Madame Roy smiled too, as Mary had not seen her smile before. It made her look years younger. “Barbara Ellis! Aye, I see it now. You’re not so changed.” She stood to meet their hostess’s embrace.
“Dear Effie. Are you still called Effie, or is that too girlish now? We all grow older, do we not? I’d heard that you were married to a Frenchman.”
“Aye, so I was.”
“And is he not then with you?”
“No.” Madame Roy’s features had begun to settle back into their former lines. “No, he is with our poor wee daughter, in a better place than we can know.”
“I’m sad to hear it. Bless them both.” She paused in a way that acknowledged and honored their passing, and then in an echo of her former cheerfulness said, “But I am glad to see you. You must tell me all the news from Saint-Germain. I’ve not been there in years.”
“Nor have I,” admitted Madame Roy. “I fear I have no stories I can tell ye. This lass here, she is the storyteller.”
“Truly?” Mrs. Foster looked round, but whatever she may have intended to say was forgotten when she saw the focus of Mary’s attention. Instead she asked, in tones that needed no answer because it was plain, “You like books, my dear? If you see one that interests you, do please feel welcome to read it. They’re gathering dust these days, and there are some there you might find amusing. I have all of Gulliver’s Travels, and nearly all of Mr. Pope’s Odyssey—the fourth volume seems to have traveled off somewhere itself, though the fifth one is there. And there are some writ by various ladies, although my husband does think them all frivolous and less important.”
Mary rose from her chair in a fine graceful motion, and in imitating the bearing of Mistress Jamieson chose to make use of her words as well, finding them fitting: “In truth, so few women write anything, that when they do it can never be deemed unimportant.” And feeling great pride in the way that came out, she moved over to look at the spines of the books, spotting one title that drew her eye above all others: Hypolitus. Taking it in hand, she found it was indeed the novel by Madame d’Aulnoy—the same one containing the story she’d used just that morning when she had adapted the fairy tale of the doomed Russian Prince into her own new-invented account of MacPherson’s sad love affair.
She said, “I did not know this had been translated to English.”
“Which is that? Oh yes, her books are very popular. I also have her Travels into Spain, there on the shelf below.” She might have said still more but Mary did not hear her, having found the comfort of remembered words that, even in another language, lightly played within her mind as though it were an instrument and every word a touch upon familiar strings that summoned forth a tune from her imagination:
Under the Reign of Henry VII, King of England, George de Neville, Earl of Burgen, had the Misfortune to be suspected of having had a Hand in the Conspiracy of Edmund Prose…
While the other women turned back to their talk of Saint-Germain, she took the opportunity to curl into her chair again and read, and so remove herself from all her greater cares and all the people causing them. At suppertime her thoughts remained within the novel, and she held herself aloof from conversation, eating all in silence and excusing herself afterwards to seek the solitary peace of sitting in the drawing room and reading, which if only temporarily allowed her to escape.
Frisque had deserted her to beg scraps of the kitchen maid with evident success, so Mary did not have the dog’s attentive ears to give her warning.
She didn’t know Thomson had come in the room till he settled himself in the chair next to hers, stretched his hands to the fire on the hearth, and said, “That was a very large meal. I’ll be all night digesting it.”
Mary said nothing. Truth was, she had decided herself to be done with all of them, and was now only counting the hours until she could effect her escape more completely and not have to live anymore among criminals, no matter how kind they might seem to be.
Thomson glanced at her. “You’re very quiet. Are you feeling well?” When she nodded, he said, “Then it must, as I feared, be my company. You do not seem to be finding the same pleasure in it you once did. I’m sorry. Perhaps…” Here he stopped, looking into the fire as though seeking his words there, while Mary determinedly went on with what she was reading.
The novel’s much put-upon heroine was just embracing her sister and wistfully saying: If I knew you could keep a Secret, how pleased should I be to repay your Goodness, with making you my Confident…
“Perhaps,” said Thomson, starting over, “I could tell a story that might rival that within your hand for danger and betrayal, and might even make you feel some pity for its hero. May I do that? Would you listen?”
Mary had no wish to hear any defense of his defrauding all those people of their money. “Mr. Thomson…”
“Please.”
She raised her eyes then from her book and looked at him, and that was her undoing. If a man could look more miserable, in truth she’d never seen it. Though she knew she would regret the impulse, Mary marked the page she had been reading and she set her book aside. “Very well,” she told him. “I am listening.”
And so his tale began.
Chapter 27
Dark in thought, a-while, he bends: his words, at length, come forth.
—Macpherson, “Temora,” Book Eight
Lyon
February 21, 1732