Free Pam Rosenthal by The Bookseller's Daughter

I’m sure I won’t have to worry about you dozing over the pots and pans. But I don’t want to see you sighing and dreaming about the handsome gentleman when you should be working.”
    She shook her head. She wouldn’t correct their misapprehensions: the more convinced everyone was that Joseph had claimed her services, the safer she was from his father and brother. She smiled and blushed, which seemed to be all that was expected of her.
    But when Bertrande slipped into the scullery to hand her some dried herbs in a small folded paper, Marie-Laure had to restrain herself from giggling.
    “You make a tea with it,” Bertrande told her. “Drink it every day; it’ll keep you from becoming pregnant.
    “Well,” she added sheepishly, catching the skeptical gleam in Marie-Laure’s eye, “it’s better than not trying anything, because I doubt that he cares to bother…”
    Marie-Laure thanked her and brewed the tea. In this case, she thought, although never before or again, the herbs were going to be one hundred percent effective.
     
     
    “How was she, Joseph?”
    Suppressing a shudder, Joseph struggled to find an acceptable response to his brother’s question.
    He supposed Hubert was trying to be sporting about it. If only, Joseph thought, his brother’s mouth weren’t so wet—he found it distracting, the way it glistened in the midday sunlight.
    He’d already spent an hour this morning with Amélie, assuring her that his dalliance with a servant was nothing out of the ordinary. It happened, he’d told her, in all the best—all the oldest —ofaristocratic families. Yes, it was regrettable, he’d sighed, but what could one expect from a hot-blooded, weak-willed young noble like himself?
    Of course, he’d murmured, were it not for his duty to his brother, he might indulge in a more sophisticated pleasure—with a more elegant lady. But surely, Madame—he’d leaned across her on the sofa, his legs elegantly disposed beneath him, his nose practically in her bosom again—surely, she understood the loyalties an ancient family conferred upon one.
    She’d come around easily enough: in fact, it had been rather too easy to make her to stop pouting, especially after he’d promised to enchant and delight the guests at tonight’s banquet. He’d been glad to be summoned to the chess game with his father, where there’d been some challenge to losing the game and still keeping it interesting.
    And now he was expected to hunt rabbits with his brother.
    The field was overrun with the creatures. The dogs seemed to enjoy sniffing them out, and Hubert loved shooting at them. Two manservants carried the guns and a growing bag of little furred bodies.
    Feigning total concentration on his marksmanship, Joseph raised his musket to his shoulder, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. Perfect. Just close enough to be a convincing miss.
    Another silly private game, he supposed, but he didn’t feel like killing innocent creatures today. Hubert caught a big one, and the dogs set off happily to fetch its carcass.
    Hubert gave a satisfied nod and turned back to their conversation.
    “And last night’s prey?” he asked. “Was she eager? She looked like a hot, enthusiastic little thing. Or did you have to force her, make her scream?”
    If his mouth gets any wetter , Joseph thought, he’ll be drooling along with the dogs.
    “They pretend they don’t like it, you know.” Hubert was clearly proud to share this information. “Especially when you push them down and force them to…”
    The end of the sentence was almost lost in a torrent of giggles, while the servants pretended to busy themselves with dogs and equipment.
    Joseph felt as though he were back in school. But he should have known to prepare a story, he thought. Like many gentlemen, Hubert was still an overgrown schoolboy; half the pleasure of an amatory triumph was in the telling, the other half in the listening.
    What made it worse was that these sniggering