He took my hand and kissed it.
“Eugène has been in Egypt on an archaeological dig since his fiancée’s death,” Madame said to me, and then turned to him. “Delphine is a fine young painter.”
A frown creased his brow for a fraction of a moment and then disappeared. “A pleasure,” he said, a bit stiffly, and moved away.
My view of the second man was now clear.
“And this is Yves Villant, the director of the Paris Opera,” Madame introduced us.
As Villant bent to kiss my hand, Madame stepped aside. With a mixture of horror and deep visceral pleasure, I saw the man I’d run away from almost five years before, standing just inside the door, his beautiful blue-gray-violet eyes staring up at me, and I felt as if I were seeing stars in the night sky, sparkling for the very first time.
Chapter 37
I must have stood there paralyzed, speechless, for a full minute. A flush rose from my chest, warming my cheeks. My heart beat so audibly in my own ears that I worried everyone else might hear it, too. I felt pain I didn’t understand, until I realized that the shank of my ring—the ring he’d given me—was digging into my flesh because I was gripping the stair rail too tightly.
What I’d both feared and longed for had materialized. Mathieu Roubine was here. A horrible and wonderful accident of fate had brought him to Emma Calvé’s house during the week I was staying there.
I saw and heard Madame Calvé introduce Sebastian to Mathieu and tried to make sense of what I was watching. My brother and my lover, shaking hands. Exchanging pleasantries while I looked on.
Ever since I’d arrived and stepped over Madame’s threshold, I’d been at war. Wanting to stay and wanting to go. Feeling welcomed and unwanted. Enjoying Gaspard and made uncomfortable by his distance. My instincts on the staircase were also opposites. I wanted to turn and run and lock myself inside my bedroom and at the same time rush down the stairs and throw myself at Mathieu, feel his arms encircle me, smell his familiar, sensuous burnt-vanilla, honey, and amber scent.
I did neither. I remained frozen on the stairs, holding on to the railing, while Mathieu walked up to me. He took each step slowly, smiling that sly half smile of his that I knew so well. As if he had a secret to share but wanted to hold back just a little longer. He had been that way as a lover, too, slow and teasing, making each and every moment something to savor. No. This was highly inappropriate. Thinking of him that way was the very last thing I should have been doing.
“Mathieu . . . I didn’t expect to see you here. How lovely,” I said, in a voice that embarrassed me for all its false bravado. I sounded like some idiotic girl running into a school friend at a restaurant, not a woman confronting the man who’d burrowed so deeply into her soul that she’d sailed across an ocean to escape his pull and still felt it every day of her life.
Mathieu Roubine was my elixir, and I was his poison. He was my savior and I his executioner. I had drawn him to try to help him discover his past and in the process had seen his future—destroyed because of me. Unwilling to take any chance that I’d follow in my mother’s footsteps and put my lover’s life in danger, I’d fled. Yes, my mother had saved my father but only by moments and only at a great price. I was willing to pay the price but not to risk failing at the task. I was not nearly the force my mother was.
To imagine a world without Mathieu in it was a far worse fate than not being with him. At least I would know he was living and breathing somewhere on earth.
He’d reached me. Without saying a word, he took my right hand in his. I felt his fingers find the ring and outline its shape. I saw a moment of confusion in his eyes. Was he wondering why I still wore his ring if I’d thrown him over for someone else? He continued running his finger around the stones. He cocked his head a little to the left, raised his right eyebrow in that mischievous way he had, and I felt my heart, which was still pounding, skip a beat.
Nothing was different. Despite all the space I’d put between us. All the time I’d spent without him. Nothing had changed. I loved him still.
As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, he grinned a little and then bent over and pressed his lips to my palm. The gesture was at once so formal and yet so intimate that it brought a second blush to my cheeks. And then he returned his eyes to my face.
I might have been able to break free and escape but not after his deep, searching gaze met mine. Not while I saw so many things in his beautiful eyes: sadness, pain, betrayal, blame, anger. And yes, still love. Love and passion.
I felt as if I were drowning, but instead of swirling in the water, flailing and confused about which direction was safe and which disastrous, it was emotions that tossed me, crashed over my head, and pulled me under. More feelings than I knew how to cope with.
There was always something otherworldly about Mathieu’s appearance and behavior. As if he’d been born in the age of chivalry, gone to sleep one night, and awoken four hundred years later. And sometimes I even wondered if that wasn’t exactly what had happened. If he’d been sent from the past. A knight who had failed to save a damsel in distress being given another chance lifetimes later. With destiny intervening and turning the tables on both of them.
Could it be possible? A bond like ours had to traverse more than our present. And if anyone would, a daughter of La Lune would know that there are more things under the stars and the moon than we can explain or make sense of.
He was two steps below me, still holding my hand in his and my eyes with his. I looked at his shining golden curls, and my fingertips remembered how soft his hair was. I looked at his strong arms, and my torso remembered how it felt to have him hold me. I wanted to bury my face in his neck, inhale his scent. I wanted to lift my lips to his and feel their delicious pressure.
But I held back, because I had rigorously taught myself to resist him. Of all the temptation that the earth had to offer, hadn’t I made a deal with myself that I could indulge in anything and anyone else as long as I kept away from Mathieu?
“Everyone is watching,” I whispered, as I looked around and saw my brother’s eyes fixed on us.
“I don’t care.” He laughed. “After all this time, I don’t care.”
“You’re embarrassing me.”
“I am not. You never get embarrassed. You don’t care what anyone thinks.”
“You’re wrong. I care what our hostess thinks.”
He took a step up and leaned even closer to me. I smelled his scent. “I wish I could tell you that I didn’t miss you,” he whispered.
He was still holding my hand. And still holding me in place with his eyes. I was tethered to him and couldn’t have moved if I wanted to.
“I wish I could tell you that we will grow old and forget about each other,” he continued. “But you know, as I do, that won’t ever happen.”