In the several years after Madame duPres died, except for that first night, Josette did not cease her smiling. Nothing could diminish her joie de vivre, even when the master abruptly sold away Claire the chambermaid and forever extinguished the smile of Jean-Baptiste the butler. He continued to perform his daily duties with grace and dignity as he always had, but the light had gone out of his eyes. Overnight, he seemed to age a decade.
Countess duPres often received letters from Claire's new masters living in the faraway land of Monaco across the sea. Josette offered to read the letters to Jean-Baptiste—who politely refused to listen.
"I wonder if Jean-Baptiste truly loved her," Josette mused one day, while admiring her hairstyle in the mirror. She had tried to copy the pen-and-ink sketches of the latest Parisian fashion. "He never asks about Claire. He never wants to hear news of her."
"Perhaps he loved her too much." Angelique fluffed the cotton sheets on the lace-draped canopy bed.
"What do you mean?"
"Mademoiselle, have you ever wanted something that you could not have, and it pained you to think of it or speak of it?"
Josette's moist lips glittered when she smiled. "That's silly!"
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In the same year that the King of France went under the guillotine, Josette blossomed into a debutante. Suitors began to circle the plantation house like seagulls at the shore in search of their prey. Eligible bachelors from wealthy families on other Caribbean islands, from New Orleans or as far away as Quebec, began sending letters to Andre duPres inquiring about his daughter's hand. The time had come, Countess duPres advised her brother, for the next level in Josette's refinement into a true lady.
"I don't want an English tutor!" Josette stomped her little foot. "Aunt Natalie can teach me English or so can you, papa."
Andre duPres followed after his daughter as she paced wildly around the room. At seventeen, Josette had grown up as tall as her father. Although he still cut an imposing figure with his broad belly, his swagger, and his gruff loud voice.
"It's no use arguing. I've already made the arrangements. A fine lady needs to speak proper English, these days. What if you need to entertain gentlemen from London, or from the colonies... I mean, the United States?"
Angelique bent over the little table by the window and gathered up the dishes from breakfast. Josette had only eaten half of her buttered croissant—always mindful of maintaining her slim, girlish figure even as she blossomed day by day into a full-grown woman.
"Who is he, Papa? Some stuffy old priest?"
"He's the son of a business partner of mine. They are a prominent family in New England, ship builders with investments all over the world. Our association is very mutually profitable. What good is it to harvest all this sugar if I can't transport it to where it's wanted?"
Josette stood over a vase of fresh orchids. She pretended to make herself busy with rearranging the white and purple blossoms. "His son, you say? So, he is not so old?"
"I'm not sure how old he is," Andre said. "He'll be coming here this afternoon with his uncle, and I expect you to make him welcome. Angelique?"
"Yes, monsieur?" Her arms were full of dirty dishes and half-drained tea cups.
"Have you aired out the sheets and swept the guest rooms, as I told you to?"
She dipped her legs in a curtsy. "Yes, monsieur, I have."
"Watch for the carriage and let me know when they arrive." Andre strolled away to the door. From the rack, he plucked a velveteen hat and squashed it onto his pale ginger curls. "Their name is Collins."
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Angelique trotted down the sandy garden path to greet the horse-drawn carriage. It was a fine coach of black paneling with gilded frames around its curtained windows. The coachman perched on a high bench at the front of the roof's luggage rack. His long reins guided a foursome of brown horses. Fine and sleek animals, their smooth fur glistened like varnished mahogany from the bright rain that had been drizzling since the morning. Grand wheels rolled to a stop at the garden gate.
As she approached the parked coach, Angelique heard the men's voices inside—one mild and light-toned, the other a deep bass. They were speaking in English, more sophisticated than the pidgin spoken at the docks, so she only understood parts of phrases. "...just for the summer... so far from the harbor... the damned rain... my books..." The music of the bass voice thrilled her, even if she could not fully understand his words. She wanted to stand in the rain and listen to him speak for hours.
The coach's footman, who rode standing on a crossbar at the rear of the carriage, hopped to the sand. He tugged straight the lapels of his double-breasted coat on his way to opening the door of the coach. A black satin ribbon tied his long hair into a ponytail. In a well-rehearsed bow, he tucked one arm behind his back and parted his legs like scissor blades. He held that frozen pose waiting for the gentlemen to emerge.
Both gentlemen had dark hair and fair faces tanned by the sun. They had obviously spent a lot of hours outdoors, perhaps on the deck of their ship as they journeyed from that faraway place called Maine.
Angelique looked back and forth at the two, from one man to the other, and wondered which had the voice like a powerful loa in a watering well. One man was slightly taller and had an air of maturity in his manner if not his appearance. He was the senior by perhaps ten years, a fellow still in the prime of his life. He wore a honey-colored coat with a green collar and cuffs. He carried himself with the poise and grace of a gentleman, while at the same time, a relaxed manner encouraged others to be at ease. Giving a nod of thanks to the footman holding the door caught the servant by surprise.
The other man, a few inches shorter, was still taller than Angelique so that she had to raise her chin to look him in the eyes. Such eyes! She went breathless. Bold and dark, he stared into her in a way that no living man ever had. His were the eyes of the darkness between the flames, the depth of a moonless night. In the brief moment before he spoke, she knew that he was hers.
"Good day, mademoiselle," he said in perfect French though with a noticeable drawl of the Quebec region. He reached for her hand. Angelique offered up her fingertips, limp and surrendering to his grasp. She received a small warm kiss on the knuckles. "My name is Barnabas Collins and I am enchanted to meet you."
"Oh monsieur," she sighed, reluctantly allowing her hand to slip out of his grasp.
The other man bowed from the waist, keeping himself at a distance. "I am called Jeremiah Collins. Will you, uh, would you be so kind, uh..."
Barnabas never took his eyes away from her, but the corner of his mouth twitched in something like a smile. Angelique understood his suppressed merriment and shared the secret of his thoughts; his companion's French was awkward and stammering.
"If you would please, mademoiselle," Barnabas spoke up, on behalf of his struggling friend. "Announce to your father that we have arrived?"
She backed away a step. "My father? Oh, you refer to Monsieur duPres."
Barnabas tilted his head to regard her in the way a hunting hound would study the underbrush in search of prey. "Pardon me, but I am very confused. Are you not Mademoiselle Josette duPres?"
"No, monsieur," she said. "My name is Angelique."
"Angelique," he repeated, and the sound of his deep voice speaking her name sent a shiver of warmth through her core.
#
Angelique carrying a teapot walked around the table. She filled each porcelain cup, in turn, with fragrant oolong tea brought from China by the Collinses. The lady Josette entertained the three gentlemen: her father, the businessman Jeremiah, and the younger nephew Barnabas who said not a word. Angelique made herself busy with offering little porcelain bowls of sugar cubes and tiny pitchers of cream. All the while she ached to hear him speak again. Andre duPres and Uncle Jeremiah conversed in English, haggling with good-natured competitiveness on the price of molasses and the number of barrels that the Collins family's ships could hold.
Barnabas watched Josette nibble at the corner of her croissant. Angelique stood right behind where he sat. She admired his broad shoulders, his strong posture not reclining in the chair but perched near the edge and leaned forward as if ready to jump up any moment. His hands were long and slender, not at all suited to hard labor. On his left index finger he wore a signet ring set in gold with a gemstone as black as a hole into the heart of the earth. Angelique breathed deeply the scent of him, the earthiness of his musky coat, the air of outdoors and sunshine, of wooden ships and the spray of the salty sea. He carried the aroma of faraway places.
From standing behind him, she could also see what he stared at—Josette. Her mistress was particularly lovely today in her frock of pink-and-magenta striped taffeta. A yoke of lace came down to a heart's point at the meet of her cleavage. She had powdered her neck and face so that her milky skin, in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window glass, had a porcelain sheen as delicate as the teacups on the table. A pair of pearl earrings set in silver sparkled at her earlobes. Her chestnut hair was curled and pinned and styled high up on her head, except for one lock that dangled over her left shoulder.
Angelique's rage began to simmer. I saw him first. He kissed my hand before he kissed yours. Why must everything be yours, Josette?
"If you don't mind," Barnabas began, speaking in French for Josette's benefit. "I would like to unpack my books and have a first lesson with my pupil?"
"It can wait," Andre responded in French as well, waving off the suggestion with a grand sweep of his arm. "You must be tired from your journey."
"On the contrary, I feel restless," Barnabas said. "I have been confined in that little box of a ship for weeks, in cramped quarters, being tossed about by the sea. It is so delightful to walk outdoors in the sunshine! Martinique is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life. The warmth and the colors are beyond my wildest imaginings. I could not rest, even if I were ordered to my quarters by President George Washington himself!"
Josette giggled in high-pitched chirps. "Oh Mister Collins, are you a friend of President Washington?"
Barnabas sat up a bit straighter at attention. Josette had spoken in English, one of the few conversational phrases she had learned from the Countess duPres.
"Miss duPres, you surprise me," he said, now switching to English as well. "I have come to tutor you, but it seems that someone else has gotten to you before me."
Josette blinked; he had spoken too quickly, and she was lost.
Angelique smirked at her confusion. She curtsied her way sideways, into his peripheral view, and explained in the meek and gentle voice of a servant, "Josette's aunt, the Countess Natalie duPres, has taught us a little... very little, monsieur."
"I see." He glanced her way. The brief meeting of their eyes sent hot prickles shooting into Angelique's belly. Could it be that she also sensed a reaction in him too, in the quickening of his breath?
Josette rose out of her seat. The three gentlemen got to their feet to honor a lady's departure from the table. It was a simple gesture, one that gentlemen always performed for Josette—but never for Angelique. As a servant, she came and went from the table, in and out of the room, and men always stayed comfortable in their chairs.
"I will show you to the library, monsieur." Josette extended her arm, offering to guide him out of the connecting archway.
"I would be delighted, thank you," Barnabas said in French.
"You're welcome," Josette replied in English.
Angelique tagged along behind Barnabas; there was no reason for her to stay while Andre duPres and Jeremiah Collins resumed talking business. Soon the tea and croissants would yield to Cuban cigars and a carafe of Jamaican rum to seal the deal.
The hallway was lined with narrow tables painted white and stenciled in blue and gold floral patterns. Vases held bouquets of freshly cut flowers; some native to Martinique, some imported from the south of France and allowed to thrive in Josette's walled garden—her miniature Fontainebleau, as the countess called it.
The library was an expansive room with a vaulted ceiling and bookshelves on three walls. The fourth wall was made of only windows that spanned from the ceiling to the floor. At the center a hinged pair of double doors opened onto the garden. Through the murky panes the colors of the garden's blossoms shined through, so that the plain gray glass seemed to be the stained windows of a cathedral.
"How exquisite." Barnabas stared breathlessly to the garden window. "I may do very little reading in this room with such beauty as a distraction." Then he turned, just as he said the word beauty, and looked straight to Josette.
Angelique hoisted his leather trunk from the floor up to the reading desk. She let the trunk fall heavily with a loud thud. "Are there no flowers where you come from, Monsieur Barnabas?"
"Oh yes, there are flowers in Maine, but they aren't as plentiful or as beautiful." He strolled over to the desk and stood opposite her, with the furniture a barrier between them. Angelique opened the clasps. He reached forward to raise the lid. The brass hinges of the trunk creaked loudly.
Each book was wrapped in several layers of oiled burlap. Packed between each precious bundle were handfuls of straw. Barnabas removed the books, one by one, with all the care of a nursemaid taking her babies from the cradle. He set them out on the table to air.
Josette used her fingertip to trace the gold-embossed lettering tooled into the leather book covers. "A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson. The Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver. The Holy Bible... I know that one!"
Barnabas laughed softly. "I'm sure you know it better than I do."
Angelique picked up another one and read the title aloud, "A Folio of Plays by William Shakes... uh, -speare. Oh, this is the famous Shakespeare, is it?"
"My favorite play is Hamlet," he said. "Do you know Shakespeare?"
Angelique fluttered her eyes to avoid his direct gaze, too piercing, too dark. "No, monsieur, I have never read it, but the countess has often compared him to Moliere."
"Moliere," Barnabas huffed disapproval in much the same way as the countess herself often had. "As if there were any comparison?"
Josette giggled and leaned upon his arm, so at ease with touching a man she had just met within the hour. "Oh monsieur, my aunt will gladly debate them with you!"
"I look forward to it." Rather than politely pushing Josette's hand off his sleeve, Barnabas instead rested his own hand on top of hers. His onyx ring was a black spot on his pale finger. "But first, you must stop calling me 'monsieur.'"
"Yes, I understand," Josette said in English. "Mister Collins..."
"No, no, call me Barnabas."
"All right, Barnabas," she agreed.
"No, no, listen." He moved about in a sort of slow, standing dance, rearranging their arms so that he could take hold of her shoulders and turn her to face him. "Don't pronounce the R with so much breath. Bah... na-bas. It is one of the most noticeable differences between French and English, and we may as well start our lesson here."
"Barnabas," she repeated, voicing the R with a rasp as she would in the word purée.
Angelique leaned forward over the desk. "Try harder, Josette! It's Ba-...nabas."
"Very good." He turned to Angelique and once more, the darkness smoldered between them. "You have a good ear."
Josette whirled and stomped off to the window. "Oh, I can't do it! I hate English!"
"My dear girl..." Barnabas reached out to empty air as he chased her across the room. "Don't be in despair. It's only our first day. Let's try something else, shall we? Let's go out into the garden, and you can tell me the colors of the flowers. Rouge… red. Bleu… blue. Jaune... yellow. Blanc… white."
Josette relaxed into her silly little smile again; she had won. Unlatching the double doors, she cast them open to the sunshine. The lacy curtains billowed in the warm breeze.
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