The Paris Orphan
Page 11
D’Arcy went upstairs. She almost headed straight for a long soak in the tub but knew she’d feel better if she stretched first. Her yoga mat was one of her non-negotiables when it came to packing for overseas trips; she retrieved it from her room and laid it out on the balcony, moving through a series of sun salutations, stretches and inversions for almost half an hour. Then she let herself sink into the glorious bath.
Célie had left out a tray of Buly 1803 products, with their eccentric vintage-style bottles, and D’Arcy inhaled the scent of lemon, mint and rosemary as the bubbles rose around her. She lay her head back and closed her eyes, feeling the ache in her muscles from hammering and sawing dissolve into the water. She really could stay here forever, which, for someone known for their nomadic habits, was both a confronting and curious thought.
After a very long time, she dragged herself out and dried herself off, using the Buly moisturizer and hand cream liberally. Then she went to her suitcase and discovered that everything had been hung in the wardrobe, and pressed too. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d used an iron, and her clothes wafted lavender and citrus toward her from the bags of herbs strung from the rails.
What did one wear to dinner in the folly of a French chateau? she mused. She pulled out one of her favorite things, a vintage turquoise Courrèges mini-dress that she always took with her when traveling because it didn’t crease, could be dressed up or down and, she thought, suited her. The brown cowboy boots from the day before were pulled back on and she checked her watch. Nearly half past eight. Everything was lazily late in France though. She hoped Josh would be too.
Outside, the night was balmy and not yet dark, a crescent moon just beginning to show like the curve of a hipbone glimpsed beneath sheer fabric. The folly was lit with candles and D’Arcy could smell the food from a hundred meters away. “At this rate, I’ll have to take up running,” she said as she cast her eyes over the table laden with food, and then at Josh, who looked as delicious as the dinner.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Josh said unexpectedly and she caught the briefest glimmer of something like admiration in his eyes before he poured out the wine.
She couldn’t help asking, “Do you normally have candlelit dinners with art handlers who stay in the chateau?”
He shook his head. “Art handlers never stay in the chateau. But I often have dinner in the folly, sometimes with the photographer—I usually stay the night when I come down each week and I like being outside.”
“Well, thank you for asking me to join you.”
“Like you said, you have to eat.”
Which meant the admiration she thought she’d seen must have been for the wine, which he was staring at intently, not her. He was so hard to read. She sat down and helped herself to the terrine. “Who cooks? How many Michelin stars do they have? And can I take them back to Australia with me?”
“Célie cooks. She doesn’t get to cook for guests very often so, when she does, she goes all out. She also looks after the house and the photographer’s needs. Célie’s husband is in charge of the grounds.”
“A true family affair. Are they related to the photographer?” The words came out before she had time to think. She held up her hand. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to pry. It was just the kind of question you might normally ask.”
D’Arcy sipped the wine and almost groaned again. It was so very good. A true feast for the senses, which must be why she was checking out Josh with one side of her brain, while the other side was telling her to behave. He was very good-looking, especially with candles flickering around him, offset by a garden so fecund she could almost hear the buds opening and new shoots pushing forth, and accompanied by a bottle of wine as full-bodied as a burlesque dancer, and paté so rustic and fresh that she wanted to eat it with her hands. Since when did D’Arcy behave anyway? Although she did like to be a little more sure that the other party was interested before she wasted time on flirting.
She dragged her eyes away from Josh’s face. Business, she told herself. For once, just stick to business. “Speaking of prying, how would you feel about me writing a piece on the chateau and its grounds for a newspaper in Australia?” she asked. “I’d be careful not to specify where it is so the photographer’s anonymity is safe, but I’m not sure how you feel about that kind of publicity. It might be a nice feature to have in the lead-up to the exhibition. As well as being a freelance art handler, I freelance for arts magazines and newspapers, mainly writing about the arts but, because I travel so much, I sometimes write travel pieces too.” It was quicker and easier than telling a story on film, she didn’t add, no matter that making a documentary was an infinitely more satisfying creative experience.
“You like freelancing? Not drawn to a more stable job?”
D’Arcy shook her head adamantly. “Not for me. I like being able to work where and when it suits me. I like doing a mix of different things. I like that I can say no if I want to.”
“Have you always been like that?” Curiosity flickered in his eyes and she saw herself as he might: flighty, unable to settle, drawn to the unconventional in a way that he, as a lawyer, hadn’t been.
“Pretty much. I did a couple of exchanges in high school, one to Italy, and one to France. I went to uni in Paris. The Maison Européenne de la Photographie offered me an assistant curatorship when I finished, which I loved, but I hated the black pencil skirts and sleek ponytails and the hush and the quiet and the seriousness. It wasn’t fun, and art should be fun. Like here; I can tell that, whoever the photographer is, she revels in life. Everything is thriving and luscious and gorgeous and you just want to wallow in it. There wasn’t a lot of wallowing at the Maison.”
She managed to extract a smile from him, which made her add, “This won’t mean anything to you but I just about mortgaged my apartment to Buly 1803 when I lived in Paris and there’s a whole tray of it in the bathroom upstairs. If that doesn’t call for some committed wallowing, I don’t know what does.”
“I know Buly. I bought an ex-girlfriend some things from there once. She hated them. Too old-fashioned, she said.”
D’Arcy raised an eyebrow. “I bet she wore pencil skirts and had a slicked-back ponytail, right?”
“She did, actually.”
“Well then.” D’Arcy sipped her wine with satisfaction.
“You say that like you’ve just proved an important scientific theory.”
“I have. Girls in pencil skirts have never learned to wallow. I’m sure your ex is a case in point.”
He laughed. “Before we start talking about my ex-girlfriends, let’s go back to where we started,” he said. “I’m not sure we can take the risk of an article about the chateau. But I’ll ask the photographer and let you know.”
“Okay,” D’Arcy said, before her head turned at the smell of more extraordinary food bearing down upon them.
Célie placed a platter of whole pan-roasted fish between them, the skin crisp and delicious, the smell of butter and lemon and rosemary wafting out. Another plate contained vegetables so imperfectly shaped and delightful that D’Arcy knew they’d come straight from the garden. “Oh, dorade,” she said, sniffing the fish. “Tell me this is a dorade.”
Célie smiled. “It is. I had a feeling you might like it.”
“I’d have liked to show children blue-water dorados, golden fish and fish that sing,” D’Arcy quoted.
“Rimbaud,” Josh said quizzically as Célie melted into the night.
“I had a Parisian literature student as a boyfriend for a few months when I was at uni. He rather fancied himself as Rimbaud. I think he just liked the lines about vomit and cheap wine whereas, for some reason, it was always those golden singing fish that I remembered. I’ve had a fondness for the dorade ever since, even though I know they’re different to the ones Rimbaud wrote about.”
“He sounds like a wallower.”
A laugh burst forth from D’Arcy. “But he wallowed in all the wrong things.”
/> They began to eat the fish and Josh said, “So tell me who you think does show compassion in their work,” and D’Arcy was both surprised and pleased that he wanted to keep their earlier discussion going.
The next hour was filled with companionable, lively and stimulating talk and D’Arcy couldn’t remember time ever passing by so quickly and so engagingly. Eventually, she pushed her plate away. “I really can’t eat another thing. Don’t tell me Célie’s made dessert, or is about to appear with artisanal cheeses.”
“If I know Célie—”
“Look!” D’Arcy cut off Josh’s words, jumping up suddenly from her chair and moving over to a stand of lobelia on which was perched the most extraordinary butterfly, as white as a bride waiting on an altar of petals for her beloved. She crouched down to inspect it more carefully, resisting the urge to run the soft film of its wings across her fingers.
Josh appeared at her side. “It’s called a Wood White. I always thought it should have a more extravagant name.”
“It should,” D’Arcy breathed.
The butterfly lifted into the air and she felt the slightest brush as it settled on her hair for an instant so unexpected she almost tipped over. Then it rose again, a wraith-like creature luminous against the darkening sky, as startlingly white as a full moon, fading to the merest streak of stardust before disappearing altogether.
“It’s moments like that…” D’Arcy murmured as she stood. “Impossible to orchestrate. Like the best photographs.”
She looked up at Josh; he was, she realized now that he was so close to her, several inches taller than she and he smelled as if he belonged to this place. Lemon most certainly, and mint too, with a base of cedar or cinnamon or both. And she would be quite happy to stand there for the rest of the night inhaling him, her eyes traveling over the dark shadow of his jaw, the inky hue of his eyes; without the light of the candles or the sun they were more indigo than she’d realized.
Her hand moved, laying itself lightly against his chest, enough to feel that running had certainly given him a very fine body. She tilted her head higher as his eyes darkened to midnight and rested on her lips. She probably shouldn’t kiss him, she knew; she was there to work. But life was about seizing the moment and if a balmy evening in the lush garden of a French chateau with a handsome stranger whose conversation engrossed her wasn’t a moment, then she didn’t know what was. At least this way she’d find out pretty quickly if he had been admiring her or the wine earlier. And she was used enough to flings in foreign countries—in fact, they were her preferred encounters—that she didn’t really mind what happened next; either he’d step away and be exceptionally solemn for the next two weeks and she’d have to find her pleasures in the Buly bath products and the food instead of him, or he’d respond and they’d have a fun night, or a few fun nights together, and that would be that.
So she let her hand drift up to the back of his neck and caress the skin there before exerting a gentle pressure to bring his head down to hers. Even though she’d given him at least a minute’s warning of her intentions, he still seemed surprised when her mouth met his, kissing her softly—far too softly. But then she let herself fall into it, this kiss that was all about the caress of lip against lip; he hadn’t even stepped closer to her, but had instead let the fact that only their mouths were touching create a kind of intensity, an expectation of what it would be like if she moved toward him, letting her body meet his.
After a long and exquisite time during which she was torn between opening her mouth and kissing him the way she wanted to and just staying in the moment of what was, she had to admit, the most romantic kiss she’d ever had, she felt him at last give way. His hands reached up to cup her jaw, drawing her in more deeply to meet the first touch of his tongue against hers. Then, finally, the oh so sensual feel of his mouth opening, letting her in, of her body shifting into his, of her hands running up his back an inch at a time, feeling every single lovely muscle beneath her palms.
She broke off just long enough to say, “My room or yours?” and was left momentarily speechless when he stepped back and shook his head.
“Since when does a kiss mean we go straight to a bedroom?” he demanded.
“Well, it was a pretty good kiss,” she said, aiming for jocular but he grimaced.
“Sorry,” she continued, “for a minute there, I mistook you for somebody attracted to me, not my grandmother.”
This time, he smiled a little and she was, she had to admit, relieved. It didn’t bother her if he wasn’t interested. But he didn’t have to be a dick about it.
“It’s just…” He paused and studied her as if he was deciding whether or not to say what was on his mind.
“Out with it,” she said. There was nothing worse than tiptoeing around a moment of amorousness as if it had never happened, like teenagers did. Much better to be honest and then move on. “I can tell you want to say something. I have bad breath. You don’t like women who can handle a saw better than you can. You’re practicing celibacy. Which one?”
“None of the above. I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you, not because I want to have sex with you. Haven’t you ever found that something is a million times better when you don’t have it straight away?”
She frowned. “Actually, no. The dorade would be off in a week. The terrine too. Okay, maybe this dress was worth waiting forty-five years for but I generally find that knowing more about a person doesn’t necessarily make the sex any better.”
“Maybe you haven’t been having sex with the right people.”
She dared to look up at him and wished she hadn’t. Yes, she wanted to kiss him all over again but she wouldn’t now. “Well, I’m clearly not going to find out what it would be like with you so do you have anyone else you’d like to recommend?”
His eyes flickered up the hill to the house as if something had caught his attention and she turned to see Célie approaching with yet more food. Josh stepped back and reached out his hand to take the tray from Célie. “We’ve decided to do some work,” he said to Célie. “I’ll take that inside for us.”
“Work,” D’Arcy said archly once Célie had gone, wanting to make light of the whole situation. “You’ll be lucky if I can concentrate on anything.”
He prodded her gently in the back with the tray. “Move,” he said, his voice as close to teasing as she’d heard it. “Work is the best thing for both of us right now. And turn off the lusty eyes.”
She made sure to give him a long stare before she started toward the house—anything to capitalize on his one definite foray into flirting. “I had no idea they were lusty in the first place so I won’t be able to turn them off. You’ll just have to put up with them.”
Nine
Her hopes lifted a little when he led her upstairs but sank when he opened the door to an attic filled with boxes and filing cabinets, an archive of the photographer’s work, D’Arcy presumed.
“I guess I was still hoping work might be a euphemism for…” she began.
“Stop it,” he mock-ordered. “If this doesn’t distract you, nothing will. You’re the only person besides me who’s ever been allowed into this room.”
“Does the photographer know?” D’Arcy said, then wondered why she’d asked. There was no way Josh was the kind of person who’d have his head turned by one little kiss and give her access to things forbidden by his client. “Why would the photographer let me in here?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. I was literally speechless when the photographer asked me to contact the gallery in Australia to see if they’d be interested in an exhibition; the photographer had never before wanted the works to travel outside Europe. And then there was the specific request for you to handle the art for the show. I mean, I had heard of you; you’ve handled work for some of our clients before and there aren’t too many art handlers in Australia.”
“Well,” D’Arcy said, “you’ve succeeded in completely distracting me. Is this where all her work is kept?”
“So the photographer is a she?” D’Arcy grinned, pleased that her intuition had been right.
Josh swore. “Her telling me to bring you up here has thrown me more than I’d realized. I never slip up like that.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. And you’re right; I can’t just send extra photographs over to the gallery. But I know the curator. She’ll listen if I think the pieces are worthwhile.”
She knew her face must betray all of her anticipation. As an art historian by training, this was like buried treasure for pirates. “We need gloves,” she said. “And the lights.” She looked up at the ceiling but saw that the installed lighting would be kind to artifacts.
“Gloves are over there. But I’m definitely not turning the lights off.”
She laughed. “There is a funny man lurking beneath the lawyer, Josh. You should let him out more. Pass me the gloves. Can I choose where to start?”
He nodded. “You look much more excited about this than you did about kissing me.”
“Only because you put a stop to it much too soon. I assume you’re not going to do the same here?”
“No.”
“Good. Well, if you’ve never been allowed to look at anything on the right-hand side, that’s where we start.”
She opened the first box. It was an assortment of photographs of the house and the gardens, narrowing in on details: flowers, leaves, insects. They had a feel of uncertainty, as if the photographer wasn’t familiar with this kind of subject.