Free Spirit of Lost Angels by Liza Perrat

kitchen.
    Cook sat, darning, on one of the two chairs at her small wooden table, the only furniture besides a narrow bed, which occupied the rest of the room. Roux was crouched on the wide sill of a tiny window, his head cocked at birds swooping by.
    ‘Who taught you the kitchen skills, Cook?’ I said, as she got up and poured tea for us.
    ‘I’ve told you, my child, call me Claudine. My father taught me. He worked at a grand hotel. I took his place when he died.’
    ‘You have no other family?’
    Claudine shook her head and went back to her sewing. ‘Our only child was dead in my womb.’
    ‘How sad. I’m sorry for you.’
    She shrugged. ‘It happens.’
    I blew on my tea. ‘And what of your husband?’
    ‘Dead.’ Claudine’s eyes didn’t waver from her needle, jabbing in and out of the fabric. ‘Agood man he was — a hard-working carter. A duke’s coach rammed his flimsy two-wheeled cart and killed him outright.’
    ‘Just as my father! How can they get away with such things?’
    ‘Nobles do as they want, my child. They don’t care for us commoners.’ She pulled her yarn taut, twisted it into a knot and bit off the thread. ‘Not that I can complain. I have food and shelter here, Roux to keep me company, and the Marquis never comes to the kitchen to bother me.’
    ‘Yes, the Marquis seems a pleasant man. What is the scar on his temple?’
    ‘Oh, some silly duel. Over a woman, most likely. What else? Women are all he thinks of. Now, my child,’ she said, eyeing the clock. ‘It is time we thought about supper.’
    ***
    After supper, at nine o’clock, all the servants gathered in the dining hall and knelt, along with the Marquis and his wife, for prayer time.
    Careful not to lapse back onto my heels, which was forbidden whilst praying, I stole a glance at the painting that always entranced me — a nymph-like creature splayed in forest verdure. Vine leaves draped across her pale, curvy body, and clusters of grapes swathed her pubic mound like forbidden fruit.
    The Marquis caught my stare, the white teeth flashing in an engaging smile. I blushed, and lowered my eyes.
    At last, two hours short of midnight, the Marquis stood, signalling everybody to rise. I trudged up to my attic room — little more than a closet with a table, chair and chest of drawers — and dropped onto the straw mattress.
    I was drifting in that cottony place just before sleep when the sound of soft footfall on the stairs startled me. My eyes flew open. The footsteps stopped. A powdery smell flared my nostrils, and the Marquis de Barberon towered over me.
    He did not look at me, but somewhere beyond, at the splice of moonlight snaking through the dormer window. I started shaking beneath my coarse blanket, prickling with a sense of danger. The Marquis still did not meet my eyes as he tore the blanket from my grip and threw it on the floor.
    Still he said nothing as his finger traced the curves of my face, my neck, and across my shoulder. I gasped as he clutched my breast and squeezed hard.
    ‘Wha-what …?’
    The cotton of my chemise sheared apart in his hands. The scar on his temple blanching white against red, his wine-stained lips stretched in a leer, the Marquis jerked my legs apart with his knee. The breath caught in my chest and Maman’s words batted about inside my head.
    Be careful not to let a man have his way with you … his way with you.
    ‘No, no! Please, no!’
    He locked a clammy paw over my mouth and without the least forewarning, speared into me with a single thrust, which rippled from my thighs up to my face.
    ‘No, stop, you’re hurting me!’
    He tightened his hold over my mouth and I took frantic, short breaths through my nose.
    I closed my eyes and tried to tear myself from his clutches as he hammered my flesh — a solid, unrelenting pounding that seemed to reach right to my womb with every stroke.
    My body tightened into a single, rigid spasm as he battered me, my thighs aching more with each fresh