Free Secrets of Paris by Luanne Rice

Lydie’s did now. Yet how could she compare Lydie’s job with Kelly’s drudge work? Days had passed since Kelly’s last session on the computer. Patrice sensed, uneasily, that since Lydie’s arrival on the scene, she had begun neglecting Kelly.
    A rose garden seemed the perfect place for Lydie to be, Lydie with her translucent white skin and fine copper hair. Patrice felt so big beside her, but she was spared a true feeling of insecurity by the knowledge that her own sundress, from St. Laurent, was a bit better than Lydie’s, from Tiktiner. She felt that they had just arrived, but Lydie already seemed to be wrapping things up. Yet when she checked her watch, she saw that fifty minutes had passed.
    “Four rolls of film should be plenty,” Lydie said. “Were you bored?” Martine had moved to the shade of an oak tree, to pack her camera cases and drink some orangeade. Lydie tipped the thermos, handed Patrice a cupful.
    “Not at all.” Patrice surveyed the scene: napkins and doilies draped over buds and roses and leaves. It suddenly struck her as hilarious, grown women arranging linens on rosebushes. She laughed, and so did Lydie. Lydie downed her orangeade so enthusiastically it left an orange smile above her lips, like a milk mustache. Patrice touched her own lips; Lydie got the message and wiped the orange away.
    “How did you get into this line of work, anyway?” Patrice asked.
    “I started off wanting to be an artist, but …” Lydie said. “This is the closest I could get to it. Sometimes when I’m working I feel like I’m making a collage—but it lasts only until the photographer takes the pictures.”
    “The pictures last.”
    “Yes, but they’re by the photographer,” Lydie said. “As soon as I take these napkins off the roses, that’s that.”
    “I see what you mean,” Patrice said.
    Now Lydie was walking around, putting the linens away. “Michael and I bumped into someone the other night I think you’d be interested in. She’s an historian—working at the Louvre.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Research. It’s really extraordinary, and a little bizarre. She’s obsessed with one woman in French history. In fact, she’s already written about her. Madame de Sévigné. Have you ever heard of her before? Don’t say yes, because I hadn’t and I felt so stupid.”
    Patrice smiled, happy in spite of herself to be one up on Lydie in an area besides clothing. “Sorry, honey. I know her well. And she is worth being obsessed by. Most people think she was so loving and sweet, especially to her daughter. I mean, this was long before the days of Freud, and I’m telling you he would have had a field day with those two. Their letters make you cringe—they’re more passionate than what I write to Didier when he goes away on long business trips.”
    “Sounds weird.”
    “What I find amazing is her influence, which was considerable,” Patrice went on. “She had the ear of King Louis, that is for sure. Get this: little Françoise-Marguerite wanted to be aballerina, so Madame de Sévigné convinces Louis to let her dance the role of Shepherdess in the Royal Ballet at the Louvre, with Louis
himself
dancing as Shepherd. I mean, talk about headline entertainment.”
    “You’re an expert on this,” Lydie said. “You have to meet this woman.”
    “If she’s typical of people who love Madame de Sévigné, she probably idealizes the mother-daughter relationship. Which explains why she would want to hang around the Louvre, her feet touching the hallowed ground where little Françoise-Marguerite first went on pointe.”
    “The daughter moved away, is that right?” Lydie asked. “And they never saw each other?”
    “Give me a break—she stayed in France. She moved to Provence.”
    “In the seventeenth century, that must have seemed very far,” Lydie said. “I wonder if they ever visited each other.”
    “Just tell me the name of her book. When I’ve finished the one I’m reading now, I might go