The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(12)
She rubbed her hand inconspicuously against the skirt of her dress, frustrated. She hoped the voices would stop once she was in the convent. That was her nightly prayer. But if they didn’t, at least she might be able to tell someone there about them without fear of being packed off to a madhouse or stoned in the street. She’d have a confessor, she knew that much. Maybe he could help her discover what God had meant, landing her with a gift like this, and no explanation what she was to do with it.
In the meantime, Monsieur Pépin would bear watching; she should maybe say something to Michael before she left. Aye, what? she thought, helpless.
Still, she was glad to see that Michael grew less pale as they all carried on, vying to feed him tidbits, refill his glass, tell him bits of gossip. She was also pleased to find that she mostly understood what they were saying, as she relaxed. Jared—that would be Jared Fraser, Michael’s elderly cousin, who’d founded the wine company, and whose house this was—was still in Germany, they said, but was expected at any moment. He had sent a letter for Michael, too; where was it? No matter, it would turn up … and Madame Nesle de La Tourelle had had a fit, a veritable fit, at court last Wednesday, when she came face-to-face with Mademoiselle de Perpignan wearing a confection in the particular shade of pea green that was de La Tourelle’s alone, and God alone knew why, because she always looked like a cheese in it, and had slapped her own maid so hard for pointing this out that the poor girl flew across the rushes and cracked her head on one of the mirrored walls—and cracked the mirror, too, very bad luck that, but no one could agree whether the bad luck was de La Tourelle’s, the maid’s, or de Perpignan’s.
Birds, Joan thought dreamily, sipping her wine. They sound just like cheerful wee birds in a tree, all chattering away together.
“The bad luck belongs to the seamstress who made the dress for de Perpignan,” Michael said, a faint smile touching his mouth. “Once de La Tourelle finds out who it is.” His eye lighted on Joan then, sitting there with a fork—an actual fork, and silver, too!—in her hand, her mouth half open in the effort of concentration required to follow the conversation.
“Sister Joan—Sister Gregory, I mean—I’m that sorry, I was forgetting. If ye’ve had enough to eat, will ye have a bit of a wash, maybe, before I deliver ye to the convent?”
He was already rising, reaching for a bell, and before she knew where she was, a maidservant had whisked her off upstairs, deftly undressed her, and, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the discarded garments, wrapped Joan in a robe of the most amazing green silk, light as air, and ushered her into a small stone room with a copper bath in it, then disappeared, saying something in which Joan caught the word “eau.”
She sat on the wooden stool provided, clutching the robe about her nakedness, head spinning with more than wine. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to put herself in the way of praying. God was everywhere, she assured herself, embarrassing as it was to contemplate him being with her in a bathroom in Paris. She shut her eyes harder and firmly began the rosary, starting with the Joyful Mysteries.
She’d got through the Visitation before she began to feel steady again. This wasn’t quite how she’d expected her first day in Paris to be. Still, she’d have something to write home to Mam about, that was for sure. If they let her write letters in the convent.
The maid came in with two enormous cans of steaming water and upended these into the bath with a tremendous splash. Another came in on her heels, similarly equipped, and between them they had Joan up, stripped, and stepping into the tub before she’d so much as said the first word of the Lord’s Prayer for the third decade.
They said French things to her, which she didn’t understand, and held out peculiar-looking instruments to her in invitation. She recognized the small pot of soap and pointed at it, and one of them at once poured water on her head and began to wash her hair!
She had for months been bidding farewell to her hair whenever she combed it, quite resigned to its loss, for whether she must sacrifice it immediately, as a postulant, or later, as a novice, plainly it must go. The shock of knowing fingers rubbing her scalp, the sheer sensual delight of warm water coursing through her hair, the soft wet weight of it lying in ropes down over her breasts—was this God’s way of asking if she’d truly thought it through? Did she know what she was giving up?
Well, she did, then. And she had thought about it. On the other hand … she couldn’t make them stop, really; it wouldn’t be mannerly. The warmth of the water was making the wine she’d drunk course faster through her blood, and she felt as though she were being kneaded like toffee, stretched and pulled, all glossy and falling into languid loops. She closed her eyes and gave up trying to remember how many Hail Marys she had yet to go in the third decade.
It wasn’t until the maids had hauled her, pink and steaming, out of the bath and wrapped her in a most remarkable huge fuzzy kind of towel that she emerged abruptly from her sensual trance. The cold air coalesced in her stomach, reminding her that all this luxury was indeed a lure of the devil—for lost in gluttony and sinful bathing, she’d forgot entirely about the young man on the ship, the poor despairing sinner who had thrown himself into the sea.
The maids had gone for the moment. She dropped at once to her knees on the stone floor and threw off the coddling towels, exposing her bare skin to the full chill of the air in penance.