Page 29 of Chateau Reverie

He doesn’t answer. She sighs.

‘Mon Dieu, what of your age, at least?’ she asks. ‘Your occupation? Your family, your life?’

Frustration wells. ‘You ask me these things as if you have some right to know, but you have hardly been forthcoming, either. What happened to you, just now, inside Saliha Sultan’s rooms? Did you speak to her about Claire? Is that why you are so upset?’

He regrets it the moment he says it, regrets the way she flinches as if he’s smacked her. She steps back towards the door.

‘Do you. . .’ she says, then falters. ‘You know of her?’

‘Saliha Sultan told me this afternoon. She’d read about it in the papers.’

She doesn’t reply. Her expression is difficult to read in the dim light, but he knows that she’s angry. He can feel it in the air between them.

‘I know it must be painful. Of course, I can’t know exactly what happened, but still. . .’

‘It is no business of yours.’

He thinks of her reaction to him on the staircase. The way her back arched beneath his hands; the horror on her face after she had spoken Claire’s name. He needs to know, he realises. He must know her secret, not merely because of the auction, but for himself, for the sake of his fascination with her, for his fear that whatever she has hidden might break his heart.

They are both silent. Genevieve skids her foot against the floor, a nervous movement. She is a semi-silhouette, graceful even in stillness: the curving line of her shoulders, her perfect posture, all precise as a ballet dancer’s.

‘Do you know who Leander is?’ he asks her.

‘. . . Of the myth? I believe so.’

‘You know what happened to him?’

She pouts in affected concentration. It is aggravatingly endearing. ‘Leander is in love with Hero, a priestess who lives atop a tower. Each night he swims across the strait to meet with her, following the light of her lantern.’ Leander nods encouragingly. She continues. ‘Once summer ends, the weather becomes too stormy for Leander to swim, and so he and Hero agree to wait until spring. But then, one night, he sees her lantern lit and he determines to swim over regardless. Halfway there, the wind blows out her light. Lost, he eventually drowns.’

Leander says grimly, ‘And what of Hero? Her fate?’

‘When she understands what has happened to him, she throws herself into the sea and drowns also. It is not a cheerful tale.’

‘Indeed, it is not,’ Leander says. ‘But it teaches us an important lesson. Wanting isn’t always selfless, mademoiselle. Sometimes our desires deceive. Sometimes they’re cruel enough to kill. That’s the point of the myth, I think. The lie of the lantern: we always want to head towards the flame. But we must turn away.’

Genevieve’s eyes trace his face, glinting in the dim light. Leander feels that gaze like a physical touch.

She says, ‘What is the lantern to you, Leander? Who is the liar? Is it me, or the auction?’

‘Either. Both. I don’t know, Genevieve. I only. . . You shouldn’t trust me. I shouldn’t trust you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ll hurt you,’ he says, and the honesty is cruel; it feels like shattered glass on his tongue. ‘I’ll hurt you, and I can’t stand it.’

Genevieve pauses, then takes a step closer to him. Leander doesn’t move. She lays her palm flat on his chest. He expels a gentle breath, and it sets off a chain of reactions as minute and consequential as clockwork: her hair flutters in the air, that movement reflecting in her eyes, her lids momentarily lowering, her lashes casting shadows across her cheeks.

‘In truth, I do not mind if you hurt me. I do not think you will. I want you,’ she says, her face transformed by the honesty of it—eyes wide and guileless. ‘I want you, Leander,’ she repeats, more desperate. ‘It happened so quickly, and yet I know you feel the same. Perhaps tomorrow we might pretend it is not so, but at this moment I cannot pretend, I cannot.’

He breaks. He kisses her. Steps forward, wraps his arms around her back, presses his mouth to hers, breathes in all the words she was preparing to say, and swallows them down. She sways in his arms like a branch in the breeze, then presses closer, without reticence, sweet and willing.

Leander has no memory of kisses before this one, but even if it is not, this would likely feel like the first. For a moment he is questing, uncertain, and then an instinct takes over. He pulls her closer, fits his hands around her waist and holds her in place. He likes the way she feels in his arms, the warmth of her, the way she trembles. She has too many skirts, he thinks as the fabric rustles between them. This damned dress. He has no choice but to press her against the wall. He does so and she whimpers into his mouth, just loud enough for him to hear.

Leander wonders how he can come to hear that sound again. Leander wonders whether she is as intoxicated by him as he is by her; whether he can unlace her from this ridiculous gown and take hold of her; whether he can wrap her legs around his waist. Leander feels as if his heart has stopped. Or perhaps it was not beating before, and now it has started. Either way, he is frozen, shrunken down to the press of her mouth against his. He has lost all sense, all reason. For a moment he remembers, entirely, what it is to be human.

His lips descend to the curve of her neck, the delicate skin below her ear. ‘Leander,’ she says with a sigh, and God, he would kill a man to hear her do that again, to hear her whisper his name like a secret as her hand twines in his hair.

Like a secret—that thought makes him pause. This quiet tryst in a darkened hallway. Because that is what this is, isn’t it? What Leander has always been. A secret, a whispered story, a pretty tragedy to be told. Something traded and admired.