Pam Rosenthal by The Bookseller's Daughter Read Free Book Online Page B

She ached for intellectual stimulation, and for something else as well: like all true booksellers, she felt herself incomplete outside of a community of book lovers. Tedious day-to-day work is a small price to pay for the joy of matching a book with its ideal reader; slender profits don’t matter when readers hurry back to tell you how much they loved your recommendations. Marie-Laure’s customers had relied upon her, rewarding her with their confidences, their respect and trust.
    A servant, on the other hand—well, she’d known that a servant wouldn’t command anyone’s respect. But it had still been a harsh thing to experience, immediately upon her arrival at the chateau.
    Exhausted by her journey, she’d been handed over to the Gorgon’s poking and prodding, her furious scowls and angry mutterings that “Marianne” was prettier than Madame Bellocq had let on in her letter of recommendation. Marie-Laure had almost been fired on the spot for daring to correct the lady about her name.
    What had saved her—though she hadn’t know it then—was the tantrum Monsieur Colet had thrown the day before, threatening to quit if he didn’t get more help. So Madame Amélie had to satisfy herself by slapping “Marianne” several times with a folded fan and commanding her to stay downstairs in the kitchen.
    Luckily, she liked the kitchen. And she liked the other servants, too—except for one crude fellow whose advances she’d had to fight off her first week. She’d managed quite well, though, first using her fist and then—for Gilles had also taught her some dirtier techniques—her knee, which had left him howling in the corner of the storeroom.
    The rest of the household staff had treated her with a certain degree of formality. At first she thought it was due to her success in the storeroom, but little by little she realized she’d always be an outsider here. For everyone else had grown up in tiny Provençal mountain villages, sharing superstitions and secrets forged by isolation and blood feud.
    Wisely, Marie-Laure didn’t pry. Respectful of the sudden silences that sometimes greeted her entrance into a room, she was awarded a grudging approval in return. She was different, people decided, but not a bad kind of different; one or two of them even approached her and shyly asked her to teach them to read. What mattered was that she could be trusted in the unceasing silent war between servants and masters. The welts she’d received from the Gorgon’s fan sealed her acceptance into the world downstairs.
    What she liked best about this downstairs world was its undisputed ruler, Monsieur Colet. Marie-Laure had always enjoyed cooking. After Mamma’s death she’d almost memorized her copy of The Modern Kitchen ; she’d been comforted to see it here, on Mr. Colet’s shelf. And when the chef caught her looking at it one morning before work, instead of punishing her he quizzed her on it, nodding approvingly as she recounted its sound principles.
    A generous teacher, he encouraged her to learn all she could from his example. He’d even suggested that she become a cook herself rather than live with Gilles and Sylvie. A paid servant, he’d told her, was always better off than an unpaid one, which was what a spinster sister would be, even with the best of brothers.
    Marie-Laure was still pondering his advice, as well as some tentative, secret plans of her own devising. For if she could earn an independent living here in the middle of nowhere, why couldn’t she also do so in a city—one with theaters, cafés, and bookshops? A cook, even for a bourgeois family, could make a decent living. And maybe, if she were a good enough manager, and if she sacrificed and saved her money wisely…maybe she wouldn’t have to be a cook forever.
    And so, she concluded, things really hadn’t turned out so badly. The smuggler-Vicomte hadn’t really cheated her; it was time she stopped blaming him for unwittingly teaching her what physical