After I left Paris and had been in New York for a few months, I received a package from Opaline that included six letters from Mathieu. She wrote that he had come to see her at the jewelry store. Distraught that he couldn’t reach me, he begged her for my address, but she refused. Finally, he asked her to at least send me his letters.
Without reading a single one, I burned them all in the fireplace in the studio. And then I wrote my sister and asked her never to forward anything from him to me again. I could never be with him. I knew that. So to read his letters would only be continuing the torture of missing him.
I lay in my bed, my head nestled in the pillow. I breathed in deeply, trying to locate the faintest whiff of the burnt-vanilla scent that Mathieu wore—and succeeding. I grew warm.
Was he still downstairs? All the guests were staying overnight. Had Mathieu gone to his room? Was it near mine? Was it possible that tonight, somewhere in this castle, Mathieu would be sleeping in a room down the hall from mine?
Mathieu. On whom I’d squandered my one and only wild chance at love—and then had to walk—no, run—away from it.
He was my splendid torture. I shut my eyes, and scenes from our time together came unbidden. His face hovering above me, his hair falling in my face, his penetrating eyes, staring into mine, saying so many things all at once. His long, tapered fingers, rough from the work he did with leather tooling, running up my arms, down my breasts, my stomach, teasing me between my legs. His lips on my lips. Breathing into me and taking my breath into his own lungs. His caramel voice, whispering my name so beautifully that it sounded the way the suede he used on his books felt under my fingers.
Oh, Mathieu. Why are you here?
My hand drifted to all the places his had explored. Now between my legs. My hand was his, stroking me awake and alive and electrified. My hand was his, dipping into the slick and teasing lightning-bolt feelings. My hand was his, sending shudders up and into me.
Oh, Mathieu. Why are you here?
I couldn’t imagine how any man would ever come close to making me feel what even the diluted memory of Mathieu did. Tommy certainly hadn’t. I knew I’d accepted him because he was so clearly different in every way from Mathieu that he’d never remind me of him.
Being with Mathieu was like living inside a secret, magical cave. Being with Tommy was like gliding across a marble dance floor, far from the soul-searing pleasure I had found with Mathieu, the kind that sends you out into the sky past the sun into the deep inky blueness, past the stars and up toward the glow of the moon. I never had to move Mathieu’s hand or squirm away from him. His kisses were never too wet or too dry or too rough or too gentle. From the first time Mathieu touched me—that day in the Luxembourg Gardens when he took my arm—I knew that we were the fit that some people only dream of ever finding. Even trying to explain it to myself, I was confounded. Spontaneous combustion was impossible, wasn’t it?
My mother talked of souls and spirits and alchemy and the power of the unknowable. All of it was in our coupling. All of it was how we were, Mathieu and I. And lying on the bed in Madame’s chateau, knowing that the man I had offered my heart to, who had taken it and given his own back for me to break, knowing that the man who with one look could cause powerful tremors deep inside me, who seemed to match me passion for passion, who understood all of my thoughts and dreams . . . knowing that he was just a few steps away made me breathless and afraid.
My hand moved faster and faster between my legs. Just once more, I would let myself remember the full force of what I had been trying to forget for these long years. What I’d tried to forbid myself to think of when I was looking for someone to make me forget. My heart breaking each time I realized that I was never going to find someone else. That there was only Mathieu. He was my curse. My mother had said not one woman in generations had broken it. Almost five years, and I had yet to push the thoughts of my golden-haired lover out of my mind.
So there in Madame’s chateau, I succumbed to remembering all of the glorious wonder of what it had been like to be with Mathieu, but this time, it was worse, because he was close by. And that made all the difference. The memory brought both an explosion of deep pleasure and the sting of tears, because as close as he was, he might as well have been sitting on the crest of the moon. I could not go to him. I could not allow him to come to me. Because the only thing worse than living without him would be knowing that his life was in danger because of me.
At least if he was alive somewhere on the earth, I could breathe the same air he was breathing. Loving him from a far distance, the only way I could.
But would one night matter? Just one night? My determination to do the right thing, dissipating, dissolving.
Twice I started to walk to the door and then retreated. I couldn’t give in. I had to. Couldn’t. Finally, I opened the door. Crossed the threshold. Stood out in the hallway. Did I dare go to him? How could I not? This might be the only chance I’d ever have. I was strong but not strong enough to sleep under the same roof as Mathieu and keep away from him. If it was only for a few hours, what harm could come? The night offered a blanket of protection around us.
As I stood, barefoot and trembling in the hallway, I realized there were more than ten guests sleeping in this house, on this floor and the one above, and I only knew where my brother was. Even if I wanted to go to Mathieu, I couldn’t.
I willed him to sense me. The minutes ticked on.
What kind of an occultist was I to not have the power to awaken him? How could he sleep through my need, my willingness to break my vow to myself? How could I not make Mathieu sense me? How could I sense him in the house but not be able to pinpoint which door kept him from me?
And then I wondered if us even being under the same roof now was fraught with danger. Was I a threat to him that night? Would I be the next day? My vision hadn’t been stamped with a date. I had to leave the chateau. I’d borrow Sebastian’s car. For one last moment, I stood there in the silence, memories sliding from my eyes and dripping onto my nightgown, soaking into the silk.
Chapter 40
Book of Hours
September 6, 1920
My trunks are all packed. I’ve cleaned up my studio and put everything away. I’m taking my art supplies, of course, but leaving behind all my drawings and canvases. I’ll start afresh in New York.
And now, while I wait for the appointed hour when the cab will come to take me to the train, there is time for one last entry, one last secret to inscribe in my book that holds all the other secret, stolen hours.