Glamour in Glass (8 page)

In this moment Jane learned that, though her written French was passable, she had almost no comprehension of the spoken language. She was fairly certain that the woman had just said that she had not met Vincent before, and yet that could not be the case, given how familiarly she had greeted him.

“Enchantée de faire votre connaissance.”
Vincent responded with French that sounded as fluent and easy as any of the natives.
“Bruno a fait votre éloge dans bien des lettres, Madame Chastain.”

“Oh, non, non, cela n’ira pas. Vous devez m’appeler Aliette.”
Without waiting for a response, Mme Chastain took Jane by the hands, quickly kissing her on both cheeks.
“Vous devez être Jane. Je suis si contente de vous voir ici.”

Flustered, Jane managed a “
Merci
,” which seemed to satisfy Mme Chastain.

“
Je m’excuse de vous avoir fait attendre debout dans la cour. S’il vous plaît, suivez-moi à l’intérieur.
” Linking arms with Jane, Mme Chastain shouted at a pair of students who had emerged from the laboratory. Judging from the alacrity with which the action was taken, she had apparently asked them to bring in the Vincents’ trunks. M. Chastain and Vincent followed, already talking about glamour and the work they would do in the laboratory. Though Jane longed to slow her pace and join the gentlemen, to do so would be intolerably rude to Mme Chastain, who kept up a running, though incomprehensible, commentary as they went up the stairs to the house. Jane gathered that the monologue was primarily concerned with fatigue and the perils of travel. She wondered if Vincent had told the Chastains of their encounter on the road, or if Mme Chastain spoke in more general terms.

The inside of the Chastain home had broad halls with high ceilings that gave a feeling of spaciousness, but Jane could not be certain how much of that was real. Glamour hung on every surface, as if M. Chastain could not help himself, and must exercise his art at all times, defying even the most basic points of taste. Mme Chastain watched Jane’s face and laughed as though she were quite used to this reaction. “
Oh, vous savez comment est mon mari
.”

Understanding only the word “husband” and Mme Chastain’s embarrassed tone, Jane took an entire volume from that sentence. M. Chastain must enjoy playing with glamour more than good taste allowed, and his wife indulged him in this.

Mme Chastain said something else in French, but it was too rapid for Jane to even hear the individual words. Colouring, Jane smiled an apology. “
Mon français est très mauvaise. Pourriez-vous parler plus lentement, s’il vous plaît?
” She had known French would be the language
de rigueur
, but until she arrived she had not realized how poorly she remembered it.

Patting her hand, Mme Chastain slowed down and spoke with such clarity that, though it was
en français
, Jane understood her perfectly. “Of course, my dear. You may have to remind me again. I only said that my husband allows his students to practice here. The whole will be refashioned by the end of the season.”

They had a bare warning of squeals of laughter before a brace of children fairly tumbled down the main hall. Unaccompanied by a governess, they raced first to Mme Chastain, flinging their arms around her with such unfeigned affection that she nearly disappeared from view in their embrace. Joining in their laughter, she gently separated them, and presented each child in turn to the Vincents. Stilled in this manner, Jane could now discern that there were but three children. The eldest, Yves, was a boy of fifteen who already showed his father’s height. His two siblings, Miette and Luc, were eight and six respectively, both appearing to be from the same mould as their more delicate mother. All gave very elegant greetings, with far more composure than Jane had expected based on their wild entrance.

As Luc executed an improbable bow, the toy sword in his waistband stuck up comically behind him. Yves’s face blanched and he reached for the sword, with a furtive look at his father.

Though he spoke in French, M. Chastain’s query was clear. “What is this?” He gestured at the sword, his brows lowering.

With no apparent self-consciousness, Luc pulled out the toy sword, made from two lengths of wood lashed together with twine, and held it above his head. Yves made an abortive movement to reach for the handmade sword, but stopped when Luc cried, “I am Napoleon!”

M. Chastain grabbed the boy’s arm and wrenched the toy sword out of his hand, then used it to strike three swift blows across his son’s bottom.

Mme Chastain, who had retaken Jane’s arm, jumped as if
she
had been struck. Her hand tightened in a sudden convulsion.

In a very low voice, so unlike the laughter with which he had greeted them, M. Chastain said, “Not in my house.” He handed the sword back to his son. “Go to your room, I will attend to you shortly.”

The little boy bowed, his face pale, and walked up the stairs with stately dignity. When he was out of sight overhead, Jane heard one muffled sob, then his gait changed to a run, disappearing into another part of the house. Sighing, M. Chastain straightened his coat, adjusting the cuffs with care.

Yves cleared his throat. “Papa, the fault was mine. I made him the sword, and when he asked who the wickedest person in the world was, I told him it was Napoleon.”

“Even in jest, I want nothing of that man in this house. You are old enough to understand why and to have known better. Pray go to your room as well, and wait for me there.”

“Sir.” Yves bowed and left with an apparent sense of dread, as if something worse awaited him.

Only Miette remained, standing on one foot, with her forefinger tucked in her mouth and her eyes wide. Through all of this, Mme Chastain gripped Jane’s arm, only gradually relaxing her hold. “Bruno, I think we have left our guests on their feet long enough.”

Spreading his arms wide, M. Chastain turned to them, his face lighting up suddenly. “Of course! Come, we have some excellent wine and cakes laid by. Unless you are tired and wish to take a rest until dinner?”

Seizing this opportunity, Jane made her apologies. The day had been long, she claimed, and the fatigue from the road made her only too grateful for an opportunity to recline. In truth, her nerves were shaken by what she witnessed. Never had her father struck her or Melody, and certainly not in front of company. She could not discard the very real expression of fear that all three children had borne or Mme Chastain’s trembling.

They were led up the stairs and to their rooms, which were well appointed and lacking the extremities of glamoured ornamentation which overlay the ground floor. The suite afforded them a sitting room and a bedchamber, both with the large windows common to the rest of the house. When the door was at last shut and they were alone, Jane removed her bonnet and dropped with relief into the armchair by the fire.

“Muse, are you well?” Vincent knelt at her feet to help her off with her boots.

“Fatigued some, but more shocked—I know M. Chastain is your friend, but, truly Vincent, I am genuinely shocked by what I saw.”

“The glamural in the front hall was something to behold.” Chuckling, he set her right boot by the fire and settled his attention on the left.

Jane stared at the top of his head, thinking back. Had he not been in the hall when the incident with the sword had happened? No, no, he had been standing just beyond M. Chastain. She had attributed his composure to good breeding, but was it possible that he had not noticed? “I refer to his manner with his children.”

Vincent raised his gaze from the laces of her boot, surprise writ large on his face. “His manner? How did it seem to you?”

“Overly harsh. There was no need to strike a child for so minor an offence, and Mme Chastain gripped my arm as if she were afraid he would do more.”

“Ah.” Vincent rocked back on his heels, still holding her boot. “Ah. And what does it say about me, I wonder, that I did not notice.” He turned the boot over, running his thumbs along the sole as if measuring its thickness and weight. “My father would not have been so gentle.”

Stilled by the reminder of how little she knew about her husband’s life before he gave up his family name, Jane grieved at the volumes she learned from that single sentence. “But it cannot strike you as right. A father should be a source of comfort and a figure of respect.”

He set the boot neatly by the other, aligning the two with painstaking care. “‘Should’ and ‘are’ rarely match. My father commanded respect, certainly, and if the respect seemed to him to be lacking, then he … corrected us. But, as I have mentioned, I was not a nice boy, so I cannot doubt that it was justified.” Vincent stood, one knee popping audibly. Rubbing his head until his brown curls stood out in a mane, he paced a little away from her. “I think only my sisters could be said to find anything like comfort with him, but the expectations for girls are not so exacting.”

“Different perhaps, but no less rigorous for that.” Jane remembered the hours she spent walking the length of their hall with a glass of water in her hand, trying to develop the smooth and easy stride her mother wished her to have. To walk to the end of the hall without spilling a drop seemed such a simple task, but it was one Jane never fully perfected. Her sister Melody had been so graceful she could almost skip with the glass. “Still, I cannot believe that my father would have treated a son so.”

“Well…” Vincent shook his head, cutting off the rest of his words. “Well, your father is an exemplary man, but I hope the comparison will not make you think ill of Bruno. Based on my friends’ accounts of their childhood, he is the more common model of father.”

Dismay crept by slow measure into Jane’s heart. She tried once more. “Not a model, never an exemplar. You—that is, if we were to have children…”

“I would wish to follow your father’s example.” He adjusted a curtain to let more light into the room, his back carefully to her. “Interesting. Bruno has set his students to creating a group glamour in the yard. Or, no, I am mistaken. They are practising passing threads from person to person at speed. It appears to be part game and part exercise.”

Swallowing her next question, Jane allowed him the change of topic. They had time enough to come to an understanding, and she was loath to push him into subjects about which he was so clearly uncomfortable, but at the same time, she desired nothing more than to know about every part of his life. Rising, she padded across the floor, thankful for the thick carpets that graced the room and protected her from the chill. Sliding her arms around his waist, Jane embraced Vincent from behind, trying to offer what apology she could for resurrecting painful memories. He placed his hands on hers, tracing the line of her fingers. Leaning her head to the side, Jane rested her cheek against his back and felt his breath through her body. She would be content if the world consisted of nothing but this connection between them.

His chest tightened with an inhalation. “Did you understand why Bruno was so angry?”

“In truth, no. Acting like a deposed monster seems a small infraction.”

“In this region, the Bonapartists are still quite present, and want to put Napoleon’s son on the throne. Bruno is his cousin on the distaff side, and has always loathed the little emperor.”

The door to their room opened and a pretty serving maid entered, head bowed.
“Excusez-moi. Mme Chastain m’a envoyée pour vous aider.”

Releasing her hold on Vincent, Jane let him greet the girl, and soon understood that she was there to help to unpack their luggage. Despite his ease with the language, Vincent hovered in the background, more in the way than not, until Jane sent him down to watch the students and their exercise in the yard. Though she was wild with curiosity herself, she truly was fatigued from the journey, and the simple act of settling in would do much to soothe her.

Practising her uncertain French, Jane ventured to ask the girl’s name, “
Comment vous appelez-vous?
”

“
Anne-Marie, madame.
” She shook out Jane’s dove grey dress and hung it on a peg in the wardrobe.

Jane put Vincent’s writing desk on the table by the window, checking to make certain his ink-pot had not opened in transit. Feeling like a schoolgirl, she then asked,
“De quelle region êtes-vous?”

“Paris, madame.”
Refolding each of Vincent’s shirts with precise care, she placed them in the bureau.

“
Avez-vous—
” Jane stopped, trying to puzzle out if one asked “Have you lived here long?” or “How much time…” as she laid her watercolour supplies on the table next to Vincent’s desk.

Anne-Marie pulled Vincent’s blue coat out of the trunk, knocking the bandbox with his collars to the ground. The lid came off and the starched white collars rolled across the floor like snakes made of paper. “Oh! I am so sorry.”

Crouching to help her collect them, Jane tried to reassure her. “No, not at all—” She stopped, nearly dropping a newly retrieved collar as she realized that the girl had apologized in English. “Anne-Marie, do you speak English?”

Blushing, Anne-Marie nodded. “You seemed as if you wanted to practice your French.” She had only the faintest trace of a French accent, but her English was as good as if she were a native.

“But you said you were from Paris!”

“I am.” She finished gathering the collars, then reached for the one in Jane’s hand. “But my mother is from London. She came as a lady’s maid in 1788 and fell in love with a French student. When the family she worked for fled the Continent at the beginning of the Revolution, Mama stayed.”

To choose to stay for love, Jane could understand, and yet she could not comprehend living through the Reign of Terror if another choice presented itself. “But that must have been horrible for you.”

“Being born into it, I was too young to understand that the unrest was in any way out of the ordinary.” She set the bandbox on a shelf in the wardrobe. “Mama made certain that I learned both French and English, as she thought it would be useful in helping me find work, and here I am.” She shut the door and brushed her hand over the wood.