Lottie squeezed Justine’s hand. “How silly of me to think I couldn’t stay awake long enough for a café au lait and an éclair.”
“You are such a wonderful friend.” Justine reached over and hugged her. “Isabelle?”
“If Lottie is certain she is not too tired, then we shall go.”
* * * * *
The murky amber of early morning had not yet given way to the sun’s rays when Lottie arrived home—where she wanted to be and wished she had been hours earlier. Even her gown appeared as exhausted as she felt, losing its elegance somewhere between the constant crushing of being seated and the remnants of powdered sugar lingering on the skirt.
Though she chatted merrily in the carriage on the return ride to her house, Lottie’s conversation with herself was anything but merry. Once again she’d subjected herself to the very situation she wanted to avoid, and she had no one to blame but herself. Of course, moments after they were seated at Vincent’s, Gabriel, Nathalie, and two other couples entered. Other than a weak smile of recognition, there had been no communication between them. But simply knowing that he was mere tables away, enjoying himself with someone else, disturbed her.
Agnes was carrying fresh coffee into the dining room when Lottie entered. “ ’Bout time you dragged yourself home. I suspect you must be having a good time, out so late.”
“I’ll have a better time when I am out of this dress.” Lottie swiped at the small spots left by the sprinkles of sugar. “And it is going to need some cleaning in places.”
Agnes placed the coffee on the sideboard, wiped her hands on her apron, and lifted Lottie’s chin with her hand. “Honey, you don’t look like a girl coming in from having fun. Whatsa matter?”
“Everything.” She yanked off her gloves then twisted them in her hands. She really wanted to throw something. Something that would shatter into pieces on the floor, just like her heart.
Chapter Twenty
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The party was five days away, and the frenzy of activity at the LeClerc house should have made the shutters rattle. Agnes, who’d never met a crisis she could not manage, became sharp-tongued and impatient. Grand-père ducked and dodged to avoid anyone female, and it seemed he elicited Abram’s help in leaving early and arriving home late. Grandmère remained exactly the same, as if her imperial attitude awaited this time and place.
Lottie devised as many excuses as possible to detach herself from the inevitable misery that awaited her on Saturday night. She slept, she read, she even pretended to work on her sampler. She learned from Penelope in The Odyssey, who wove by day and unwove by night to forestall her suitors’ intentions to replace her husband, that she could avoid finishing her sampler. Except that, unlike the clever Penelope, she could prevent nothing.
After two days of watching her grandmother move furniture—that is, watching Grand-mère watching Abram move furniture—Lottie decided she needed a change of scenery. “I’m going to visit Justine,” she announced to whoever might be listening, and left.
The two girls had not spent time together since the night of the opera. Before the party plans, being surrounded by the chaos of the Dumases’ house provided a reprieve from the deafening silence of her own. Today, it would be a relief to be in someone else’s confusion and know she didn’t have to participate.
The shutters weren’t opened, so Lottie knocked on the door. She picked up a wooden doll and a child’s shoe on the top step and handed them to Madame Dumas when the woman opened the door.
“Lottie,” she whispered, “the baby is sleeping, but please come in.”
The Dumas family always seemed to have a sleeping baby, so much so that they were the only family Lottie knew that actually kept a tester baby bed in their study.
“Isabelle’s oldest two aren’t feeling well. No one else is home,” she told Lottie as they tiptoed past Rosalie. The child slept on her stomach, noisily sucking her thumb, with her knees pushed up to her chest and petticoats and dress at full tilt. Her blond hair covered her head like a bonnet of curls.
“Justine should be home soon. She’s…” Madame Dumas looked toward the ceiling and tapped her cheek as if that would expel the answer. After several taps, she shook her head in defeat, pulled out a dining room chair, and sat. “She’s at a class, somewhere with someone. Who isn’t you, apparently.” She motioned for Lottie to sit, plucked a pair of boy’s breeches out of a basket of jumbled clothes on the table, and pulled out the threaded needle in the waistband.