It wasn’t impressive if it was ignoble.
“With many places that aren’t meant to be public—that aren’t meant to be known,” I ground out in annoyance.
As she spoke earlier, it was the only thing I could think. Would it scan through the walls? Would it scan the passages that only a handful of people knew how to find? Would my sanctuary no longer be safe?
I didn’t belong in the world. Not with a face and a purpose like mine. And I wouldn’t let her little project—whatever its purpose was—force me to return there.
Even if her contraption wasn’t able to pass through structures, it wouldn’t stop her from making sure every stone was unturned and every corner of the cathedral explored—every nook and cranny.
Every corner.
My corners.
“And you spoke to her?”
My mouth thinned into a line of annoyance. This was not the conversation I came to have. “She was in the cathedral after hours. Of course, I spoke to her.”
“Interesting,” he hummed.
“That she was there after hours? Absolument,” I practically snarled.
He laughed, used to my surly nature because it was the only one that rivaled his own. “No. That you approached her.”
“I’m not a complete fucking hermit, Léo.” Nor a hunchback.
I ran a hand up and pulled at my thick locks before forcing my hand back onto my hip.
“You also rarely speak to anyone outside the Valois.” He put a finger up and shook his head. “Actually, you rarely speak to anyone outside of those who might be involved with your stepfather or taking down his organization.”
“Who says she’s not?” I ground out.
I watched the thought sink into his features. “Do you think this has to do with Méchant?” He held the paper up as he spoke.
“I don’t know yet, but she showed up the same day I came to see you.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t like coincidences.”
“Do you think he found you?” His words became hushed. “You can’t think he sent her like he did—”
I cut him off, never wanting to hear that name again. “I can’t think anything without having answers. Where can I find Lavigne?”
“Christ,” he swore and pushed up to stand, matching my height from the other side of the cluttered desk.
It was the slight disarray of the room that informed me Troy hadn’t been here in a few days; she never would’ve stood for the disheveled disaster.
“Follow me.”
He led the way out of his office and we wound through the half-lit halls of the university toward the other side of the courtyard that housed the head of the art department.
“Give it to me,” he demanded, and I begrudgingly obliged.
Information would be more easily given to a colleague and friend rather than a stranger with the face of a monster.
“Mathieu,” Léo’s voice rang out as he knocked on the cracked door.
“Éntrez,” the voice on the other side replied.
Sliding me a glance that told me to stay back, as though I was the one who needed instruction, Léo stepped into the room, leaving the door farther ajar than it had been before.
“How can I help you, Baudin?” The voice was chilly with dislike.
“Did you sign off on a project at Notre Dame?”
Pause.
Lavigne cleared his throat. “I sign off on a lot of projects, many involving the cathedral. You’ll have to be more specific.”
Léo laughed and drawled with a small sigh. “Always the pretentious prick. Just wondering what you knew about this.”
The silence that followed told of a wordless examination of the paper I’d taken from her bag.
“How’d you get this?” The head of the department demanded sharply.
“I see a lot of things, my family being who they are. I want to know if it’s legitimate.”
My lips tipped. At one time, Léo had been the heir to the Baudin empire—a string of corporations that made his family one of the wealthiest in France and, consequently, one of the most politically influential.
But he’d cut away from them many years ago, so I was surprised to hear how he used them as his excuse for the interrogation.
And I was grateful.
“I thought you didn’t speak to—Never mind.” Lavigne huffed. “Yes, I signed off on it.”
“Why?”
Good. Perhaps dealing with my half sister had given Léo more experience in interrogation than I gave him credit for.
“You know as well as I, Baudin, that something needs to be done about the cathedral. Something has needed to be done for a long time,” he began roughly. “Giselle showed me Ms. St. Claire’s work on the National Cathedral in Washington, so I decided to invite her here, through the school, to scan and archive the church. I’m hoping what she finds will provide enough evidence to push the government for immediate renovations.”
My body tightened as each word fortified the legitimacy of the letter.
“Giselle?”
“Esme is a friend of hers from a while ago.”
My lip quivered. Another tie that solidified legitimacy. Still, I questioned everything about the woman who made me question myself.
Everything Lavigne claimed was the truth. The French government had let one of the country’s most iconic symbols decay unchecked for too long.
It was an admirable thought, but a poorly timed one.
Friend or not, I knew those employed by Méchant were quite adept with a mask of friendship to conceal a foe.
“So why hasn’t it been announced? Why are you keeping it secret?” Léo pressed.
“Mon Dieu, Baudin, have you looked outside lately? The protests. The riots. I respect the impossible job Macron has to perform, which is why I don’t want to fuel the fire by creating a public outcry over the cathedral.” He grunted. “There’s already the perception that the war is being waged against the middle class. Notre Dame was built by the working man and now the ‘elite’ government has failed to respect that as well.”
I could practically hear the shake of Lavigne’s head in resignation, the ripples sending his justification even more clearly to my ears.
“No. I reached out to her because, like many scholars and historians who work here, I care about the heart of Paris. I care about restoring and preserving her. What I don’t care for is using her as a political ploy to garner attention.”
“So, you want to see what she finds first,” Léo clarified.
“And then I’ll share it with a few politicians, gain sponsors, and respectfully petition for something to be done about it,” he grunted. “But not before I have all the information. The last thing I need is for the rumor mill and the tabloids to turn something essential into entertainment.”
“You think he’ll shut you down?”
With the unrest going on in the streets of Paris, it was certainly plausible that, if the president knew, he would stop Esme from completing her task.
He had every right; Notre Dame was government property.
And part of me wished he would—selfishly—so I could focus on my own task.
And just as selfishly, I was glad he hadn’t.
“I’d rather not find out.”
Léo cleared his throat, and I heard the soft rustle of paper being folded again.
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“I trust you will keep this between us.”
“I want to see it restored just as much as you, Lavigne,” my friend replied, the echo of his voice indicating that he was approaching the door again. “And I know just how damaging gossip can be.”
And then Léo was back in the hall, and we began our silent retreat from the open door back to his office.
“I’m surprised you brought up your family.”
Léo’s chuckle grated through the air. “They might as well be good for something.” He shrugged and then added, “Plus, you saved me from your family. The least I could do was use mi
ne to help you.”
I swallowed hard, feeling my scarred skin pull tight over my throat.
I was used to barely breathing—barely living. But that was forever the fate of a shadow… to be present in the world but shackled to a life that wasn’t my own.
There was no freeing me of my family. Even if I managed to end Méchant, to exact my revenge for what he’d done to my mother and to me, I would never escape him. And he’d known that the day he painted fire on my face.
I could no longer look at myself without seeing the liar I’d become, the liar he’d made me out of necessity… out of vengeance. It was the price I’d paid.
Léo pressed the letter against my chest and brought me back to the present where we stood outside his office as he demanded roughly, “Satisfied?”
No.
Not in the slightest.
And this information just confirmed that I wouldn’t be for several long weeks.
Her invitation may be legitimate. Her work may be legitimate. But that didn’t mean she was.
Those gold-flecked green saucers flashed in front of me, staring at me as they searched for answers.
She stared at me searching for more.
And until I knew what that more was, I couldn’t trust her alone with my cathedral.
Or alone with myself.
“For now,” I replied, but only because I was content with the information he’d gotten me.
But satisfaction… I winced. Satisfaction wasn’t a word destined to reside in the same sentence as Esme St. Claire.
As Léo turned back to his office, I faded into the shadows of the streets, losing any stray eyes as I wove through the narrow alleys with a new destination in mind,
More than anyone, I knew the disrepair Notre Dame had fallen into—I lived in it, felt her fractures, breathed her broken air.
But it seemed too much of a coincidence that the day I received a coded message about some imminent destruction was the day she showed up in my sanctuary, her bracelets singing like tiny warning bells with each step she took. It seemed too much coincidence she taunted me with Hugo’s work when that was how my messages to my agents were coded.
And it seemed too much coincidence she appeared every part the gypsy… every part the tantalizing temptress.
I shuddered violently.
I might be a monster, but I wasn’t a fool.
And only a fool would ignore the instinct that this gypsy wasn’t meant to be trusted.
Quinton
For three days, I did what I did best. I disappeared.
I disappeared into the dark places inside the church that was as broken as I was. And there, I bided my time and observed her.
From the wooden rafters and concealed crawlspaces, I watched her work. The methodical way she assembled her equipment detracted by the almost musical movement of her body.
I should’ve let it go, finding nothing suspect in what I saw, but, to my immense frustration, I couldn’t.
I couldn’t because with every step, her gilded limbs sang their own melody. With every turn, the bright colors that made her appear both unmistakable and unearthly, filtered warmth and life into the vacant, damaged shell housing me.
And I found myself wanting her guilt with each strained breath because it would justify the time I spent in strange concealed company with her presence—hating her might be the only thing to quell my fascination with the gypsy—and the way she looked for me.
She knew I was watching and, like the steady, low metronome beat that dictated the tempo of her tempting tune, she looked for me while she worked.
Steadily. Consistently. Brazenly.
No one ever looked for me. Not when I was injured. Not when I disappeared. Not for half a decade. And especially not now. And any gaze that caught a glimpse of my face fled in fear and disgust, swearing to never return.
But she’d seen me. She’d stared at the monstrosity of my face and only moved closer. Like a blind fool, inching toward danger.
I distrusted her because she wasn’t repulsed by me. I distrusted her because she turned my body traitor against my mind, leaving me fitful and full of everything but true relief.
For days, when she finished for the evening and left the cathedral, I released her from my mind, knowing my concern about her did not extend beyond these walls, and took my first full breaths in several hours. Finding the unsettled chill returning to ice my veins, I disappeared into the night and followed morsels of information on Hubert and his connection to Méchant with no further communication from my priest.
I needed to know more before I brought this to my father and the Valois.
But tonight, I’d been weakened by the silken tune she hummed while she worked. I’d been weakened by nights left wondering if she went home to a bed as cold as mine, or if someone had claimed her wild lust for life. And I’d been broken when she’d answered a call and said she would meet the caller at the park at Gabriel-Pierné, my mind spinning tales as skillfully as Rumpelstiltskin, turning innocent straw into gold-laden guilt.
I’d held off. I’d returned to my attic with renewed vigor, scanning through my notes, making a list of where I would go tonight—a hotel Hubert was known to frequent for dinner.
But the thought of her ate at me with the destructive violence of a flame, burning away rationality.
I wasn’t used to feeling a need like this—except for the need to kill Marcel Méchant.
I wasn’t used to feeling a need for someone. A need to know her. A need to protect her. To persecute her. And, beneath it all, a need to take her like the monster I was.
With a low growl, I whipped my coat off the small wooden chair, sending the rickety seat tumbling over onto the floor. I left it there to remind me later how weak this was of me.
Moving swiftly and silently, like water through a canyon, I traversed the narrow and dimly lit path away from Notre Dame, following the gypsy by imagined sound and scent rather than by sight.
The cloudy skies that had grown pregnant with precipitation over the last several days finally released their weight in steady showers, making the hood tugged over my head more justifiable than when it shielded me on clear nights.
I turned and made to cut through Square Gabriel-Pierné, a small park just a block or so away from the Seine. The wrought-iron lamplights were picturesque in the daytime, but after dusk, their old glass restricted more light than it reflected.
Lining the stoned path that ran along the edges of the small, square park were the very same cherry blossom trees that lived outside Notre Dame, currently at the start of their blooming period; the ailing lamplight clung to the pink blossoms.
But tonight, the park wasn’t mostly shadowed and secluded like it usually was. Instead, there was a crowd of people gathering around the beginning strains of tuning instruments.
Street performers and swindlers alike ruled many of the streets of Paris, preying on tourists for their living.
But this…
I should’ve turned around. I should’ve accepted the knowledge that she’d gone to a park to meet a friend and returned to my own business. And I was about to.
But then a long, haunting note from a violin struck something inside me, a hypnotic chord that stayed my steps and pulled me toward the swaying crowd like a veritable Pied Piper.
Clinging to the outskirts, the music lured me closer as the beat picked up, the sound like a mystery begging to be solved.
Wading through the crush of people, I realized how no one even noticed me, as though the song was a spell woven around their attention.
A flash of gold caught my eye and the thin tether to my body caught fire like a waiting fuse.
It was her.
The gypsy was the one playing.
My jaw was the last part of my body to tighten as each step revealed more and more of her tempting body, finally stopping at the point where I was close enough to see her without being easily visible.
She stood in front of the small bust-topped stone fou
ntain in the center of the park and captured all of its attention.
The pink cherry petals bled into a burning red by the evening light and framed her body with a vibrant backdrop. Her body moved like a flame, fluid and supple as it flowed with each note she played on her violin, and the crowd, like miserable moths unaware of her power—or her danger—drew closer.
She was clothed in the same dress from earlier. But now that I wasn’t observing her from above or afar, I now noticed how high the slit in the skirt sat as it parted to reveal her shapely legs as she moved with the beat, undulating like ripples over water.
But it was the metallic reflections that glinted and glimmered off every curve of her body that trapped my gaze. The bracelets on her wrists, the matching gold chains clasped around her ankles and draped over the tops of her feet, the gold bands clamped around both of her biceps. She hadn’t been wearing them all before. Stacked rings that looked like notes perched on the musical clef of her fingers shimmered as they moved the bow. Twinkling with the magic of stars, I felt myself pulled from the dark pit of night and into her constellation.
My focus shifted higher, noticing the way her eyes stayed shut as she played, gold makeup transforming her lids into gold tokens.
And her hair… the midnight mass of waves was pulled back, hidden almost completely with a white scarf worn like a Muslim hijab that caught every stray shard of light and demanded they fall on her. As she moved, I noticed it wasn’t worn quite traditionally, her hair spilling freely from under the scarf down her back like a waterfall of night releasing from the bright moon.
I tensed. One more curiosity about the woman I already struggled to piece together.
Her head dipped and the light caught on the gold-chained headpiece that rested on the white fabric, its charms dripping down over her forehead like an upside-down crown.
The gypsy queen.
I stepped forward, uncaring who was in my way or what they might see. If they could look away from her, they deserved the punishment of seeing my face.
Only then did I notice the three other men she played with, and how they stared at her with unabashed appreciation, too. I watched how they played and waited, their enthusiasm of their play increasing each time her dancing feet brought her closer to one of them and then the next.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 8