Pam Rosenthal (17 page)

How dreadful to have to wait, night after night, for an inebriated, unwilling partner—instead of someone madly eager to sweep you into bed and cover you with kisses.

And how embarrassing it must be when the gentleman—but what had Jacques called it?—when the gentleman
wilted
. What did one
say
in those circumstances anyway? Not that there was any chance, she thought proudly, that
Joseph
would ever have such a problem.

It all seemed unspeakably sad; perhaps it even explained the Gorgon’s meanness.

Of course, these flashes of pity would only last until the new Duchesse hurled the next insult or inflicted the next bruise upon someone—for the smallest clumsiness, or for no reason at all. Upon hearing the latest outrage Marie-Laure would happily join her colleagues in heaping curses upon Madame Amélie, all the while secretly glorying in her own superior situation.

Too bad for you, Madame, she’d think, that
you
won’t have somebody wonderful waiting for you tonight. Somebody who’ll hold you tightly when you throw yourself into his arms. Whose eyes will shine and whose grin will betray the lascivious thoughts he’s been having. And who—after a few long kisses—will whisper the naughtiest, most mischievous ideas in your ear, overwhelming you with all the new and fascinating things he wants to try tonight.

At which point in her thoughts Marie-Laure would shrug her shoulders, forget about the Gorgon, and turn her mind toward more interesting matters…

…like exactly
which
new thing she and Joseph might be trying tonight.

Of course, practically everything was new to her—new and absolutely fascinating.

So many positions, she marveled. So many angles of entry, points of contact, thrilling secret explorations along the nerves’ pathways. So many moods and modes: flamboyant, triumphant, shy, and everything in-between. So many languages, so many geometries, so many nuances and shades of meaning, depending upon whether you were horizontal or vertical, above or below, facing one another or turned away…last night he’d lifted her in his arms while she wrapped her legs around his waist. She’d levered herself into place and shaped herself tightly around him as he moved into her. She’d thought he’d carry her to bed, but he didn’t, until he had to climax. For as long as he’d been able, he’d fucked her right there, standing in the center of the room while she howled and thrashed about in his arms, catching occasional glimpses of their dual reflection in the mirror across the room.

How strangely and well we fit together
, she’d thought;
what a fierce, beautiful beast-with-two-backs we make.

They played and laughed, coaxed and teased, whispers and giggles shading to half-voiced entreaty, “yes, there, more,
mon Dieu,
don’t stop”—entreaty shading to imperious command. They pleaded, insisted, demanded and exacted tribute—“yes, again, just like that.”

Was there a line of poetry more beautiful, Marie-Laure wondered, than a lover’s summons? Any pair of syllables more glorious than “I want”? Their shouts crashed like ocean waves, breaking into a thousand crystal droplets at passion’s crest, and ebbing and subsiding to groans and growls and giggles—it was comical that two such word-struck people could communicate with such lusty, simpleminded crudeness.

She smiled, remembering that first morning in the barn, when she’d anxiously and fearfully asked whether people really did such scandalous things. Right now she was a great deal wiser, knowing with the certainty of a fortnight’s experience that people did just about everything, earthy or lyrical, with an infinity of miraculous results.

The results—ah yes, the results. The sense of satisfaction, of satiation, of absolute harmony and completeness—to be followed, surely as the night follows the day, by the next slow, delicious gathering of desire. Delicious and unbearable at the same time: well, it
would
be unbearable, she thought, if she didn’t have tonight’s visit to look forward to.

She discovered that she might experience these new feelings at any time at all. Sporadically, unpredictably—and quite brilliantly, she congratulated herself—her body could reconstruct the most complex and ephemeral sensations. She marveled at how a memory (only a memory!) of a caress could set her trembling.

Standing at the kitchen washbasin, she’d be taken unaware by an errant sensation, a stray resonance in her tightly strung sensorium. Suddenly she’d be transported back to the first time he’d laid his tongue in the hollow of her throat, or when his fingers had touched her (merely touched her!) in the fold where her buttocks met her legs.

She’d vibrate like a tuning fork—her insides wet and burning, and her imagination as deeply in thrall to memory as her body had been to touch. Useless to resist: it was all she could do to maintain her center of gravity while the feelings roiled through her. She’d plant her feet firmly, stretch her neck, curl her toes, and purr with the delight of simply inhabiting her own body.

For a moment she would feel absolutely, purely, and perfectly whole. But only for a moment. Immediately afterward, she’d begin to want him so badly—
him
and not a memory of him, him right
now
and not tonight—that her muscles would clench and her eyes would smart with tears.

Enough
, she’d scold herself.
Enough, there’s work to be done.
She’d shrug off her feelings, and force herself to get the pots washed and dried before Nicolas passed by on his rounds through the kitchen. Carefully, she’d dry a fine porcelain plate and pile it on top of its fellows. Desperately, she’d drag her thoughts back to the conscious, workaday world—the steamy, noisy, greasy kitchen, where her head ached and her chapped hands smarted and the tired muscles in her shoulders grew hard as rocks.

It wasn’t easy to come back. It was a constant struggle not to give way to the demands of her overwrought nerves and lascivious imagination. But to lose control would be to court disaster.

Her most insistent fear was that she’d break some horribly expensive piece of china. She could only hope that it would be something the family owned a lot of, like cups or saucers. Nicolas wouldn’t be able to hide it if she dropped a teapot. The Gorgon would have to be told; the crime would demand a suitable punishment.

Not an immediate punishment, of course—Marie-Laure knew that whatever penalty she’d incur would have to wait until Joseph was safely married and the dowry signed over in its entirety. Until then, the Gorgon wouldn’t risk angering him by mistreating the girl he’d chosen to amuse himself with. Marie-Laure’s whipping or her dismissal—or perhaps both—could wait until after he left…

She drew a sharp, whistling breath, suddenly noticing a nasty bit of burned-on grease that had been entirely invisible the moment before. It seemed to taunt her, to grimace at her. Furiously, she tried to rub it away. The spot became her mortal enemy and there was nothing more important than making it disappear.

But it hadn’t been the fear of punishment that had disrupted her reverie, or even the possibility of being thrown out without her twenty livres.

She’d been jolted back to present reality by the horrid phrase that had crept into her thoughts.

After he left.

Yes,
that
was enough to shake her free of her fantasies and leave her with the bare facts of her situation: an aching back, a pile of unwashed pots, and a crust of grease that refused to be loosened by any amount of scrubbing.

He’d be leaving for Paris a week before the Feast of All Saints. The date was immutable, signed and sealed within the provisions of the betrothal contract. It would happen whether she broke a teapot or not.

Well, if she couldn’t change it, she simply wouldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t count the nights remaining to her—there were too few of them anyway. She’d live in the present, finish the pot (the grease spot had finally yielded to her efforts), and concentrate on whatever way she could affect her circumstances. If she couldn’t have him forever, she’d have him as completely as she could in the time left to her.

She knew that physically he wouldn’t hold anything back from her. But she wanted more. She wanted to know him: his moods and secrets, not to speak of those mysterious papers on his desk—the ones he would take a final hurried scribble at and then sweep under the blotter when she entered the room.

Looking up from whatever he’d been concentrating on so passionately, his eyes would need a moment to focus upon her. She was sure he was writing something fictional: he had the bemused look of someone returning from a distant place in his fancies. He’d gaze at her as though surprised that she was there in front of him instead of in whatever fabulous principality he’d dreamed up. He’d peer at her curiously and she could tell he was considering whether he’d gotten it right.

Gotten
what
right?

And then he’d smile—a wildly provocative smile that seemed to bridge the realms of the fantastic and the physical. His smile would turn to a delighted laugh; he’d leap up, reach out for her, and draw her to him.

I’m quite mad
, she thought. He could be writing about anything at all.

It’s only a reader’s fancy
, she told herself. The fancy of a reader in love.

Madness or fancy—she was nonetheless certain of it. Whatever he was writing had something to do with her. It was
about
her.

She’d demand to know what it was.

Ridiculous! Joseph told himself. He
never
blushed. But right now he could feel the blood rising to his face.

And there was no way to hide it, for Marie-Laure was looking straight at him, sitting up alert against the pillows, her eyes shining and her breasts still heaving from the last hour’s lovemaking.

“So you still want to talk about writing,” he murmured, “even in our current situation.”

“Of course I do.” She laughed. “But you don’t
have
to tell me. If you think it’s too…ah,
racy
for me, too scandalous for my innocent ears…”

He took a quick nip at her left earlobe. “I adore your innocent ears.”

“Then tell me,” she said. “What are you writing?”

Why not? He’d read it aloud to Madame de Rambuteau. He’d even pretended it was about her. But it was different, somehow, when a story really
was
about someone. When someone had seized your imagination and taken you to new—and yet hauntingly familiar—places…

“It’s a fable,” he said. “An oriental fable. They’re popular at Versailles, you know.”

She nodded. “We sold a lot of
The Arabian Nights
in Monsieur Galland’s translation. People liked the genies and the dervishes, and…and the harem scenes, too.”

“This one has harem scenes,” he said.

It was about a sultan, he told her. A young, very rich and powerful sultan, who possessed everything he might desire and a thousand wives and concubines—so many that he hadn’t even had them all yet. Some of them had been gifts from political allies, others the spoils of war. Or he might buy one, on a whim, while passing through a slave bazaar, have her sent home to the palace, and forget about her for months.

Like the young woman, naked up there on the block, who’d stared boldly at him, with piercing gray eyes.

“Gray eyes?” Marie-Laure asked.

“Gray eyes, with not a trace of blue in them. So you see, it’s completely a fiction. Of course, the girl in the story is rather petite in stature, with round little breasts…” He dropped a kiss on each of hers.

“And when she’s angry—for she does become angry at him, though she’s forbidden to show it—she stands with her back very straight and her chin very high. She has a will of iron, you see.”

He looked away. And when he spoke again his voice was very soft.

“He puts her through some rather extreme ordeals. I’m not sure why. To prove that he can, I suppose. But in the end, he’s as much her slave as she is his.”

She’d crept into his arms and was planting tiny kisses on his chest. Her tongue flicked against one of his nipples.

He tightened his arms’ hold and rolled over so that he was lying on top of her. She was kissing his throat now. He sighed and felt himself tighten between his legs. Between
her
legs now, for she’d opened herself to him. She’d arched her back; he could feel her reaching for him.

“I…
will
read it to you,” he managed to say. “A-another time.” But his words were swallowed up in a kiss and for that night, at least, it seemed that they were done with literary conversation.

He read it to her a few nights later, when they’d summoned up enough self-control to allow them to get through it. After several unsuccessful attempts, they’d decided that both of them needed to get out of bed and decorously put on their dressing gowns.

For she had a dressing gown now—shell-pink velvet with a bit of Venetian lace at the sleeves. He’d posted an order to a dressmaker in Aix and sent Baptiste in a donkey cart to pick it up a few days later. She’d protested, “I don’t want anything from you but…you.” But he’d insisted, “It’s for me, not for you. It’s so I don’t have to unlace you and then lace you up again every night.” So now when she visited him she came to him in the most beautiful thing she’d ever worn. And if Louise wondered why Marie-Laure was making her nightly visits in such gorgeous semi-undress, she never said a word about it.