The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,62

his voice.

She purses her lips, considers him again.

For a moment, they are the only silent spot in the bustling café.

Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines.

Addie scans his face, the slight furrow where his brows go in and up, the set of his lips, the way he rubs one palm as if working out an ache, even as he leans forward, and in, his attention wholly on her.

“I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”

Henry stares at her, all the humor gone out of his face, and she knows she’s gotten too close to the truth.

Addie laughs nervously, and the sound rushes back in around them. “Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “Too deep. I probably should have just said you were good-looking.”

Henry’s mouth quirks, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “At least you think I’m good-looking.”

“What about me?” she asks, trying to break the sudden tension.

But for the first time, Henry won’t look her in the eyes. “I’ve never been good at reading people.” He nudges the cup away, and stands, and Addie thinks she’s ruined it. He’s leaving.

But then he looks down at her and says, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

And the air rushes back into her lungs.

“Always,” she says.

And this time, when he holds out his hand, she knows he’s inviting her to take it.

Paris, France

July 29, 1719

X

Addie has discovered chocolate.

Harder to come by than salt, or Champagne, or silver, and yet the marchioness keeps an entire tin of the dark, sweet flakes beside her bed. Addie wonders, as she holds a melting sliver on her tongue, if the woman counts the pieces every night, or if she only notices when her fingers skim the empty bottom of the tin. She is not home to ask. If she were, Addie wouldn’t be sprawled atop her down duvet.

But Addie and the lady of the house have never met.

Hopefully, they never will.

The marquis and his wife keep quite a social calendar, after all, and over the last few years their city house has become one of her favorite haunts.

Haunt—it is the right word, for someone living like a ghost.

Twice a week they have friends to dinner in their city house, and every fortnight they host a grander party there, and once a month, which happens to be tonight, they take a carriage across Paris to play cards with other noble families, and do not return until the early morning.

By now, the servants have retreated to their own quarters, no doubt to drink and savor their small measure of freedom. They will take shifts, so that at any given time, a single sentinel stands watch at the base of the stairs, while the rest enjoy their peace. Perhaps they play cards, too. Or perhaps they simply relish the quiet of an empty house.

Addie rests another bit of chocolate on her tongue and sinks back onto the marchioness’s bed, into the cloud of airy down. There are more cushions here than in all of Villon, she is certain, and each is twice as full of feathers. Apparently nobles are made of glass, designed to break if laid upon too rough a surface. Addie spreads her arms, like a child making angels in the snow, and sighs with pleasure.

She spent an hour or so combing over and through the marchioness’s many dresses, but she doesn’t have enough hands to climb into any of them, so she has wrapped herself in a blue silk dressing gown finer than anything she’s ever owned. Her own dress, a rust-colored thing with a cream lace trim, lies abandoned on the chaise, and when she looks at it she remembers the wedding gown, cast-off in the grass along the Sarthe, the pale white linen shed like a skin beside her.

The memory clings like spider silk.

Addie pulls the dressing gown close, inhales the scent of roses on the hem, closes her eyes, and imagines this is her bed, her life, and for a few minutes, it is pleasant enough. But the room is too warm, too still, and she’s afraid if she lingers in the bed, it might swallow her. Or worse, she might fall asleep, and find herself shaken awake