Read Online Pam Rosenthal by The Bookseller's Daughter - Free Book Online

He grimaced. She was right to be worried; by morning every servant and peasant within a league of the chateau would know the story.
    And since they were probably already laughing at Hubert’s evident inability to get his wife pregnant, this latest round of jokes would hardly help matters. Poor, prickly Amélie, already so insecure of her authority, would imagine sneers and snickers every time a servant bowed or curtsied to her.
    And she’d blame it all on Marie-Laure.
    “No,” he said, “I hadn’t thought that the Comte would be here. Nor about the, uh, complications for you. I would imagine,” he added, “that even under the best of circumstances my sister-in-law wouldn’t be the easiest person in the world to work for.”
    “She said I could be dismissed for lewd behavior.” Marie-Laure’s voice wavered.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.” A little courtly politesse was all it would take, he thought. “But I’m afraid I can’t transform her into a pleasant employer.”
    She shrugged and he felt a bit abashed. “Pleasant” conditions of employment obviously weren’t uppermost among her concerns right now.
    “Don’t worry,” he repeated, “I promise you won’t lose your job. After all, it’s the least I can do for someone who saved my life.”
     
    She wished he were not being so courteous, so understanding of her situation. She’d vastly prefer it, she thought, if he were as ill-tempered as he’d been last winter, when he’d lectured her about reading what wasn’t on the page. That unpleasant man might well have taken physical advantage of her. If that man were here with her, the only emotion she’d have to admit to would be outrage.
    But as things stood—with him being so kind, and smiling so affably—well, there was no getting around it: she knew how enthusiastically she’d responded to his caresses. No evading responsibility: her body had been suffused by the same desire she’d felt the night she’d watched him sleep, only—even worse—this time without any of the guilt or surprise.
    He must have felt how much she’d wanted him, she thought, no matter how tactfully he now chose to ignore it. Well, she supposed she’d just have to ignore it as well. Like him, she’d have to pretend it hadn’t happened that way at all.
    “We could hardly let you die on our floor.” The words came out a bit more sharply than she’d intended. “And anyway, it was my brother who saved you.”
    “I hope he’s well,” the Vicomte said. His polite disregard of her bad manners felt like a reproach. “And is he still studying medicine?”
    She nodded slowly.
    “And your father, I trust his health has improved? And what of the bookshop?”
    “My father died last May, Monsieur Joseph. As for the bookshop,” she added, “well, Papa was rather in debt, as it turned out.”
    He grimaced. “Something we have in common. Our fathers being in debt, I mean. But I’m sorry about the loss of your father, Mademoiselle. It seemed to me from my brief stay in your home that you were a very loving family—which, as you can see, is something we do not have in common.”
    She looked away.
    “And you didn’t marry your brother’s friend after all.” He sounded almost accusing.
    She shook her head. “My father didn’t leave me a dowry.” Which was true enough, if not the real reason she hadn’t married her brother’s friend.
    The real reason she hadn’t married her brother’s friend nodded sympathetically.
    But he wasn’t addressing her properly, she thought.
    “Pardon me, Monsieur Joseph, but perhaps you shouldn’t be calling me ‘Mademoiselle,’” she said. “Now that I work for your family, I mean. Perhaps you should be calling me—”
    “Marie-Laure.” The lines around his mouth deepened as the sounds issued from his lips.
    Oh yes, much better, she thought. Especially the way his tongue had rolled itself around the final r .
    “Marie-Laure,” he