Promised to the Crown (31 page)

C
HAPTER
31

 

G
ilbert raised his glass, brimming with fine French champagne worth more than he would earn in three weeks of baking.

“To the Lefebvres and the finest social event of the season,” Gilbert said, wrapping his arm around Elisabeth, who clinked her glass against his.
How fine you look in your elegant suit of clothes, my love, but your plain wool jacket and breeches covered in flour become you even more.
She smiled up at her sturdy husband, appearing well rested and happy for the first time since Gabrielle's injury.
Please God that the governor makes good on his promises to Nicole and I can keep my sweet-natured husband for good.

“An unqualified success, my dear,” Alexandre said, nodding to his wife. “You'll find yourself flooded with social calls for months. Any woman in attendance is going to want all your secrets for throwing such a party.”

“How thrilling,” Nicole said, her tone dry. “But if tonight's efforts improve things for the Beaumonts, I won't complain about a string of wasted mornings.”

“Amen to that,” Elisabeth said. “If that odious man gets shipped back to France, I can't imagine that our problems won't ease.”

“With regard to the Giroux girl, certainly,” Alexandre said. “No one but Cloutier has any interest in seeing her removed from your care. But the bakery is another matter. If another official takes a notion to enforce the royal edict, you'll find yourselves in the same predicament.”

“I've thought of that,” Gilbert said. “But I can't think that there's anything we can do. The edict makes perfect sense for a baker in Paris, but if we can't set the prices to allow for the cost of flour, we can't do business.”

“And I'll continue to speak on the matter to the governor, even the Intendant, if I'm ever in his earshot. In the meantime, there is a way around the regulations. Have the patrons deliver their flour to you and order what they want to be made from it at whatever price you agree to. If you conduct things like this, the law can't touch you. Even the King can't dictate what you make under commission.”

“It will complicate some things,” Gilbert said. “And it may be an inconvenience to the customers.”

“They'll adapt,” Elisabeth assured him, making mental calculations she would share with her husband when they were alone. “And we could expand the business to more of the outlying farms. Pascal can be sent to collect flour one day a week and deliver the finished products the next.”

“I believe your wife is as talented a businesswoman as she is a baker,” Henri said, accepting a refill of the sparkling wine from his uncle. “You may count us among your first customers in your new delivery service. Mylène has some skill in the kitchen, but her bread is nothing to yours.”

“Done!” Elisabeth said, shaking Henri's free hand. “And count on a platter of pastries every week for being the first to offer us your custom.”

“My waistline won't thank you for that,” Rose said, laughing as she traced the lip of her glass with her pinky. “But I'm sure I'll suffer through it.”

“It will be a sacrifice, but I'm sure we all will,” said Henri, patting his flat stomach.

Warmth enveloped Elisabeth as she looked at the faces of her husband and dearest friends.
What would have become of me if I'd ended up in Trois-Rivières or Ville-Marie? Or worse, if Maman had found a way to keep me prisoner in Paris? Sometimes fate can be kinder than our fondest wishes.
Elisabeth squeezed her husband's hand and laced her fingers through his. He took the signal, and it was less than a quarter of an hour before they found themselves entering the bakery in as much silence as they could so as not to disturb Pascal, Gabrielle, or baby Pierre.

Rather than going above stairs, Gilbert lit a candle, sat on Elisabeth's stool, and pulled her into his arms.

“Just twelve hours ago, I knew with every fiber of my being that we were going to lose this place,” Gilbert said, resting his chin on her head. “And now I feel, I honestly feel in the pit of my gut, that we might have a chance to keep going.”

“And keep Gabrielle,” Elisabeth said. Over the past week she saw the shadow that crossed Nicole's face whenever someone mentioned Manon. She would be every bit as haunted as Nicole if Gabrielle were taken from her.

Gilbert's embrace tightened around her. “I couldn't even bear to think of that.”

“You're a good man, Gilbert,” Elisabeth said. “And a good father to our children. All of them.”

“Well, nature hasn't been too helpful giving us a family in the usual way, so it just made sense to collect a couple more, didn't it?”

“Indeed, my love,” Elisabeth said, thinking of the growing babe in her womb who caused her worry each day. She would not be convinced there would be a child until he or she was screaming lustily in her arms. “Though I wish more than anything that we'd have more luck in that area. We ought to have our own tribe by now.”

Gilbert cupped his wife's face in his hands, forcing her to look in his eyes. “Sweetheart, don't you waste a moment fretting on all that. If we're meant to have more children, we will. If not, I have the most loving family in all the settlement, and don't need a dozen babies to prove that to the likes of Father Cloutier.”

Elisabeth leaned her face in to reach Gilbert's, her mouth finding his. She parted her soft lips and yielded to his hungry kiss.

 

Three weeks later, the Beaumont bakery was a place transformed. Word of their delivery service spread to the homesteads, and farmers arrived every hour with their sacks of flour in tow, grateful to be free of the task of baking their bread each week. While Elisabeth knew how to stock a traditional bakery, the organization of the delivery business was foreign to her. Pascal took on this task, showing a remarkable capacity for management. He devised systems for organizing the flour deliveries, the orders, picking up flour from farther afield on Thursdays, and delivering the baked bread no later than Friday morning. Gilbert saw to the majority of the bread baking, Gabrielle kept the shop, and Elisabeth saw to the cakes and fine pastries that the authorities had yet to regulate.

Gilbert saw this in Pascal when he took him in. An eye for talent, just like Papa.
Her heart swelled each night when he boasted that there had been no miscalculations in the orders, nor any wasted flour. More than one farmer had come in from the far reaches of the settlement to praise Pascal to Elisabeth and Gilbert. The answer was always the same: “We would expect nothing less from a Beaumont.”

Elisabeth set a platter of her favorite
millefeuilles
in the case and reached for the broom to tidy before the dinner rush when the bell at the door sounded. Father Cloutier stood in the entry, looking as friendly as a wolf snarling over a hunk of discarded meat.

“You meddlesome whore of Babylon, how did you manage it?” he demanded by way of greeting.

“Gabrielle, go on upstairs and start supper, sweetheart,” Elisabeth asked, squeezing the girl's shoulder. She leaned in to whisper, “I'll be up before too much longer, don't worry.”

The girl obeyed without hesitation, and Elisabeth waited until she heard the door latch at the top of the stairs before she looked back to the priest.

“Now, how may I help you, Father?” Elisabeth asked, treating him with the same sugary condescension she had used with the roughhewn sailors on the crossing.

“Don't play innocent with me, you witch,” Cloutier said, his face purple with rage.
Please God don't let the despicable man have an apoplexy here. I don't want his wretched ghost spoiling my pastry cream.

“I'm afraid you'll have to tell me what you mean, Father,” Elisabeth said, not abandoning her pretense. She swept the floor as though he were no more than a farm boy, unworthy of her full attention.

“I'm being sent back to France. To some backwater in the south,” he spat. “And don't act like you aren't responsible for it.”

“Father, I am but the wife of a humble baker,” Elisabeth said, careful not to claim the title for herself, though at some personal cost. “How do you imagine I have the influence to make such a thing happen?”

“I don't pretend to know your conniving ways,” he said, still standing only a few paces inside the door, speaking loud enough for the passersby to hear. “All I know is that you are to blame for this. You're an independent, evil woman and you will pay for your sins.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Elisabeth said. “We all will on the day of judgment, as you remind us each week. But I assure you that I had no knowledge of your transfer before now. Though I cannot say that I am sorry to see you go.”

“You will still refer to me as ‘Father,' you impertinent hussy,” he thundered. “Do you not know I am a man of God? You dare speak to me in such a way? Have you no shame?”

“Indeed I do. But though you are a man of God, I believe you are also a man. And a flawed one at that. You have taken it upon yourself to attempt to ruin my family, though we intended no insult on you. At the end of the day,
Father,
I would rather be held accountable for my sins than yours. I pray you will think on that before you treat anyone in your new parish as callously as you have treated all of us.”

“Do not believe that you will get away with this, you harlot,” the priest said, his tone now low and threatening. “You have no idea who you are meddling with.”

“Oh, I think I do,” Elisabeth said, gripping the broom until her knuckles glistened white. “I think you're a small-minded man with more ambition than good sense who has been shunted from post to post for the past three decades because no one can stand to have you at the pulpit for long. Have I got the measure of it,
Father?
”

“I pray that the man who replaces me will continue to watch over you and work to purge this good settlement of your evil influence,” he pronounced. “I pray that he will be a true man of God.”

“As do I,
Father,
though I think you and I have very different ideas of what that looks like. Now I will bid you good day.” Elisabeth pointed to the door with her broom, using every ounce of her restraint not to fling it at his head.
And when the new man comes, and I know he is a true man of God, I will take him—by his hair if necessary—to consecrate the land where my Adèle is buried. She will not be denied her eternal rest because of you.

As the priest spun with a flourish he smacked into Gilbert's broad chest. The priest offered no greeting or apology, but slithered past him onto the street, making his angry path back to the church.

“What was that all about?” Gilbert asked, his brow arched.

“What else could it be?” Elisabeth answered, grasping his face and bringing him in for a kiss. “We've won.”

 

Elisabeth tucked little Pierre into his cradle, and escaped for a few moments of solitude into her empty kitchen. Pascal and Gabrielle slept, secure in the knowledge that both were in their rightful home. Gilbert spent his hour below stairs preparing what he could for the following morning. Rather than retire to the bliss of her soft mattress, she put the kettle to the fire and prepared a cup of herbal tea.

She sipped the bitter brew and willed herself to put aside the venom that rose so quickly to the surface when she recalled the memories of her mother. She pulled from the vault of her memories the few pleasant thoughts she'd kept hidden, shadowed darker and darker since her father's death.

The first doll she remembered. A cloth doll with a sweet face that Anne was always happy to provide with new frocks that matched Elisabeth's. The time that Anne took Elisabeth to the opera when she was twelve years old, allowing her daughter her first dress that was cut for a young woman and not a girl—Elisabeth long considered that the day she'd become a woman. And the coffee. A silly thing, but something they loved.

For several days, Elisabeth toyed with the notion, but she brought herself to take out a sheaf of paper, quill, and ink from Gilbert's small desk, where he kept the bakery's books. Though Elisabeth was still slow in forming her letters, the calm of the night allowed her the full concentration she needed for the task.