She’d discovered this spot during her first month at the chateau, reveling in the stillness and solitude before hurrying back for breakfast and the day’s work. Not recently, though; these past few weeks she’d been staying so late in Joseph’s room that she could barely drag herself out of bed in the mornings.
The fluttering wings of a startled grouse distracted her attention; she almost slipped on a loose stone. Her rock was just around the bend. She steadied herself and hurried toward it.
To discover that someone had gotten there before her.
Wide shoulders strained against his dark waistcoat; his silky black hair threatened to escape from its queue. When he turned at the sound of her footsteps she could see that his eyes were moist and his mouth freighted with grief.
“Oh,” she stammered, “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to bother you.”
He tossed a stone into the stream, skipping it lightly across the water’s surface.
“No,” he said, “please stay. There’s room for both of us, I think, if I move over a little. Yes, there, voilà, please stay.”
She slipped timidly beside him. Yes, if she situated herself very carefully there would be just enough room. She concentrated on the slender margin of space between his body and hers; she gazed at his profile, dark against the sunlit water, and at a stray wisp of black hair fluttering in the breeze. Her attention thus monopolized, her only problem was remembering to breathe.
They sat silently as the sun crept higher and the water’s surface turned from silver to palest gold.
“I’m… I’m…”
“Sorry,” one of them, both of them, stammered.
“I…”
“…was rude, thoughtless…”
“…didn’t mean to hurt you…”
“…that night.”
She couldn’t identify which words had issued from his mouth and which from hers, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Another stone skimmed across the pond, four hops before it dropped below the surface.
“My father taught me to skip stones,” he said, “on a spring morning, right at this spot.”
He rose abruptly, startling a rabbit that had been watching them from the underbrush.
“Let’s walk,” he said, reaching down a hand to help her from her seat. “Shall we?”
Silently, in single file, they threaded their way along the sun-dappled path. But she had no memory of beginning to walk; she had no thoughts or feelings at all except in the hand he’d held, his touch rippling along her nerves’ trajectories. And when the forest path widened to allow them to walk side by side it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take her hand again. They stepped into the clearing.
“I thought I had nothing but bad, angry memories of him,” he said. “But now that he’s dead, I’m suddenly recollecting other things.”
He reached into a pocket to scatter some breadcrumbs for the ducks.
“Mostly he was away. But there were a few weeks once…I was seven…he and my mother were both visiting the chateau, and I got scarlet fever. And astonishingly, my mother sent the maids away and stayed with me all night. Do you know, it was the only time I’ve ever seen her with her hair tumbling down her shoulders, not combed and puffed, powdered and swept up. I thought she looked like a saint, and I remember my father standing behind her, stroking her hair. And she reached up and held his hand, while she continued to smile her sweet, worried smile at me.”
His voice, which had been soft and bright with wonder, shaded into dark irony.
“I suspect that my father was reading Rousseau at the time, and that it had inspired him to give the domestic life a try. Perhaps he wanted some novelty; he’d sampled every other pleasure. He even told me to call him ‘Papa,’ though I’d been raised to address him and my mother as ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Madame.’
“And when I was well enough to walk outside, he and I would come here, and feed the ducks, and talk. It seemed to me that we discussed everything I’d ever wondered about—from the heroes of history and mythology (he had a harebrained notion that our family could trace our lineage from both Charlemagne and Aeneas), to whether you could train a duckling to follow you around as though you were its mother.”
The sun, rapidly climbing in the sky, shone brightly down on the hayricks. Marie-Laure could see peasants at work, dotting the hilly fields around them. She’d miss breakfast if she didn’t hurry.
“And so, while I know as clearly as anyone,” Joseph said, “that he was a fop and a scoundrel and a wastrel and a failure—and rather a buffoon in his later years as well—I can also remember those walks by the river, and our talks, and…and skipping stones. And that spring, when I was seven, I thought”—his voice began to tremble—“that he was the wisest, funniest person in the world.”
She looked up at him, losing herself for a moment in the sorrow of his eyes, and then they both looked away, walking on in bashful silence.
“I can imagine,” he added, “how it must have hurt him for the only person who’d ever admired him to renounce and desert him.
“He was also kind to my mother that spring,” he added a few moments later. “I know, because she dropped her everlasting praying for a while, and some of her other interests as well. For about a month, her confessor didn’t come to visit us. And my father didn’t bring his mistresses home either—though I think he still ran after servants and the girls from the village.”
“Did your mother know he was doing that?” Marie-Laure asked.
“She must have,” he said. “But you see, I think that she actually loved him. That month was as close as she ever came to having him for herself; my guess is that she simply decided to cherish that little bit of time together with him, and to forget all the rest.”
“Do you think that was stupid of her?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I couldn’t make that decision for someone else.”
They stared at each other, his eyes bright with unspoken questions, hers shining with a new confidence.
The path took a fork. She pressed his hand, guiding him away from the river and toward an empty barn. They stopped and peered in, at the dust motes turned to gold by sunbeams streaming down through a hole in the roof to the straw heaped on the floor.
“You have to get to work,” Joseph murmured.
“Not quite yet,” she lied, leading him inside.
His kiss was gentle, tentative at first. She put her arms around his waist, and he sighed and pulled her to him.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,” he whispered. “I’ve driven myself half mad with my resolve not to touch you. And there’s still time to stop. Are you sure it’s what you want, Marie-Laure?”
Never surer of anything. But she’d show him. Reaching her hands to his shoulders, she gently moved him backward and onto the pile of straw, dropping to her knees beside him. Lucky she’d worn Gilles’s breeches so often, she thought, because if she knew nothing else about this business, she knew the pattern of the buttons, and how to undo them. Just one more little pull, voilà, and…
“You’re sure?” He put his hand on hers to stop her from going any further. “You have to say you’re sure.”
The words wouldn’t come. His hand was tight about her wrist; in another moment he’d pull himself away.
Peasants shouted in the fields. Flies buzzed. Life hurtled on.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Ah.” He removed his hand and she pulled open the last button.
“Yes yes yes yes yessss.”
Her last yes shaded to a gasp of surprise. She hadn’t quite expected the length and breadth of flesh suddenly freed from his breeches. Naively, she supposed, she’d pictured something more decorous, less rampant. Less thrilling. On sudden impulse, she leaned over to kiss the dark, purplish head atop the long, erect shaft—like a delicious wild mushroom, she thought, swollen after a rainstorm. She licked a salty drop of moisture from its tip, and traced a slow, adventur
ous finger along the sort of seam on the shaft’s underside, watching awestruck as he continued to grow and harden.
He made a throaty incomprehensible sound, abruptly pulling away from her and sitting up.
Her boldness disappeared; she froze with embarrassment.
“Oh no,” she gasped. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh dear, did I do something terrible? Perhaps people don’t actually do such things with their tongues, but you looked so…so lovely, and I just wanted…”
He’d taken something out of his waistcoat pocket. It was whitish, translucent. She watched in fascination as he rolled the sheath down over his penis. Ah yes, Gilles had explained that to her. He’d made it sound quite the manly self-sacrifice too.
And it’s a sacrifice for me as well. Timidly, longingly, she touched the stretchy stuff that contained his flesh and separated him from her.
“It’s important, Marie-Laure…”
Though hardly foolproof, Gilles had warned her. Still, it was good of him to think of taking such precautions. She should probably thank him for it.
But there wasn’t time to thank him; there wasn’t time to say anything, because now it was she who lay on her back on the straw, and he who was rising above her, his hands lifting her skirt and parting her legs. It was happening very quickly now, the pressure of his thighs on hers, his entry into her, his mouth on her mouth, her cheeks, her neck. It was moving so fast, it was taking too long; it was lovely, it was confusing; she felt a marvelous opening and grasping somewhere inside. And then pressure, too much pressure. And too soon, only pain.
He held her tightly, licking the tears from her face.
“Oh, my dear,” he said, “I wouldn’t have planned it that way for you, but you took me rather by surprise, you know.”
“I…took…you?”
He nodded.
“I’ve never been seduced quite so expeditiously before. It was all I could do not to make a complete fool of myself.”
He sat up, smiling at her astonishment. “Such a determined mouth,” he murmured, tracing her lips with his little finger and smiling as her lips parted and the tip of her tongue became visible.
Light as thistledown, he touched the tip of his own tongue to hers.
“And yes,” he added, “people do do such things with their tongues. They do it all the time, though not nearly so charmingly as you did. But you’ll see.”
She managed to return his smile. “Well, I didn’t think it would be quite so easy. After a month of your very decent and honorable resolve not to touch me, after all.”
He laughed. “And after all the time we’ve spent together in one or another bedchamber. Well, maybe it needed to happen on neutral territory.”
He’d undone the white cravat from his neck and was gently wiping the blood from her thighs. “Careful, don’t move, or you’ll get blood on your skirt. Yes, it’s all right, nothing stained—somehow we managed to get all the cloth tucked out of the way.”
He leaned over and kissed the spot he’d just cleaned. It was a new sort of kiss, she thought, her eyes widening and her lips beginning to tremble. So light, and yet so lingeringly present. He lifted his head, smiled ruefully as he scanned her face.
“I was selfish a few minutes ago,” he said. “I couldn’t stop myself—well, after all those weeks of stopping myself, you know…I didn’t give you time, didn’t help you be ready.
“And so I fear I’ve given you the wrong idea of what it’s all about. It’s not about a gentleman driving into you as though with a battering ram. Well, not entirely. It’s also about what you’re feeling right now. But next time—next time you’ll see.” He kissed her along the insides of her thighs and she shuddered with wonder.
She reached her hand to caress his bare throat, almost drunk with the pleasure of touching him whenever she wanted to, now that she had the right to, now that this was no longer a fiction. She tucked an unruly lock of hair behind his ear.
He’d rolled the sheath off himself and wrapped it in a handkerchief. She touched him curiously. His penis was smaller, more relaxed now but still energetic—it jumped and twitched to the touch of her fingers, especially as she became bolder and began to trace the shape of the dark sac at the base of the shaft.
She smiled to draw a long, trembling sigh from him, before he lifted her hand from between his legs and brought it to his lips, kissing each of her fingers in turn.
“I’ve got a little time before I have to get back,” he said. “And you? When do you have to get back?”
She grinned, almost proudly, as she rose to her feet. “Oh,” she said, kissing the top of his head, “I needed to be back at least an hour ago.”
He grasped both her hands.
“I love you, Marie-Laure,” he said. “My God, all those evenings together and I’ve never told you I love you.”
“I love you too.” Telling him was almost as thrilling as touching him, hearing it from his lips as wonderful as kissing him.
“Tonight,” he called, as she began to walk, a bit unsteadily, up the road and back to the kitchen.
“Tonight, mon amour.”
Monsieur Colet was furious and Robert was deeply disappointed in her. One simply was not late (more than an hour late!) for work in the kitchen.
She could, she supposed, have made up some sort of excuse—she hadn’t been feeling well, or (perhaps more convincingly) that Monsieur Joseph had been most importunate this morning and insisted she stay with him. But she didn’t. She remained uncharacteristically silent, not wanting to disturb the delicate balance of emotion and sensation within herself by saying anything at all.
Her punishment was to stay after supper and scour the fireplace’s iron heat reflectors. It was filthy work, and it gave her no time, before Baptiste came to get her, to change her dress. All she could do was get the grease and soot off her hands and run a brush through her hair.
Baptiste’s expression was the same as ever—knowing, reserved, with an ironic edge that intended no harm.
She nodded cordially. Did she look any different, she wondered? She could tell as little from Baptiste’s face as from her own reflection in the small, tarnished mirror. But she must look different. She was different.
Everything was different now.
Chapter Twelve
He wore the same embroidered dressing gown and slippers he’d worn all the other nights she’d visited him. But while he usually kept the gown open, revealing his shirt and breeches, tonight it was tightly sashed around his slender waist, and Marie-Laure knew he had nothing on beneath it. His hair, loosed from its queue, fell to his shoulders. His lips curved slightly; the curves and hollows of his neck shimmered as he breathed; his opaque black eyes glittered like those of a wary forest animal.
She walked slowly toward him, stopping before she quite reached him. Overwhelmed by his stillness and abashed by her shabby clothes, she was suddenly mortified by the streaks of soot on her stockings.
How lovely his dressing gown was, she thought; its dark gray velvet was embroidered in sinuous patterns of purple and metallic gold. How sad that she had nothing beautiful to wear when she came to him.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Marie-Laure. Truly it doesn’t.”
Had her thoughts really been so transparent?
But then he must also know how much she wanted him.
He reached behind her waist to unhook her dress, gently lifting it over her head and tossing it onto the floor. Her stays tumbled off when he tugged at the knot in the laces; her petticoat floated after them. Clearly, he was as familiar with the ties and fastenings of her clothes as she’d been with the buttons of his breeches. When he knelt before her to take off each shoe, to slowly unroll each stocking, she put her hands into his thick black hair, letting it trickle through her fingers like water as he bent to kiss each instep.
He rose quickly, moving back a few steps. She willed herself to keep her eyes open and her hands at her sides, as his eyes slowly traveled up and down her naked body, hi
s mouth curving into a broad smile.
“Oh yes.” It was more a breath than an utterance, a mist of warm air like a veil around her flesh. She could feel the shape of her body—the roundness, the hollows—in the movements of his eyes and the currents of his breathing. It felt rather a nice shape: too short in stature, of course, but quite all right on the whole.
Of course she knew that she was pretty. People had always told her so; clearly it hadn’t only been her cleverness about books that had attracted a certain percentage of Papa’s small clientele. In consequence, she’d always been a bit contemptuous of her appearance, preferring to dismiss the subject, and pretending not to care.
She cared now, though; she wanted to be pretty, for him.
He put out an arm to lift her to the bed.
“No,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“Not yet.”
The corners of his mouth twitched.
She reached for his sash, made a lucky guess as to what sort of knot he’d tied, and pulled gently.
He shrugged his shoulders out of the heavy velvet dressing gown, kicking it out of the way as it fell to the floor.
He stood easily, his weight lightly balanced on slender, muscular legs. His face was alight with mischief. Could she survey his body with the same ease and boldness she saw in his eyes?
Could she move her eyes casually and confidently over his shoulders, his torso? Or would she simply gape, dumbfounded, at the taut lines of his muscles, the tracings of fine black hair on his belly? At his flat pink nipples and the heavy sex rising from the thick wiry darkness between his legs?
She couldn’t pretend to be casual; it was all too new, too astonishing. Her eyes widened and a gasp escaped her parted lips.
“Mon Dieu,” she whispered, “how beautiful you are.”
“And you, Marie-Laure, and you.” He was whispering too. He’d come closer; his chest just grazed the tips of her breasts. He pushed her heavy hair behind her ears, holding it at her nape while he brushed his lips against her earlobe. His other hand traced the curve of her spine, lightly at first, but holding her with increasing firmness, slowly pulling her to him. She could feel the insistent swell of him against her belly. She pushed back shyly, rotating her hips forward and back, to stroke him. How nice it felt, to move like that.
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