The Awakening, Zuleika and the Barbarian Read Free Page A

child, nor my memories. Those belong to me, and they are worth far more than any of the monies you have stolen." She turned and left him, still writhing with his pain, in the lovely salon she had decorated so beautifully when she had first come to Vertterre.
    In the foyer of the house her maid, Clarice, and Clarice's husband, the undercoachman, were waiting for her. Wordlessly Clarice wrapped a cloak about her mistress, tsking at the torn bodice. She shepherded Marguerite out the door of the house, helping her into a small coach.
    "He will not miss it," Clarice said matter-of-factly. "It was in the back of the barn, and he probably never even saw it." She climbed in behind her mistress, and pulled the door shut.
    "The horses," Lady Abbott said.
    "If he wants 'em, he can come after them, but he won't. He will not want to appear publicly to be a bully. He had done his worst. Now he will scurry back to his England," Clarice said sensibly as the coach drew away from the house.
    Marguerite looked sadly at what had been her happy home for the last six years, and the tears slipped down her cheeks. There was nothing to be done. Now she had to decide how she was going to survive, as well as protect her small daughter, Emilie, at school in Paris. "Where are we going?" she asked her maid.
    "Why, to Madame Renée's, of course," Clarice answered her mistress.
    Of course, Marguerite thought. Where else would she go at a time like this but to her aunt's establishment in Paris? She sat back and closed her eyes. Renée had always said that when one door closed, another opened. Her aunt was a pragmatist. She always had been. But it was this very quality that had saved both of their lives during the Terror. Naturally Marguerite didn't remember the Revolution, having been an infant, but Renée had told her everything. She had been very frank about how she had whored for the prison governor in order to save their lives, although she could not save the lives of Marguerite's parents. She had whored when she had finally been released from the Île de Cité prison in order to pay off her niece's fees at the convent of St. Anne. But, Renée pointed out, she had never walked the streets seeking clients.
    Governor de la Pont had been generous to his young mistress. Renée had carefully hoarded his largesse to her. She had gained the freedom of the old whore who had shared her imprisonment, and learned all she could from the woman about her trade. Celine had served Renée faithfully until her death. When she had left prison, Renée had enough monies to purchase a small house in the Île de Cité district. There were two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs. Together she and Celine had cleaned it and found furnishings for it. And then Renée had gone into business, entertaining her former lover and the gentlemen he brought to her home. She was an elegant and cultured hostess with a quick wit and a generous nature.
    Renée de Thierry's reputation began to spread. Soon the second bedchamber in her house had a resident, a young intelligent country girl to whom Renée taught manners, skills in music, how to make small talk, and how to always please a gentleman. Chez Renée began to host important and famous gentlemen. Renée bought a larger house, this one overlooking the River Seine. It was rumored that the Emperor Napoleon came to visit Madame Renée regularly.
    Chez Renée did not accept callers in the month of August, or on Christmas Day or Easter. In August, Madame disappeared from Paris, but no one knew where she went except Marguerite, who was with her aunt then. While Marguerite had lived in France as a child, they had gone to a seaside village in Brittany where her aunt watched the little girl as she played on the sand by the sea; and where they walked together down verdant country lanes in early evening before the peach-gold light faded. At the end of the summer that Marguerite turned six, she did not go back to Paris with her aunt. Instead her