Finding Emilie (42 page)

Just then the woman returned with a man of the same age. They hurried through the door and shut it behind them. “I’m sorry to be so disrespectful to a daughter of the marquis,” the woman said, “but he rages so terribly now that we try not to upset him.” She gestured to the man. “This is my husband, Lucien,” she said. “And I’m Berthe. We’ve both worked here most of our lives. We knew your mother, God rest her soul.” Berthe crossed herself.

“Knew the marquis in his better days too,” Lucien added, “not like you was seeing him when you arrived.” His eyes were steeped in melancholy. “He’s not fit for visitors now, so far from his right mind.”

Lili looked at the fading light through a small window. If he weren’t able to have company, perhaps she would be asked to leave, which would mean returning to Bar-sur-l’Aube in the dark. But she was the marquis’s daughter after all, so that would not happen, at least not tonight. “I have a valet and maid,” she said. “They’re waiting at the cottage of a man named Anton.”

“I’ll go now and bring them here,” Lucien said, and without another word he was gone.

Berthe turned to Lili. “We’ll put you and your maid in the guest room in the attic of the old wing. Your valet can stay with us tonight. It’s best to keep him out of sight until the marquis has a chance to get used to him. Last month he thought the new coachman was Monsieur Saint-Lambert, and he knocked the poor man senseless with his cane.”

Lili smiled courteously. “Come,” Berthe said. “Let’s get you up to your room before the scullery maid comes back to put the vegetables in the stew. There will be gossip enough tomorrow, I’m sure. No need to get it started tonight.”

Lili followed behind her up to the main floor, then up another flight of stairs, and another. A short hallway led to an attic bedroom. “I hope you find your quarters satisfactory.” Berthe scowled at a sudden memory. “That Madame de Graffigny was always complaining about how Madame la Marquise and Monsieur Voltaire spared no expense for themselves, but stuck her in the attic and couldn’t be bothered to finish her room properly.” She sniffed. “Her room. As if she had a right to it.”

She unlatched the door to a room similar in size to Lili’s bedchamber at home but more sparsely furnished and in need of a new carpet and a touch of paint on the wainscoting. “I think it’s rather nice,” Berthe said, opening the curtains. “And the viewpoint is the highest in the house.”

Lili was only half listening as she looked out the window. To her right, through branches that had obscured the château when she had looked up from the village, she could see Lucien bringing Justine and Stephane to the château on foot. None of them would have as much as a change of clothes until their trunks could be fetched from Bar-sur-Aube tomorrow, but Lili was relieved that they were all at least safe for the night.

Turning to the left, she looked out across the golden fields to a dense forest in the distance. The blue of the sky was deepening in the early twilight, and suddenly Lili realized how long it had been since she had eaten. She had no doubt that Anton’s wife had fed Justine and Stephane, but she had not eaten since the woman had handed her the bread slathered with butter and jam that morning. Could it possibly still be the same day that she had woken up and run in her unlaced dress across the square?

She sat down in a sudden rush of exhaustion. “Could you bring me something to eat?” she asked. “I’m afraid I’ll be asleep in a few minutes. And could you make sure my maid and valet have been fed as well?”

Berthe smiled. “It will be my pleasure, Mademoiselle Stanislas-Adélaïde,” she said, leaving the room before Lili could open her
mouth to tell her that only the difficult people in her life ever called her by that name.

MOONLIGHT GLEAMED ON
the white bedcovers, and when it reached Lili’s face she sat up to look around the unfamiliar room. Night had softened the white stucco designs adorning the wall panels, and on the wainscoting, the pattern of the silk brocade wall covering had dissolved into a gray blur. Through the narrow opening in the casement window, cool air stroked the dust of disuse from the creases and crannies in the room, prickling Lili’s nose until she broke the quiet with a sneeze.

As her eyes adjusted, Lili picked out the white chaise percée with a chamber pot underneath. She got up, lifting the bottom of her chemise, which had served as her nightdress since her trunk was still at Bar-sur-l’Aube. Sitting down on the wooden seat, she contemplated the soft, familiar whisper of water falling into the vessel underneath her.

For a moment she couldn’t remember why she had come. The bone-bruising journey had put the world of Paris so far behind that it seemed as formless as the Meissen figurines standing in a darkened cabinet across the room, waiting, as Lili was, for the light of morning to give everything back its shape.

A cock crowed in the village and Lili got up and went to the window. The sky was beginning to lighten, and with both resignation and relief Lili decided there would be no more sleep for her that night. She went to the desk, lit the lamp, and went back to Meadow-lark’s world.

The steps to the cathedral in Andalusia were filled with people murmuring angrily and waving their arms. Meadowlark hid Comète in a nearby garden and went with Tom to investigate. “What is everyone so upset about?” she asked a man dressed in a bishop’s robe and mitre.

“There’s supposed to be a wedding today, but the bride has disappeared.” He scratched his head. “We think she must have been kidnapped—after all, why would she run away when she’s about to be married? Everyone’s been so pleased about the match. Her family has hoped for an alliance with the Mounte-bank-Piquedames for years …”

Lili rubbed her eyes. She had a real Baronne Lomont and a father to deal with, and her own wedding to escape. Sending Meadowlark off to Spain was not going to help with that. Now that she was here, all her ideas about what to say, what to do, had vanished. It would be best to use this quiet dawn to think, before Justine got up to help her dress, and Berthe came with her breakfast.

“All right,” Lili said aloud. “What do I have here?” She thought for a moment. A father I have to persuade to let me manage my own life when he clearly has no control of his own. A father who might not know who I was if I’d lived in this house every day of my life.” A father who said he never wanted to see me.

The hope she had carried with her from Paris, that since he had not interfered in her life to this point she could persuade him to stay out of it now, evaporated with the memory of the befuddled man in uniform looking for his troops. Perhaps I should just leave this morning, Lili thought. Leave before he throws me out for being someone he imagines I am.

She wasn’t sure why he would want to do that, or who he might think she was, but if he’d attacked a coachman over a grudge with this—what was his name? Saint-Lambert?—anything was possible. If she left now, perhaps Baronne Lomont would never know she had come, but if she stayed and failed, she’d lose any chance at all to hold off the fate looming in front of her.

The glass cover on the candlestick would make it safe to carry, so she lit the stub inside and stepped out of her room. The passageway had a plank floor that looked quite new, but the paneling on the walls was rough and had been given only a hasty coat of paint. The paneling
stopped where the open timbers of the roof and crossbeams protruded from the walls, low enough for her to bump her head in the dim light.

She dodged her way around a cluster of roof beams that went out in different directions like the spokes of a badly damaged wheel, and she found herself in a large room, unfurnished except for a few chairs and benches. Scattered here and there were large chests and one open crate. Inside it was a jumble of odd-looking dresses and wigs, as well as a pair of pink stockings and a tattered crown made of dried leaves. A piece of paper was wedged in among the leaves, which crumbled as she pulled it away. She held the playbill up to the candlelight:

Tonight at the Theater at Cirey! The premiere of Mérope by M. Voltaire. Cast—Mérope, Madame la Marquise; Polyphontes, Monsieur Voltaire; Ismène, Mademoiselle G-P du Châtelet; Euricles, Monsieur le Marquis, et al.

Lili stroked the hand-inked letters. Madame la Marquise. Light had begun to filter through a small window, revealing an open doorway on the other side of the room. She held the candle in front of her and went through it. Her foot hit against an upholstered bench and the flame shook, illuminating the ornate wallpaper on three sides with bobbing pulses of light. The entire fourth wall was taken up by a rounded arch in a light-colored wood, framing a stage hardly bigger than some of the massive fireplaces she’d seen at Versailles. The backdrop and wings were painted to suggest a rustic farmhouse, with a wooden door, a cuckoo clock, a cupboard, and a large window looking out onto a painted blue sky. In the center of the stage, a candlestick and a water jug sat on a wooden table, ready to be used as props for the last play presented at Cirey.

The theater! Lili remembered Anton talking about how he sometimes wore a costume and came onstage, and how his mother had said the marquise could sing forever without forgetting anything. Lili
put the candle down on one of the benches, clasping her hands behind her back and lifting her face to take in this extraordinary place. She felt her chest broaden under her thin chemise, as if it were opening a door to a secret room inside her. She was breathing the same air as her mother had, and making the same floorboards creak. She was so close, Lili was sure she could almost hear her voice.

A vision. That’s what Anton said she was, Lili thought as she made her way back through the anteroom and into the passageway. A noise overhead caused her to jump back in alarm. A pair of doves cooed and fluttered their wings, breaking the spell. Lili watched them perch on the sill of a tiny window before they flew out into the light of a new morning.

JUSTINE APPEARED FROM
behind a screened-off alcove as Lili came back in. “Mademoiselle is up early.” Justine curtsied. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.”

“I couldn’t sleep—but no need to disturb you.”

“Mademoiselle would like breakfast?” At Lili’s nod, Justine disappeared, and within a few minutes she had returned with Berthe.

“Your breakfast will be sent up on the dumbwaiter in just a moment,” Berthe said. “I thought I’d come to see how you slept. Your valet already left with Lucien for Bar-sur-Aube to retrieve your things. I’m sure you’ll be happy to have them.”

“I slept well, thank you,” Lili said. “I looked around already this morning and found the theater.”

Berthe gave her a wistful smile. “No one’s been in there in years. I’m surprised you didn’t come out covered in dust.” She looked away, lost in thought for a moment. “How we all used to enjoy those plays!” she said. “Madame pulled everyone in—Lucien and me, and even the marquis, though he couldn’t never remember his lines.”

The marquis. Lili’s brow furrowed. “Berthe,” she ventured, “is my father always like he was yesterday?”

The housekeeper looked up, surprised. “Oh non, mademoiselle.
It comes and goes. On good days he can sit and talk for hours about things that happened years ago and remember them perfectly. And then, just like that, he asks for madame, as if she’s just stepped out of the room.” Her eyes looked pained. “It’s terrible to see such a great man”—she thought for a moment—“reduced like that.”

Justine tightened the laces on Lili’s dress as Berthe went on. “Perhaps you will be good for him. He’s all alone in the world now. Don’t no one visit, not even his son, and of course Gabrielle-Pauline is too far away. No one in the flesh, I mean, although I suppose one might call it a blessing that so much of the time he don’t know the difference. The other day I heard him carrying on a conversation in the gallery, and when I went to see who come into the house without my noticing, he was telling Duke Stanislas that he’d be joining him for the hunting season at Lunéville.” She dabbed her eyes. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him again that the duke is dead.”

She got up to straighten the figurines on the shelves. “He died a few months back, you know. Caught his dressing gown on fire and perished later from the burns.” Berthe adjusted the curtains, for something to occupy her hands as she talked. “I don’t know. Perhaps the dead do visit us. Perhaps it’s just our poor eyes that can’t see them.”

Perhaps they do. A few hours ago, Lili had been tempted to get up and run from Cirey, afraid of what might happen if she stayed. Standing in the theater, absorbing the presence of her mother, she felt as if she had taken on the strength to see this visit through. Whatever happened with her father, she would find a way to go on from there, confident in the belief that Julie and Emilie each had an arm around her.

Justine had finished her laces, and Lili turned around. “Does he talk to my mother like he talks to the duke?”

A quick, sad smile flitted over Berthe’s face. “All the time.”

“Does he ever mention me when they talk?”

The housekeeper looked away. “You were just a baby then. Not even born, while she were still alive to talk about you.”

She busied herself for a moment before turning to face Lili. Taking a deep breath, she let it out in a sigh of resignation. “No point in watching my words here, mademoiselle. You’re likely to see for yourself soon enough what kind of conversations he has with the marquise. Much of the time they’re not fit for hearing. He’s angry with her, and I lost sleep last night with worry over whether he’ll be angry with you as well.” She looked toward the door. “Your breakfast must be waiting,” she said, making a perfunctory curtsey as she left the room.

“Angry about what?” Lili asked, picking up the conversation the moment Berthe returned with the tray.

She put the tray down heavily on the fragile table. “The past is best buried,” she said. “I mean no disrespect, but I’m not going to say more. Lucien is with the marquis now, and he’ll tell him he has a guest, so you’d best be prepared to meet him. I think you should act as if it’s the first time, since he’s unlikely to remember seeing you yesterday.” She looked at Lili. “You remind me so of madame, though your hair’s not as dark. Best be prepared for anything, since there’s no telling how he’ll react.”