Pam Rosenthal (9 page)

“The specifics don’t matter—I’m sure you don’t remember, never even attended to the petty costs of your adventures. But what does matter is the total amount of money you owe me. This is a bill, Joseph, due six months after our father’s death, whenever that may be.”

Joseph scanned the second document while Hubert brought down two more rabbits. They were little ones, babies really, he noted, some part of him registering their pathetic smallness in the dogs’ maws while the cold legal words took shape in his mind. The baby rabbits had doubtless been driven frantic by the loss of their mother’s protection. He felt his cheeks grow hot as he struggled to keep his voice soft and even.

“So if I don’t pay you I could go to prison?”

“Shows a concern on my part, don’t you think, for the general morality? The King’s agents congratulated me on my public-spiritedness. I’m doing my bit for France by trying to teach Monsieur X some decent behavior. You’ve had a good time all these years, Joseph, but you’re going to be profitably married, just like the rest of us.

“And yes, I do need the money. Odd, how once you get money you find that you need more of it. But you’ll learn. Even with your reputation, your looks and bloodlines ought to buy somebody as good as Amélie anyway.”

Joseph felt a chill seep through his bones despite the merciless midday sunshine.

“You can’t,” he muttered. But he knew all too well that Hubert could. Joseph wouldn’t be the first young nobleman locked away for the supposed public welfare with the King’s seal on the
lettre de cachet
his family had secured. He thought of the Comte de Mirabeau—eight years in and out of prison at the whim of a hateful father. And if the Marquis de Sade’s mother-in-law continued to have her way,
that
gentleman would live out the rest of his life in the Bastille.

He struggled to concentrate on what his brother was saying. “It was good of you to make this visit,” Hubert continued. “Not a day went by last winter when the old Duc didn’t regale Amélie and me with pronouncements of how overjoyed he was about the imminent return of his favorite son.

“Too bad the lawyers took so long with their subtleties of phrasing or you might have been able to return sooner. But
I
couldn’t help but enjoy the old coot’s frustrations when I’d tell him he’d have to wait a bit longer.”

Couldn’t help but enjoy it. Yes, I can imagine.

“Is he really as ill as your letters said?” Joseph asked.

Hubert threw him an aggrieved look. “Would I lie about a matter of such import? Speak to his doctors yourself if you wish. Of course, if you absolutely can’t bear the idea of marrying, you could probably get away right now—cross the border back to the shabby adventurer’s life you were living. But you won’t.”

He’s right, I won’t. I’ve committed myself to staying with our father through the course of his illness.

“You needn’t hurry to find a fiancée, after all,” Hubert continued. “Our inquiries to the marriage brokers have been most perfunctory as yet. Personally I’m delighted to have you here—saves me from having to listen to the old goat’s stupid rants at dinner and tea. After he dies, of course, we’ll need your quick cooperation.”

Joseph aimed, fired several shots in quick succession, and watched the dogs retrieve the limp little bodies.

“Good work, little brother. You’re a quick study. And no doubt you’ll plug the little kitchen slut just as efficiently tonight.”

Would this afternoon never end?

“She’s
not
…” he began furiously. But what was he to say exactly?

Hubert smiled. “What was that, Joseph?”

“Nothing, Monsieur le Comte. Nothing at all.”

The workday in the kitchen had been regularly punctuated by Monsieur Colet’s tantrums, the latest one being over the crayfish tails.

“Too small! They’ll be lost in the dish! It’s a disaster!” It took all of Nicolas’s wheedling and cajoling (and a very fine Cotes du Rhone) to get things on back on track.

Marie-Laure knew that the tails were only a garnish. Tucked around the outside of a large dish, they would form a scalloped edging for a thick sauce, holding slivered sweetbreads, mushrooms, truffles, foie gras, and cockscombs. Upon which would be laid the squabs, braised with slices of veal, ham, and bacon, covered in diced sweetbreads, truffles and mushrooms, and topped with a heart-shaped slice of puff pastry.

“And
how
many such complicated dishes will we be preparing today?” Marie-Laure whispered.

Her fifteen-year-old workmate Robert beamed. “Twelve. Twelve, Marie-Laure.” Robert had often been hungry as a child. Working in this kitchen, he often said, was like being paid to go to heaven.

Of course, the twelve dishes didn’t include the soup, the vegetables—even Monsieur Colet was satisfied with the beautiful young peas and artichokes and asparagus they had to work with—and the salads. Not to speak of the delicate little hors d’oeuvres. And as for the desserts…

But there wasn’t time to begin contemplating the desserts. Robert and Marie-Laure had to race to keep up: to clean the pots and pans the rest of the staff kept dirtying, to split and de-fuzz more than a hundred baby artichokes. To chop and scald and peel and stir, wherever they were needed. But even as Marie-Laure’s hands flew and her head began to ache, Joseph’s image drifted toward her through the steamy air. Here was his smile and the taste of his mouth; there, the arcs of his hands and the outline of his hips.

And here was…a huge cleaver sailing through the air and landing in a wooden dresser. It marked the opening salvo of Monsieur Colet’s next tantrum. This one was directed at Arsène, who was getting in everybody’s way, on his way to the meat locker to hang up a ridiculous number of freshly killed rabbits.

The crash caused a huge dessert soufflé to fall. And so, as Monsieur Colet proclaimed to everyone’s delight, the ruined soufflé would have to be eaten by the servants. The idiot guests would simply have to make do with the strawberry, raspberry, and apricot tarts, the heaps of meringues and macaroons studded with almonds and pistachios, the molded marzipan cakes in amusing and sometimes indecent shapes and colors, the chocolate-covered éclairs and profiteroles filled with crème anglaise, the towers of fruit topped with hothouse pineapples, and the fantasia of molded milk and water ices flavored with fruit, coffee, chocolate, coconut, and candied violets.

They could hear the guests’ carriages clattering over the drawbridge. Nicolas inspected the footmen’s livery, clucking about a grease spot here, a bit of tarnished braid there. The troop of them finally marched up the stairs, each carrying a more impressive platter than the last.

And marched back down, for more food, more wine. A lot more wine, Nicolas called out. The banquet was a success.

The guests had only come, he explained later, out of respect for the Duchesse’s ancient pedigree and curiosity about the Vicomte’s reputation. But they’d stayed and enjoyed themselves. The food had been a triumph and the family had risen to the occasion. Even the Duc had behaved quite respectably, contributing a witty anecdote of life and manners at Louis XV’s court.

“So the Gorgon’s finally been accepted into the local gentry,” Nicolas concluded. “Let’s hope at least for a bit of relief from her everlasting demands.”

“And now, Mesdames and Messieurs,” he added, opening another bottle of wine and passing around the flat but still delicious soufflé, “it’s our turn to celebrate.”

But Marie-Laure slipped away early, carrying a jar of lemon water that Monsieur Colet had given her for washing away kitchen smells—it seemed that even he was interested in her supposed adventure with the Vicomte.

She scrubbed herself. Not bad.

She pulled off her cap. Her room’s cracked mirror couldn’t tell her much, but she thought that her hair had regained the thickness and luster it had lost to the typhus. She brushed it vigorously. She didn’t have any ribbons, so all she could do was force a few strands at the sides into spiral tendrils, continuing to brush it while she waited for Baptiste’s knock at the door.

And when the knock finally came Marie-Laure could feel a collective sigh rising from the servants’ dormitories down the hall: everybody who wasn’t still carousing in the dessert kitchen had been waiting along with her.

Chapter Eight

Returning Baptiste’s silent smile and nod, she followed him down the stairs and through an unfamiliar corridor, all silvery stone that the Gorgon’s plasterers hadn’t covered over yet. Their footsteps echoed as though from afar. She felt surprisingly calm, oddly without volition, mysteriously removed from the physical space she occupied. Perhaps it was the effect of a long, fatiguing workday, but she felt as though none of this was really happening. Or—more precisely—that it was all happening to somebody else. To a character in a play perhaps; yes, it was all happening to a breathless ingenue who just happened to be named Marie-Laure. While
she
, the
real
Marie-Laure, watched the drama’s progress from a cheap hard seat in paradise, the rows at the very top of the theater.

Baptiste stopped in front of an arched doorway and turned a large iron key in the lock. He opened the door, delivered an ironic bow, and—since Marie-Laure’s legs seemed to have forgotten how to move of their own accord—gave her a little shove inside a very bright space.

Someone must have lit a lot of candles. Her eyes needed time to adjust from the corridor’s dimness. She thought she could discern large shapes of furniture; there was something shiny to her left—a glass-fronted bookshelf, perhaps. But in fact the only sense organ she could truly rely on was her nose. She stood still, breathing rosemary and lavender while Joseph’s image took shape and substance at the other side of the room. He was leaning on one of the posts of a large, curtained bed, grinning mischievously, and wearing slippers and an embroidered dressing gown.

His grin made everything real again.

He winked. “At last,” he said. “At last some intelligent conversation.”

That insouciant wink guaranteed his sincerity. She didn’t know how she could be sure of it, but she was.

She could tell that he hadn’t lied about his principles last night. No matter what else might transpire between them, he wouldn’t take advantage of a servant.

All right then. They’d have a conversation.

Well,
that
was a relief anyway.

Of course
it was a relief.

Sorry, Baptiste
, she thought as the door closed behind her.
Sorry we won’t be giving you anything to peek at tonight.

Still, she found it difficult not to stare at his enormous bed.

Happily, he seemed to understand, for he motioned her to a cushioned window seat and drew up an armchair for himself, partially obscuring the purple velvet bed curtains from her line of vision.

“At least I won’t topple out of
this
chair. No broken legs, you see.” He smiled and so did she, until both their smiles began to wear thin and it became clear that one of them was going to have to say something else.

They settled, as though by mutual consent, on literature as the safest topic of discussion. Marie-Laure hadn’t spoken about books or writing for some months now. But encouraged by the interest in his eyes, she soon found herself rattling on as though she were back in the shop.

“And so I must admit,” she concluded, “that Monsieur Rousseau’s memoir rather disappointed me, even while it fairly overwhelmed me with its honesty and…and greatness of soul. But it was a very
aggressive
honesty, a very
prepossessing
greatness.”

He knit his brow. “You’re a severe critic.”

“For a scullery maid, you mean.”

“No, that’s not what I mean at all. I stand by what I said last night. You’re a reader worth having, an extraordinarily clever one.”

She stared. But he’d said it without irony or affectation.

“And you’re right,” he added. “I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way, but Rousseau does betray a streak of egoism, doesn’t he? As though he were using all that honesty and humility to bludgeon his readers into submission.”

She laughed. “Yes, yes, you’ve expressed it perfectly. Well, of course, as an author yourself…”

But—just as she’d been about to turn the conversation to him and his writing—she was seized by an enormous yawn.

And it had been going so well, Joseph thought.

Of course it had been rather a physical ordeal to have her so close by and yet so off limits. But it had also been delightful.

She’d been timid at first. Well, to be honest so had he—but he was a better actor, and able to hide his nervousness. And he’d had a good sharp opening line to deliver, one he’d honed and polished throughout that endless banquet.

Mon Dieu
, what a dreary affair
that
had been, with only the excellence of the food to make up for all the vapid witticisms and clumsy double entendres directed at him—not to speak of the fluttering eyelashes of half a dozen predatory provincial demoiselles. He’d endured appraising stares from potential fathers-in-law and sidelong glances from their wives, a few of them clearly hoping there might be a little something in it for
them
as well. He’d worked
hard
—smiling, smirking, bowing, and gesturing.