Girl in Bath
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
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Girl in Bath
CC Heywood
Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy.
—George Sand
Glossary of Terms and Proper Nouns
atelier – private workshop or studio for a professional artist; can also be an artist’s residence
blanchisserie – a professional laundry
blanchisseuse – a professional laundress
bohemian – one who practices an unconventional lifestyle such as free love or voluntary frugality; associated with artists, writers, and musicians
courtesan – originally a courtier; clever, talented, charming; a woman who is a paid mistress to powerful men; the top of the demimonde
demimondaine – a woman who belongs to the demimonde
demimonde – French for “half world,” hedonism financed through a steady income of cash and gifts from wealthy lovers
grande horizontale – another name for courtesan
grisette – a working-class woman who combines one occupation, typically in the garment trades, with part-time prostitution; the entry-level of the demimonde
hôtel particulier – a grand, free-standing townhouse, typically with an entrance court and a back garden
lavandières – washerwomen
lorette – the “respectable prostitute” or mid-level of the demimonde; named after the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette, where many of these ladies took to making their assignations
le Fauborg – refers to the French high nobility, after the Revolution, the great or “old families;” an idiomatic expression for “old money”
le gratin – “the upper crust” of society, includes both le Fauborg and Tout-Paris
Rive Gauche – the “Left Bank” or the southern bank of the River Seine
Tout-Paris – refers to the most influential of Parisian high-society, setting trends, tastes, past times and holidays; generally, but not always, “new money”
vernissage – “varnishing,” before the formal opening, a private viewing of an art exhibition during which artists would apply the coat of varnish
Table of Contents
Glossary of Terms and Proper Nouns
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Also by
Author’s Note
About the Author
Chapter 1
Montmartre, Paris
April 23, 1889
Monica cringed against Gabrielle’s coughing, then glanced at the other women who flicked inscrutable glances back. It was darning day, which meant that after their early-morning deliveries they sorted all the dirty linens, separating those that needed repair before washing. Amidst soiled piles of clothes and linens, sweat-stained and reeking, they sat with thimbled fingers and needle and thread repairing holes. Gabby coughed again. It was smaller and swallowed up, but still persistently there.
“No better today?” Monica asked as she drew a needle through a limp and smelly sock.
“A little.” Gabby poked herself, dropping her needle and thread.
Again Monica dared a look at the women. Her frequent glances were becoming conspicuous. They were her sisters-in-soil. But spies, too. “Can’t you wear a thimble today?” she whispered, handing her one.
Gabby had always had deft fingers. Yet they’d grown sore and swollen of late. She was too-often tired and couldn’t concentrate. A cough would seize her chest, her whole body, and she would wrack with it. She seemed to be improving. Then it would return. Some good days and some bad. Increasingly, there were more bad. Working from five in the morning until eleven at night but for Sunday, they had little hope of her being seen by a doctor. Unless her condition should miraculously improve, the best they could hope for was to conceal it.
Monica took a sip of wine, then peered out the window. Paris sloped below her to the south, its pinched and crammed and sloping gray sheet roofs and crooked rows of rust-orange chimney pots. The tight city looked as tipsy as she felt.
At half past four, Monica went next door to their boarding room. A month before she’d requested a shorter shift and Madame Pelletier nearly sacked her for it. But she had to take the risk. Freshening up as best she could, she fixed her long mane of midnight-brown hair into a high bun, and changed into a fresh skirt and shirt. Dabbing on some Eau de Cologne, she breathed in the citrus scent as she studied her reflection in the mirror. Finally she pinched her cheeks and sighed.
No sooner had she stepped onto the street, when biting fingers snaked around her arm.
“I won’t have a choleric girl working in my blanchisserie,” the short and bosomy Madame Pelletier hissed into her ear. “Bad enough they force us to the damn outskirts for fear of disease. Do I give them a girl who proves them right?
“I cannot tolerate Mademoiselle Thomas and her hacking for much longer.” She pierced Monica’s chocolate-brown eyes with a black gaze. “And if I should see even one drop of blood, you’re both gone. Do you hear me? Out of a position and out of your rooms.”
She was shaking on the short walk to the café. Madame Pelletier was a bitch of the first water, cooing like a mother hen over her lavandières. But she would just as soon cut them as hold them. She issued no idle threats. Had cast out a girl who’d gotten pregnant only two months earlier.
Monica couldn’t bear to think of Madame Pelletier putting them out. They wouldn’t sleep on the streets, of course. Wouldn’t starve. And it wasn’t that she didn’t miss her old life. Sometimes. But she could never go back to that. She simply wouldn’t. They would have to find a way to make Gabby well and, in the meantime, see to hiding her condition.
She slowed as she came to the picture window of Café Mignon and dared a glance inside. He was there. Her heart galloped in her chest and her mouth went dry. Shifting the odious madame and her threats to the back of her mind, Monica pasted a smile on her face and breezed into the café.
“You’re late,” the café’s owner Monsieur Frédéric said, slapping her bottom as she collected her tray.
She grit her teeth, nearly swallowing her tongue along with all the sharp things she wanted to say.
“I am not,” she said, ducking away from his stinking breath. He loved the café’s onion soup and indulged in it far too much. Didn’t he know it was coming out of his pores?
Frédéric was rude and handsy with his staff, but with his upper-class patrons he was wide smiles and arms out, utterly appropriate,
if somewhat fawning. He loved them nearly as much as he loved himself. That’s why they came to Café Mignon, a Tout-Paris enclave in the midst of bohemian Montmartre. And that was why Monica had begun working there—for one very important member of le gratin.
Jonathan Derassen stroked a neatly groomed auburn beard as he read his papers and sipped his red wine. He’d been in only once before when she was working, but was not seated at her table. She’d begged Yvonne to switch with her, but the woman had refused. Today he was seated at her table, yet every clever thing she’d planned to say suddenly seemed pitiable. No doubt he was approached by hopeful starlets everywhere he went. He probably had a merciful dismissal at the ready. She had to find an unusual way to engage him. Something memorable.
She jerked at a vicious pinch to her bottom to see Frédéric sidled up to her with a serpentine grin. “Are you sleeping, mademoiselle?” He nodded to Derassen. “His wine’s nearly empty.”
Monsieur Derassen had taken perhaps two temperate sips, his glass nowhere near empty. Still, fuming as she went, Monica obliged her slavish boss with a simpering smile. First Madame Pelletier and now this, she thought. Why do people always assume they can take advantage? One day. One day I will have them all at my feet and they will see.
Distracted by her musings, she was delivering Monsieur Derassen’s wine when a customer behind her stood, bumping her tray, and the cut glass carrying his cabernet tumbled off, splashing Derassen and shattering.
She sucked in a bracing breath and gaped in stunned horror. Until Frédéric made a sound like a cross between a quack and a gasp and bounded to the table.
“What did I tell you about those stilts for legs? The wine falls harder for your height. You’re dismissed! Get!” Turning to Monsieur Derassen, he said, “She’s an idiot girl. I should never have hired her.”
Derassen stood, shaking his hands of the wine as Monica desperately apologized and blotted his papers. She hoped they were résumés for other performers, now ruined.
“If you hired an idiot,” said Derassen caustically, “what does that make you?”
Frédéric had a face like a potato and it went blank as he was struck dumb. Monica couldn’t help but laugh.
“Don’t laugh, you insolent girl.” He pinched his face in disgust. “It makes you sound half-mad and we both know that’s only half right.” Turning to Derassen and dabbing frantically at the blood-red stain that looked like a chest wound, Frédéric said, “I assure you, the cost of wash or repair will come out of the girl’s wages.”
Now it was Derassen’s turn to laugh. “I can’t ask that. And in any event, there is hardly a wage amount this poor girl can earn that could begin to cover it.”
“Then I will have her under heel for a year. More!”
“A fine arrangement that is, given you just dismissed me,” Monica said.
“I’m sure I could think of something,” Frédéric said not even trying to hide the lascivious look on his face. Despite his devoted wife, he had propositioned her at least half a dozen times.
“Monsieur, I do hope you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” Derassen said.
“She’s no maiden, monsieur, I assure you. But a common slut who hangs around every atelier in Montmartre ready to drop her dress for every man-of-the-brush who gives her a smile and a franc.”
Derassen froze, his mouth ajar like a provincial about to do a hurried sign-of-the-cross. But she knew he was not that man. He looked at her, his eyes widening, as if he had never heard the words slut or atelier. Looked at her as if he were truly seeing her for the first time. His eyes quickly scanned from head to toe, the corners of his mouth turning up. She knew she had him, so she swallowed a sly smile and left.
Monica had taken perhaps thirty steps down the narrow cobble street when she heard his call:
“Mademoiselle…wait.”
Imperceptibly she slowed but didn’t stop. If she could have grasped that splash of cabernet in her hand to keep it from falling on his pristine shirt, she would not have. For this.
“Mademoiselle…I’m afraid I don’t know your surname. But please stop. If I must, I will chase you down this street. And we both know it will be you who looks the ridiculous one.”
She stopped. Because she knew what he said was true. Tout-Paris couldn’t look ridiculous when compared to the bohemians of Montmartre if they tried. She turned cagily when he approached. His chest rose and fell against his stained shirt, his cheeks had high color and his short, wavy auburn hair was slightly mussed. But against his searching cool sage eyes and aristocratic features, against his magnificent height—she had yet to meet a man who towered over her own height of 5’8” by some half foot—and clothing, an impeccably cut midnight-blue suitcoat over dove-gray trousers, she did look ridiculous and he looked, well…magnificent.
As they regarded each other, something warm and alive cut a path between them she had only felt once before.
When his eyes continued to travel all over her, she folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her brows.
“I’m sorry to be so rude,” he said.
“Yes, you are.”
He smirked and extended a hand. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. My name is Jonathan Derassen.”
Reluctantly she took it, for his bold appraisal had been the height of rudeness and had he been any other man, she might have slapped him.
“And you are?” he pressed.
“Monica Fauconnier.”
Still he appraised her from head to toe and not without a hint of awe.
“I regret we haven’t been formally introduced, for I’ve certainly seen your”—he appeared chagrined as he struggled—“face. Haven’t I?”
Despite his deft swallowing of the word body, she knew what he was about. “Perhaps.” The word fell like dust on her tongue.
“Do you know Monsieur Talac? The painter.”
“Oui, monsieur,” she uttered against her will.
A smile so wide, as if the sun had parted the clouds, broke across his face. “It is you,” he said breathlessly. “You’re Girl in Bath.”
Would she never be able to run far enough from Aubrey? Hurt and spiteful, a worse pairing she couldn’t imagine, he had set out to ruin her life. The devastation of that painting, that relationship, poured over her like an acid rain. What possible hope could she have with Monsieur Derassen now?
“If you’ll excuse me, monsieur.” She turned and walked away.
“What are you doing home?” Gabby asked when Monica returned only two hours after she’d left.
“I was dismissed,” she said, still dazed by her dashed hopes.
She poured a full glass of wine and drank it down in one swallow, then refilled her glass and took up her sewing.
“Dismissed? Did you turn Frédéric down one too many times?”
“I wish. I would go back and cut him where he stood if he reached for my bottom again.”
“So what happened?”
“I spilled wine all over Monsieur Derassen.”
Gabby chortled, then swallowed and tried to cough politely.
“I don’t suppose he offered you an audition after that?”
She shook her head. “It’s difficult enough to even get a chance to be seen by him and Zidler. Now he’ll take one look at me and cross me off the list before I even have a chance to open my mouth.”
She wouldn’t tell her about the painting. Gabby would only politely entreat on Aubrey’s behalf and she couldn’t bear that. Not today. She would have to find another way. Because, come what may, she would get that audition.
Chapter 2
Five nights later, Jonathan sat in Le Chat Noir. The original cabaret of Rodolphe Salis had walnut panels, stained glass windows, a gigantic fireplace and massive chairs and tables, iron lanterns with cat motifs, and a motley collection of arms and armor. Struggling painters and poets mixed with high-class clientele as they awaited the night’s entertainment to begin. Jonathan had been there often in s
earch of talent, but never on a Sunday night.
Five long days he had waited after mining every bit of information he could find about the alluring Mademoiselle Fauconnier. What a coup that he’d found the figure model who launched Aubrey Talac. Girl in Bath splashed a painter and his new style on the Paris art scene, then the model was never heard from again. It was rumored they’d been lovers and had had a falling out. Conjectures, too, that the painter himself, who hadn’t been able to harness the same magic in his follow-up work, didn’t know where she was either. Never could Jonathan have imagined she was a performer at one of his regular haunts.
“Why am I here?” his sister asked. Marie-Thérèse sat rigidly beside him adjusting her perfectly kept ensemble.
“I couldn’t bring Daphne tonight, you understand.”
“Would she object to accompanying you as you search for her replacement?”
“She would, I think.”
“Liberal in her appetites, but only to a certain degree?”
“Quite,” he said, smiling tightly. “And I’m not searching for her replacement. This girl is merely a…curiosity.”
“A curiosity.” Marie-Thérèse slid skeptical eyes to him.
Salis, a shorter man with slick hair and a pointy beard, stepped on stage and the room grew dim while the stage warmed. “What is Montmartre?” he began. “Nothing. What should it be? Ev-Ry-Thing,” he declared, booming with greater emphasis for each syllable. Salis had dedicated himself to agitating for anarchy through the divine subtlety of poetry and song. He wanted Montmartre to secede from France and made certain everyone knew it.