Louisa Rawlings

by Promise of Summer

  Dedication

  For Hilda Banyard Rosen and the magic of her legacy.

  Praise for Louisa Rawlings

  “There’s so much great stuff going on in this novel, I don’t know where to start. It takes a lot of well known tropes, like the Pygmalion plot, Identical Stranger, and Becoming the Mask, just to name a few, and mashes them all up into something unpredictable and fun. Topaze is tough, strong and smart, Lucien is brooding (but not too brooding), sexy and clever. There’s terrific period detail too, and a host of well-drawn minor characters.”—Joanne Renaud, author of A Question of Time on Promise of Summer

  “A dangerous game, a grand deception… Promise of Summer is a novel of hidden risks and surprises. Louisa Rawlings delivers a book that is not all it appears to be. It’s more.”—Affair de Couer

  Chapter One

  The purse was fat. There was no doubting it. Almost as fat as a stuffed goose at Saint Martin’s Fête. Topaze grinned at her brother, Michel, and elbowed him in the ribs. “Hellfire and damnation! That must be the fattest purse in all of Bordeaux, or I’m cursed!”

  Michel rubbed the cold from his bony hands. He grinned back, a crenellated grin that still showed the loss of baby teeth. “His purse aren’t no fatter than his arse!”

  Topaze scrubbed soot from one of her pale amber eyes and glanced again across the bustling street and into the open door of the shop. The large monsieur still clutched the purse in his puffy hands. “Quick, now, while he’s haggling over the price of the snuffbox. Get over there. Wait by the door. As soon as the poxy knave is out on the street…”

  Michel winked. “My hand will be in his pocket before he’s a minute older. Where will you be?”

  “Next to Blind Jacques on the corner. Slip me the damned purse, and run like the devil. I’ll meet up with you again in front of the Church of Sainte-Croix.” Topaze watched as her brother made his way across the crowded street, dodging a fish seller’s cart in his path. She shivered and bundled her ragged scarf more tightly around her neck and ears. Damnation, but it was cold! Almost as cold as last year, the winter of 1738. Even with Maman’s old torn jacket over her own skimpy one. But if the purse was rich enough, there might be firewood for tonight. She smiled at the thought, then winced as the smile cracked her chapped lips. Ah, well. If they bought a little bacon for supper, perhaps she’d steal a dab or two of the grease for her lips and cheeks. She stiffened. The fat man had pocketed his purse and moved toward the door of the shop. Time to head for the corner. Michel was already poised to stumble against the man. It would only be a moment now.

  “Stinking urchin! Whore’s dropping! Get out of my way!” The fat man’s bellow rang out over the noise of crying street hawkers and barking dogs. He lifted a hamlike fist and struck Michel to the cobbled pavement.

  Topaze was before the man in an instant, her eyes blazing, her voice shrill with all the curses she’d learned on the quays of the old seaport. Spanish curses from sailors who smuggled contraband into Panama and Peru, French and Arabic oaths from the seamen who plied the slave and rum triangle out of Bordeaux.

  The fat man laughed at her tirade. His eyes, piglike beneath his gray wig and tricorne, glittered with lust. “Little hellion! It might be amusing to teach you a lesson or two.” As Topaze yelped in protest, he pulled her into his arms, one large hand squeezing her small breast, the other fondling her thin flanks through her skirts. He grunted in disappointment and released her. “But I like my wenches with meat on the bones. And not so young. So then. Go home to your maman with a gift from me. For your impudent tongue, bratling!” Before Topaze could dodge the blow, he had smacked her sharply across the side of her head. He turned to the busy street and waved his arm. “Sirrah! My chair!”

  Dazed, Topaze watched him scramble into his sedan chair. Her breast hurt, and her head rang from his slap. Michel, still sprawled on the ground, had begun to whimper. “I didn’t even go for his purse, Topaze. The fat pig hit me for no cause.”

  Topaze forced a smile for Michel’s sake. What was done was done. “No point in lying there. Pick yourself up,” she said gently.

  Michel struggled to his feet, fighting back the tears. “But his purse. We’ve lost it.” He wrapped his arms about himself as a sharp gust of wind swept over the cobblestones, blowing up bits of debris and whistling through the chimney pots of the crowded shops. “The little ones will cry tonight.”

  “There’ll be another purse. You’ll see.” Topaze wound her scarf around Michel’s shoulders. “No use crying over spilt milk. I’m just sorry I didn’t kick the dung heap in the culls. He’d not have been wenching for a while, the damned whoremonger, if I’d had a clear shot with my shoe!”

  Michel laughed and wiped at his nose with a grimy sleeve. “Maman would dust your hide to hear you swear so!”

  She tousled his hair. “I aren’t no worse than you, and a damn sight older. Damnation. Look!” Her eyes widening in surprise and pleasure, she scooped a piece of fabric from the street. “It weren’t all for naught! The son of a dog lost his handkerchief.” She rubbed the square of silk and lace against her chapped cheeks, her cold-reddened nose. “Don’t it smell sweet. What a nice gift for Maman.” She allowed Michel a sniff at the handkerchief, then tucked it into her apron pocket. “Come on. There’s more traffic near the church. We’ll find another gull.”

  Sure enough, the square before the old church was crowded with bystanders, watching as a trained bear danced and cavorted at the end of a long chain. Topaze scanned the crowd with a practiced eye. Tall men and short. Fat and lean. Idle aristocrats bundled against the February cold. Sailors and travelers with skin tanned from the Indies. Complacent bourgeois merchants and shipbuilders, with impatient wives who tugged at their sleeves. Topaze poked Michel and nodded in the direction of a handsomely dressed young man. His heavy greatcoat, his beaver tricorne, his fine wrist laces marked him as an aristocrat, his bored expression made it clear that he was used to the more sophisticated pleasures of the king’s court. The slight bulge of his coat pocket betrayed the presence of a purse. “I’ll wait here,” said Topaze to her brother. “Afterward, meet me where the long quay joins the rue Jeanne d’Arc.”

  Michel bobbed his head in agreement, then moved around the circle of spectators to the young man’s side. The boy was slight, even for his twelve years: the nobleman, his eyes on the dancing bear, didn’t see the small hand slipping into his pocket. But it was clear he had felt something. As the boy deftly withdrew the purse and turned away, the man let out a shout and clapped his hand over his pocket. “Thief! I’ve been robbed! Stop, thief!” Frantically, Michel pushed his way through the press of people, never stopping as he slipped the purse to Topaze. Then he broke into a gallop, with the nobleman—and half the bystanders—in hot pursuit. Topaz dropped the purse down the front of her chemise, then ambled toward the edge of the square, as though the bear’s antics had become tiresome, and she had better things to do.

  Pray God Michel gets away, she thought. She wasn’t too concerned, of course. Her brother was small and wiry, and he knew the back alleys. Besides, even if he were caught, he’d have to be searched for the purse. And without it, how could he be accused? Topaze smiled to herself; the purse was warm, pressing against her flesh beneath her loosely laced stays.

  “But he gave the purse to that chit of a girl!” A buxom matron, in a wide panniered skirt and a lace coif, pointed at Topaze. “I saw him! That girl there!”

  Topaze gasped, feeling a rough hand grasp the back of her jacket. She squirmed about to stare into the red face of a beefy merchant who frowned down on her. “Unless you want a drubbing, girl, you’ll give up the purse,” he snarled.

  Elfin-faced and dainty, Topaze knew she looked younger than nineteen. It had saved h
er before; it would do so again. She began to wail. The bystanders crowded around, fascinated by this new sport. “I never touched no purse, monsieur,” she cried. “I never even saw it. I swear it by God and Saint Denis!” She even managed a heartrending sob.

  “Lying little beggar!” The merchant began to shake her violently. Her long blond hair, that had been pinned loosely with a hairpin she’d found on the street, tumbled about her shoulders and over her forehead. She looked around at the circle of people, the indifferent faces. There was no salvation to be found here. Her tears were wasted. The merchant plunged his hand into her apron pocket and withdrew the silk handkerchief. “Morbleu! Where would a little whore like you get something like this?”

  Not the handkerchief for Maman! Hellfire and damnation, but she had her pride. And it wasn’t as if she’d stolen the cursed thing! She stopped all pretense of weeping, and sneered in the man’s face. “From my friend, King Louis, you dough-baked varlet! Take your paws off me!” She wriggled free of his grasp, leaving Maman’s jacket still in his fist, and dashed into the crowd. Stopping for a second to glance back at him, her thumb going to her teeth in a mocking obscenity, she barreled into a man who had been languidly watching the scene while he peeled and ate an apple. They crashed to the cobblestones together. She heard him swear softly beside her. She raised her head from the pavement. His penknife lay directly in front of her. Praise be to Sainte Agathe! she thought. It was a fine knife, well-tooled, and worth a great deal, she guessed. And it had practically fallen into her hand. Surely she was meant to have it! As she jumped to her feet she clutched at the knife; she took off at a run again, closing the blade and slipping it into her pocket without breaking her stride. She dodged a small fiacre, skipped around a hay wagon, careened down a side street.

  Merde! She could still hear shouts and pounding footsteps behind her. And the telltale purse inside her bodice, and no place to dump it for safekeeping! Another twist and turn. She saw a narrow alley and ran into it. It led into a small courtyard behind a fish shop. There were a dozen wooden barrels, some brimming with fish, some with tight-fitting lids. As quickly as she could she lifted a lid, scrambled into the barrel, lowered the lid over her head, and crouched down. Listening. Waiting. She heard footsteps, then there was silence. Sweet Virgin, but it was cold without Maman’s jacket! And the barrel was damp and stank of fish, its rounded sides sticky to the touch. Something felt slippery beneath her shoes; it was impossible to see in the dark, but from the smell she feared it must be rotting fish entrails.

  She waited a bit longer. Still no sound. Gingerly she lifted the lid a scant inch, and peered out. From what she could see, the courtyard was empty. She pushed the lid off the barrel and let it clatter to the ground. Damnation! With a shock she felt herself hauled to her feet and wrenched roughly out of the barrel. “Let me go!” she squealed.

  “You’re not going anywhere, you little thief.”

  Stunned, Topaze stared up at the man who held her before him in a punishing grip, his hands clenched about her thin shoulders. He was darkly tanned, a rich caramel color that served to heighten the clear blue of his eyes. His face was sharp and angular, with harsh planes, high cheekbones, eyebrows that arched mockingly. At his temples the hair was white, snowy barbs that nestled uneasily against the raven locks tied into a ribbon at the nape of his neck. Carved diagonally across his left cheek was a long scar. His sensuous lips held the hint of a smile, but the blue eyes chilled her. Peering at him warily through her drooping hair, Topaze shivered. For all his look of bored indifference, there was something almost diabolical, frightening about the man.

  She began to whimper. “I didn’t do no wrong. I aren’t got the purse. I swear it.”

  He laughed sharply. “You’ll probably burn in Hell for all your lies, you filthy little creature. Stop your sniveling. Of course you’ve got the fop’s purse. And a neat job it was. I couldn’t have nimmed it better myself. My compliments to your little partner.”

  She wriggled furiously. His hands were tight clamps, crunching her bones. “Leave off, you grave-robbing whoreson!” she shrilled. “I don’t share with no one!”

  He looked tired. Or bored. “Oh, for Satan’s sake,” he muttered. “I don’t give a damn about the purse. You look like you need it more than that coxcomb. But you have my knife. I want it.”

  She examined him with more care. His coat was well cut, and of good cloth. He might have a livre or two to spare. “I might have found a knife,” she said craftily. “What’s it worth to you, to get it back?”

  “You damned brat,” he said with a weary sigh. “That knife has been halfway across the world with me, and back again. The only thing it’s worth is a thrashing for you, if I have to ask you again.”

  “Oh, what a brave monsieur,” she taunted. “Especially with someone weaker than you. Just for that, I don’t have no knife. Not yours. Nor anybody else’s.” With a defiant gesture, she tossed back the tumbled curls from her face and stared him straight in the eyes.

  “By my faith, I’ll… Oh, Lord!” He sucked in a sharp breath, his blue eyes widening. He seemed to be looking at Topaze for the first time, his bored expression turning to shocked surprise. His grip on her loosened momentarily.

  She wasn’t about to wait around while he recovered his wits. Drawing back her foot, she kicked him savagely in the shin and darted away. She squeezed her thin body through a narrow chink in a stone wall and made good her escape. This time she knew she was safe. By the time he ran around the wall, she’d be halfway to her rendezvous with Michel.

  She hurried toward the quay, filled with a strange exhilaration. Maman’s jacket was gone, and she was cold and hungry, but she’d outwitted Dame Fortune for one more day. There’d be food on the table tonight; the little ones wouldn’t have to cry themselves to sleep.

  Michel was waiting on the quay, casting stones into the gray waves, when she arrived. He inhaled deeply and wrinkled his nose. “Jesu, but you stink!”

  “I had to hide in a fish barrel. And I lost Maman’s jacket. And the pretty handkerchief.” She grinned and produced their booty. “But here’s the purse.” She’d already decided not to tell him about the knife. She’d save it, give it to him for his birthday.

  There was less in the purse than they’d hoped. They counted the coins with care, tossed the empty purse into the sea, and ran to make their purchases at the open stalls that sold the cheapest goods: bread, salted herring, bacon, a few turnips and onions, a large cabbage. And enough firewood for cooking, though it wouldn’t last more than an hour or two. They might sleep in a cold room, but at least supper would be a hot, filling soup.

  They hurried toward home, their arms filled with their bounty. As they passed a large bakeshop, the door opened and a young man stepped out, rubbing his floury hands on his apron. He was short and robust, with close-set eyes and a large nose. “Topaze!” He reached out to pinch her bottom, but she dodged his fingers. “Why didn’t you buy bread from me?” he asked, his voice filled with accusation.

  “You’re a thief, Philibert,” she laughed. “That’s why. You guard your money like an old miser.”

  The accusation in his voice became condemnation. “Why won’t you marry me?”

  She grinned and made an obscene gesture with her finger.

  “You wait,” he muttered. “When Madame Givet dies, you’ll come begging to me!”

  She tossed her head. “By the Holy Virgin, Philibert, I’d have to be a poor beggar to want you! Come on, Michel.”

  They passed the noisy shipyards, the sugar refineries belching steam and acrid smoke into the frosty air, the rum manufactories, and made their way into the oldest, meanest quarter of Bordeaux. Michel was strangely quiet, after the enthusiasm that had accompanied their purchases. At last he glanced at Topaze, his soft eyes troubled. “She won’t die. Maman won’t die, will she?”

  Topaze shifted her bundles and patted his shoulder. “Do you trouble yourself about that shittlebrain Philibert? He only says those things to
try and frighten me into his bed.”

  “But will she die?”

  “Foolish boy. Why should she? Isn’t she getting stronger every day? And tomorrow, I feel sure, there’ll be a purse big enough to buy some medicine for her.” She tweaked his nose lovingly. “Are you so very unhappy, Michel?”

  “I wish we didn’t have to steal.”

  “You don’t have to do it. Isn’t Guillaume the carpenter looking for an apprentice?”

  “Merde, Topaze. You know we can’t afford it. He’d only pay my keep. What about you, and the rest?”

  “Do it if you want to. I’ll get money somehow.”

  “How? Not every purse is fat. And you’re not nearly so good at thievery as me. You can’t whore, neither. You swore to Papa that you wouldn’t.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll marry Philibert after all, if he gives me a say over his purse.” She laughed ruefully. “A married whore aren’t the same as an unmarried one.”

  “But you hate him. You said he’s a pig!”

  “Qu’importe. What does it matter?” She giggled. “Just think! Every day of our marriage I can steal loaves for you and Maman and the little ones. If I beguile him every night in bed, he’ll never be the wiser. Think what fun I’ll have, to deceive the tight-fisted knave.”

  “I couldn’t laugh about it!”

  “Oh, Michel,” she said, brushing a wayward curl from his forehead, “if we haven’t laughter, what have we in this life?”

  The Givet family lived in a squalid rented room above a tanner’s shop. Topaze and her brother climbed the rickety stairs accompanied by the sour smells filtering up from the shop below. The little ones, having heard the shouts of the tanner (“Keep them damned brats quiet tonight, Topaze! You hear?”), crowded around the door to greet them. There were seven in all—not counting Topaze and Michel—ranging in age from two and a half to eleven. Thin and ragged children, with runny noses, watery eyes.

  “Good God, let me put down my bundles first!” cried Topaze, as they hugged her and tugged at her skirts.