J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: The Rousseaus #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 14)
Read J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: The Rousseaus #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 14) Online
Authors: Katy Regnery
J.C. AND THE BIJOUX JOLIS
The Rousseaus #3
Katy Regnery
Copyright
© 2016 by Katharine Gilliam Regnery
Sale of the electronic edition of this book is wholly unauthorized. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without written permission from the author/publisher.
Katharine Gilliam Regnery, publisher
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Please visit my website at www.katyregnery.com
First Edition: November 2016
Katy Regnery
J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: a novel / by Katy Regnery – 1st ed.
ISBN: 978-0-9966547-8-4
For my friend Kerry, who, after three years, still reads everything I write.
I appreciate you.
xo
And for Meital and Kim.
I would have been lost without you two.
xo
A note to readers of The Rousseau book
s
♥
J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis
shares and exceeds the time frame of
Jonquils for Jax
and
Marry Me Mad
, beginning at the wedding of Étienne Rousseau to Kate English.
August 30, 1939
Marseille, France
“You are…exquisite,” sighed Monsieur Montferrat, peeking at her from one side of the canvas before hiding behind it once again. “
Magnifique
.”
“
Merci
,” said eighteen-year-old Camille Trigére softly, wishing she could flex her arms and roll her neck to get the kinks out.
A bead of sweat that started at the nape of her neck swerved around her collarbone to rest precariously on the tip of her left nipple. It was hot this summer.
Merde,
but it was hot.
Still, to be immortalized by a famous painter like Pierre Montferrat was an honor for a very new and inexperienced portrait model like Camille. A hundred years from now, when she was long gone, this portrait, which Monsieur had titled
Les Bijoux Jolis
, would hang on someone’s wall, somewhere in the world.
Immortalité.
It was worth a moment’s discomfort to live forever.
“Do not move. Not even an inch,” said Monsieur Montferrat, pulling at the gray goatee on his chin as he stood to admire her, a glass of muddy-gray water in his hand. “I must refresh the water.”
She watched until he had left the small studio, then stretched her arms over her head eagerly, massaging the feeling back into her hands. For over four hours, she’d held the same pose of “young nude wearing emerald necklace” and she was tired, damn it.
Casting her eyes toward the open doors that led to a small terrace, she wondered if her old friend, and new lover, Gilles Lévy, was already waiting downstairs to walk her home. The sun was quite low. It must be after four.
Camille and Gilles had known each other forever, growing up in the same neighborhood and attending the same synagogue throughout their shared childhood. Lately, the France of their early years was shifting, however, with conservatives and socialists that Camille’s father had once considered mainstream now speaking out against the Jews of Marseille and aligning their politics with worrisome new ideas filtering into France from Germany.
The shift was subtle—Camille saw it in the way that Monsieur Ragout had stopped taking Jewish piano students this summer, too busy for one more student, though very little lesson music wafted down from his third-floor studio on Rue Saint-Dominique. In Camille’s own life, the shift had been slightly less subtle and infinitely more personal: Monsieur Montferrat, upon meeting her in July, had commented, “How curious! You don’t have the
look
of a Jewess.”
His initial inspection had made her uncomfortable enough to reconsider the monthlong modeling job, but she’d accepted despite misgivings. Although her father would skin her alive if he found out what she’d been doing every day, she hoped to make enough money to run away to Paris with Gilles this September. He had a second cousin willing to share his deux pièces with the young lovers. Struggling artist Gilles said they’d find work at a local café during the day, and every night he would paint her in the moonlight before sweeping her off to bed to make love until dawn.
When Monsieur Montferrat slipped back into the room, Camille’s arms and hands were perfectly in place, though her smile may have been a bit more dreamy.
“It’s almost five,” he said, flicking a glance at the terrace doors regretfully. “I suppose you have to go soon.”
“
Oui
, Monsieur. Gilles will be here at five. How much longer today?” asked Camille politely as the artist stood at his canvas, surveying his work.
After several long moments of staring at the portrait, he looked up at her and sighed. “We’re finished.”
Camille sat up immediately, grabbing her chemise and panties from under the divan and wiggling into them, always self-conscious of her naked form when Monsieur Montferrat was finished painting. She shrugged her light-blue cotton dress over her head, smoothing the clothing back into place, relieved that she was fully covered once again.
“Shall I come again tomorrow?”
Monsieur Montferrat raised an eyebrow as he smiled sadly at her, slipping around his painting carefully to take his place behind her. Gathering her black hair in her hands, Camille lifted it off the back of her neck and stood still, waiting for him to unclasp the necklace so she could go.
His rough fingers rested on the damp skin of her neck. “Do you know what’s happening in the world,
belle
Camille?”
“Monsieur?” she murmured, surprised by the distressed tone of his voice.
“Madness,” he cursed softly. “The world is going mad,
petite
.”
Camille liked Monsieur Montferrat.
He was gray and wrinkled like her grandfather, but he had been good to the young model: respectful, not leering, patient as she learned how to maintain a pose for hours on end, and always kind to her, talking of art and music during their long afternoons together. But his outburst made her uncomfortable and eager to leave.
“Monsieur,” she said gently, “my friend will be most anxious.”
She felt his fingers working the clasp of the ornate emerald necklace. She’d worn it every day for twenty-nine days while her parents believed she was minding Gilles’ twin nieces on the other side of town.
The heavy jewels slipped into the crevice of her breasts as Monsieur Montferrat lifted the two sides from around her neck, then raised them over her head. Camille breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped away, and she reached down to tug on her shoes, quickly buckling them.
“You needn’t come back, Mademoiselle Trigére,” said the artist, crossing the room and placing the priceless necklace back in a black velvet box, which he locked in the bottom drawer of a desk.
“
Pourquoi
?” she whispered, fearing that she had displeased him in some way.
Turning to face her, his smile was rueful. “Because the portrait is finished.”
He beckoned her to stand beside him, and she stepped around the easel to look at the canvas she’d never been permitted to peek at before now.
Her painted body, pale and pink, was stark on the dark-green velvet divan on which she had posed, but she quickly realized that she was merely a palette for the necklace around her throat. The gems caught the afternoon light, facets gleaming, white-gold settings shiny and bright. The centerpiece of the painting was the necklace, and Camille had a sense of disappointment as she realized that her immortality would be forever overshadowed by the jewels she’d worn around her neck. Yet still…
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly.
He collected an envelope full of francs from the shelf at the bottom of his easel, holding it between them, searching her eyes with his. When he finally spoke, his voice was urgent. “Don’t go to Paris,
petite
. Go to London. Or better, New York.
Oui
,
belle
Camille, go to America.
Maintenant
. Now. Promise me.”
“America?”
“
Oui
. As soon as possible.”
Troubled by the wild look in his eyes and ever more eager to leave, she took the envelope from his fingers. “You have been kind to me.
Merci
.”
“I beg you. Leave France behind. Never look back.”
“Leave France?”
“Promise me,” he begged her in an urgent whisper. “Promise me that you will have a good life.”
She stepped forward to press her lips against his papery cheek. “
Adieu
, Monsieur.”
Her footsteps echoed down the metal stairs of the tiny apartment building, and she flung herself into Gilles’ arms, heady with freedom, as soon as she reached the sidewalk.
“
C’est fini
!” she told him with a beaming smile, offering him the envelope of money that would secure the next step of their shared future.
“Paris, here we come!” he cried, covering her mouth with a lusty kiss.
From the lonely terrace of his apartment, Monsieur Montferrat watched them link hands and scurry joyfully away, wondering just for a moment what would become of the young Jewish girl in the painting…the beautiful young woman in his final portrait,
Les Bijoux Jolis
.