From a Paris Balcony

by Ella Carey

  ALSO BY ELLA CAREY

  Paris Time Capsule

  The House by the Lake

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Ella Carey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503940505

  ISBN-10: 1503940500

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  For Ris Wilkinson (writing under the name Melanie Milburne)—talented writer, inspiration, and beautiful friend—with my heartfelt thanks for everything

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Boston, 2015

  The small green chest was concealed at the back of the wardrobe. Its hinges were made of brass that must have shone once, but now it was roughened with amorphous black spots. A key was bound to the lid, almost endearingly, Sarah thought, with layers of old sticky tape whose edges curled under a canopy of dust. Sarah had no idea how long the chest had lain there, wedged underneath a pile of her father’s moth-eaten sweaters, alongside his other hoarded little treasures—the pipes that he used to sneak out into the garden to smoke and the stained yellow tobacco tins that he always reused for fishing hooks. Sarah hesitated to open the curious little box for some reason. But that was ridiculous, because not a soul would know or care if she did. She had no family left at all.

  Her sentimentality about unlocking this secret was even more ironic given that she curated the possessions of the dead for a living. Sarah was hardly unused to opening precious things left behind. In the end, she adopted the determination that she had assumed so often as a matter of necessity over the last tumultuous year and slid her nails under the tape. The key felt small and cold in her fingers when she inserted it in the lock. She pulled at the lid and stared at the contents. Or the content. Because there was only one thing in the box.

  An envelope. And across this envelope, written clearly in the blue ink of a fountain pen, were both a name and an address that were perplexing in themselves—Viscount Henry Duval, Ȋle de la Cité, Paris. Postmarked 1895.

  Sarah took the letter over to the window that looked out over the genteel Boston street where she had grown up. Blossom petals floated from the stately trees that lined the grand street below. Nannies pushed expensive new strollers along the sidewalk, dodging the inevitable well-tailored office workers and the usual array of women who looked like they lunched. But none of this could draw Sarah in, not today. She turned back to the delicious little mystery in her hands instead.

  Viscount Henry Duval had been veiled in intrigue for Sarah since she was a girl. The name was linked forever with Sarah’s family, tied up with a tragedy that had captured her imagination when she was young.

  The death of Sarah’s great-great-aunt in the midst of a glamorous party in Paris during the Belle Époque had never been fully explained, as far as Sarah was concerned. Louisa Duval had, so the story went, jumped out of a window one night in Paris and died on the pavement below. Even though the mysterious young woman’s death was declared a suicide, the circumstances had never been investigated.

  The more Sarah had asked her father for details, the more she realized how little he knew. She hadn’t had much time for curiosity in the last few months, having been confronted with a triple tragedy of her own: the deaths of both her parents, and her husband leaving for good. Now, as she worked through her parents’ vacant apartment, the resurfacing of her ancestor’s mystery tickled her mind. These older ghosts had a more comfortable distance than the painful, fresh ones right now.

  There had always been an assumption that Louisa killed herself. But had this enigmatic young woman, from whom Sarah was descended, really taken her own life?

  The more Sarah had thought about it, the more she wondered if there was a reason it had been kept quiet. What on earth was her father doing, hiding away a letter addressed to Louisa’s husband in a decrepit green box?

  But Sarah was late for a meeting and there was no time to linger over distant events. She had already missed some work over the past few months, and, while she was not directly involved in the new exhibition that was about to open at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where she worked, she had to go or she would wind up in trouble.

  Sarah tucked the letter inside her handbag, took one last look at her parents’ apartment—it would have to be sold—locked their heavy front door, and slipped down the front steps into the street.

  It wasn’t until that evening that she had the chance to pull the timeworn envelope out of her handbag. She had been accosted by emails and interruptions at work all afternoon, and while her thoughts had wanted to turn to Henry Duval’s letter, she had forced herself to remain focused on her job.

  Sarah poured herself a glass of wine in her galley kitchen and moved across to her living room, with its picture windows overlooking the Charles River. The days had started to lengthen, and she didn’t need to turn on the lamps that she had bought after Steven had left during Boston’s last cold, icy winter, but she switched the lights on anyway. She loved the warm glow they created.

  Sarah still didn’t know whether to sell her apartment, rent it out, or simply stay put. She had been too exhausted to face a move after Steven left. So she had replaced some of the furniture, had installed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with books on things she loved—art, old jewelry, family heirlooms, and houses. And she had stayed where she was, for now.

  Sarah sat down in her favorite pale blue armchair, took a sip of wine, and turned back to the letter. And opened it. And read.

  Paris, 1895

  My dear Henry,

  I find myself unable to articulate my shock at the events that unfolded last night.

  You must be appalled, mon cher. And confused, I am in no doubt. What a tragedy, what a trauma—I simply cannot think how you are bearing up.

  And to have something as dreadful as this happen in Montmartre, our little homeland! Louisa’s death throws a villainous shadow over our menagerie sociale. The atmosphere is quite changed after one single night. I saw not a soul from the party when I rode in the Bois de Boulogne today. The park was empty of our little groups—and it suffered for it. It suffered with the stuffy bourgeoisie gliding like old ghosts on the paths—because we were not there, my dear.

  Later, I found myself extremely agitated
at home in the apartment. I could not settle, and the idea of visitors! Can you imagine? No I think not!

  Following this, I was in a mind to visit you. I even had on my kid gloves, but I feared that the sight of my carriage at your house on the Ȋle St-Louis would simply bring more gossip—and we cannot afford that, my dear friend, not at all. Which brings me to my next awful thought.

  I know that you come to Paris to enjoy our wonderful “attributes”: the cancan dancers, all our friends, and the razzle. Not to mention our wonderful theatres and dance halls. But my fear is that you need to think like one of us, my Henry. I want you to think like a true modern, I want you to move and move very fast. My darling, I sense that it is vital that you leave Paris, today.

  Tragic as it is, tragic as must be your feelings about Louisa and about last night—no matter what she was, or what she was to you, she was your wife.

  Go home to England. Bury yourself at Ashworth until it is over. You need to encircle yourself within your family. They will protect you. You must let the wheels of your parents’ influence take over now. The authorities will want to question you if you stay here—you know everything, and that is too much.

  Your father will be able to get rid of the press. And you will deal far better with the inevitable police investigations from the safety of your home. Your parents will shield you. They are not emotionally invested. They will know exactly what to say.

  Just leave, or I will worry until it kills me.

  When we meet next, we will talk as if we were never apart. It will be like it always is, but for now, à bientôt, my friend.

  I will miss you, but I am always, always with you, you know that.

  Au revoir,

  Marthe de Florian

  Sarah stared at the signature at the bottom of the page. No matter how used she was to researching other people’s heirlooms, no matter how used she was to hearing about other people’s pasts—this was her own family.

  This was her past.

  The fact that Viscount Henry Duval, Louisa’s husband, seemed to be connected with one of the most famous Parisian courtesans who lived in the Belle Époque was one thing. The fact that the famous courtesan was telling Henry to leave Paris was quite another again.

  Marthe’s handwriting stared back at Sarah as if it were quite the most casual thing in the world. But Sarah knew how famous this woman had been. Sarah knew that Marthe de Florian’s apartment had been rediscovered in Paris in 2010. Her granddaughter had fled Paris in June 1940, abandoning it on the eve of the Nazi occupation.

  For seventy years, nobody had entered Marthe’s grand home, no one had set foot inside. And nobody knew why the granddaughter had never returned. The discovery of Marthe’s apartment had caused more than a buzz in the art world and had been a topic of interest among Sarah’s colleagues.

  The story had become even more fascinating. Marthe’s apartment was not just a frozen replica from 1940, it was a time capsule from a generation before that. Sarah could only imagine how the curators who had discovered Marthe’s gifts from her countless gentlemen “clients” must have felt walking into the veritable time warp when it was discovered. Imagine the jewels, paintings, furniture, objets d’art.

  While getting her degree, Sarah had studied, albeit briefly, the life of Giovanni Boldini, the artist whose unsigned portrait of Marthe de Florian had been found in the apartment, causing such a stir in itself. It had sold at auction for over two million euros, no less.

  But the thing that had touched Sarah, what had intrigued her most of all, was the discovery of a stash of letters to Marthe from her gentlemen admirers. They had been wrapped up in silk ribbons, all left intact.

  And now, Sarah was holding such a thing right here, in her hands.

  While she was tempted to sit and let some of the magic distill itself onto her, she knew that she had to investigate, and now.

  Sarah went to her computer. First questions first.

  When she read that the courtesan’s apartment was now available for rent, Sarah simply stared at the screen in front of her and sat back in her seat.

  But then, as she sat there, a thought began to kick in. It was mad, creative, the sort of plan that she would normally laugh off as ludicrous—but then, ideas that seemed mad at first were often valuable; how many artists had she studied over the years to learn that?

  What if she were to go to Paris?

  What if this was her chance to get close to her mysterious ancestor—to find out whether Louisa had ended her own life? If Sarah had no living relatives left, why shouldn’t she find out about the past? After all, Louisa’s father had lost nearly all of his old Boston wealth as a result of his terrible grief, and the family had been shunned by society because of the taint of suicide.

  Sarah knew the feeling that gossip could bring. Rumors had led her to the sickening awareness that her ex-husband, Steven, had a girlfriend, an old flame of his whom Sarah had known nothing about. Once the horrible truth had come out, Sarah had avoided every place that she knew Steven frequented in Boston. In spite of this, she bumped into him and his girlfriend all too often—the woman always stared at Sarah as if she were something unpleasant that had crossed her path. Not the other way around.

  But that was nothing compared to the death of a young woman at a party in Paris. Sarah looked at the letter sitting on the table in front of her. The idea that had started forming in her head was turning into a plan.

  What if somewhere there were letters from Henry to Marthe that were as revealing as the one she had just found? If the courtesan had kept all her correspondence, this was not a long shot. What was more, the idea of getting away from Boston, from her own past, for a little while was more than tempting; it seemed like a release. What if she could rent Marthe de Florian’s apartment?

  Summer in Paris was starting to sound like the perfect idea.

  The following morning, Sarah steeled herself against any further doubts. Over breakfast in the museum’s elegant café, she convinced her boss, Amanda, that she would like to use her sabbatical right now. Before she could think again, she would call the owner of Marthe’s apartment—a Monsieur Loic Archer. What if Marthe had corresponded regularly with Henry? What then? There had to be more clues to Louisa’s life and end in the apartment.

  Once Sarah was in her office, she closed her door, swept a hand through her glossy black bob, and dialed France.

  She explained, in her halting schoolgirl French, her reasons for wanting to rent the apartment. She said that she was hoping to make a reservation for the entire summer, but Loic Archer, the charming-sounding Frenchman who replied to her in English, speaking, curiously, without any French accent at all, sent all her hopes sinking like liquid down a smooth drain.

  “I understand your interest in the apartment, Sarah, and to tell the truth, I’m intrigued by your ancestor’s seeming connection with Marthe. But there is one problem. We have a clash. Laurent Chartier, the artist. I’m sure you’ve heard of him?”

  Sarah nodded in silence down the line.

  “Laurent,” Loic Archer went on, “needs to be in Marthe’s apartment for the entire summer—there is nothing I can do about it. He’s one of my oldest friends. We grew up together in Provence. I’m sure you know how famous he is. He’s been commissioned to paint a series of portraits for Vogue magazine in the style of Giovanni Boldini. You know, models, actresses, the sort of celebrities whom Boldini would have painted, were he alive now.”

  Sarah had heard of Laurent Chartier—he was a wunderkind, the next big French artist. He had held wildly successful exhibitions in Paris, London, and, more recently, New York. His style was ever changing. He adapted all the time. And that had made him extra famous, one to watch. His paintings sold for record prices because no one knew what sort of mode of expression he would take on next.

  “Laurent needs to be in the setting where Boldini painted while he works—the lighting, the props, Marthe’s things. Vogue is fixated on the idea of using the famous courtesan’s redisco
vered apartment as a backdrop for the series of paintings. It makes sense that he stays there. I’m sorry. He paints all night when he’s on a roll.”

  Loic was quiet for a moment. “This is a commission from the leading fashion magazine in the world in honor of one of our most famous portrait artists. The only option I can offer is that you share the apartment with Laurent. You would have your own bedroom, of course . . . otherwise, I’m happy to help you find somewhere else to stay in Paris.”

  Sarah stood up and paced around her office. While she adored her job, she hated to think how many hours she had spent stomping around this room during the past year. Typically, the stomping would be followed by a good dose of staring out the window at the street below, trying to contain her grief.

  Sarah closed her eyes.

  Loic Archer remained quiet.

  Sarah moved back to her desk. She collected the folder of notes for her next appointment. A woman wanted to bequeath her mother’s jewelry collection to the museum.

  She ran a hand over her trouser suit. “Please, could you ask if I could share the apartment with Laurent?” She steeled herself and waited for Loic’s response.

  “I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a silence. “There’s a few things you should know about Laurent.” Loic’s voice dropped so low that it sounded as if he were about to reveal state secrets on an international scale.

  Loic paused for a moment before he started to speak. “It might help—if you are going to live with him—if you understand what’s going on. Laurent is a very refined individual. He has a strong aesthetic. He abhors anything obnoxious, tasteless, or crass. But at the moment . . .” Loic coughed.

  Sarah stopped still for a moment, before moving towards the elevator.

  “Nowadays, he’s abandoned all that.” Loic went on in a rush. “He seems to think he’s some sort of Toulouse-Lautrec. He’s hanging with models. His behavior is a bit . . . wild.”

  Sarah had also heard stories, gossip. Laurent hung around with the elite set and he had done something naughty at Miami Art Basel last year, but Sarah couldn’t recall exactly what. She bit back her instinctive response and pressed the elevator button instead, gazing at the red numbers on the screen. She had made an art of focusing on what was right in front of her just to move forward every day after what had happened with Steven.