Rebel Rose, page 15
Night had fallen in full by the time they reached the village. Belle rode Philippe all the way up to the busiest-looking tavern and dismounted. The streets were far from empty, but she didn’t get a sense of unrest just yet. No one gave her a second look as she tied Philippe to the post and rewarded him with a second apple she had taken from the kitchens.
As she entered the establishment, Lio’s voice echoed in her mind: It isn’t safe, Belle. She wondered how he would react if he could see her in that moment, walking alone into a busy tavern.
But Belle wasn’t a fool. She understood that she was taking a risk by being in the village unescorted. Even without the threat of revolution and unrest, it wasn’t wise to be a woman out on her own. She had to keep her wits about her.
Belle pulled her hood tighter around her face and made for an empty table. She knew in her heart she would rather put herself at risk than be as out of touch as King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette. And the only way she could get a sense of how the people of Aveyon were truly feeling was to walk among them. Especially since she thought Bastien was hiding something from her.
The barmaid came over to her and smiled. “What’ll it be?”
Belle looked at the tables around her for clues but found none. “A tea?” she asked. She had long steered clear of the tavern in Plesance in an effort to avoid its most dedicated customer, Gaston, so she didn’t know if the request was an odd one.
“One tea, coming right up.” The barmaid turned on her heel, and Belle leaned back in her chair.
The room was large and filled with people of all sorts. She saw laborers, spinners, weavers, and farmers lined up at the bar ordering ales to ease a hard day’s work out of their tired muscles. Huddled around tables drinking wine were men dressed in the finer clothes that marked them as merchants, traders, or lawyers. And dancing between them all were three or four barmaids who moved with a practiced efficiency.
The tavern was loud. Belle could hardly make out what anyone was saying, and if she couldn’t hear anyone, her plan would be a failure.
The barmaid appeared and placed a steaming teapot on the table, followed by a chipped cup and saucer. A flash of pain flickered through Belle as she unwittingly thought back to the days of the curse, when a boy as vibrant as Chip had been wickedly confined to a form so delicate. The woman gave her a curious look. “That’ll be a sou.”
Belle pulled out the coin and handed it over. The barmaid gave her a small curtsy and was on her way. The gesture concerned Belle—she worried she stuck out in the tavern despite the roughness of her garment. But then the thought felt silly. She had spent the vast majority of her life belonging in places like the tavern. It was only recent events that would have marked her out as different from the rest of the crowd. She poured the hot tea into the cup and stirred some sugar into it for want of something to do with her hands.
“Are you alone?” asked a nice-enough-sounding voice.
Belle looked over to a girl in an apron and cap. “Yes,” she offered.
“Not sure I’d want to be a woman alone in a place like this. You can join us, if you like.” The girl gestured to her table of women, all wearing similar caps and aprons. Belle didn’t hesitate and dragged her chair over to the group. The girl who had invited her over spoke. “I’m Sidonie, and these are the ladies I work with. We’re weavers over at Saint Madeleine’s.”
“I’m Delphine,” Belle replied, using Lio’s mother’s name as an alias. “I’m…a maid.”
“You’re clothed like a castle maid,” remarked one of the women.
Belle hesitated, but decided to stick as close to the truth as possible so as to avoid confusion. “I am.”
Some of the table looked at her with renewed interest. “That’s a plum position. What’s it like?”
“Being a maid?” Belle asked.
The woman rolled her eyes. “No, working in the castle. I hear the king and his wife are kind employers.”
A man who had been eavesdropping nearby scoffed. “What does it matter if they’re kind?”
Sidonie rolled her eyes. “Oh, tais-toi, Guillaume.” It seemed they knew each other. Guillaume came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder and looked over at Belle. “Tell me, is the king truly touring his noblemen’s estates?”
Belle swallowed. “Yes, but—”
Guillaume tipped his mug of ale back and slammed it on the table. “Of course he is.”
Another man joined in. “He didn’t give a damn about us for ten years—why would he start now?”
Sidonie rolled her eyes. “It’s not as though he’s done nothing. We’ve seceded from France.”
“And now we don’t have to take part in the corvée,” offered another woman, referring to the unpaid labor Aveyon’s peasants had long been subject to at the behest of the French crown.
Guillaume gave her a pitying look. “You don’t think our good king is plotting his own version of the blasted corvée with his nobles as we speak? Forced labor is far too lucrative a thing for him to give up. Besides, working twelve-hour shifts at the mill in order to afford rent and taxes and food is hardly better.”
Belle spoke before thinking. “The king believes in equality.”
Guillaume waved at a barmaid and gestured for another round. Then he leaned in close to Belle. “Tell me, if he believes in equality, why are the classes taxed differently? Why does Aveyon still operate under discriminatory French law, the same law, might I add, that pushed the people of France to revolution? Why has he changed nothing save for who wears the crown?” Belle was silent, and Guillaume nodded as if he had expected it. “Until the peasants of Aveyon can advance in society without barriers, the king has earned only my disdain.”
“His wife was a peasant,” offered another man with a smile.
Guillaume threw back his ale and belched. “Yes, well, sadly we can’t all marry the king.”
Sidonie folded her arms across her chest. “I still think it’s too early to judge him. He’s been king for less than a month.”
“And look at where his priorities lie,” said Guillaume with a shrug. “I remain skeptical.”
Belle wanted so badly to defend Lio, and by extension, herself, but it would not be prudent. She decided to be grateful to have a peek into the minds of everyday people, which was all she had wanted when she opened the castle to petitioners. She studied Guillaume and Sidonie, feeling something like a kinship with them. Though Guillaume’s complaints would not be easy to address, they were things she knew Lio would be quick to correct. At least they weren’t marching in the streets or pushing for more violent tactics. Lio would have to earn back the trust of his people, who were concerned about unequal taxation and eager for their king to establish an Aveyonian code of law, separate from French law. She felt somewhat more capable now that she had a clear direction to move in. Perhaps when Lio returned and Belle presented him with a way forward, Aveyon could begin to heal.
Sidonie shuffled closer to her, pressing her hands into the grain of the table. “You never told us what it’s like up in the castle, what the king and his wife Belle are like.” She spoke with an awe in her voice Belle was sure she didn’t deserve. She looked at the weaver’s hands, battered by the work that she did. Sidonie’s cheeks were hollow, and she looked like she didn’t often get a restful night’s sleep. Belle knew Aveyon was nothing like France, but that didn’t mean the kingdom couldn’t improve.
“They’re far from perfect,” she admitted. “But they care a lot about this kingdom.”
That seemed to confirm Sidonie’s suspicions. “I only wish they’d listen to us, you know?”
“Me too,” Belle replied. And she meant it.
By the time Belle and Philippe made it back to the castle that night, her mind was bursting with ideas. Instead of doing research and circling around the idea of planning a salon, Belle wondered if she could combine them. She imagined herself hosting a salon like Lio had urged her to, only instead of a typical salon spent discussing literature and the like, the goal of Belle’s salon would be to establish reforms that would improve the lives of everyone in Aveyon. She would gather the brightest minds to the castle—philosophers, economists, scientists, and the like—to debate governance and politics in order to establish the best way forward.
The thought of it filled her with hope. She wanted to get to work straightaway, starting with a visit to the bookshop in Plesance in order to brush up on Aveyon’s tax and labor laws so she could establish a baseline to work off of. She briefly considered riding all the way to Plesance and knocking on Monsieur Renaud’s door until she woke him up and he let her into his shop, but decided she would seem a great deal less mad if she waited until morning.
She brought Philippe back to the stables and took her time brushing out his glorious blond mane. He was one of the last reminders she had of Plesance and the small cottage she shared with her father there, and she was happy to have brought the best parts of her old life with her to her new home in the castle. She kissed his nose and made to leave, but someone else entered the stable first. Belle ducked into an empty stall and pressed herself into a shadowy corner to avoid detection.
It was a stable boy seeing to the last of his nightly duties. Suddenly a horse and rider clattered in, nearly scaring him out of his skin.
“I didn’t know you had left, monsieur,” said the stable boy, speaking to the ground in a low bow.
“I had business in the village.”
Belle almost revealed herself by the noise she made when she heard Bastien’s dismissive tone. She moved her body so she could see into the rest of the stable. Bastien tossed the reins at the boy and peeled his gloves off. “Make sure she has enough to eat; I rode her hard tonight.” Belle thought that contradictory to his earlier claim that he had simply had business in the village.
“Yes, my lord.”
“And speak of this to no one.” His voice did not leave room for lightness. Belle didn’t often hear Bastien speak so plainly, without an ounce of warmth or a customary witty barb.
“Y-yes, monsieur.”
The duc left the stable in a rush, leaving the poor boy to tend to his horse well after he should have been sleeping. Belle waited until he walked the horse to her stall before hurrying away unseen. As she made her way to her chambers, she was left to contend with a troubling thought: She hadn’t been the only one to sneak away from the castle that night.
• • •
When she walked into the book shop in Plesance the next morning, it felt a bit like coming home.
She had left Lumière—who had insisted on coming—at the bakery next door, but only after making him promise not to pester the baker too intensely. The shop wasn’t as well stocked as the grand bookshops of Paris, but what it lacked in inventory it made up for in warmth. She could have drawn the shop from memory—the threadbare carpet, the worn-out shelves, even the books that rarely changed. She had read most of them at least once.
“Belle!” cried Monsieur Renaud, an ancient yet ageless man Belle had known her whole life. “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up.” It was said kindly, for hardly a week had gone by in at least ten years without Belle visiting at least once. “I’ve been saving a pile of your adventure books for you,” he told her while making his way over to the desk he worked behind most of the day.
“That’s very kind of you, monsieur, but I am here for a different kind of book.”
He paused, bent over, and raised a quizzical brow. “Oh?”
“Do you have any books pertaining to Aveyon’s tax laws or labor laws?”
He drew up straighter. “I’m sure we can find something.” He shuffled over to a shelf she would have usually avoided. “Did you see Madame Tailler on your way here? She’s been asking about you.”
Belle had predicted as much, and had left the castle as early as possible in order to avoid most of her old neighbors. They didn’t care for her much when she lived there with her father, and she couldn’t bear the thought of them playing nice with her now, acting as though they hadn’t whispered unkindly about her every time they had crossed paths. “No, I didn’t have a chance.”
“Next time, perhaps,” he muttered while scanning the shelf. “Are you still hoping to catalog your library?”
She had confided in him the last time she visited the bookshop, well before they left for Paris. “It’s a dream, to be sure, but perhaps a distant one. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Why, at the beginning, of course.” He gave her a wink before looking back at the shelf. “Ah, here we are.” He pulled a dusty tome down and handed it to her. “This covers everything from the reign of Louis XIV onward, though now that we’ve seceded I imagine this book will soon be obsolete.” He looked at her expectantly over his half-moon spectacles, but she didn’t indulge him. Belle didn’t want to make any promises she couldn’t keep. He noted her slight frown and patted the back of her hand. “It was the right decision.”
She cleared her throat, suddenly aware of how small the bookshop really was and how much she had needed to hear him say that. “Merci, Monsieur Renaud. How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t you worry about that, madame.”
“I insist.” Belle had benefited from the shopkeep’s generosity before, when she had almost nothing to give him. Now that she was able, she’d make sure he was properly compensated.
He blushed a bit. “An écu would do.”
She handed him a silver coin just as the door behind her rang out a new arrival. Monsieur Renaud looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Ah, Mademoiselle de Lambriquet,” he called out.
Belle turned and was shocked to see Marguerite de Lambriquet strolling into the shop, as striking as the first time she saw her at Bastien’s fête. She wore an emerald-green dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Paris but certainly did in Plesance.
“Bonjour, monsieur!” she called jovially before noticing who stood next to the shopkeep. Heat rose to her brown cheeks as she made her way over.
“Come, Marguerite, you must meet our dear Belle.” It was a possessive way to refer to her, but Belle didn’t mind. A part of her would always belong to this provincial town and the people she had grown up beside.
Monsieur Renaud gestured to her until the two of them stood face-to-face. Belle had forgotten that Marguerite had several inches on her. Someone at the door caught Monsieur Renaud’s attention, and he gave them a quick bow before turning away.
“Oh, but we’ve already met, monsieur, back in Paris,” called Marguerite to the back of the shopkeep, giving Belle a conspiratorial smile.
Belle could hardly believe she was standing right in front of her. “What are you doing in Aveyon?”
Marguerite’s smile turned bashful. “Is it horrible of me to admit that I may have taken your vague invitation to visit Aveyon a little too seriously? I meant to be here for your husband’s coronation, but travel within France has been somewhat hampered of late.”
“You came all this way for Lio’s coronation?” Belle could hardly believe it.
Marguerite’s brow creased. “It was foolish of me to come. You must be so preoccupied with everything happening with the secession.” She began to back away from Belle as if ashamed. “I am so sorry to have burdened you further.”
Belle reached out a hand to stop her. “Burden me? Don’t be ridiculous, this is the happiest I’ve been in days.”
“Truly?”
“Truly,” Belle assured her. “That dress alone has brightened up my day.”
Marguerite looked down at the dress and fanned her skirts out to admire the way the satin shone in the light pouring in from the window. “Yes, it is quite fine, isn’t it? I normally prefer a more subdued type of gown, but I couldn’t resist when I caught sight of it in Rose Bertin’s shop for practically nothing. I’m told it was made especially for Marie Antoinette just before she suddenly decided she abhorred the color. Her loss is my gain.”
Belle grinned. “She wouldn’t have been able to do it justice like you.” She pulled Marguerite to a corner of the shop and spoke at a lower volume. “How did you get here? Where is your escort?”
Marguerite blanched, her big smile fading. “I am on my own,” she admitted.
“What of your father and brother?”
She sighed. “My father grew tired of the whole charade and has absconded to America with what little remained of his money, and my brother, the rogue, has sensed the shifting tide and taken up with the ever-progressive Philippe, the duc d’Orléans, suddenly and suspiciously uninterested in his birthright.” She rolled her eyes.
“Your father just left you?” Belle thought of her own father, and how she worried every time he traveled far from Plesance. She knew he hated being away from her too.
Marguerite waved away Belle’s concern. “My father and I were not particularly close. After my mother died, Aurelian and I were mostly raised by governesses. My father informed me he was selling our manor via a letter written by his valet, whom I liked a great deal more, if I’m being honest.” She looked out the window absently. “I know I should miss my father, but I think perhaps I miss my mother more, though I barely knew her.” She paused and heat rose to her cheeks as she seemed to remember whom she was speaking to. “I apologize, I forget myself.”
“Don’t apologize,” Belle assured her. “I lost my mother when I was quite young as well. It is a pain that never leaves you.”
Marguerite smiled a sad smile. “Yes, well, my mother had the sense to leave me a small inheritance my father could not touch, and since I have no interest in moving to America and even less interest in staying in Paris, I thought I’d take inspiration from you and begin a tour of the Continent myself. I had made it as far as my great-aunt’s home in Arlon when I heard about Aveyon’s secession and subsequent coronation and found I couldn’t resist. I’ve always been someone who is drawn to the action and the drama, no offense. And now that I’m here, I’ve fallen in love with the countryside and can’t seem to pull away from it just yet.”
