Page 28 of The Art of Theft
“That’s how I feel morning and night—and often in the middle of the day, too—that I am still at large, that everyone I love is still safe, and that my life is still my own.”
The clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, yet she saw nothing but starlight in his eyes. She had never known such an unpolluted soul, such purity of spirit. “I envy you,” she said.
“Because I’m happy?” He grinned. “My sister says I’m too young to know any better.”
Ah, here was something she’d been wondering about. Charlottehad told her that he was at least five years younger than her, but she’d been hoping that perhaps Charlotte was wrong, for once. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I will be twenty-one soon.”
Good heavens, he was even younger than she’d feared. There must be a full seven-year difference in their ages, as she was not far from her twenty-eighth birthday. “I—feel like a fossil standing next to you.”
“I happen to adore fossils. I have visited every museum of natural history in every major city we have passed through to see their paleontological collection. I even dragged my family to Lyme Regis in the hope of discovering some fossils myself.”
She laughed. It was so easy to laugh with him.
He reached across and took her hand. Her heart pounded. The boat tilted up all of a sudden, sending them both skidding across the deck. They ended up against a railing, her falling into him.
“Do you mind my age?” he asks.
“Somewhat. But I worry more that you will mind my age—or that other people will find our age difference ridiculous.”
“Well, our age difference will always be the same, but at least I’ll never be as young as I am now.”
They still clasped each other’s hands, still stood chest to chest.
“Maybe... I don’t mind your age at all. Maybe I like that you are young and kind and not at all cynical.”
She lifted a gloved hand and touched it to his face. She could not feel his skin, of course, but just the fact that she was doing something she had never dared in her life—somehow that made it less important that she was fast approaching the cliff of thirty, beyond which unmarried ladies plunged into utter uselessness and undesirability.
She pulled her hand back, shocked by her forwardness, after all. “I should—I should go see how Charlotte is getting on.”
The ferry reached Dieppe before dawn. By the time their train pulled into Gare du Nord in Paris, it was barely past eight in the morning. A cold drizzle greeted them, along with staff from the house that had been put under Lord Ingram’s disposal.
Paris was a better planned, more impressively laid-out city than London, which simply grew and spread however it liked. The thoroughfares were straight and wide, the grand houses that lined them, with pale stone stucco facades and slate-colored roofs, uniformly imposing. And the city as a whole seemed cleaner, less grimy than its English counterpart.
Livia expected to pull up at a town house rather similar to Lord Ingram’s dwelling in London. Instead, they were brought to a four-story, green-roofedhôtel particulier, a private mansion, set some distance back from the street and surrounded by high walls.
When Livia was younger, she’d been confused that the rich and powerful people of France all seemed to live in this or that hotel. Her governess had chuckled at her question and explained that anhôtelwas simply a large town residence, not necessarily an inn, the same way that a château was but a large country residence, and usually not a castle.
This one had an unusual name, Hôtel Papillon: Butterfly Residence. At the moment, the family that lived in the house was away and it was served by a skeleton staff. A manservant named Forêt, who spoke English with a pronounced French accent, welcomed Livia & co. and showed them to a dining table laden with coffee, hot chocolate, croissants, andpain au chocolat.
“I have been given to understand,” he said—I ’ave been giveng to undairzdang—“that theAnglaisprefer eggs for breakfast. I hope theseoeufs au cocottewill serve?”
He lifted a large domed lid to reveal a platter of ramekins, which turned out to contain baked eggs, made with cheese and ham. TheAnglaisgave their hearty approval and fell upon their meal, withthe exception of Charlotte, who ate slowly, gazing at the spread with the lasting regret of a monk who’d taken his vows immediately before inheriting a harem.
At the end of the meal, Forêt led them to a large library with a comfortable reading area and presented them with a dossier. “Mesdames, Monsieur, milord’s friend brought this for you.”
They thanked him and waited until he’d left to open the dossier.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Watson immediately exclaimed, “but Lord Ingram’s ally works fast. These must be the architectural plans for Château Vaudrieu.”
While she, Charlotte, and Mr. Marbleton bent over the architectural plans, Livia picked up a magazine from the dossier, which happened to be an omnibus that reprinted articles from other publications. She flipped through a feature from theJournal of the Royal Geographic Societyon Chinese Turkestan, another on the current and future development of railway tunnels in the Italian Alps, before landing on a piece concerning the Château Vaudrieu masquerade ball.
The article, which originally appeared in an American magazine, presupposed its readers to be unfamiliar with everything about the ball. That assumption of ignorance grated on Livia, but because of it, the author omitted no details or explanations.
The château was described as sitting on extensive grounds, with its own apple orchard and a herd of dairy cows. One approached via a splendid tree-lined boulevard, lit for the occasion with thousands of paper lanterns. The would-be revelers then traversed a formal garden with extensive parterres, abundant sculptures, and dramatic fountains, before—and here the writer nearly swooned with excitement—crossing a handsome stone bridge that led to the actual manor.
For the edifice itself was situated on an island one third of the way into a lake, which acted as a natural moat, and the bridge was the only access. At either end of the bridge stood gates that could belocked. As if those weren’t enough, a third gate barred the way on the island itself, in the center of high wrought iron railings that surrounded a courtyard that was also a miniature formal garden.
