people in tattered work
clothes sat at a table talking with a man wiping the cups left behind by others. He put them on a shelf and came over to Lili.

“Would Madame like to sit over there,” he asked, “so as not to be bothered?” He gestured to the far side of the room, and Lili followed him to a table. “Shall I bring you something to eat?” he asked as he lit a candle.

Before Lili could reply, he disappeared. A few minutes later he returned, holding a wedge of bread in the crook of a hairy arm, and carrying a bowl of stew large enough to require both hands. “Madame would like wine?” he asked, putting the bread down on the bare plank table. Taken aback at the casual arrival of her dinner while she was still expecting to hear what her choices were, Lili nodded without saying a word.

She picked up the spoon resting in the bowl. It was more like a ladle, almost as wide as her mouth and quite deep—nothing at all like the tiny consommé spoons at home. The aroma from the stew rose from the bowl, and when the man hurried off for her wine, she put her lips to the rim of the spoon and took a delicate sip. She shut her eyes, savoring the sweet, heady swirl of mutton, chervil, new onions, and carrots, before opening her mouth wide and taking in the entire spoonful. Still breaking down the tender meat with her tongue, she scooped up another spoonful, and then another, until she had polished off the entire bowl and mopped up the last bits with her remaining bread.

The innkeeper came over. “Was it to your liking, Madame?” He nodded toward the empty bowl. “Would you like a little more?” You’re behaving like a barnyard animal, she could hear Baronne Lomont saying. Slopping like a pig who’s now grunting for more.