Mademoiselle Chanel Read Online Free PDF Page B

respectable families who paid to have them educated. It was Aubazine all over again, with the same resentments and rivalries. And I knew I’d be a target because I was new, clearly impoverished, angry—in a word, different .
    Adrienne cleared my path of obstacles without any apparent effort. “Pay no mind to them,” she said as we walked to class with Julia at our heels. The rich girls with their preposterous bonnets and plump cheeks turned up their noses and said, “I smell roast chestnuts,” alluding to our peasant blood. At Aubazine, I’d have whirled on them. However, Adrienne merely paused to regard them before she lilted, “Why, Angélique, such a fetching capote you have on.” The recipient of this unexpected compliment flushed, embarrassed by her own cruelty as she muttered, “Thank you, Adrienne. Your sister Madame Costier made it.”
    “Did she really?” Adrienne smiled. “Well, it’s enchanting. It suits you perfectly.”
    “Enchanting?” I said in disbelief as we walked on. “Why would you say such a thing? That bonnet didn’t suit her in the slightest. She looks like a mule with a dead stork on her head.”
    Adrienne laughed. Even her laughter was sublime, its refinement truly differentiating us, despite our uncanny similarity of appearance. “Oh, Gabrielle, you are droll. She does look absurd, doesn’t she? But we cannot always say what we think. What kind of world would it be if we all went around admitting our dislikes?”
    “A better-hatted one?” I grumbled, though I had to admit she made sense. Her ability to win over even the most recalcitrant with her charm was a quality that I found not only maddeningly elusive in myself but also dangerously appealing.
    At night after the doors closed on the dormitory and the girls settled into their various cliques, she glided to my bed to slide between my sheets. “Tell me a story,” she whispered.
    Unsettled by her proximity, I said, “What makes you think I know any stories?”
    “Don’t be coy.” She reached over to pinch my nose. “Julia already told me you read everything you could in the library at Aubazine. You must know many stories.”
    Julia had been confiding in her. Why wasn’t I surprised?
    “All the stories I know are about martyrs or saints,” I said, refusing to surrender to her enticement. “You’ve surely read the same yourself. There is a library here, as well.”
    “Oh, I never read if I can help it,” she said, and I pounced on this admission of her ignorance with sheer delight.
    “You don’t read?”
    “No.” She reclined on our shared pillow, her hair draped about her face. “I don’t care for books. I prefer to listen to stories; it is more exciting that way. I can hear the characters as if they’re right there in front of me, on a stage.”
    My enthusiasm that I had uncovered a fault in her crumbled. “Well, I don’t know any,” I persisted, watching her from the corner of my eye as I’d watched the girls in Aubazine. “Does Aunt Louise actually make hats?” I finally asked.
    “She doesn’t make them,” explained Adrienne. “She helps decorate hats for local mercers and tailors. In the busy season, she gets work from Vichy, because the shops don’t have enough hands to get their orders completed on time. Have you ever been to Vichy?” she asked, and when I glowered at her, she nudged my ribs. “Don’t frown so much. You’ll get lines on yourforehead and you really are quite pretty. Besides, you’ll visit Vichy soon enough. Louise goes twice a year to deliver consignments and buy trimmings. I often go with her. You’ll love it.”
    I barely heard her promise of a trip to Vichy. “You—you think I’m pretty?” I detested my own desperate question even as I braced myself for another of her offhand replies.
    Instead, she righted herself on one elbow to stare at me. “I do. You have such fine, distinct features yet you don’t look like anyone else.”
    “Julia says I look like you.