Page 21 of Chateau Reverie

‘Genevieve is here for me,’ Leander says. ‘For me to use, I mean. All I have to do to win is gain her trust and then betray her—but I won’t be able to. I’ll fail. I’ll watch her be taken alongside all the others and I’ll remain here without my liberty. That is what Mother wants. What you want.’

Orestes sighs. ‘I only wish to aid you. I take no joy in your suffering, regardless of what you might believe.’

Leander doesn’t reply. They stare at each other, not-brother and not-brother, so little resembling each other and yet so similar in the ways the Château has moulded them: silver and bronze, beautiful and cold. Their mother’s ornaments. Leander ran out of pity for Orestes long ago; he quickly realised sympathy did neither of them any good. But sometimes, when Orestes offers him these brief and hollow moments of kindness, Leander recalls the way he once took comfort in his brother’s presence here.

‘You do not require a guillotine, you know,’ Orestes says. ‘She needn’t push you towards it. You have tried to die many times before. I could easily count how often you have thrown yourself from the rooftops; Mother adds a new gargoyle each time you do so. You have drowned yourself in the tarn at least thrice—once, you weighed yourself down with the corpse of a leftover guest; that was quite amusing—and we shall never forget the time you slit your wrists with a clamshell left over from the banquet. The servants were cleaning for days.’

Leander doesn’t remember any of this. He doesn’t need to, in order to believe it.

Orestes takes his silence as surrender. He smiles with both approval and pity. ‘Mademoiselle de Vienne searches for you,’ he says. ‘She will be here soon.’

‘What then?’ Leander asks.

‘That is your choice, Leander. Not mine.’

Without further farewell, Orestes sweeps out of the foyer. His feet leave a line of grass growing from the marble; the green shoots rocket upwards, wither, and then fall away.

Genevieve finds him at the bottom of the staircase.

He is staring up at the chandelier above him, which scatters red sunlight across his face like shards of stained glass. His eyes are closed, and he is not wearing his jacket; he has rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and his forearms are dusted with blond hair as if his skin has been couched with gold thread. If she was angry at him—was she ever angry?—she is too helpless now to remain so. His resistance to her seems the natural order of things. Something so beautiful could never be easy to obtain.

Genevieve takes a few steps down. He opens his eyes. His gaze meets hers. There are only a few feet of staircase between them, but it feels as if she is at the top of the mountain and he in the valley below.

‘I have found your figurine,’ Genevieve says, feeling oddly bashful. ‘Would you like it? I have yet to find my own.’

Sterne laughs bitterly. ‘You will hand me my victory? How noble you are.’

She frowns. ‘It is only a game, monsieur.’

He pauses. Blinks at her, then shakes his head.

‘You are without hope,’ he says.

‘What. . . What do you mean?’

‘That softness of yours, Mademoiselle de Vienne. It never stops. Soft footsteps, soft voice. Flitting about like a songbird, singing at the sky. It is a weakness. More weakness than I can bare.’

‘I irritate you?’

‘You infuriate me,’ he snaps, tipping his head back. A strand of pale hair falls over his cheek, casting a vague shadow like a scar. ‘You make me want to scream.’

Genevieve is almost too confused, too surprised, to be truly hurt by this. She searches his face, wondering at the pain haunting his expression, the wild dilation of his pupils. Like an animal trapped, she thinks. Leander Sterne seems to despise his presence here. It is a wonder he ever accepted the invitation in the first place. How he would have hated Versailles; the thousand little laws and social mores there that had governed every movement and word. She had resented it all too, once, before she understood the necessity of the certainty it provided. As cruel as order can be, to her, chaos is infinitely worse.

In that manner, Château Reverie, for all its paradoxes and impossibilities, has some familiarity. It has gears that turn just as those at Court did, rules and standards that—while sometimes nonsensical—at least have their consistency. But to this man, the house rules seem to produce a sort of permanent alienation. Perhaps his childhood was wild, without boundary? Has he always been master of his own fate? Or perhaps it is due to something more inherent. Perhaps there is some quality of his character that demands independence; a quality that Genevieve has always lacked. She has always lived for others—always. And now he acts as if that is wrong. As if she has already failed.

‘Do you already despise me so deeply?’ she asks, and she keeps her tone cordial, because she knows it will only make him angrier. ‘After knowing me only a day? What have I done that is so objectionable?’

Tell me, Leander Sterne. Tell me that my wrongness, as ugly as it is, is at least somewhat amusing to observe.

‘I never said I despise you,’ he replies.

She takes another step down. She speaks louder this time, her voice challenging. ‘What, then? You resent me, is that it? Envy me? What is the source of this petulance, sir?’

Sterne takes a step up. Four steps between them now, but they are of the same height, eyes level. Genevieve is a small woman, a flower prone to wilt, and Sterne is a birch tree: slender yet strong, utterly immovable. She could crash against him and beat him with her fists, and he would hardly react.

He gives her that look again, the same look he gave her when they first met—his eyes sweeping over her, knowing and smug, as if he has discovered something about her she herself does not know. When their gazes meet once more, Genevieve feels as if he has touched her, even though they remain apart.

‘You push me and push me,’ he says. ‘So convinced I am safe. So convinced that I will bend. You don’t know who I am, Genevieve de Vienne. You know nothing of my past, or what I’m capable of.’