man who hated his own flesh and blood. Maybe if she’d been tiny and pretty…But weren’t fathers supposed to love their daughters no matter how they looked?
She was too old for the baby tears she wanted to shed, so she slipped into her loafers and set out to explore. She found a back staircase leading into a garden where mathematically straight paths delineated geometric beds of ugly shrubbery. She told herself she was lucky to have been sent away from this horrible place. At the
She swiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. Some small, stupid part of her had wanted to believe her father would have a change of heart when he saw her. That he’d realize how wrong he’d been to abandon her. Stupid. Stupid.
She took in a T-shaped, one-story building sitting at the back of the grounds. Like the house, it was constructed of gray stone, but it had no windows. When she found the side door unlocked, she turned the knob and stepped into a jewel box.
Black watered silk covered the walls, and gleaming ebony marble floors stretched before her. Small, recessed spotlights shone down from the ceiling in starry clusters like a Van Gogh night sky, each cluster lighting an antique automobile. Their polished finishes reminded her of gemstones-rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and sapphires. Some of the automobiles rested on the marble floor, but many sat on platforms, so they seemed to be suspended in the air like a handful of jewels flung into the night.
Slim columns bearing engraved silver plaques sat next to each car. The heel plates of her loafers clicked on the hard marble floor as she investigated. Isotta-Fraschini Type 8, 1932. Stutz Bearcat, 1917. Rolls-Royce Phantom I, 1925. Bugatti Brescia, 1921. Bugatti Type 13, 1912. Bugatti Type 59, 1935. Bugatti Type 35.
All the automobiles grouped in the shorter wing of the L-shaped room bore the distinctive red oval of the Bugatti.
Positioned in the exact center, a brightly illuminated platform, larger than all the others, sat empty. The label at the corner of the platform had been printed in big, bold script.
BUGATTI TYPE 41 ROYALE
“Does he know you’re here?”
She spun around and found herself gazing at the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen. He had hair like fine yellow silk and small, delicately formed features. Dressed in a faded green pullover and rumpled chinos fastened at the waist with an oversized cowboy belt, he was much shorter than she and as small-boned as a woman. His long, tapered fingers had nails bitten to the quick. His chin was pointed, and pale eyebrows arched over eyes that were exactly the same brilliant shade of blue as the first spring hyacinths.
Belinda’s face looked back at her from the form of a young man. Her old bitterness rose like bile in her throat.
He looked younger than his fifteen years as he nibbled on the remnants of a thumbnail. “I’m Michel. I didn’t mean to spy.” He gave her a sad, sweet smile that suddenly made him look older. “You’re mad, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like people sneaking up on me.”
“I wasn’t really sneaking, but I guess that doesn’t matter. Neither of us is supposed to be here. He’d be pissed if he found out.”
His English was as American as hers, and that made her hate him even more. “He doesn’t scare me,” she said belligerently.
“That’s because you don’t know him.”
“I guess some of us are lucky.” She made the words as nasty as she could.
“I guess.” He walked over to the door and began flicking off the ceiling lights from a panel of switches. “You’d better go now. I have to lock up before he finds out we’ve been in here.”
She hated him for being so tiny and pretty. A puff of air could blow him away. “I’ll bet you do everything he tells you to. Like a scared rabbit.”
He shrugged.
She couldn’t face him a moment longer. She dashed through the door and rushed out into the garden. All those years she’d worked so hard to win her father’s love by being the bravest, the fastest, and the strongest. The joke was on her.
Michel gazed at the door his sister had disappeared through. He shouldn’t have let himself hope they’d be friends, but he’d wanted it so much. He’d needed something, someone, to help fill the aching chasm left by the death of the grandmother who’d raised him. Solange had said he was her chance to make up for past mistakes.
It was his grandmother who’d overheard his mother screaming the news to his father that she was pregnant with Michel. Belinda had told Alexi she wouldn’t give any more love to the child she was carrying than he’d given to the baby abandoned at the Couvent de l’Annonciation. His grandmother said his father had laughed at Belinda’s threats. He’d said Belinda couldn’t resist loving her own flesh and blood. That this baby would make her forget the other one.
But his father had been wrong. Solange was the one who’d held him, and played with him, and comforted him when he was hurt. Michel should be glad she was finally free from her suffering, but he wanted her back, puffing away on her lipstick-stained Gauloise, stroking his hair as he knelt in front of her, offering all the love that the others in the house on the Rue de la Bienfaisance denied him.
She was the one who’d negotiated the uneasy truce between his parents. Belinda had agreed to be seen in public with Michel in return for twice-yearly visits with her daughter. But the truce hadn’t changed the fact that his mother didn’t love him. She said he was his father’s child. But Alexi didn’t want him, either, not when he’d seen that Michel couldn’t be like him.
All the trouble in his family had happened because of his sister, the mysterious Fleur. Not even his grandmother knew why Fleur had been sent away.
He left the garage and made his way back to his rooms in the attic. He’d gradually transported his belongings up there until no one remembered exactly how it was that the heir to the Savagar fortune came to be living in the old servants’ quarters.
He lay on his bed and locked his hands behind his head. A white parachute hung as a canopy over his small iron bed. He’d bought it in an army surplus store not far from the Boston prep school he attended. He liked the way the parachute rippled in the moving air currents and sheltered him like a great, silken womb.
On the whitewashed walls he’d hung his precious collection of photographs. Lauren Bacall in Helen Rose’s classic red sheath from
He picked up his sketch pad and began drawing a tall, thin girl, with bold slashes for eyebrows and a wide mouth. His telephone rang. It was Andre. Michel’s fingers began to tremble around the receiver.
“I just heard the wretched news about your grandmother,” Andre said. “I’m so sorry. This is very difficult for you.”
Michel’s throat constricted at the warm show of sympathy.
“Is it possible for you to slip out this evening? I-I want to see you. I want to comfort you,
“I’d like that,” Michel said softly. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you. England was beastly, but Danielle insisted on staying through the weekend.”
Michel didn’t like being reminded of Andre’s wife, but soon Andre would leave her, and the two of them would move to the south of Spain and live in a fishing cottage. In the mornings Michel would sweep the terra-cotta floors, plump the cushions, and set out earthenware pitchers filled with flowers and wicker bowls piled with ripe fruit. In the afternoons, while Andre read him poetry, Michel would create beautiful clothes on the sewing machine he’d taught himself to use. At night they would love each other to the music of the Gulf of Cadiz lapping at the sandy shore outside their window. That’s the way Michel dreamed it.
“I could meet you in an hour,” he said softly.
“An hour it is.” Andre’s voice dropped in pitch. “
