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The lip of the curtain finally brushed against the stage, deadening the applause and blinding the footlights, and sending one weak, brief breath rolling back across the floor. The last time she had had any respite from the heat had been hours ago, and suddenly she felt it - the time always came crashing down around her at curtain call, after three or four acts' worth of borrowing someone else's. And all the weight of discomfort was her own again - the inescapable fog of heat under muslin, under copper satin, under fox fur, under the great thick woolen cloak whose lowered cowl doubled the darkness around her.
A moment passed. She took a breath.
Then she threw the hood back, breaking free for the night, and found herself surrounded already by busy drab-dressed stagehands, dancing girls giggling and scuffing chalk lines in dim gray clouds across the boards, set pieces moving dutifully back into the wings.
She stayed a minute longer to embrace the chattering and mortified young woman who had stepped on her toes during a particularly somber moment (of course no one had noticed, what a silly thing to worry over, no, she hadn't felt a thing), left her with a forgiving kiss, and pushed through into the dark, crowded passage that wound back to the dressing room. She pressed both of her hands flat against the cool, wooden door, cast her eyes down in preparation for the relative brightness in store, and pushed it open.
A flash of blue was the first to catch her eye, a graceful bunch of parma violets in the nervously tightening hands of her brother, seated quite presumptuously in her own chair. Her eyes adjusted to the light just in time to see disappointment tighten the line of his mouth, and she laughed.
"What a charming present, my dear! But I'm afraid I shall have to refuse them. I can't bear the smell of violets."
"How tragic." Armand stood, grudgingly, smoothing down the front of his waistcoat and stealing one last glance at her mirror. "With your permission, then, I'll find someone else to burden with them."
"Do." She kissed his cheek despite his protest, and left him to destroy the damning smear of paint and powder before his dancer of choice could appear. Behind the screen she threw off the cloak, the stole, the frightful, stiff polonaise, the baffling volume of petticoats. Parts not designed with flinging in mind were laid more sedately away in the appropriate drawers. She splashed her face from the basin, taking rather longer than necessary to clear her skin of the day's performances, and straightened to relish the happy second of solitude, pleasantly cool, mild, full of air.
Her own clothes, waiting faithfully where she had left them, felt as always disappointingly sensible. That was no very large price to pay for mobility, however. When she emerged, dressed, the room had acquired a small clutter of dancers and actresses, and one or two older women exhorting them not to sit around in the more delicate costumes. Armand's violets had been successfully transferred to a slender little brunette whose delicate fingers rested gratefully on the dark sleeve of his coat. They were smiling shyly at one another.
Her brother's posture gave Marguerite a twinge - one hand hung awkwardly by his side, one was hidden starchily in his pocket. She hadn't yet spoken of it to him, indeed could hardly imagine doing so, invading wounds only so recently healed - but she felt certain that memory, of bruising and of blood, was the force that seemed to turn him all to stone around this young woman who so clearly returned his admiration. And yet she wondered (perhaps uncharitably) if Armand was not giving himself up a little easily. The sister in her had been driven quite to the edge of protective madness when he had been delivered to their door a mess of blood and filthy rainwater, and would have been happy to see him forswear women for the indefinite future.
But some other part of her, the part left cold by the logic of blood relations, was - disappointed - by the thought that somewhere, not so very far from here as like as not, there was a girl he might be gazing at not with the stunted, blinking gestures of interest, but with a passion fed on injustice, pain, righteousness, taboo, and a little fear. If he had tried again.
- How ridiculous, to think of oneself as a series of separate functions, when one was - one. She put it down to the folly of an actress, a person too used to the mask.
Marguerite watched in mounting distress as the pair stood locked in mousy silence. Then she smiled, strode up to the girl, took her arm, and arched her neck down to breathe deeply of the violets she held.
"Ah! What a charming present." She gave the girl a satisfied smile. "I adore violets. You're so lucky, my dear; I haven't had flowers since the opening night. They come so infrequently in the winter."
The dancer - Anne was her name, she thought - flushed, but looked pleased. "You're a kinder woman than I, then - or your brother defies you fearlessly. If I had a brother, I should make him bring me flowers every night."
Armand jutted in, embarrassingly punctual: "I shall be honored to make up for the lack." Oh, lord.
"Such a solemn promise," Marguerite said, teasing gently, and taking advantage of her height to send her brother an exasperated look over the slight dancer's head. "One would think you were promising a funeral wreath. You must be famished, my dear - you were the very picture of focus this evening. Are the two of you off for a bite?"
"I had intended to propose the de l'Ecole," Armand said with a confused little half-bow. Marguerite wished she were hanging onto his arm, so she could shake him. But Anne, bless her, seemed to love the sound of it.
"Oh, I think that would be perfect - if you sit in the upstairs there's a lovely view of the boats sometimes, at least in the summer, and when the moon's out it's truly beautiful - oh, but of course it has been cloudy all day, but I suppose it shall still be lovely -"
Marguerite broke into this ill-fated twittering. "The weather has been dreary. Just this morning I heard an old man saying he had never seen the sun hidden for so long. The rain is terrible on one's shoes - I have my eye on yours, there by your chair, my dear. I fear I may be coveting. Wherever did you find them?"
"Oh! There's a little shop my cousin owns," and here Armand's eyes glazed over. "I'll have to show you."
"Indeed you will. Once the sun finds us again, I hope. Although it may be April."
"I hope it isn't! I despise the cold. I'm set to shivering in no time at all."
Marguerite smiled at her brother, surely having given him time enough to think of something to say. He only gave a faintly contented "Hm," and the two of them lapsed hopelessly back into making eyes. She stifled a sigh.
"Well! I wish you both a pleasant night. I know that café of yours, Armand, quite fills up at this hour, and I won't be responsible for spoiling your outing." They would manage that well enough without her.
"You should come, Margot, you're bound to be starved as well," Armand offered rather more than politely, and with a less than gallant dose of desperate hope. Anne chimed in with her enthusiastic agreement. "You're ever so good at conversation."
"It's a very gracious offer," she said, pushing down a rising sense of guilt, "But I'm afraid I'm engaged for the evening. I only wish you had made it earlier, when I was free to accept." It was only luck that the excuse was not an outright lie. An evening of captaining a conversation between these two - a dinner spent in navigating the narrow, ice-blocked passages of their communication - was perhaps something she ought to have done, for the sake of her brother, but it was not something she would be doing. Armand would survive, left to his own devices. And it was his own fault if he had chosen a boring companion.
"Of course we must walk together until we part ways," she said, lifting the heavy wool cloak she had worn onstage onto her shoulders again. She rather liked the piece, and felt sure that it was indestructible. As stuffy as the dressing rooms were, there was nevertheless the December cold to contend with. "If the two of you will be so kind as to walk me to my escort."
They traveled together to the little door that let out onto the smaller, darkened street set apart from the boulevard, Anne and Marguerite chatting pleasantly about the weather, the performance, the week to come. Armand followed them out, quite silent, but apparently content to listen to the two of them. They all braced up against the cold, and Marguerite looked out from under her hood, her eyes searching the alley in hope of her escape.
He was there, of course; punctual and reliable, as always. By the way he lounged against a lamppost with his watch in hand, she expected she was the one who had kept him waiting.
He straightened - a slight man, a touch shorter than herself, bound up in a black coat with a crisp white stock at his throat - and delivered an off-the-cuff bow, which she returned with a mockingly shallow curtsey before allowing him to offer his arm.
"You look frozen, Chauvelin. You came too soon."
"Quite - I've rushed you off the stage, I find. It seems to me I recognize the coat." He inclined his head to Armand. "St. Just. I look forward to seeing you at your sister's next gathering - after yesterday's vote I expect we have a good deal to discuss. I assure you, I take no pleasure in being correct, in this instance; and all the same I ought not to have called you a naive little whelp."
"Oh - no, never mind it," Armand replied, with an air of distraction but nonetheless quite genuine. "It's an upsetting development, but I trust it won't last long in this climate. I truly cannot comprehend what a 'passive citizen' would look like, if - well. It's a little cold to be standing around in the dark," he finished lamely, at what Marguerite thought was a very gentle press from his dancer's foot. Why Armand insisted on keeping these two worlds of his apart from one another she did not know. "Good night to you both," he said with a nod, and Anne gave a polite little wave as they turned and began down the street into the avenue, leaving politics decidedly behind.
"It was very rude of you not to invite them along," Marguerite scolded him when they were out of earshot. "How were you to know whether I had asked them to be at dinner with us?"
"I'm a terrible brute," Chauvelin admitted, slipping his hand into the pocket of his coat for a rolling paper. "Do you mind, fair lady? I find it warming."
"I suppose not." She would have preferred conversation, and Chauvelin always seemed to forget how to speak when he was smoking; but he also always did it quickly, drawing it in with long, burning breaths as though it simply couldn't travel fast enough. "Although goodness knows you had the time while I was still inside."
He lit a match as they walked. "No, in fact. I was accosted by a little lackey-of-a-lackey of Saint Hérem, who had been at the performance. He gave the appearance of scoping out my opinions."
Marguerite laughed, relishing the flicker of irritation that passed over Chauvelin's unevenly shadowed face as they passed by another lamppost. "Your opinions! Why, you make it sound as though you were being - courted."
"A far-too-pleasant word. But suitable, if you can find no other." He put the cigarette to his lips before thinking better of it, and adding: "He asked after my English."
"There are seeds of competence in these new governors. I can hardly think of a better place for you - grey and cold and overrun by starched collars."
He gave another mocking bow, accompanied by a smoke-muffled pleasantry, and lapsed into a thoughtful - and, dare she say, piqued - silence. Marguerite rearranged the folds of her cloak with a contented sigh. She approved of Chauvelin's ambition - rather, the way he spoke of it as though it were just another fact of himself, where others went to ridiculous lengths to mask it. He was generally a closed man, as she was a closed woman, and the things he chose to allow into the open were amusing, if never particularly telling. Perhaps best of all, the confidence that laid down the road ahead of what he called his advancing career was still prone to disruption; he was easily stung.
Not at all like Armand, who was only easily wounded. Chauvelin could be counted upon to strike back punctually. When he wasn't smoking. Tobacco made him brood - an unattractive trait.
"Your offices, Citizen Ambassador," she proclaimed with a gentle push to his elbow as they turned into the St. Honoré. The palace loomed off to the right, appearing to sleep, the distant light of torches from the courtyard creating a false dawn behind it.
Chauvelin deposited the end of his cigarette into a flower bed. "Yes, do laugh. And we shall see what happens the next time you ask leave to travel."
"I don't believe you have powerful friends, my little Chauvelin. I hardly believe you have any - you come to the theatre alone, when you can be bothered, and you seem always to be terribly rushed. Unless you're running home to your mistress -"
"Tut, Marguerite."
"- Which does seem unlikely, I'm inclined to guess that you only keep company with inkwells."
"And yet, I find most civil servants don't require me to take them to the theatre before they give me what I want. Admittedly they sell themselves cheaper than some."
"And what are they bought for, then?" They turned the corner to face the distant, peaceful stretch of the Pont Neuf, its string of lights still and steady through the mist that had begun to fall.
"Oh - a seal, a signature, the appearance of loyalty. Nothing as exciting or as touching as violets."
"Longer-lasting, I suspect."
"How unhappy it always makes me to tell a lovely woman she is wrong."
"You should savor it, instead - rare as it is."
"In that case," Chauvelin said, pulling his scarf away from his throat to tuck his chin into it, "I beg you to choose where we're to eat, because I haven't a clue where we're headed. It's been an age since I ate in this direction."
They had passed onto the bridge, and stood over the water. The quiet rush of the river mixed with a faint sound of singing, mismatched voices jumbling together into a crowded, artless music. Along the opposite quay the fog was luminous around a band of indistinguishable people bearing flames and wooden figures.
"Let's stop a moment, rather," Marguerite said, winding her arms more tightly into the wings of the cloak and leaning heavily against the parapet, damp through it was. "I believe they're headed for the cathedral - shall we watch?"
Chauvelin gave a shrug, and rested his hand beside her elbow on the cold stone. "They ought to be heading away from it as quickly as possible. It looks set to topple."
She wrinkled her nose. "If you're going to speak figuratively, do simply have the kindness to say so. I am expected to speak in riddles all day - it becomes tiresome."
"Your forgiveness, fair lady," he said with a dry smile, looking out at the procession with a distasteful smugness. "In this case, the metaphor is entirely incidental. It really is a rotting hulk of a building - someone ought to clean it up, someday, and put it to a better use."
"A grand time the Church would have of that - I wonder that they have the money to keep the bell-ringer, never mind repair the flags."
Chauvelin scoffed. "Rome is a mountain of gold, my dear. A few acres here and there makes so much difference to them." He kicked a wayward pebble into the water.
"Well, it seems you might at least forgive them a run-down building, in the meantime." She closed her eyes to try to make out the words that they were singing, but it was useless. There were times she wished that she were closer to it all. But just as she could not possess, nor even approach, the feverish hatred she had seen sweep over gatherings of men and women on occasion over the past months - usually sudden, unplanned risings of emotion that seemed to shock even the participants - her attempts to descend into rapture or even simple, peaceful devotion never quite carried off. She felt artificial, at times. Chauvelin usually mirrored it, a stilted, frigid conversationalist, an unknowable partner with whom to wallow in jade and irony.
She found herself wishing for sincerity all of a sudden, as sometimes happened. But when she found it, it reminded her of all the reasons not to.
"If it were only the building, it might not be so difficult," Chauvelin was saying, his expression dark. "But the softening nonsense they feed their sheep has left an entire state close to ruins. Notre Dame is not the only crumbling heap in France. If we continue to allow -"
Marguerite feigned a stifled yawn. "I find you bore me tonight," she said with an idle drawl. "Pious people usually do."
Chauvelin paused; his posture straightened slightly, as though he were waking up. "I am sorry," he replied, his voice a smooth, untroubled thing again, all sleek and caustic lightness. "I forget myself. Odd; feminine company usually keeps me quite on my toes."
"As it should. They say marriage changes a man, my little Chauvelin - renders him perfectly unrecognizable - I do wish you'd consider it. It would do wonders for you."
His cold bark of a laugh was almost loud enough to make her jump, and when he thrust his hand into his pocket she felt a strong wave of nauseous terror and couldn't help but stare, tight-lipped. Surely he would never be so ridiculous.
But he only pulled out his handkerchief, a simple white affair with his set of initials stitched clumsily into the corner. For a moment his hand seemed almost white-knuckle tight around it; then he simply pressed it to his nose against the cold, and then back into the darkness of his coat once more. "Oh, someday, surely. I suppose it could only improve me."
"Devoutly to be wished," Marguerite replied, feeling the color return to her face as she looked back out across the water. She straightened abruptly. "These silly worshippers of ours move too slowly - onward, my little Chauvelin. If I wait another minute for my dinner I shall faint."
They continued on along the bridge, cold fingers twining briefly together as she took his arm again. That was what she liked about Chauvelin, she realized - they required so very little of each other.
In the early morning, when the black-clouded sky was just barely turning to grey, she turned her key in the lock and let herself into the cold - but blessedly dry - parlor of the flat that she shared with her brother. She bent down in front of the stove, home now only to the dimmest of embers, to unlace her boots, and draped the cloak over one of the chairs nearby.
The bedroom was even colder. Armand lay on his side, wrapped impossibly tightly in layers and layers of white bedclothes. His dark hair falling over the pillowcase was his only distinguishing feature. Marguerite spent a moment at the wardrobe, hanging her clothes and loosing her hair, which smelled lightly of tobacco. The white shift she wore when she climbed into bed was hardly guard enough against the chill, but she was too tired, absolutely too tired to do anything but collapse straight away.
Armand stirred. His face appeared from underneath the blankets, bleary and fogged with a touch of irritation. "It's very late," he murmured.
"Very nearly time for breakfast. And how was your dinner with the charming - Marie?"
"Anne, Marguerite -" He yelped pathetically as she touched her cold, damp hand to his shoulder. "You know her name. You mustn't pretend you don't - I'm in love with her."
"Oh, really, Armand."
"I am." His arm reached out to her, and he clung to her about the waist as he had done since he was only a boy, a matter of instinct, a practice not to be put off by something so trivial as winter and its trials. "I am, and she's wonderful. We had a marvelous dinner, and we stayed out talking until nearly three. She was practically asleep on her feet when I left her, but cheerful as anything, trying so very hard to keep her eyes open. It was the most charming thing I've ever seen."
"She isn't so very bad, then." Marguerite traced her fingers idly through his hair, watching herself in the mirror that hung on the outside of their armoire, propped up on one elbow over the nestled figure of her brother.
"Oh, you have to love her, Margot - you must. If you didn't, I don't know what I would do. I might die." His breath was hot on her neck.
"Very well," she said lazily, eliciting a relieved and grateful nod before resting her head beside his on the pillow and allowing herself to close her eyes.
Exhausted as she was, sleep refused to come. The body beside her was uncomfortably warm, but when she kicked down the blankets the air made her shudder. She only found her rest, at long last, when Armand left to go and procure breakfast. The quiet, solitary darkness lulled her to sleep, and she lay in bed well past time for coffee, rising only when her brother knocked impatiently on the door.