Finding Emilie (35 page)

“This is really no place for a scientist,” she muttered as she untied and mounted her horse. “Perhaps when results make no sense, you ought to examine your assumptions, Monsieur Voltaire. Don’t you think so, Hirondelle?” she said, rubbing the mare’s neck. Hirondelle shuddered, and Emilie laughed. With a light touch of her heels, she sent the horse in a fast trot down the path to the château.

She was a better scientist than Voltaire was, but since she couldn’t hope to be taken seriously, she would have to satisfy herself with trying to get him to give up notions so foolish they would embarrass him later. Like heat having mass. He’d burned everything he could get his hands on and gotten such conflicting results, he’d never be able to demonstrate anything persuasive to the Academy.

But how can heat have no substance? Something was scorching her face back at the forge, and how can something be nothing? Emilie rode through the dappled light of the forest, oblivious to everything as she pondered the question.

Reaching the forest edge, she winced at the sudden intensity of
the light reflecting off the golden fields in front of her. Then, with a gasp, she put her hands to both sides of her head and her eyes widened. “It’s so obvious!”

She dug in her heels to send Hirondelle into a gallop. Only two weeks remained before the Academy’s deadline, two weeks to get her own essay finished and into the mail coach bound for Paris.

1766

I
N THE
summer heat, among fears of an epidemic, Julie de Bercy was buried quickly and unceremoniously in a family plot outside the city. A few weeks later, when danger of wider contagion in the city had passed, a requiem mass was said for her soul at Notre-Dame, with music composed by François-André Danican Philidor.

“Not a large crowd,” the Comte de Buffon pointed out to Lili as they filed out, “but quite an illustrious one.” Among the mourners were Denis Diderot and most of Julie’s regular guests at her salon, as well as Madames Lespinasse and Geoffrin, two of Julie’s rival sa-lonnières. Queen Marie Leszczynska offered condolences in a letter and sent two of her daughters to represent her. They arrived with the Duchesse de Praslin, who, much to Lili and Delphine’s relief, had come without Anne-Mathilde. The Comtesse d’Étoges attended with Ambroise, who supported Delphine as she went with trembling steps to receive the sacrament. Lili followed mechanically on the arm of Baronne Lomont.

The mercier was there, and the dressmaker and milliner too, dabbing tears at the loss of someone who looked them in the eye and always paid her bills. They disappeared back to their shops after the mass, most with just a nod in Lili and Delphine’s direction. Private carriages took the family and close friends to the Jardin de Roi, where the Comte de Buffon had invited them to a somber dinner.

Delphine went in the carriage of the Comte d’Étoges, leaving
Lili to travel alone with Baronne Lomont. Thank God Monsieur Barras isn’t invited, Lili thought, shuddering at the thought of his mournful, cloying look when he talked about his dead wife. Clarisse this, Clarisse that, as if Maman scarcely matters even when she’s the one newly dead. Lili felt a sudden wave of exhaustion. Slumping into a corner of the carriage, she shut her eyes.

“You should not sit in that manner when you are being observed by others,” the baroness said, “even if I am the only person to see you.”

Lili opened her eyes but did not move. “Maman is dead, Baronne,” she said. “Surely I am permitted some show of grief?”

“You will, of course, be forgiven almost anything right now, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be talked about. It’s at times like this that a lady’s character is most clearly observed.”

Lili sat up and stared ahead, avoiding the baroness’s eyes. “You should not consider yourself excused from pleasant conversations simply because you are privately sorrowful,” she went on. “You should view yourself as the hostess at the Comte de Buffon’s dinner, if you wish talk of you to be favorable. And you most certainly need that in your circumstances …”

Lili had stopped listening. Dead. Buried. Gone. She and Delphine had not been permitted to see the body out of fears of lingering contagion, and she still didn’t quite believe that Maman wasn’t simply away somewhere. There had been no time yet even to visit her grave. Perhaps Maman would be waiting outside the Jardin de Roi to run to them and tell them it had all been a mistake, that someone else was buried in her coffin, that she had just been visiting a friend and was sorry she had frightened them.

The carriage slowed to a stop. “Are we clear then?” the baroness asked.

She must have been lecturing me the whole time, Lili realized. “Oui, madame,” she said, knowing it was always best to agree with the baroness even when she had no idea what she had said.

*   *   *

“
AND HERE’S WHERE
I drew my sketches,” Delphine said to Ambroise as she showed him the greenhouse after dinner. A wilted tone in her voice and a hesitancy of step as she clung to Ambroise’s arm were the only signs that Delphine was suffering, and only those who knew Delphine’s natural gaiety would notice even that.

Lili hung back behind them, wanting a moment to herself. How odd it is to be here, she thought, taking in the chirps and trills of the birds. Death had swallowed up Maman, but here in this world so full of life, not a creature knew she had existed.

Tatou screamed, rattling the bars of his cage, and a flood of affection came over Lili for the little capuchin monkey, blessed with a life so innocent and simple. He doesn’t know I’m sad, she thought. He doesn’t understand why he’s still in his cage now that I’m here. She draped a cloth over her shoulder and opened the door. Tatou scrambled up her outstretched arm and took his seat on the cloth.

“Do you miss Jean-Étienne as much as I do?” she asked, as tears swelled her throat. Tatou met her gaze and cocked his head. “Yes, you know who I mean, don’t you?” He gave a single soft cry. “But you still have the count,” she said, scratching behind the monkey’s tiny ear. “He’s rather like a papa to both of us, isn’t he?”

She looked around at the only place that felt like home now. Hôtel Bercy was a tomb, every room waiting to ambush her with memories, and Hôtel Lomont was as arid and bleak as a desert. If I could just spend some time here, I think I might heal…

Delphine’s loud cry startled Lili, and Lili rushed to her where she was standing beside the pink mantis cage. “It’s dead,” Delphine sobbed. “I wanted to show Ambroise, and it’s dead.”

Stiff, and smaller in death, the mantis lay beneath its perch. Delphine buried her head in Ambroise’s coat. Her shoulders heaved and her voice came out in huge, gulping sobs. Lili stood watching alone, hands at her sides, as the monkey’s insistent shrieks rang in her ears.

There’s nothing but death, Lili thought. Nothing would ever be good again, whole again, bright again. “Nothing,” she whispered. Nothing.

1767

“
OF COURSE I
must insist that he accede to my wishes.” Baronne Lomont placed the newly arrived letter back on the tray. “You may read it yourself if you like.”

Lili’s hand trembled as she unfolded the stiff, cream-colored paper and laid eyes on the familiar, meticulous hand.

I would be greatly indebted to you if you would permit Mademoiselle du Châtelet to visit me at the Jardin de Roi now that a suitable period of mourning has passed. Her assistance is most valuable to me. I trust that, on the occasion of the dinner after Madame de Bercy’s funeral, you had opportunity to observe that the Jardin de Roi is an appropriately salutary environment for a young woman, and I assure you she would always be directly in my care. If it is agreeable to her and to you to resume her work, I will be most gratified.

My best regards to you and to
Mesdemoiselles du Châtelet and Bercy,
Georges-Louis Leclerc
Comte de Buffon

“You are quite correct in that.” Robert de Barras gave the baroness a somber nod of his head. “It is indeed most unseemly.”

Lili bristled. What right has he to say anything about me? she thought. And not even to look at me while he does it.

“Of course you understand, I assume, why the Comte de Buf-fon’s request must be refused, do you not?” the baroness asked Lili. “Six months is a suitable period of mourning for some things, as he says, but it serves no purpose at all for you to waste your time in that fashion.”

“And if I may be so bold as to presume that you will soon honor me by accepting my proposal,” Barras said, finally looking at her. He
brought life to his face with a haughty arch of his eyebrows. “I want to make most clear that your responsibilities at home would make such outside interests impossible to maintain.”

Were you both born dead or did you smother yourselves willingly to have people approve of you? Lili battled to keep herself under control. It had been bad enough when she had come from Hôtel Bercy to visit, but in the dreary half a year she had lived with Baronne Lomont, she had never heard laughter, never heard anyone express a thought except to disparage someone else’s, never glimpsed joy in being alive.

She took in a deep breath before responding. “I have given no consideration to your proposal,” she said, despising the quaver in her voice. “And I find it most unpleasant to be talked about in this fashion.”

“My dear, it is my home, and I shall talk as I wish.” Baronne Lomont rang a bell and a servant appeared. “Please lay out some writing paper and make sure there is ink in my well,” she said, casting a glance in Lili’s direction. “I have several letters I must write this afternoon. And now, I would ask you both to excuse me. The tenor of this conversation is most distressing and I prefer to be alone.”

Lili stood up. “I am sorry if you find my behavior disrespectful, Baronne,” she said, “and I am grateful for your generosity in taking me in, but I do not feel I am obligated to show my appreciation by marrying Monsieur de Barras.” She turned to him. “I do not feel we could live harmoniously, and I will not marry you, now or ever.” She made a quick, stiff curtsey, in the direction of first one and then the other, and stalked out.

Be angry with me. I don’t care, Lili thought. I hate being so strident, but she forces me to be something I’m not.

She leaned against a wall in an alcove off the hallway and felt the cool air calm her face. “Deformity,” she whispered, remembering what Rousseau had once said to her. It’s my right to resist being deformed to match what Baronne Lomont and that awful man want.

Maman would let her go to the Jardin de Roi. If she could send a carriage from the grave, it would be outside waiting for her right at that moment. Lili went over to the window and pulled the heavy curtain aside. A lump rose in her throat not so much because the courtyard was empty, but because she had been desperate enough to entertain a fleeting hope it might not be.

A memory of the key turning in the lock in her cell in the abbey overtook her, and she shut her eyes in pain. The loss of Maman hit her with such force that she was surprised it didn’t knock her to the ground. She always rescued me, Lili realized. But she can’t do it anymore.

Or could she? Perhaps it was Maman who had risen up inside her, giving her courage to say things to the baroness just now that she had never dared say before. Perhaps Maman was still worrying about her, and had managed to penetrate Lili’s mind and heart to tell her not to surrender. And perhaps it was more than just Maman. Was her mother whispering to her also? How else could Lili explain that all of a sudden she felt bigger than herself—and braver, almost reckless in what she believed she could do?

It’s up to me. No going home to Maman to complain, no fuming with Delphine. Just me. Something came over Lili—a launching upward from her toes, a tightening of the belly, a burst of energy that carried her back into the parlor.

“I’m sure you know I received a letter from Mademoiselle de Bercy yesterday,” she said, cutting off what looked like an angry and bewildered interchange between the baroness and her guest. “Her wedding has been set for next month. I have been invited to stay with her at the abbey to help her prepare. I am accepting the invitation, with or without your approval, since I am certain it is what both Madame de Bercy and my mother would have wanted, and I intend to honor them.”

There. She turned and strode out of the room.

Upstairs, Lili dipped her quill in the inkwell, trying to still the trembling in her hand after leaving Baronne Lomont and Robert de
Barras in the parlor. Nothing else, she thought with a grim smile, can calm me like Meadowlark.

“They cut off your wings?” Meadowlark asked in disbelief.

“Of course,” the group of children said. “It hurts a little now, but we can’t wait to start decorating the stumps.”

Two little girls held each other’s hands as they twirled in a circle. “We’ll have pearls, and diamonds shaped like teardrops, and lace made from gold thread!” they chanted, laughing as if it were a private song they had practiced for years.

“But you could have flown!”

The children looked puzzled. “What’s the point in that? Everything we want is on the ground.”