Pam Rosenthal (43 page)

Damn Madame Mouffe and her toothache anyway.

His eyes were huge and frightened, their rims darkly shadowed in a face flushed from running. He hadn’t shaved this morning and he looked as though he’d gotten even less sleep than she had.

“Thank God,” he panted. “Marie-Laure, thank God I found you. The coffee vendor…said a woman…a baby that must be mine…crossed…to the Left Bank.”

It wasn’t fair. It would be much more difficult this way. He had to go away.

“I didn’t want you to find me,” she said. “Please. Didn’t you read my letter?”

He’d almost regained his breath. “I’m sorry. I can imagine how this must look to you. But please, just let me tell you one thing. No, two things. Two, that’s all, I promise. Please. And then I swear I’ll go away if you want me to.”

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Almost eight.”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk. But I have to be back here by nine.”

She waved away the hand he held out to her. “Let’s just…walk.”

As though by mutual agreement, they headed toward the Seine.

He swallowed a few times before he began. “I didn’t want to leave you alone in the middle of the night like that. But I promised Jeanne I’d come for some sort of midnight supper she’d planned. Very mysterious; I didn’t know why it couldn’t wait until today, but she insisted.”

Her insides clenched. Perhaps the Marquise had decided it was time to find out what men were all about.

He looked down at her and smiled. “No, it wasn’t that. Not that at all. On the contrary,” he paused, “she wants me to marry
you
.”

She hated it when he spoke in riddles. “Don’t joke about something like that,” she said.

“That’s what I said to Jeanne. But it’s no joke, Marie-Laure. She means an annulment. She’s been discussing it with priests—well, the very liberal Abbé Morellet, anyway, who’s written articles for Diderot’s
Encyclopedia
. And Morellet thinks it can be done. After all, she and I never did go to bed together. And she’s prepared to make a fairly staggering donation toward rebuilding some cathedral tower, I forget which now—well, it was late when she told me.”

She stared at him dumbly.

“I know, it’s a lot to take in at once. But as she put it, ‘I couldn’t buy you out of the Bastille, but it seems I can buy you out of this marriage.’”

“But why would she want to? Aren’t she and Mademoiselle Beauvoisin better off—safer—this way?”

“They are, but when I asked her about that she said she’d learned that love wasn’t about safety. Love was about committing yourself any way you could and this was her commitment.”

“My God.”

“They want to go away,” he said, “to travel together—Venice, Berlin, even Russia—they want to see the world. Ariane has some invitations to perform. But the main reason, according to Jeanne, is that they don’t think France is going to become a better place for women like them. They think that whatever other changes occur—even good ones—the country’s going to become more straitlaced and puritanical, and they don’t want to be here when that happens.”

The ground seemed to be moving under her feet.

“And…and…you’d marry me then?”

“Are you proposing to me?” he laughed.

“I’m asking you if you’re proposing to me.”

“Of course. Or I will, in a few minutes. But wait. Because you won’t know which
me
I’m asking you to marry until I tell you the other thing.”

“I hope,” she murmured, “that Sophie doesn’t inherit your taste for conundrum.”

“Just be patient,” he told her.

“You see,” he continued, “I had another very important conversation yesterday as well. With Doctor Franklin. I suppose I should have told you about it last night, but you kept me pretty well occupied.”

They had reached the quay now, and he nodded a familiar hello to each bookseller, in his or her stall, as they passed. Madame Mouffe waved.

“I should have realized you’d know them,” Marie-Laure said. “I paid Madame Mouffe double,” he said, “after she told me where you were headed. I hope she uses the money for a dentist, but she’ll probably dose the tooth with brandy.

“But as for Doctor Franklin,” he continued. “We got on very well last night, and he offered me”—he tried to say it casually—“a means of employment.”

She had to smile; his aristocratic mouth was having some difficulty shaping the word
employment
.

“As an assistant to the French consul for Philadelphia. Well, actually, the position’s not his to offer, but he promises to recommend me for it. If I want it.

“If you want me to take it, Marie-Laure. Or, as he put it, ‘if that intelligent, industrious, and wonderfully pretty young woman wants you to.’”

“If I
want
you to!”

“I think they’d look kindly on me,” he continued. “After all, I did fight in America, and Monsieur Franklin’s recommendation is worth a lot. Then, of course, I can write, and I get on with people when I want to. And there’s no question, Monsieur Franklin said, of my bravery or daring.

“I’d have to organize an office though. And I’m not very patient or good at details.”

He’s nervous
, she thought.
He’s frightened of taking it on.

“My father tried to be a diplomat once,” he said, “and failed miserably.”

His voice faded for a moment. He forced himself to continue. “But I wouldn’t
have
to fail, you know. I think if I applied myself I could develop a little patience and
become
good at details.” His eyes pleaded for confirmation.

“I know you could.” She looked at him levelly.

“Because after all,” she added, “you are
not
your father.”

He laughed with surprise and confusion. “No,” he said, “I’m not, am I?

“I’m glad,” he continued, “that you don’t think this is a ridiculous idea. Because I wouldn’t want to renounce my title and move us to Philadelphia and then discover that I wasn’t any good at work I’d committed to do.”

In truth, she thought, he could become a wonderful diplomat. It was a perfect opportunity for him to use his charm, his cleverness, and the passion for liberty and equality that he’d never known what to do with. As well as his newfound seriousness.

And then the import of what he’d said sank in.

“Move us to Philadelphia!”

“Doctor Franklin said that
you
were halfway toward being an American already, so the change wouldn’t be too much of a strain on you. Whereas for me—he thinks I’ll probably live out my days somewhere between the old culture and the new. But he thinks this could be a good thing—for I’d understand both sides of a negotiation.”

Doctor Franklin was very wise.

“But I’m still not sure.” He gestured at the river, the jostling crowds, the spires of Notre Dame. “What do you think, Marie-Laure? Paris is a lot to give up.”

She was too overcome to speak. But Sophie, who’d been watching him wave his hands about, suddenly bestowed upon him a wide, glorious, toothless, and just slightly crooked smile. An absolutely genuine, bona fide smile—no possibility of it being gas or fleeting accident—that demanded matching smiles from both her parents.

“She’s a miracle,” Joseph whispered.

Marie-Laure nodded. “And she’s given you
her
answer.”

“Yes, but what’s
your
answer, Marie-Laure? Do you want to be…
Meessus
Raimond?”

“
Missus
Raimond,” she corrected him, partly out of the delight of saying it.

“I’ll have to help you with your pronunciation,” she murmured. “Yes, yes I do, of course I want to be Missus Raimond, but…”

Without warning, it welled up within her: the nightmare fear and horror she’d vowed never to reveal, choking her with sudden bitter tears.

“Here,” she sobbed, “take the baby while I try to compose myself. It’s…it’s not going to be easy to tell you this.”

He held Sophie carefully, cradling her head as though he’d been doing it all his life.

The story emerged slowly, in fragments, as they walked along the Seine. His brother’s desire for her. His sister-in-law’s vindictiveness. Their plans to use her for their own indecent ends. She watched a tiny muscle tremble in his jaw.

“I’ll kill him,” he said, looking straight ahead. “I’ll kill both of them.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “Hasn’t Arsène taught us anything?”

He nodded soberly. “You’re right, but I’m glad I’d already resolved to give up my title.”

“And after all,” she concluded, “not much actually happened to me. Except that I felt so guilty; you know, and so frightened and powerless, and not like a human person entitled to…”

“…the pursuit of happiness,” he concluded.

She smiled a wobbly smile and dried her eyes. The world looked newly washed; the spires of Notre Dame glittered.

Joseph had once called Paris the center of the world. He’d told her she’d adore it. She did adore it; it
was
a lot to give up. But she’d happily give it up for a world that wasn’t divided into nobles and commoners. All of Paris wasn’t too much to exchange for a chance at the pursuit of happiness.

And while she was thinking of exchanges, while she was thinking of business…

“The necklace,” she asked. “Is it really mine?”

“Of course. Here it is.” He nodded and patted his coat pocket. He stood still, his eyes clouding.

“Here, take Sophie for a moment.” He frowned, shrugged, fumbled in each pocket in turn.

“Oh dear, was your pocket picked?”

He winked, producing the necklace from somewhere behind her left ear.

Well, every love affair could use some magic. And in a moment she’d see if theirs was magical enough to survive what she was going to tell him.

“I’m going to sell this necklace,” she announced. “It should bring enough, don’t you think, to finance a little business in Philadelphia?”

He grinned. “A bookshop. Doctor Franklin wondered how you’d decide to finance it. He offered to help, though, if you’d rather keep the necklace.”

“I’d rather pay my own way.”

She turned to embrace him. The busy crowds along the quay would simply have to make their way around their entwined figures, she thought.

But instead she yawned and so did he. Enormous, gaping, ungraceful yawns that released an eternity of tension, fear, and suspicion in their wakes. She laughed.

Neither of them had gotten much sleep last night. How nice though—and what a rare new pleasure—simply to be tired together, to want to lie down together just to get some rest. Well, maybe not
just
to rest…

“I wish,” he said, “that I could say, ‘let’s go home,’ but we don’t have a home yet.”

It was true. A home still lay in the future and beyond a wide ocean.

“But we could take a rest, and a bath. The two of us, I mean.” She peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Well, the bathtubs in the Hôtel Mélicourt are rather large, you know, and…”

He laughed. “
Ah
oui,
the Hôtel Mélicourt in all its splendor. Well, I suppose it will have to do for now.”

And so they walked back together, slowly, across the Seine, and through the busy Paris streets, taking turns carrying the book and the baby.

Epilogue

Philadelphia

1789

The autumn days were still warm, but it grew dark early. Too dark, Marie-Laure thought, to let the children play outside after supper. But she shouldn’t have brought them down to the bookshop at dusk if she’d truly expected to get any work done. Or perhaps she should only have brought Sophie, who was quietly teaching her dolls to read. The glamorous Venetian, the flaxen-haired German, and the Russian—a newcomer in her fur coat and boots—smiled politely as Sophie explained about putting a
T
before an
H
and getting an entirely different sound, as in “Thank you.” Sophie had begun a letter just this morning thanking her aunts Jeanne and Ariane for the Russian doll; she was extremely proud of having constructed that fascinating
Th
combination.

But the dolls were a bit too polite to hold Sophie’s attention, especially when she was missing an exciting sword fight between her brother Benjamin and cousin Alphonse. Any minute now, Marie-Laure thought, Sophie would grab her own sword and leap into the fray. And with all three of them darting about, it was only a matter of time before one of them knocked over the new display.

Marie-Laure had worked hard to assemble it: the few available children’s books that addressed young readers as reasoning, imagining beings and not vessels for moral instruction.

“En garde
, Alphonse.” The graceful arc of Sophie’s arm was an unconscious miniature of her father’s.

Deftly, her cousin parried in turn. They were well matched. The green-eyed boy had inherited his height and bearing from his mother. He’d grown so tall this year that it was hard to connect him with the tiny terrified child Joseph had brought back, wrapped in his cloak, from France three years ago.