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Sometimes it’s Bertrande who serves the tea—well, she’s fifty if she’s a day. But Bertrande has a sprained wrist, due to an unfortunate argument she and Nicolas…”
    “Yes, I see, Baptiste.”
    Typhus, mon Dieu. And then she came here. Pale and tired-looking enough to be hired despite the chateau’s rule, but growing prettier and healthier every day, until…
    His father hadn’t seemed to notice her this afternoon. But Joseph suspected that his father was capable of more coherence—and more guile, too—than people generally thought. I get that from him , he thought, that flair for playacting. For certainly no one in the library could have suspected that I’d ever seen her before .
    He was sure of his performance. He’d been calm, amused, distant—even while his heart had swooped in his breast like a hawk ranging the thin mountain air.
    He’d turned from the bookshelves and there she’d been, cup and saucer in hand. The girl who’d held him in her lap, who’d sat at his bedside and confided her impatience with a circumscribed provincial life. The girl who’d thought she understood Monsieur X—and who’d struggled so charmingly to tell Monsieur X’s lewd story.
    The heroine of the new story he’d been scribbling, the object of several months of tumescent fantasies.
    Oh, and the girl I rather insulted as well. Don’t forget that part, Joseph. He’d been nasty and patronizing, simply because she’d read Monsieur X’s book a bit too perceptively for his comfort. Of course, he’d intended to beg her pardon before he’d left. But Baptiste—who’d been searching the streets for him—had arrived with Madame de Rambuteau’s coach while Marie-Laure had been out at the market.
    Perhaps, he’d thought then, it had been just as well. For his response to her had been so strong (how touching she’d looked when she’d stalked out of the room, head high, back straight and proud) that he might well have given in to temptation and risked a broken tooth of his own.
    But to find her here this afternoon! At first he hadn’t been able to believe it. He’d needed to look into her eyes. No wonder she’d almost dropped the cup and saucer—the gaze he’d directed at her had been the most charged he could muster. Of course, once he’d ascertained her identity, he’d been obliged to feign disinterest.
    But then, what could he have done? Ravish her in full sight of his family? Or—far more inappropriate—shake her hand and ask after her father’s health?
    One could hardly breach the rules of conduct between master and servant, noble and commoner, all based, he thought, upon some noodleheaded assumption of aristocratic superiority. You’re bathed and dressed, fed, flattered and—if you like—serviced by your inferiors.
    The thought made him dizzy: part of his brain swooning with images of intimate conversation with her; the other part wanting only to drag her into a dark hallway, raise her skirts, and get it over with quickly. Take what he wanted and move on; liberate himself from his complicated feelings for her. Assert his right to her as some of the worst of his peers might have done—the vile old Baron Roque, for example.
    “Time for supper, Monsieur Joseph.”
    “Thank you, Baptiste.”
    “I know how to get to her room, by the way, Monsieur Joseph. She’ll be the only one sleeping there tonight, with Louise away.”
    “You know I don’t take advantage of servants, Baptiste.” Hypocrite, you’ve thought of little else for an hour.
    “No, Monsieur Joseph.”
    “Well, not for a very long time anyway.”
    “That’s true, Monsieur Joseph.”
    His eyes strayed to the notebooks spread out on his desk. Boyish yearnings and libertine cynicism cobbled together with a bit of wit and a lot of salacious detail. Rather a pathetic little body of work, really. And the story he’d been writing these past months, about the sultan and the gray-eyed harem girl—embarrassing stuff, especially under the