“It won’t go away.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?” I asked him, trying to keep my voice light, when, in fact, I was afraid he’d read my mind. No one, not even my mother, had ever done that.
“Sometimes what people are thinking just flies into my head.”
“Thought butterflies?” I tried to keep him engaged and not pressure him.
“Thought butterflies,” he repeated with delight, and turned to his father. “Thought butterflies. Can we call them that from now on?”
Gaspard nodded and tousled Nicky’s hair. “Of course, and we will always remember the afternoon we spent with Mademoiselle Duplessi whenever we talk about them.”
Tears sprang to my eyes again. The idea that I wouldn’t see him or Nicky again saddened me.
“I don’t live far from here. We can see each other again, can’t we?” I asked, surprised at my own boldness.
“We very well might,” Gaspard said. “I’d like for that to happen.”
There it was again, the sense that he knew something he wasn’t telling me. I was about to ask about it when we were interrupted by Sebastian, who’d come out to fetch me. Madame was hoping I could try one more set of drawings before the guests began arriving.
I spent the afternoon in an exhausting effort to draw my way out of the castle. Finally, at five o’clock, I gave up and gave in to the inevitability that I was going to have to attend Madame Calvé’s soiree.
I hadn’t brought a dress with me, but Madame lent me one of hers from when she was younger and slimmer. It was a simple black sheath made of a fine diaphanous material. In the right light, it shone with a purple-blue sheen, and the sleeves fluttered like butterfly wings. The shoulders were cut out, and my bare skin peeked through.
I slipped on a pair of my own sandals with tiny straps across the instep and a little crescent-moon-shaped button holding them closed. They were daytime shoes but delicate enough to work with the dress.
I only had one piece of jewelry with me, the ring Mathieu had given me. Although I never wore it on my finger, I always kept it on a chain around my neck. Perhaps I’d put it on my finger, since I didn’t have anything else in the slightest bit festive.
I wished I’d packed the bangle my sister Opaline had made for me. It was a wide rose-gold bracelet studded with rubies, amethysts, and garnets set in star shapes. I wore it high up on my arm, above my elbow, to hide my birthmark whenever I bared my arms in a sleeveless frock.
I had always been moved by La Lune’s story, about a woman so desperate to feel love again that she searched for almost three hundred years to find a strong enough descendant to host her. All that suffering so she could experience passion. And pain. For there is never one without the other, I thought. All that so she could feel again what she had felt for the man she’d lost. And she finally succeeded on the day my mother saved my father’s life and in doing so incorporated La Lune into her soul.
The mark on my upper arm was so clear and precise that I preferred to hide it rather than entertain questions about it. When I was a child, my mother made sure my dresses had sleeves. When I was older, Opaline created the disguising bracelet in solidarity, for she understood as well as anyone what a burden and a curse our gift was. A lithomancer who could hold gems and learn through them, hear the dead through them, she’d also had her share of pain because of her ability.
I looked at my paints, tempted to use them to cover up the crescent. But they were oils and wouldn’t dry, and if I got flesh-toned paint on Madame Calvé’s dress, I’d be mortified.
Music was drifting up the stairs, inviting me down. I felt a jolt of anticipation. I reminded myself that I could relax. Madame had reassured me that I wasn’t going to be a party favor this time. I wondered, however, if Sebastian had other plans. My strong need to save him seemed to match my growing distrust of him.
It wasn’t the time to think about that. I was due downstairs. As I walked to the door, the heel of my sandal caught in the rug, and I went sprawling. Only when I sat up, rubbing the spot above my right eyebrow, did I realized how much damage I might have done to my sight if I’d hit one of the table’s clawed feet from a different angle.
I wet a towel in the bathroom and sat for a few moments while pressing the cold cloth to my forehead. Once the pain subsided and I felt more composed, I left my suite and, on slightly wobbly legs, walked down the stairs to the main floor, prepared to meet Madame’s guests.
I felt the quickening that sometimes accompanied a revelation, not sure why I was experiencing it. It was the fall, I supposed.
Below me in the foyer, I saw Sebastian, looking up at me, waiting for me, smiling. Then the front door opened. A crush of people hurried in, escaping the rain that had started. With the rest of them hidden under umbrellas, I could only see three sets of trousered legs.
The men had their backs to me as the butler moved among them, divesting them of their raincoats and umbrellas. Just as one turned, Madame bustled past and blocked my view. Her voice rose over the wind that blew her words away.
“Eugène, welcome. I’m sorry about the storm. It must have been madness driving here in all that rain. And Yves, it’s so wonderful to see you,” Madame greeted them.
I was holding my breath, waiting to hear her address the last man in the group.
“And Mathieu. Be still, my heart, to have so many handsome men arrive at once,” Madame said, with a lovely, flirty laugh in her voice.
My hand tightened on the banister. I stopped moving. It wasn’t possible. Except, like a train rushing toward a certain destination, I’d known this would happen since I’d first arrived. And then it occurred to me that there must be thousands of men with that name. This Mathieu wasn’t necessarily the one I’d known and loved. How embarrassing that I’d just assumed it was. How pathetic a creature I was.
In New York, at a party, I’d once overheard a conversation between two women. One was talking about a man she’d just met, whom she might be falling in love with. The other, an older woman, asked her why she’d do that. “Love is the very worst way to punish yourself.”
I’d never forgotten what she’d said. It certainly was true for me. The worst pain I’d ever endured was a result of the greatest love I’d ever felt.
I shook myself out of my reverie and resumed descending the stairs. Almost relaxed, thinking myself foolish to have believed that the one man I had run away from, had left France to avoid, would be here in the chateau and I’d have to see him.
Sebastian called out to me.
Hearing him, Madame turned and looked up. “Delphine, you look lovely. And to think I once fit in that dress. What age does . . . what age does . . . Come, you’re just in time to meet my guests.”
One of the men stepped forward, blocking one of the others. Madame was blocking the third.
“Eugène Leverau, this is Delphine Duplessi.”