Page 48 of Chateau Reverie

‘Of a sort.’

‘Your mandolin is beautiful.’

‘A gift from my mother,’ he says. ‘This song. Is this the sort of music you like?’

Genevieve bristles at the cynicism in his tone. ‘Of course. I grew up with music like this.’

‘At Versailles?’

‘Yes.’

He raises up her arm to give her opportunity to spin. She does so impeccably: the poppies on her skirts rustle wildly with the movement, one dropping an embroidered petal to the ground in a tangle of red thread.

‘Did Claire dance?’ he asks her, and the cruelty of the question is such that she stumbles in her shock.

‘Yes,’ Genevieve replies, desperate to regain her composure. ‘Often with me. She-I-I required a partner. When practising. Why would you ask me such a thing?’

‘Forgive me. I didn’t intend to upset you.’ He appears genuine in this apology; he glances away, and she can see frustration in his expression. ‘I wanted. . .’

‘You wanted?’

They are still dancing, the movements automatic, the song continuing without pause or change. It seems they could dance all night if they wished to, the orchestra never tiring, the lanterns never going out.

‘I want to know you,’ Leander says. ‘To understand you. I feel—I feel. I can’t put it into words.’

‘You needn’t say anything.’

‘Then how will I explain?’ he asks her.

‘Show me,’ she says. ‘Do not speak. Show me instead.’

He stops dancing, and so does she. They stand there, the music still playing, Genevieve in Leander’s arms. And then, quite suddenly, every cocoon lantern bursts open simultaneously. They release hundreds of glowing white moths that surge like sea-foam away from the Château and up towards the sky.

Leander leads her away from the stage and the servants, away from the food and the music. He takes her to a part of the gardens he knows will be empty, where there is little light but the moon. Here, there are two lines of lilac trees planted in parallel, making a path of the grass in between; they are so dense and tall, so thick with scented blossoms, that they entirely obscure everything else. It is one of the few places in the Château that feels private, even though Leander knows that privacy is an illusion.

The two of them stop between these trees. It is dark here, but not dark enough that he can’t see Genevieve’s face. She is still and silent, patient, waiting. Leander feels weightless. They are motes of dust, both of them, captured by the moonlight and suspended in the air.

‘When you leave this place, you won’t remember me,’ he says to her.

‘I will,’ she replies.

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do.’

‘I want you to remember, Genevieve,’ he says. ‘God, how I want you to.’

He pulls her closer and kisses her. It is not a soft and pretty kiss, nor slow and insistent. Leander kisses her with the sort of urgency and desperation that forewarns of an inevitable farewell; he kisses her as if someone is about to pull her away from him; he kisses her as if she will slip through his fingers and fall like dust to the earth, because it feels like she will, he knows that she will. His arms are looped around her back, his fingers pressing into the lacing of her corset. Genevieve puts her own hands on his shoulders, leaning in, smiling against his mouth. He needs her like air, and the more she presses against him, the more that need sharpens. He will suffocate for need of her. He will drown in it.

Something bright bursts above them, in a crackle of sound; they both pull away instinctively to look up. The explosion is a firework—of course, the display. How quickly midnight has come. It is the Company’s usual frippery: rather than stripes of light, the explosion has made a murmuration of silver-bright starlings, who swoop and swell until they die, falling to earth as sparks.

Leander looks down at Genevieve. He wishes to tell her—something, he doesn’t know what; an apology, an admittance, a declaration; but then she reaches for him again, and he forgets speech entirely. As they kiss once more, she slides her fingers between the buttons of his shirt, and Leander feels his heart beat quickly, impossibly quick, within his chest. He is human in this moment—all blood and bone and skin, just as much as she is, more than he has ever been. She smells of the grass and the spring and scented powders, of the woodsy scent of the horns of plenty, of the cloying sweetness of the Château. When she gasps at the touch of his tongue, he feels that gasp sink into his stomach as if he has swallowed it.

He pulls away. ‘Genevieve. . .’

‘I told you not to call me that.’

‘Why? Do you still think yourself above me, after all this?’