“Laboratory?” Lili’s jaw dropped. “Microscope? Here?”
“It’s not what you think. Right now, it’s just a corner of my dressing room set up with equipment. My father’s promised to build a real lab at Vaux-le-Vicomte, though I’m not sure how much I’ll be here to use it.”
“What do you look at?”
“Oh, whatever looks interesting. Moss, mold, leaves. I watch fleas crawl around and see little things squirming in water drops.” He tapped a pouch tied to his saddle. “I was hoping to find some things to look at today. Maybe you can do it with me.”
“How could a microscope fit in there?” she asked. Lili heard how childishly eager her voice sounded, but as thoughts of Delphine’s disapproval flitted through her mind, she brushed them aside.
Paul-Vincent pulled up his horse again and took out a little case. Inside was a copper instrument small enough to fit in his palm. He handed it to her, and she looked up at him, perplexed. She had seen a drawing of a microscope, and it was nothing like this tiny, violin-shaped object with a large screw in place of the instrument’s neck, and a glass lens where the sound hole would be.
“This is the kind Leeuwenhoek invented. I’ll show you how it works.” Paul-Vincent put out his hand to take back the tiny device. “The screw tightens or loosens this little bracket that presses on the lens, so whatever you’ve put on this little skewer”—Paul-Vincent touched his finger to a needlelike prong set just over the little circle of glass—“can come into focus when you hold it up to the light.”
He looked up at the lattice of tree branches above their heads. “When there is some light, I mean.” He put the tiny object back in its case and slipped it into his saddle bag. “Hooke’s microscope is easier, because you look down through a cylinder onto something, but really, this one magnifies better. If you want, I’ll show you how it works after lunch.”
If I want? “I’d be delighted,” Lili said, trying out her best imitation of Delphine’s coquettish toss of the head, and instantly wishing she hadn’t made the truth sound so false.
THE TWO OF them caught up with the rest of the group just before they reached the clearing in front of a hunting lodge. Tendrils of smoke rose from the chimney where a cooking fire had been laid. The interior had been dusted and a stew pot hung over a bed of glowing embers, but other than the bustle of the moment, the lodge showed no recent signs of use.
The building could hardly be called rustic, with its painted panels and gilded cherubs in the vestibule, holding up a carved banner still embossed with the crest of the Marquis du Villars, the former owner of Vaux-le-Vicomte. In fact, nothing in the lodge seemed to be about hunting at all, once they were past the stunned-looking deer and snarling boar whose heads were mounted in the antechamber. The dishes on the table were so dainty, and the crystal so fragile, that if this were a story by Charles Perrault or Madame d’Aulnoy, Lili decided, the place would surely be enchanted.
Where’s the evil witch? Lili wished Delphine were beside her to share the joke. The other girls had all disappeared upstairs, and Lili trailed along afterward, mystified again by their peals of laughter.
At the table, over a ragout of venison and root vegetables, Anne-Mathilde and Joséphine chattered about how simple, and in a way cleansing and pure, the lives of peasants must be, and how disappointed they had been to find the upstairs almost entirely unfurnished. “We shall have to persuade Father to change that, now that Vaux-le-Vicomte is ours,” Anne-Mathilde said. “Won’t we, Paul-Vincent?”
She noticed Lili’s grin. “Whatever is so funny?”
“Oh, nothing,” Lili replied. “I was just picturing you here.” Stirring a poisoned pot.
“It can be my own little house, to entertain my friends.” Anne-Mathilde ignored Lili and looked back at the two other girls. “Unless you want to turn it into a silly old laboratory.” She stuck out her tongue at her brother, as if to convey her confidence that she could never be unattractive, regardless of what she did. She burst out in a laugh that turned into something more like a cackle, and Lili wondered for a moment if they all would be turned into barnyard animals by her spell.
“No, my dear sister,” Paul-Vincent said. “In fact it would give me immense pleasure if you spent all your time here with your friends.” He looked over at Lili, and if he could have done so without betraying that he meant his comment as an insult, Lili was sure he would have winked.
Anne-Mathilde, having missed the slight altogether, put down her napkin. A liveried valet, one of a group of servants who had come shortly after dawn to prepare the lodge for its visitors, came up behind her to pull back her chair.
“Well, then,” Anne-Mathilde said, standing up. “It’s settled. The lodge is mine. And since I am its mistress, I make the rules. Don’t disturb the ladies for the next hour, so we can rest for that beastly ride back to the château.”
“I’m not tired,” Lili said. “Paul-Vincent has promised me a walk.”
“Lili!” Delphine implored. She came over and took Lili’s elbow. “You’re supposed to stay with us,” she whispered. “You know. Be sociable.”
It’s the only attention she’s paid me all day, Lili thought, fighting down anger.
Delphine’s pleading smile vanished at Lili’s resistance to the tug on her arm. “Oh, go then,” she sniffed.
Lili felt the eyes of all three girls on her as she turned her back and went out the door with Paul-Vincent.
* * *
A PATH AWAY from the clearing led down to a stream, which by late summer had disappeared under an explosion of thick marsh grasses. Frogs bellowed and dragonflies hovered in the sticky air. Paul-Vincent slapped his face, leaving behind a tiny smear of blood where a mosquito had landed. “This wasn’t such a good idea after all,” he said. “But I wanted to collect some water to look at under the microscope back at the château.”
He came over to her and pressed his index finger onto her forehead. “Mosquito,” he said. “Got it.” He peered more closely. “A little too late, I’m afraid. You’re going to have a bump.” Lili’s fingers found the spot by the itch, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“You’re very pretty,” Paul-Vincent said. “The prettiest girl at the château.”
“Me?” She looked away, taken aback by the compliment. “That’s not something I hear too often. Delphine’s the pretty one.”
“Yes, but in an ordinary way, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Lili said, trying to sound offhand as she watched two dragonflies hovering in midair.
Paul-Vincent was making his way through the weeds to the edge of the stream. “She’s very nice to look at,” he called back to her, “but it doesn’t seem there is anything more to discover.” He lifted up a collecting jar half full of cloudy green water. “Like my sister.”
“Delphine is a lot more interesting than Anne-Mathilde!” Lili snorted. Don’t talk about them, she pleaded silently. Even if you’re just thirteen, talk about me.
He was standing next to her again. “You’d know better than I do about girls, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. He examined the liquid as he swirled it in the jar. “This should be good.” He slapped his cheek again before putting the collecting jar in a bag he slung over his shoulder.
“Let’s not go back yet,” Lili said, surprised at the quaver in her voice.
Paul-Vincent gave her a curious look. “We ‘re being eaten alive.”
“I know,” she said, running her fingers over her face. “Is there anywhere else to go besides—back there?”
“Do you like wild strawberries?” he asked.
“Does anyone not?”
“Well, then, let’s go,” he said, making a gesture to take her arm, before changing his mind and dropping his hands awkwardly to his side. Paul-Vincent began walking in the direction of a woodland glade between the stream and the lodge. “I noticed a big patch when I was riding here by myself last week. Perhaps there are still some, though the season’s almost pa
st.”
“By yourself,” Lili said. “You have no idea how much of a luxury that is.”
“We all have our luxuries, I suppose,” he said. “At least you’re not stuck babbling in Latin at boarding school. And then, next year, it’s off to my regiment.” He laughed. “It sounds so odd—’my’ regiment. My parents bought a command for me, of course without asking whether I wanted it or not. I’ll have to go off to be a junior officer soon. Learn my way around. Get to know the men.” He shrugged. “All that.”
He paused for a moment to observe a doe and her fawn disappearing into the glade. “So there goes any time to do the things I enjoy, though I do rather like the uniform, I have to admit. What do you do at home in Paris?”
“Not much. Read, write stories—silly ones for children. I study things most people tell me I have no use for, like astronomy. Physics.”
“No use for?”
“Everyone thinks the only things that matter are what husbands view as useful. Except for Maman, of course.”
“I thought your mother was dead.” Paul-Vincent picked up a twig and made a full circle of his body as he threw it.
“She is. I call Madame de Bercy ‘Maman,’ since she’s the one who raised me.” Lili bent down to pick a small yellow flower poking out from the forest debris. She put it to her nose, inhaling a fragrance that was more fresh and pungent than sweet. “Delphine and I call each other sister sometimes, though it isn’t actually true.” She thought for a moment. “How did you know about my mother?”
“I studied a little of the Principia at school,” Paul-Vincent replied. “When I heard your last name, I asked Anne-Mathilde if you might be related. She didn’t care a whit that your mother had a brain in her head, but she certainly was ready to gossip about this and that.”
“Gossip?”
“Nothing in particular that’s likely to have a shred of truth to it, especially if it comes from her. I guess it was mostly that your mother was more interested in science than people thought she should be, and although it’s beyond me why anyone should care whether somebody spends her time embroidering crests on pillows or working out calculus, I guess it seemed dangerous somehow. That it was bad for women in general when men saw one of them be so—”
They both turned, hearing the voices of two young children nearby. Seconds later, a girl of about eight ran into view, chasing a boy several years younger. Both were wearing grimy smocks spattered with red from the strawberries they’d eaten. Catching a glimpse of Lili and Paul-Vincent, they backed away.
“Don’t be afraid,” Lili said, taking a step toward the children and putting out her hand with a smile. “Did you save a few for us?”
The boy yowled as the girl yanked him by the hand. “We didn’t eat any!” she said, dragging him back into the woods as fast as he could run.
Lili turned to Paul-Vincent. “What was that about?”
“They’re not supposed to take anything from the estates of nobles,” Paul-Vincent explained. “Their family is probably nearby with big baskets, making off with enough to sell for a loaf of bread in the village, and maybe hoping to snare a rabbit to cook over a fire somewhere in the woods tonight.”
“Don’t they have a home?”
“Probably not. Part of the population flottante.” Seeing Lili’s confusion, he went on. “Peasants who’ve lost their lands. There are many of them now. A bad harvest or two and they can’t pay their debts or their taxes. They lose their homes and patch of land and wander around taking advantage of anything that’s there for them to steal.”
“Steal? Are we going to eat everything ourselves? And ripe fruit is rotten in a day or two anyway.”
“That’s not the point,” Paul-Vincent said. “My father says people should only have the benefit of work they’ve done themselves, if France is to stay strong.”
“Growing wild strawberries is work?”
“If they think no one’s watching, they’ll rob us blind.”
An image of the beaten tailor flashed into her mind, and she didn’t care how scolding her tone sounded. “The strawberries grow by themselves, and they belong as much to the birds or those children as they do to anyone else. More, really, because they need them for food and you don’t.”
Paul-Vincent looked at her sheepishly. “Actually, I agree. It’s been beaten into me that there’s a certain way the son of a duke is supposed to turn out, and I’ve found it easier to say what everyone expects to hear. But I didn’t really mean it. It seems as if there should be a way for everyone to have enough, but I can’t say I know too many people who give it that much thought.”
Lili felt her heart slowing down. “I’m glad I don’t have to add you to the list of people I’d rather not talk to.” She cocked her head and this time her smile was genuine. “Especially since you have a microscope I have yet to look through.”
Paul-Vincent laughed. “Shall we eat a little of my inheritance first? Sit down and I’ll bring some berries to you, so you don’t soil your hands.” He took off his jacket and laid it on the ground, and once she was settled, he took a small butterfly net from his bag. Within minutes he had returned with dozens of berries nestled at the bottom of the net. Sitting down on the soft mat of twigs and leaves on the forest floor, he turned the net inside out, spilling out the tiny fruits and brushing off bits of debris as he picked a few of them up with delicate fingers and laid them on the palm of his hand.
“Here.” He gave Lili four or five of the best ones and tossed the remainder in his mouth.
Lili lifted her hand to her nose. “They smell like the woods,” she said, pinching the leafy top off the first berry and putting the fruit in her mouth. The tiny, soft skin broke between her tongue and palate without her needing to chew, releasing an explosion of musty sweetness so intense, she shut her eyes to savor it better.
“If you don’t eat faster, you won’t get your share,” Paul-Vincent said. Lili opened her eyes and tossed the remaining berries into her mouth, mashing them with her tongue against the inside edges of her teeth, and letting the spicy tang work through to her cheeks.
Nice, she thought. So nice. The taste of strawberries lingering in her mouth, the light shimmering in the glade, birdsong in the trees, the wisp of a breeze on a warm afternoon …
The good company. She looked at Paul-Vincent, who was sorting through the remaining berries. No point in letting her imagination go. He was three years younger than she was, and the suitable mate for him was probably asleep in a cradle.
A dragonfly buzzed by her head, pursued by a second one. Paul-Vincent gave a whoop of excitement, and within a few seconds he had trapped one in his net. “I was hoping for this,” he said, decapitating the insect with a quick motion and securing one of its wings to the microscope. He went a few steps to a better lit spot in the clearing and held the microscope up to the light, adjusting the screws until he had it right. “Come take a look,” he said.
Lili peered through the lens and gasped. The wing burst out before her like a leaded glass window in a cathedral, translucent and radiant as a drop of oil on water, held together by a lattice of rectangles and hexagons, no two alike. “Spin this screw like this,” Paul-Vincent said, showing her how to twirl the specimen to see it at different angles.
Lili was vaguely aware of his hand on the small of her back as she looked through the lens, but when she turned to comment, his face was so close she almost brushed his cheek with her nose. She shifted her weight back to pull away, but without knowing quite how it happened, his lips were on hers. They were warm and wet, and softer than she imagined possible, but she was too startled to linger. She pulled away, pressing her fingers to her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Paul-Vincent said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
No you shouldn’t, Lili thought, not sure if she believed it. But I think I’m glad you did. “It isn’t proper,” she said, trying to sound indignant. “And it shouldn’t happen again.”
And then it did. This kiss, longer and more
confident, set off an odd but not unpleasant twinge in her belly that inched toward her groin, fading only when a hard click of teeth caused her to startle and pull away. Just then the sound of horses’ hooves crackled through the twigs on the forest floor, and Jacques-Mars burst into the clearing.
“Where in hell have you been?” he said. His horse whinnied and tossed its head at the yank of the bit when Jacques-Mars pulled up next to them. “We were about to send out the guard.” He tossed his head in Lili’s direction. “Help her on behind me,” he said to Paul-Vincent. “I’ve tied up your horses back at the trail.”
Jacques-Mars looked back and forth between Lili and Paul-Vincent, with an expression unnerving enough to make her feel as if her chest were folding in half. Do men just know when some things happen? Is it that obvious?
Paul-Vincent made a stirrup with his hands and helped her up behind Jacques-Mars, whose body under his riding jacket felt as uninviting as a statue.
“Did you notice that family stealing strawberries just up the trail?” Jacques-Mars asked. “I drove them off. Gave one of their dirty little brats a whack to let them know I meant business.”
Their horses were tied up only a few minutes away, and Lili avoided Paul-Vincent’s eyes when he helped her back down from Jacques-Mars’s horse and onto her own.
“You’re going to have to start paying attention, Paul-Vincent,” Jacques-Mars said. “If you don’t, hundreds like them will think your lands are the solution to their empty stomachs, and soon they’ll be so bold it won’t be safe for you to be out here.” His eyes pierced Lili with a now-unmistakable leer. “Especially with a young lady.” Then Jacques-Mars kicked his horse’s flanks and galloped down the trail to the château.
Lili followed, forgetting Jacques-Mars’s expression and thinking of nothing but the lingering taste of strawberries and soft lips, the secrets of dragonfly wings, and what Paul-Vincent must look like riding behind her.
FRANÇOIS!” JEAN-LUC Valmont steadied himself as he leaned out of the coach and stared up at a third-story window. “François-Marie Arouet!” he called up again in the blaring tone of a drunken reveler. “Get yourself down out of that rat hole you live in! I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”
Finding Emilie Page 9