The night of the ball, D’Arvor opens its wings like a dragon allowing strangers into its lair. It breathes out gusts of wind as cars line up on its lawn, chauffeurs dropping off guests in black sedans. The night is starting to fall and the clouds grow heavier, soon to be burst open by the towers’ spires. From my room I hear music and the rising clamor of a building crowd.
The ball will take place in the older part of the castle, formerly defensive and medieval. The vast downstairs dining room is impossible to heat up and not in regular use by the family today, Maxime said—but the space, with its two-meter-thick walls and original granite floor is perfect for summer balls. I love that this part of the castle was spared mock-medieval nineteenth-century decoration and the walls have been kept bare—it is austere, but grand. Having gotten used to living in the “modern” eighteenth-century part of the castle, it does feel like a different place entirely. A harsh, unforgiving, and awe-inspiring space. I don’t think Maxime or any of his family like it very much—I heard him call it “my father’s dark wing.”
Upstairs, I have both dresses, the black and green one, laid out on my bed. I’m late. I should be welcoming guests, teasing out their interest for the auction. Instead, I’m standing in my underwear, unable to make up my mind.
My mind is a puzzling thing at the moment; I’m going too fast on the conveyor belt of Maxime’s plan to be able to catch my thoughts. I miss the handrails I used to find in my head that led me somewhere safe, reliable.
“Would you go through with it?” I ask the room. This is only a teaser, a rehearsal, Camille. The press conference, once we have Night Swimming, will be much bigger. Relax, Maxime said, as we went over what should happen. The window is open and the murmur of the guests who have spilled into Frédéric’s enchanted garden rises along the peculiar breeze announcing a storm. I’m trying to conjure Constance. In this castle, she used to be the only person I felt I truly knew, but now even she escapes me. I stroke the headboard. There are scratches in the wood I never noticed before. A flash of her nails, digging, her screams. They’re trying to pull her away. Did this really happen or is it all in my head?
You could leave. That’s what the wind says. Unless—I spin around, but nothing. Then I turn again and she’s here, lying on my bed—
No. It’s the green dress I’ve laid out. But now my choice has been made, because I imagined I saw Constance in it, and it suited her.
I’m sorry I neglected you, I tell her as I put it on, the silk like scales and fairy skin merging with mine. We’re trying to right the wrongs you’ve been dealt.
The laughter is faint in the distance as I tiptoe into the bathroom to give myself a final check-over in the mirror. I struggle to recognize the woman walking toward me—I swear my features are thinner, sharpened. I don’t think I’ve done too bad a job with my makeup, or maybe it’s the dress. Lila does have an eye.
I take a breath, supporting myself on the sink. The bathroom’s door slams—the wind. Rumbling thunder in the distance, coming from the sea to wipe us all out.
When I venture downstairs, it is silent—the guests are in the other part of the castle. In the vestibule, there’s a man with thick dark-gray hair combed back, who looks up at me as I descend.
We lock eyes on the stairs—well, until he slides his eyes down the entirety of my body and smiles, showing perfect teeth. He isn’t that tall, but his presence fills the room, the way his bow tie hangs undone, his eyes ice blue, one hand in his pocket and the other on his phone. I’ve seen that posture before, in his son.
“Hello,” he says.
“Camille Leray.” I introduce myself, approaching him with an extended hand. He comes to life and shakes it, surprisingly animated, radiating warmth. A man of contrasts—the kind who would pull me into a snowstorm only to immediately wrap me up in a blanket.
“Enchanté, Ms. Leray. Guests aren’t allowed in this part of the castle, but I think I’ll choose to forgive you.” I note that Dominique Foucault, the elusive father and maître des lieux, doesn’t think it necessary to introduce himself back.
“That’s very kind of you. Except I’ve been staying here for a while now,” I explain.
“Ah, really. And which of my boys are you a friend of?”
“Maxime.” I don’t like the way he said friend, as if he meant something demeaning and irrelevant reserved for women.
“I see.”
The vestibule is dark and I remember Lila throwing herself into Maxime’s arms. I haven’t seen her around, nor her car, since Maxime said they broke up. I wonder if it all stemmed from our conversation in the patisserie, if I played a role in this. I would have wanted to say goodbye. I feel Viviane is watching us from the garden.
“I don’t think you do. Allow me to explain. I’m a sculpture specialist; Maxime asked me to take a look at the Sorels that recently resurfaced.”
“A rather long look, by the sounds of it.”
“And to help with the auction tonight.”
A sudden draft rattles the stained-glass panels above the entrance.
You should leave.
“Well, it sounds like Maxime, as usual, has underestimated your talents. Leading his little auction sounds beneath you. I think it will go down slightly better with some champagne, don’t you?”
He holds his hand out to invite me to follow him. There’s something in his manner that mesmerizes, hooks me by the throat. I feel that I want to follow him even if he’s going to hurt me.
I’m about to slide my hand into the crook of his elbow when Maxime rushes in.
“Camille. There you are.” The way he doesn’t acknowledge his father, or even look at him, cools the room by a few degrees.
“Maximilien, you’re interrupting.” Dominique’s amused smirk does not attempt to hide the warning.
“You’re needed,” Maxime continues, speaking directly to me.
I nod, stepping toward him.
“And what is she needed for? You’re going to give her a pot of paint and a brush and send her to touch up the damp moldings? I thought your brother had taken care of that.” That’s his natural voice when speaking to his son. I shudder because I know it well.
“And that’s more than you’ve ever done for this place.”
Outside thunder rumbles, or it could be a rogue helicopter surveying the coast. I feel like we are under siege, preparing to duck behind the furniture when the delicate stained-glass passage is blown to smithereens.
“Behave yourself, boy.”
I wince and so does Maxime, and I’m struck with how much of a boy he does look like right now. As if he is under some kind of spell, reverting him to the seven-year-old who took me by the hand and showed me his fairy in the attic. That boy, was he damaged? Were the bruises on the outside or the inside?
No wonder we formed a pair then. Me, beset by near-misses and emotional neglect, and him, forged by this. No wonder Constance’s kindness marked us more than hands or teeth ever could.
“I think I’ll go in search of that champagne,” I say, looking from one to the other, offering a smile as if this atmosphere has any chance in hell of warming up. “If you’ll excuse me.”
I slip out into the covered walkway that was installed as a link between the ancient and “modern” parts of the castle, but I can’t move on. I stop, listening for raised voices behind me. I can’t hear any, and it is worse. I know, intimately, within the fibers of my skin and nerves and blood vessels, that silence. Those hushed, violent words that can be worse than slaps. The wall of disdain you slam into repeatedly, blocking your every exit. My heart is drumming, my ears humming with blood. I want to break the glass keeping us apart and pull Maxime out of his father’s claws.
Very soon, perhaps after a minute or two, the door opens and Maxime, only Maxime, comes to join me.
“Are you all right?” I rush to him, before realizing that my question was silly—he is holding his chest, breathing fast and shallow. He presses both hands against the stone of the decorative pillars, his head hanging low as he shakes.
“Come sit down,” I tell him, gesturing, though he doesn’t see, to a stone bench in the passage, unsure as to whether I should touch him, then thinking better of it. What he’s projecting hits me like stray shards of glass: distress, aggression, despair. It hurts with every strike, embedding into my cheeks, under my eyes, in the soft parts of my exposed arms.
“Every fucking time,” he mutters. “I should know better. I’m thirty-fucking-five years old and I still can’t deal with him.”
All the swearing doesn’t seem to help, and his breathing is out of control. I crouch down as much as my dress allows so I can be at eye level with him. He brings a shaking hand to the bridge of his nose.
“You don’t need to deal with him. All you need to do right now is breathe. Can you do that for me, Max? Breathe with me.”
After a while, his eyes open, a flash of green. His breathing isn’t perfect, but it’s calmer. When he looks up and starts straightening his back until he is standing right over me, I become acutely aware of both of us standing in our finest in the soft multicolored light of the stained glass. I put my hand on his arm to anchor him and he catches it, presses it onto his chest. His heart is still drumming, his hard chest rising and falling still a tad too fast. He holds my hand there for a few minutes while our breathing and hearts sync through the bridge between our bodies.
“Camille, my father is a bad man. He’s a gambler, a selfish narcissist. As far as I remember, he always left us to fend for ourselves—and by that I mean for the castle, for our family’s reputation, everything. When he was around, he was worse with me. He did things that he said would ensure I’d grow up…tough enough. That I wouldn’t need anyone. That I’d be able to take on the work that should have been his. I grew up conflicted between how he showed me one could be, and how I thought, from my mother and great-grandmother, that I ought to be, to be good. I thought I had to choose, and I tried to choose to be good.” His voice reaches me through water, the light of a lazy late-afternoon flickering on the surface of a pond. “He used to make me sleep in the turret room, far from anybody else. With no heating. He would lock the door at nine p.m. every night. You understand, don’t you? What that does to you?”
He doesn’t need to tell me about the fabric of their relationship. I don’t need the sordid details. I know them by heart, and he knows it. “Yes.”
He nods, more like a deep bow. Then he lets my hand go, straightens his collar.
“That’s why I need tonight to go well. I need to know that we control the narrative now. Also, I need you to change your clothes,” he says.
I look at him, aghast. One minute he’s holding me, the next telling me—what?
He shakes his head, a frustrated, low growl escaping him. “Camille. I really need to see what you can do. You’re going to distract them like this. Like—like you’re distracting me. It might not work.” He waves to the green dress—to me. I flush.
“All right, then.” I make to go away, back to where I came from, up the stairs to my room, to sulk there like a teenager.
Leave.
His hand catches me, holds me back. His other hand wipes my hair off my shoulder, starts tracing maddening patterns on my bare skin. “Way too distracting,” he whispers. I feel like my dress has turned to water, is running off my skin like a shower, goose bumps all over. “Camille, when we’re in there…please—”
We’re interrupted by the door to the passage opening. Maxime’s hand retreats hastily. It’s not his father, but Lila, accompanied by Lowen. They stroll into the place thick as thieves, in stitches.
The laughter dies on their faces when they see us.
I don’t understand. I thought Lila had gone. Maxime told me he’d have someone pick Lowen up, but I didn’t think in a million years that it would be her. I look to them, then to Maxime, but don’t register any surprise.
“Sorry we interrupted,” Lila says. She’s stunning in a floor-length dark-blue dress cut so high on her neck it looks like her head is detached from her body, floating in shadows. Her hair is tied back in a low bun. All the mischievousness in her deep eyes when she was, for a second, oblivious to our presence fizzes away.
“You’re not interrupting anything,” Maxime says. “We were waiting for you. You’ve been ages. Let’s go,” he says, and she follows him.
Then: “You too, Camille. Like I said, I need you.”
He doesn’t wait for my answer as they disappear.
It’s Lowen and me now, where just before it was me and Maxime. I feel dizzy with what has just passed, lightheaded, and now it is a different landscape, as if Lowen’s presence makes the room more solid. I feel a great fatigue and the evening hasn’t even started yet. I drop down on the stone bench, gesture to him. “You look…”
“Like a penguin?” he asks.
He very much does not look like a penguin, and I wonder if he too has somehow been at the receiving end of a Lila makeover. His suit is loose enough to bring out his broad shoulders in a kind of classy way. I notice he’s refused to go for a tuxedo—he’s in deep blue.
“You’re wearing a tie,” I say dumbly.
“Yeah, I guess penguins don’t. That’s one difference you spotted. Can you spot the other nine?” He smiles and that makes me smile too. It’s impossible to resist.
I grin. “It really suits you.”
He seems to relax, comes to sit next to me. “Cam, you look smashing.”
It’s so nice to feel that he’s in my corner, so to speak. That no matter what I wear or what I do, he’ll always be telling me I am, like Goldilocks’s porridge, just right. But Lowen doesn’t know this world. He doesn’t understand any of its rules, that there are games you must play to win. He takes everything at face value.
“Thanks.”
“This place is unreal.” He rakes his hand through his messy hair, looking up and around. I smile because this is literally a corridor. He hasn’t seen anything yet.
Lowen’s eyes are kind. He knows me well, but I have changed so much in these past few weeks. I hope he can’t see into my soul anymore, as he always has. I know he would disapprove of what he would find there. He continues, “It’s impressive what money and an unfair political system can achieve.”
“Oh, Lowen,” I huff, half-irritated, half-amused.
“What? You brought in the enemy, a socialist peasant, to the Beast’s castle. Does your Maxime know about your treason?”
“He’s not my…” But I stop. Is he? I don’t know, and I don’t want to lie to him.
“Cam. Seriously, you are being careful, aren’t you? With these people. I just can’t imagine their intentions are straightforward. Not when a place like this is at stake.”
It’s my turn to stare at him. “What else do you know?”
He holds his hands up, giving me a reassuring smile. “Nothing I can’t second-guess having spent ten minutes in this craziness and half an hour with that posh twat.”
“You know why I can’t—why I can’t leave it behind.”
His hand pats my knee. “I know. It was your mother’s dream. It’s been your dream too, since you were tiny. And Constance Sorel lived here. But Cam, if you really think about it, that’s all in the past. Do you really need it? Or is it holding you back?”
I can’t do this now. Not here. “How has your course been going?”
He smiles, defeated, relaxing against the wall, before leaning forward again as if it is burning, and trying to brush off his suit. “It’s been hard work. I don’t know what I was expecting. Well, maybe having worked in a bakery for five years, I was a bit complacent. They tore all my processes to pieces, but I’m learning. Tell you what—I’m excited about cakes again. And that feels great.”
“I’m so pleased to hear that.” My heart swells for him now, and I think: We’re connecting, when you’re like that, Lowen. When you understand, and I understand, how much creating, learning, pushing yourself matters.
That’s what Maxime has always understood, I think. That’s how we’re akin, have been since forever. Camille, you are the key to it all.
Somewhere, at the party, or perhaps in the kitchen, a glass crashes.
“We should go,” I say.
“Should we?” He arches an eyebrow. “Can we not just grab a case of champagne and leg it?”
I laugh. “You didn’t come all this way for that.”
“I came all this way to see you.”
I smile. “I’m glad. But there are petits fours to be enjoyed. Though I bet they’re not as good as the ones you can make now, you pastry genius.”
He shrugs, but is smiling as well, and I love making him smile. “You’re coming?”
I quickly kiss his cheek. He smells delicious today—caramel and something spicier, more grown-up. It flashes before my eyes: I take his hand, we run out, stealing Maxime’s Audi in the process, and drive far away, and I never know what I could be. How much power I can have. What my influence really can be and how much I can rewrite of the past if I wish to. And I abandon Constance once and for all, screaming in her straitjacket.
I shake my head. “I need to go change first.”
“Why?” He’s confused. “You look incredible.”
I laugh. “It was nice while it lasted, but this isn’t me, Lowen.”
“Well, then. I’ll see you by the famed petits fours.”
“I expect a full-fledged review so I can get straight to the best ones.”
“You got it.”