“But you weren’t having that, were you?” He smiled softly.
“For a long time I was. I grew up in a small city. There weren’t many jobs for the men, let alone the women. Going to university was never discussed. I was good at school, excellent at languages, but that didn’t really matter except that I would be able to manage my husband’s money well.”
An old, anger-laced embarrassment slid through her. It was hard not to look back on the girl she’d been without wincing with embarrassment.
“What changed?”
She smiled. “A book.”
Gus shook his head, exaggerated and slow. “It’s always a mistake, letting the women read.”
That made her laugh, and the laugh released some of the tension in her stomach. She could stop here, cut the story short.
But there was something freeing about telling all this to a stranger. He might not remain a stranger forever—might even end up as a member of her territory.
Might end up as one of her spouses.
The thought made her shoulders tight and stomach hurt.
For now, he was a stranger, and the confession felt good, even easing some of the tension thinking about her marriage brought. She kept going.
“When I was ten, eleven maybe, there was an international teacher who came for one year. She was teaching younger children, and was never my teacher, but as a gift to the school, she donated two e-readers loaded with books in English. I was one of the only older students fluent in English, and one of them became mine by default. Because my parents didn’t read English, they didn’t know what kind of books were on it.”
They paused at the knock on the door. Iacob wheeled in yet another cart.
Gus helped gather their salad plates, exchanging them for a large cheese board and fresh small plates.
Once Iacob had wheeled the cart out, she and Gus looked at the cheese board.
“It’s just…cheese,” she said, puzzled.
“I think having it with bread and fruit is not a French thing,” Gus said. “Though I’m glad it’s not a fullcharcuteríaand there’s no meat. I’d be tempted to eat it and I’m almost too full for the cheese, let alone meat.”
He’d mispronounced charcuterie, which was oddly endearing. She didn’t tell him that this wasn’t charcuterie anyway—it was the cheese course, and charcuterie meant meat, not cheese.
They filled their small plates with bits of each of the five different cheeses, tasting and discussing before the conversation lulled again.
“What book changed you?” he asked in the warm silence, so different from the silence before.
Nikolett laughed. “All of them. Did you know that many people think parents shouldn’t beat their children? I had no idea until I read story after story about girls standing up to the people who hurt them, running away, telling a teacher who then had the authorities get involved.”
Gus grimaced. “I’m sorry, lass.”
“No need to be, it’s long over. It’s just… It had never occurred to me that getting beaten wasn’t normal, and because of that, I never mentioned it to anyone, even my friends. I don’t know if anyone would have done anything.”
“Probably best for your mental health to assume they would have.”
“The one person I did tell was my grandmother. My mother’s mother. My grandfather died right around the time I got the books and she came to live with us. She knew some of it, because she’d see the marks on me, but I told her details about…it.” The truth of what she’d suffered wasn’t right for this elegant room in Paris. It belonged in the past, in a too-dark bedroom, the only light coming from candles on the table in the icon corner. “She was outspoken in that way of old women.”
Gus nodded. “Grannies can be savage.”
“One night I told her about a book I was reading. One where the girl ran away because her parents beat her. The story was about her adventure when she was running from them, but in the end, the authorities didn’t make her go home to her parents. She went to live with another family.”
“What did your granny say?”
“She said that if she were stronger, she would beat my father every time he beat me.” Nikolett swallowed hard against the remembered emotion. She still didn’t have a name for it, the feeling that swept over her when she realized someone in her life was willing to protect her. “Said that she wouldn’t blame me for running away.”
“Lass, you look like you’re about to cry.” Gus came around the table, taking a knee beside her.
