Page 28 of Chateau Reverie

But Saliha Sultan does not want help. Instead, she tilts her head, catlike. ‘Do you wish to know what my secret was, Mademoiselle de Vienne?’

‘Your secret?’

‘A simple thing,’ Saliha Sultan tells her bitterly. ‘So simple. What value does it hold now?’

‘I. . .’ Genevieve begins, but Saliha is not listening. She continues as if Genevieve is not present at all.

‘My father was not the sultan. That is it. That is all.’

‘. . . Pardon?’

‘My true father was an advisor of the sultan whom my mother loved and who was put to death on other charges. My mother told me the truth before she passed.’ She pauses. ‘And so, in truth, I am not Saliha Sultan. I am a bastard. No one. Nothing at all.’

‘You are not nothing,’ Genevieve tells her.

‘So says the daughter of a comte.’

For a moment, Genevieve forgets the blood on her hands. ‘So says a woman who knows grief,’ she replies. ‘Who knows what it is to love and be loved.’

Saliha’s shoulders slump. She tips her head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

‘Would you fetch me a handkerchief from the drawers, mademoiselle?’ she asks Genevieve. ‘I must wipe the blood from my cheeks.’

Genevieve does so. As she wipes the blood away, Saliha Sultan hums something beneath her breath—a children’s lullaby that Genevieve does not recognise. A song that sounds like another place, a treasured past, soon to be left behind.

Leander has been waiting for her. He has considered leaving, but he can’t. Not when she might need him. For tonight, at least, he can be there for her. Perhaps he owes her that much.

When Genevieve emerges from the sultana’s rooms, her hands are bloody.

‘Genevieve,’ Leander begins, but he forgets what he intends to say, because she is crying.

‘Forgive me,’ she says, wiping away the dark trails of kohl that have pooled beneath her eyes.

‘For what?’ he asks. ‘For weeping?’

‘For-for my weakness.’

‘I should have never called you weak,’ Leander says. ‘I apologise for that.’

‘It was true enough,’ she replies hollowly, and before he can refute her, before she can notice that he is reaching out his hand, she is turning away from him. ‘I must rest.’

No doubt that is true, but he is concerned for her still; of course he is. So he follows her up the stairs to the third floor. Leander has been assigned rooms here, as guests always are. He can’t remember if they are the same rooms he was using before the auction, or if, indeed, he even had rooms before. He must have, surely? But he can’t recall, not precisely, and he knows from experience that attempting to remember will achieve nothing but a headache.

The corridor with the bedchambers is to the right of the staircase. The lamps there have not been lit—perhaps the Château wants to amuse itself by watching the guests stumble around in the dark—and the entire hallway is shrouded in shadow. It’s narrow too, so narrow that he and Genevieve can’t fit side by side with the width of her skirts.

You can’t pretend nothing has happened, he thinks. Not now, surely? And yet she suddenly appears calm, collected. Merely a lady returning from the ball.

Genevieve stops in front of her door, then turns to Leander. A lamp lights spontaneously, casting silver over her left side. Her right remains dark, a moon in quarter.

‘What will happen to Saliha?’ Genevieve says in English. She speaks in English, he realises, when she wants to create distance. She must pause for longer before speaking, consider more carefully what to say. ‘What penalty will occur?’

‘Why do you expect me to know?’

She shakes her head. ‘I could not say. You certainly know more than you ought to, I think. The fact is—I know nothing about you, Leander Sterne.’

He says nothing.

‘Where did you live, before coming here?’ she asks him, her tone challenging. ‘If I tell you something about myself, will you reciprocate? I live in Devon now, with my grandfather. I was raised not far from here, just south of Provence. When I was fourteen, I went to Court at Versailles, and I was forced to leave six years later. I am a lover of romances and ballet, and old-fashioned dresses, and violet-flavoured sweets.’