Of course Nigel was not here—the inability to smell tea brewing would be to him worse than all the tortures of hell combined (if hell existed: thus far no evidence suggested that it did). She was suddenly desperate to be as far away from breakfast as possible.
Her desperation—how did one control desperation?—hurled her back through the flapping doors and down the hallway, depositing her once more at the edge of the lobby.
The doors to the great ballroom—inset with authentic Tiffany panels designed by Louis Comfort himself—were shut, but Nigel could have traversed them. He loved the airy, high-ceilinged space in the daylight hours, when it was empty, he said, except for dancing ghosts. As she started forward, a rush of wind blew her back: the concierges, hurrying across the lobby.
{just so y’all know what’s up… been posting on Instagram this week from the Londinian hotel, right smack in the middle of Bloomsbury, where my novel-in-progress, PATRON SAINT OF CHEATERS, is set, little snippets paired with images, leading up to this week’s dose of Bad, Bad Love, which is about a chapter-and-a-half’s worth of Bad, Bad Love, afterlife style… would love to hear what folks think, so leave a comment or DM me over on Instagram…}
Both of them at once. Unheard of. They switched shifts at six a.m. and then again twelve hours later. Unobtrusively, but she had seen them do it—the overlap lasted a minute, maybe two, and they never performed tasks together.
But here they were. Ageless faces, freckled and ruddy. Dimpled chins, eyes the bright blue of periwinkles, dressed in their dark, double-breasted suitcoats, brass buttons agleam, long (and period-perfect) coattails flapping behind them. First cousins—as one had told her once, the daytime one—who looked more like twin brothers. But these concierges were of her own ilk: she could see through them both—walls, the fireplace, the vases with their calla lilies. A third concierge, identical but for his lack of transparency (a service-industry dynasty, perhaps?), still wrestled with the giant heart-shaped wreath.
With a flutter of disquiet and not in time to avoid encounter, Madeleine realized that the transparent concierges were hurrying, not only across the lobby, but toward her.
“It’s late!” Arms akimbo, they boxed her in. “Wherever have you been?”
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” the stouter of the two observed, crossly. And unnecessarily, Madeleine thought, given the blowsy profusion of papier-mâché hearts. “There’re some very unhappy ones. No time to waste!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must have me confused with someone else.” With an appearance of greater calm than she felt, Madeleine slid through the lattice formed by their transparent elbows. “I’m on a rather urgent errand.”
“No mix up here,” said the stout one, stepping closer and thrusting his chin in her direction as he looked her up and down. “You’re the one we’re after.”
Madeleine forced herself not to recoil. Quelled desire to flee, so as not to rocket through the ballroom doors and excite them further.
“Your name is Madeleine, is it not?” The slender man’s voice was smoother than his companion’s, more reasonable. And, maybe, more to be feared. “We could help you with your errand. That’s what we’re here for. We’re concierges!”
He was offering her a pleasant smile. “If you assist us for an hour or two, we can help you. One good turn, then another. We know where everything is around here.”
Madeleine looked carefully from face to nearly-identical face. These two could potentially save her centuries of vain searching. The hotel was enormous, there was only one of her, and Nigel’s wanderings were anything but linear. “An hour.”
“Two, if you please. But not a minute longer.” The slender concierge inclined his head deferentially. “You have our word.”
“What would I be doing?”
“It’s quite simple.” Another slight bow. “But showing is easier than telling. If you’ll just come with us, if you’d be so kind…”
“The last one moved on decades ago, as they do.” The fatter man sounded chipper now that a deal was in the offing. “The work’s been piling up ever since. It’ll be a bit of a shocker at first, but you’ll fall right into it, they all do.”
The pace across the lobby was vertiginous, the carpet runner, with its bright flowers and birds, melting behind them like froth on the crest of a wave. They flew past the enormous mirror in its gilded frame that reflected only the opulent lobby back unto itself, heading for a door. Unobtrusive, marked ‘Staff Only’ in plain capital letters cut into a no-nonsense plaque. The maids’ utility closet, tucked underneath the stairs that led to the mezzanine. Madeleine had often seen the girls in the mornings on her way out to the library. They sorted bed linens and towels and toiletries onto their carts, conversing in hushed Polish. If they thought she was going to clean rooms, they were gravely mistaken.
At their approach, the door became blurry—had she been staring at a computer screen, she would have said it pixelated—then swam back into focus. A pearled border appeared around the sign, the squat, utilitarian letters replaced by lacy cursive:
Consultations 9-11 a.m. By appointment only.
The portly porter inserted a heavy, old-looking key into the lock.
Instead of a supply closet, she was hustled, albeit not without gentility, into a high-ceilinged room, its wallpaper stamped with golden roses, baby’s breath, harps. And stags. Like the one in the mezzanine window, through the reverse side of which wan light filtered from far above. They were inside the staircase. Madeleine fought an onslaught of claustrophobia by looking around. Familiarizing herself with her surroundings. Identifying possible escape routes (though there was only one door, she could probably fly up and out through the window if she had to).
Before a cheerfully snapping fire sat a prissy chair upholstered in gold brocade, a stool for feet much tinier than hers, and a small basket of embroidery. Despite the many hours she’d spent in her mother’s sewing room, Madeleine had never learned; Belle had been the one talented with a needle. She hoped she wouldn’t be expected to sew.
The slender concierge was staring, in scrunch-browed concentration, at the empty surface of a spindly-legged escritoire. A rattling sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once—Madeleine maintained her nonplussed demeanor: they were certainly trying to intimidate her—and a book appeared. The concierge clasped his hands. “Ah, the poor ledger. Desperately in need of your attentions!”
The ledger—which, following some lesser rattling, was joined by a quill pen in a stand and a pot of ink—was a ponderous thing; it looked as though it might belong to a harried (and incompetent) accountant.
“Is this some sort of bookkeeping exercise?” Math had never been a strong suit of hers, but if they were going to lead her to Nigel, or reveal his whereabouts, she’d make an effort.
“After a fashion. Though your responsibilities pertain to souls rather than sums.”
The slender porter opened the ledger with a quivery gesture of his forefinger.
As the pages crackled—they were clearly old, though of paper rather than parchment; she’d handled far older materials—beside the ledger manifested a lamp, its shade ruched and fringed, like something out of a lady’s boudoir. And beside the lamp, a paperweight. Which was an actual Fabergé egg, Madeleine recognized the label. Not her style, but quality was quality.
Beneath the egg nestled a napkin. A jolt, as of electricity, coursed through her and out into the air around her, sparking green then purple; the concierges appeared not to notice. The napkin bore the Mon Plaisir insignia, circled by the imprint, in Lancôme Rouge Cerise, of her own mortal lips. The pact. They had found the pact. Madeleine felt as though she’d been extinguished and brought back into being again, all in one exquisite, excruciating moment. She was filled with sweet calm, the very opposite of the dark, sickening panic that had gripped her earlier. With the sweet calm came a surety of the rightness of every choice she had ever made, leading her to this strange, wonderful place, to this strange and wonderful threshold, prelude to the reward befitting the rightness of those choices, and their bravery.
The slender concierge was looking at her in a kindly manner. “Please.” He pulled a spindly chair out with a quiver of his finger. “Do sit down.”
Which she did, as gracefully as she was able to manage: it was very strange not to feel the chair beneath her posterior.
The concierge indicated the pages before her—shakily marshaled columns of names and dates, all but indecipherable, with passages scratched out in gloppy blots, notes in the margins, notes to the notes. “You and your beloved are not the first to have had the idea of reuniting here, having enjoyed the earthly benefits of our grand hotel.”
“Far from it!” The portly porter, wearily. Madeleine had almost forgotten him. “They’ve been showing up since the days of Charlie Faversham.”
“The gentleman you encountered in the library.” The slender cousin, helpfully. “Our architect. He’s always there of a morning, with his paper. He had a roving eye, and once the hotel was built, well… he could easily afford the price of a night’s stay, even if only for the afternoon.” The man tastefully avoided Madeleine’s gaze, busying himself with the pen and the inkwell.
“Not like the tawdry lot that left their wives at home to have it off in the backs of taxis, riding round and round Regent’s park. Old Faversham did it up right, in a room with a bed.”
The slender concierge pointedly ignored his cousin’s crudeness. “He fell desperately in love with one of his paramours, and she with him. Much younger. A suffragette—and him so conservative, but love triumphs over all! She even donned flapper apparel for him, on occasion, a significant concession for one with such progressive views. They trysted here for years, their respective spouses none the wiser. Until she died, just after the Great War, of the Spanish Flu.”
“Like the both of us,” the portly porter chimed in. “Tommies brought it back from the goddamned trenches.”
“Never mind us.” A reproving glance. “She was a volunteer nurse, for the returning wounded, but when the flu hit, she cared for its victims as well. He warned her she’d get sick, and then of course she did.”
“She was the first to show up in this condition”—the stout porter indicated his own transparent midsection—“right around the time we did. They needed us to run the place.”
“Run what place? The hotel?” Interrupting was rude, but the conversation was beginning to meander. “And might we please get to the point of what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“Correct. A certain dimension of the hotel.” The slender concierge, unruffled. “And we shall soon get to your task. We’re merely giving you a bit of background. Socio-historical context, I believe the term is, in your previous line of work.”
“You know about that?”
“Why do you think we chose you?” The slender concierge crooked a finger, drawing the ledger a few inches closer to Madeline. “There they are, Charlie Faversham and his flapper, at the top of the page.” It was true—Madeleine was just beginning to decipher the ornate hand, to distinguish letters from flourish. The flapper’s name was Nell. “She swore he’d come to her when he died, and he did. In 1929. By then, of course, we had others showing up, many, many others—there appears to be some sort of pull… The Cambrai has always attracted adulterous dalliance.”
“And lascivious assignation.” A satiated leer spread across the stout porter’s features, as though he’d just come from one himself.
“This place was a whorehouse?” Madeleine looked from one to the other.
“Heavens no, that was Soho.”
“Red lights over the doors! Rooms above the bars rented out by the hour, full of boys on furlough. Especially the Canadians, they were the best paid, and they got the clap for their troubles!”
“As I say, the Cambrai saw nothing of the sort. This was, and is, an upscale establishment. We trade only in discreet, longstanding assignation. Worthy lovers, as it were. Such as yourself.” A nod to Madeleine. “Admirable. Not that we pry.”
“But one does see things…” The portly porter grinned. “And hear them.”
Madeleine felt as though her black dress had melted away, revealing the most intimate secrets of her pale, tender ectoplasm.
“Oh, we can no more see through doors than you can.” The slender porter’s soothing voice, as though he’d read her mind, and maybe he had. “And we never go into the rooms.”
“But they all do, without so much as a by-your-leave.” The portly concierge sounded aggrieved. “Double occupancies, overlaps, territorial disputes—most disorderly.”
“Yes, the ledger is in quite a state.” The slender porter again signaled the pages before her. “We hear you’ve a remarkable talent with badly catalogued material! And that you…relish your job.”
They’d likely learned of her archival triumphs, the most memorable being the moldy, midge-eaten documents hoarded by an aging group of nuns—all afflicted with clinically-diagnosable Alzheimers, including the ‘librarian’—living in a falling-down-around-their-ears convent in a forlorn hamlet in the north of Portugal.
She’d planned to stay three days and had ended up remaining, practically cloistered herself, for upwards of three weeks, in sub-par lodgings above the village tavern. In exchange for which travails she’d gotten fragments of a twelfth-century copy of the Floire et Blanchefleur legend—the star-crossed Christian and Muslim lovers, princess and prince, saved by their own smarts and a last-minute softening of the heart of Blanchefleur’s evil Sultan captor. The crumbly bits of parchment were scrawled across the back with seventeenth-century market lists, eggs and flour and root vegetables. The article had garnered her worldwide renown, in the rarified circles occupied by career medievalists, and early tenure.
“They take up very little space as such, but the trouble is, they all want their own rooms, they like their privacy.” The slender cousin shook his head regretfully. “And we simply can’t have singles occupying doubles, or the executive suites, for heaven’s sake.”
“So you want me to sort the room assignments out. Pair them up like college freshmen…”
“It’s a bit more delicate than that.”
“No good having them wander the halls,” the stout concierge stirred the fire remotely with a period-perfect poker by staring aggressively in its direction. “Which they’ll all tell you they’re prepared to do in a pinch. Can’t be allowed. Makes the place drafty, the guests complain.”
“A lot of them will simply have to go. And others will be downgraded. The suites, as I am sure you’ve guessed”—the slender cousin—“are reserved only for the very best ones.”
“The best ones?” Madeleine felt as though she’d wandered into a house of mirrors.
“That’s why we have you here. You’re good at managing difficult personalities, or so we’ve heard.” The department chair thing. “And clearly something of an expert in matters of adulterous love.”
“As regards medieval romance.”
“There must be some instructive parallels.” The slender concierge cocked his head, pensive. “Lancelot and Guinevere, perhaps?”
“I’d hardly call them exemplary,” Madeleine replied. “Social constraints stemming from a patriarchal desire to keep the royal bloodline pure landed Guinevere in a nunnery. A dalliance that basically causes the collapse of the realm, because—it is implied—the woman couldn’t keep her legs together.”
“Oh, dear, I’d forgotten that bit.” The slender concierge tsked. “In the end, no one got what he wanted. Or she.”
“They had a roll in the hay!” The stout concierge.
The slender concierge neatly shouldered his cousin out of the conversation. “Peleas et Melisende?”
“Never consummated, so not adulterous sensu stricto.” Peleas and Melisende had always annoyed Madeleine. “Not that the jealous brother believed them, so they might as well have.”
« Fleur et Blanchefleur!” The slender concierge clasped his ghostly hands together, one visible through the other; the word ‘palimpsest’ came to her and wouldn’t leave. “I believe you have significant expertise regarding that particular pair?”
“A bit.” Madeleine allowed herself to bask, if ever so slightly. So few people appreciated scholarship. “That relationship was most definitely consummated.”
“I’ll say it was! And more than a few times!”
By unspoken agreement, both Madeleine and the slender concierge ignored the outburst. “But they weren’t adulterers per se—they were allowed to marry once their interfaith relationship was sanctioned by their respective cultures.”
“Well, then, which are your favorites?” The slender concierge leaned over Madeleine’s shoulder, toward the ledger. Confidingly, she thought. He actually cared about medieval lovers!
“Tristan and Isolde.” As she spoke the names, her mouth filled with the memory of honey. “Arthurian outliers, with possible Welsh origins. And most certainly adulterers.” Waltraud Meier’s mezzo echoed, for a brief instant. The slender concierge heard it too, he must have, for their glances met, parting as the unearthly notes vanished. The stout concierge, oblivious, stirred the fire with a disgruntled look. “But in the service of a higher love.”
“Equal passion on both sides!” The slender concierge’s smile was beatific. “So sorry for King Mark… They risked everything, sacrificed all for the sake of love.” A long sigh. “Of which they died.”
“Together,” Madeleine added, watching the concierge’s face carefully.
“He expired in her arms, did he not?”
“He did.”
“Well!” The slender concierge was suddenly brisk. “Your standards, it seems, are quite clear!”
“So… you’d like me to draw up a new list of rooms and occupants? With a written report justifying my decisions?” Which sounded dismally similar to an annual report, which Madeleine had despised preparing.
“Not exactly.” With a discreet quiver of the slender concierge’s finger, a delicate little chair, twin to the one in which she sat, appeared on the other side of the escritoire, positioning itself at an open, inviting angle. A familiar sight—all too. No more office hours had been at the top of Madeleine’s list of the Ten Most Attractive Things about Being Dead.
“I’m going to meet with them!?”
“Of course. Someone has perform the interviews—some of which, sadly, must be exit interviews, can’t be helped—and inform them of their new lodging assignments.”
“Not you?”
“Heavens, no, we’re concierges. In a well-run hotel, the guests are hardly aware of our presence. That’s the goal. The managerial position is yours.”
The department chair thing had condemned her to this.
“They’ll be queuing up any moment.” The portly concierge clattered the poker back into its stand and, approaching the escritoire, began to scan the ledger. “Good God, there’s a thirty year back-up here!”
“Time does pass,” the slender concierge answered mildly. “Little awareness though we may have of that fact.”
Pages flipped noisily. “It was here.”
“No, no, no, here.”
“That far back?”
“Further, man, further.”
As they bickered, Madeleine glanced up at the window. The stag glowed with an inner, otherworldly light—appropriate, she was in another world—which seemed to find its way, in an inexplicable way, into the deepest recesses of whatever she was now.
Nigel was waiting for her, the glow reminded her. And the concierges knew where he was.
“It’s here”—an emphatic nod from the slender concierge. “I told you.” Then he locked gazes with Madeleine. “You’ll have to make some difficult decisions.”
Madeleine gave a professional nod.
“You who prize excellence”— Madeleine cringed slightly at the word, haloed by grandiosely empty associations in higher-ed jargon of recent years—“in all things, and above all, in matters of love.” Though it was also true that, when excised from the admin-speak into which it had been unjustly marshaled, ‘excellence’ was a perfectly blameless word. “You’ll do a fine job, I have no doubt, and you will be duly compensated. You have our word.” The slender concierge backed away from the escritoire, bowed, and disappeared through the door.
His cousin followed suit, minus the bow. From beyond the door, “Be on your guard—you can’t believe a thing they say. And they will say anything!”
Then silence. She was alone.
A clock appeared on the wall, its face wreathed in rococo frills. 4:00.
A.M., clearly—the window had gone dark, the stag all but indistinguishable against the gloom. Madeleine felt disoriented for a moment, then grateful. They’d rolled back time, or something had, to allow her to prepare.
She glanced at the pact, beneath its Fabergé egg, then bent her head to the ledger.
She would find them, the worthy lovers. Amongst all the scribbles and the yellowed newspaper clippings, the dried flowers and old theater bills. Between the notes and the notes to the notes. The scratch-outs upon scratch-outs upon scratch-outs.
She would make of the ledger a pristine marvel of order and efficiency. She would fill the suites with noble lovers. The other rooms with pairs whose merits were lesser but nonetheless worthy. She would compassionately dispatch those whose lack of merit required it.
And then she would see Nigel.
~
MUCH LIKE AN AMAZON PREVIEW, CHAPTER 4 IS BEING WITHHELD, SO THAT WHEN THIS IS AN ACTUAL NOVEL, YOU HAVE AT LEAST SOME INCENTIVE TO GIVE ENOUGH OF A CRAP TO PICK IT UP…
~
.5.
When she looked up to check the clock—so slow now, four minutes, even standard ones, seemed an eternity—she was not alone.
Leaning against the mantel, to the left of the fireplace, stood a woman.
Who hadn’t come in the way the others had, or she’d have seen.
Not a woman. A girl, short and slight, in a fringy red brocade skirt that looked as though it might once have been a curtain. Gypsy earrings—showers of gold coins, glinting in the stray glimmers thrown by the flames. A black shawl over some sort of chemise, matching the black lace scarf tied over her dark hair.
The clothes were easy to place: the ‘bohemian’ look adopted around the time of the First World War by Nigel’s adored Bloomsbury Group. There were hundreds of photographs of them, convivially sipping tea or cocktails, or playing croquet on the lush lawn of one or another’s country estate. Though there were poor Bloomsberries, there were also rich ones, or comfortably well-off ones, to buck the rest of them up with food and drink and gypsy clothes.
The girl’s features came into sharper focus as she sauntered forth from the shadows. Broad cheekbones, deep, dark pools of eyes. Chin in a point, mouth both full and sculpted, like a doll’s, accented by an impudent black mole. Likely not yet thirty, perhaps even a hard-ridden twenty-five. But there was world-weary bitterness in the way she draped herself into the prissy gold chair, pulling a chipped little enameled box from her pocket and extracting a cheroot, which she proceeded to light. She took a deep drag and exhaled, producing no smoke. Which was predictable, but disconcerting nonetheless.
As was the slightly hellish effect of the dancing flames through the folds of her black lace shawl.
The girl studied her openly, her skin for a moment taking on the pink-tinged purple hue of a heliotrope, before fading back to a soft, grainy gray. “The new patronne, I presume.” The voice had a gravelly, hoarse edge. The girl—her French accent was atrocious—continued to stare.
Madeleine stared back. The face was strangely familiar, like someone on a plane you were sure you’d encountered before, which—you were equally sure—was impossible. Maybe one of the Bloomsbury women?
Because of Nigel, Madeleine knew them all.
Not Virginia Woolf, with her drawn, sad eyes. Nor the sister, the painter, Vanessa, who, though prettier, had shared Virginia’s attenuated features and Grecian profile.
Not Lady Ottoline Morell, whose legendary wealth and wardrobe had never quite made up for the large nose and horsey countenance. Nor the artist Dora Carrington—another notable nose—for whose comic little stick figures (behind which lurked years of discontent in an unhappy marriage) Nigel had a tender affection.
The girl before her was petite, elfin (and therefore not to be confused with the tall, lissome Nina Hamnett, famously gorgeous until she drank herself first ugly, and then to death). Attractive, in an androgynous, vaguely disturbing way. A hanger-on, perhaps; someone’s waylaid daughter. The clock’s tick was loud in the stretching silence. Though the second hand appeared not to advance at all.
Madeleine glanced down at the ledger. The appointment space for today was blank—once the names were scratched out, they too had disappeared—damnatio memoriae. Her doing. Madeleine felt desolate, alone. To blame. Blameworthy.
The girl—who stared fixedly at Madeleine, taking in every detail of her appearance, from head to toe—should not be here.
Madeleine assumed her most authoritative, professorial tone. She’d go through the motions. “Your name, please.”
“Edwina Grant, née McFarris.” The girl stretched out her legs and crossed one black-booted foot over the other, staring pointedly at Madeleine’s feet. “Very nice footwear, by the way. Classy. Maybe we could trade off sometime, I bet we wear the same size.”
“You’re not in the book and I’m just finishing up, so I’m afraid whatever you’ve come here to discuss—likely not shoes—will have to wait. I’m sure it’s not a matter of life or death.” Madeleine was pleased with her deadpan delivery of the final line.
The young woman smirked. “Not of mine.” The dark eyes traveled slowly over Madeleine’s face now, cataloguing her features. The clock ticked. “You are her!”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, mais oui.” The dark eyes narrowed. “The one that popped herself off in 176. The suite. Been in there a few times myself. Very nice. If you’re going, go in style. And now here she is, la patronne in her new bureau!” Edwina Grant, née McFarris, looked around the room, contempt curling her upper lip, above it that mole. It had to be painted on. “Figures. It’s always the bloody suicides.” She snickered. “And they certainly had a bloody time of it getting you down the stairs!” An impish grin revealed small, ivory-colored teeth, the incisors vicious. “You’d started to slide about on the gurney, perhaps they hadn’t strapped you down properly, and the poor man had to stop on the entresol—that’s French for mezzanine, you know”—the girl sat forward in her chair, chin balanced waggishly on the heel of her hand—“and get you back into position. The sheet had slipped. He pulled it back up, bien sûr, but I got a good look at you.”
“At us.”
“At you and the orderly, do you mean?”
“No, the man who was with me.” Madeleine had the sense of falling, quickly, through air. Though she was stationary. She would not betray her discomfort to this girl. This dangerous girl.
“There wasn’t any man with you. Other than the orderly, and then his mate—he needed some help getting you down the last bit.”
“Then they’d have brought him down separately, either before or after me.” Madeleine forced herself to return the impudent stare with a steady gaze.
Edwina Grant, née McFarris, shook her head. “T’was only the one gurney, and you were on it.” The dark eyes narrowed. “You know, now I think of it, I did see a man leave the room, but that was hours before they brought you out. He was alive, very much so. And in quite the rush.”
“That’s not possible.” Madeleine spoke slowly, as though reasoning a confused student through an argument in medieval logic. “We had a pact.” Madeleine glanced down. The place on the escritoire formerly occupied by the napkin was empty. The egg was gone too. The falling feeling again.
“No, I didn’t take your stupid napkin.” Edwina Grant, née McFarris, flicked her cheroot toward the carpet, as though ashes might fall. “The concierges will have it.” The cheroot was an affectation, a ridiculous one. And there were patches, cleverly sewn but patches nonetheless, hidden in the folds of the red brocade gypsy skirt. These observations focused her, held the falling feeling in abeyance. “They can take things by thinking about them. They’re quite good.”
“The napkin is immaterial. Nigel and I had a pact. He’d never have broken it.”
“Tosh—every relationship is a sort of pact, isn’t it? And no one keeps them. Husbands, wives, parents, children. This life, that life, after life, makes no difference. Surely you lived long enough to sort that out.”
Ringing in her ears, the awful dizziness was back, as she’d felt it on the mezzanine (it seemed important that she not think of it as an entresol). The lovers, the dozens and dozens of them, dazed amid all the broken promises, like shards of treasured heirlooms, shattered at their feet. But not her. Not Nigel. Never. “Impossible. It must have been someone else you saw leaving.”
“You don’t have to take my word for it. Go and check—you’re perfectly able!” An emptiness inside her, pulling from within. The feeling of not being, of not existing. Of never having been, which would be better than this. “The rest of us are stuck here. Unless, of course, you give us the boot.” Edwina Grant, née McFarris, swung her own. “Be my guest, by the way. Make my day.”
“You’re not in the book.” Focus on that, on the violation of protocol. “Should you be?”
“Should, could, would. Might have been. Maybe someday. But not today!” The wicked smile, the feral teeth. “Today is your day. This is about you! And your wayward objet d’amour.” The pronunciation. Abominable. An affront to France and to the French people. Madeleine focused on the pronunciation. “If they gave you this office and that book, you can go anywhere you please. So go and see for yourself. He looked fit as a fiddle to me.”
And then several things happened at once, which Madeleine barely noticed, though she’d remember them later. The clock above the fireplace began to chime—finally the four minutes, which had seemed so many more, were over; the chimes were sweet this time, the notes of an English folksong she almost recognized. The sweetness seemed to mock her—her disbelief, her confusion—as though orchestrated, ironically, by the rough-edged woman seated in the chair before her, though that was an illogical assumption and she should probably not make it.
She heard the concierges’ mumbled bickering behind the door. The rattling of the key into the lock. Edwina Grant, née McFarris, started, looked over her shoulder, and vanished, but not before slipping back into the corner from which she’d materialized, to grasp a little girl by the hand. Probably eight or nine years old, Madeleine was bad at guessing children’s ages, never having cared to spend much time around them. Golden curls that spilled past her shoulders, impossibly large eyes, a sharp little chin. The child was dressed as a boy, in green velvet, an addled fancy’s version of little Lord Fauntleroy.
All this barely glimpsed because the little girl vanished, along with the girl-woman who was certainly—unfortunate child—her mother, just as the door opened to admit the concierges.
First the slender one, followed closely by his portly cousin, but not by Nigel. Why, for God’s sake, didn’t they just melt through the door? And why, as her soul was being snipped to shreds by a dull pair of scissors, did she care?
Madeleine sat very straight behind her desk. She could ask them about Nigel – perhaps they’d put the pact on the desk to warn rather than to flatter or congratulate her – but a darkness had taken hold inside her, a mistrust of herself, of him, of her own perceptions. If she were in fact a typical mistress, tossed aside by her married lover, she wanted confirmation—she was a scholar, after all. Why should she trust these two to give her accurate information?
And she wanted no pity.
Not even commiseration, or sympathy, which the slender concierge would certainly offer. Cheaply. Dishonestly.
They’d known all along that she’d been betrayed, abandoned, Nigel leaving her still warm in the King-plus bed, sneaking out in the middle of the night like a thief. Like Trippy Vickie, leaving John Bristow to his ecstatic, drug-addled death throes. They’d let her cruelly judge—and evict, to God knew where—hundreds of unhappy lovers, knowing all the while that not only had Nigel not sacrificed all, he’d sacrificed nothing.
“Seems it went well!” The slender concierge eyed the ledger, the substantial chunk of shifted pages, with approval. “There was quite a wind in the hallway!”
“Out with the old, in with the new,” came the hackneyed quip from the portly cousin. “They’ve had their chance, now it’s someone else’s turn.”
“Don’t be insensitive. It can’t be easy for them. But!”—the other man turned to Madeleine, beaming—“It certainly does seem you’re cut out for the work! Your questions have been answered, I believe, so shall we escort you back to your suite?”
“I can make my own way, thank you.” They’d put the pact on the desk to taunt her.
“Splendid.” The slender man—absurdly—held the door open for her, bowing. “Until we meet again.”
Not if she could help it. Madeleine cast a covert glance up at the window.
But it told nothing of Nigel.
Only the stag was there. A new crack had appeared, splitting the pierced heart precisely in two.
~