Leonie by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page A

later.”
    Léonie sat on the edge of one of the coral velvet chairs, as she sipped her drink, barely believing that she was here, watching Mademoiselle Montalva as she sat at her desk writing a note. She must remember it all, so that tonight when she was in bed she could recall all the details, all the colors and the textures and the way it smelled—heaven must surely be like this room.
    Caro could see the girl reflected in the mirror above the tulipwood desk; the color was coming back into her cheeks and her damp hair was drying, lifting with a floating energy to curl in tendrils about her face. How very attractive she was; she was wasted working at Serrat!
    Léonie finished the chocolate and began to unpack the parcels for Mademoiselle Montalva to see, arranging the fragile garments carefully, the dozen sets of chemises and knickers in sapphire, amethyst, and topaz, embroidered minutely at the hem with her monogram, “CM”—and no lace. Caro never wore lace on her underwear. Léonie smoothed the creases from robes of panne velvet as blue-black as summer midnight and as deeply aquamarine as a tropical sea, and set beside them their matching satin slippers with their puffs of swansdown and delicate heels. She glanced down at her own feet and sighed; maybe they, too, would look small and delicate if she had shoes like that.
    Caro pushed aside the robes carelessly, settling herself on the chaise. “Well, Léonie, how do you like working at Serrat?”
    “Oh, I love it, Mademoiselle Montalva; it’s the loveliest place in Paris! Or at least”—Léonie glanced around the room—“I thought it was until I came here.”
    “Tell me about yourself,” commanded Caro, intrigued. It was late, and she would have no more visitors on an afternoon like this. Léonie was a welcome diversion.
    “There’s not much to tell. I come from a village in Normandy and now I’m here, working in the salon.”
    “And why did you leave Normandy? Why did you come to Paris? And why Serrat? Come on, Léonie,” she said, laughing, “tell me everything. ”
    Caro coaxed the story out of her, smoothing over the rough parts, holding Léonie’s hand sympathetically when she told tearfully of her mother’s death and how at the age of thirteen she had been left completely alone and had gone to work at the café. You poor child, she thought, you poor, lonely little thing. The words tumbled out in a torrent as Léonie confided to this beautiful stranger her dreams of having a marvelous job where she would “belong.”
    “What do you mean, ‘belong’?”
    “It’s just that I don’t really belong anywhere. I’m always on the outside looking in—everyone in Paris ‘belongs.’ Do you understand what I mean? How do you ‘belong,’ mademoiselle? What do you have to do to become a part of it all?”
    Caro stared at her in surprise, hearing an echo of her own youthful longings when she had been trapped in the rigid Spanish household, yearning to escape to a world where there was romance and love and passion. It was the same feeling that she had had then, that life was taking place somewhere else. Her heart went out to the girl. She had been just as simple and innocent as this, once, long ago. She glanced at the girl’s face and sighed—it was expectant, waiting for her reply as though she had some magic formula. “How old are you, Léonie?”
    “I’m sixteen, mademoiselle, I shall be seventeen next month.”
    “I’m twenty-four—not that much older than you. I’m not sure how it happens—belonging—just one day you feel that it has happened and you’ve grown up. Maybe it’s when you first fall in love, or suddenly get a good job, or it’s spring and the world fallsmagically into place for you … it’ll happen, though, I’m sure of that. Do you have friends, Léonie?”
    “I have Maroc, my friend from Serrat. And Loulou, Bella, and Jolie at Madame Artois’s—but they are busy at the cabaret most of the time, and so I