The Consequence

by Giana Darling

  “It really is gorgeous, Richard. You have fabulous taste.”

  He nodded as he pulled away, prompting me to laugh again. “Sinclair does as well. He is a very detailed man and frankly, a pain in my ass most of the time. But the end result is always worth his breathing down my neck, ordering me to redo the blue prints a thousand and one times.”

  My Frenchman enjoyed control in all things. “He’s a man with a plan.”

  Richard gave me an appraising look. “He is, indeed. You should be prepared for that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He took my hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “I have a feeling he has a number of plans for you.”

  “He dated Elena for four years without much forward momentum. I think we are happy to take things slowly.”

  Besides, we hadn’t even told Elena or the rest of my family about our relationship yet. That was something that I was dreading more than anticipating, if I was being honest. Just because I had decided not to live without Sinclair didn’t mean that I was eager to sacrifice my family, especially when we had just reunited.

  “I think we both know that Elena wasn’t right for him. Now that he has the right woman, I have no doubt that he will want to charge ahead. Don’t let him sweep you into anything you aren’t ready for, he has a habit of doing that to people.”

  We walked into the left side of the hotel where the elevator bank to this portion of the hotel was. The one we took was beautifully appointed with a red velvet bench at the back and wood paneling that harkened back to historic French designs.

  “I appreciate that you’ve known him longer than I have, but I really don’t think you are right about this. It was hard on Sinclair to make the decision to choose me. I think we just need easy now, probably for a while. It’s a massive adjustment for both of us but mostly for him.”

  I mean as of under a week ago, Sinclair was living with another woman.

  That woman being my sister.

  Yes, we were definitely going to take it slow.

  “How do you even know that I’m the right woman for him?” I asked softly, because despite his declarations it was difficult not to compare myself to the elegant and successful Elena or find myself unequal to Sinclair’s own brand of movie star quality good looks and too-good-to-be-true awesomeness. And I meant that in the traditional sense of the word; I was in awe of him.

  “If the only thing I knew was that Sinclair, a man I know to be steadfast, whip smart and intensely loyal, had left Elena and his beloved well-ordered life to be with another woman, I would know it was the right choice. As much as he has succeeded in his professional life, he lived like a robot for years and I’m sorry to say, your sister has too. They enabled each other. Now, especially when I have had the pleasure of meeting you and more, knowing you, I can assure you that there is no woman more perfect for Daniel. He needs light, love and creativity. You seem to need the things that he has always been ashamed of, his intensity, his need for control and his deeply hidden sensitivity.”

  “Oh,” I responded, because I was struggling under the beautiful weight of his words.

  He grinned at me. “So, I wouldn’t be so sure about his desire to move slowly. If I’m right, you let me know if he’s speeding too fast for you and I’ll have a word with him, okay?” Richard led me off the elevator at the tenth floor and into a corridor lined with crown molding and subtle silver, floral patterned wallpaper.

  He looked down at me while giving my arm a squeeze. “I’ve worked with him since he was twenty one years old and hired my firm to renovate his club. Even though he is technically my boss now, I like to think that we are friends and maybe even that he thinks of me as a father figure.” He hesitated. “I know that I think of him as the son I never had.”

  It was my turn to squeeze his arm as I was flooded with warmth at his words. From what I had seen of Mortimer Percy, he seemed like a nice enough man, if not completely self-consumed. In direct contrast to him was Richard Denman, Sinclair’s right hand man and, apparently, a nearly life-long friend. It thrilled me to know that even though Sin underutilized his loved ones, he had them in spades.

  “I’ll let you know,” I promised.

  He searched my face for sincerity and, finding it, he nodded curtly. “Okay, let me show you our latest baby then.”

  After a long morning of touring the hotel with Richard, I left to walk around the surrounding streets of my old neighborhood while Sinclair finished his meetings somewhere across the city. Habit kicked in and somehow my feet took my to L’École des Beaux-Arts. It was the safe place I had found, thanks to Cosima and Sebastian’s generosity, after the hell I had fled from in Naples. It was the same place that had nourished the creative spirit of masters like Henri Matisse and Anne Rouchette. There was no other place in the world that felt more like home to me than the world-renowned university and even though my years studying there had been the loneliest of my life, I wouldn’t have changed the experience for anything.

  I smiled as I slipped through one of the buildings on a whim to find Madame Claremont’s studio. It was a large space lined with big square windows on three sides and currently a small class of artists-in-training was set up at easels painting a live nude model who reclined comfortably across a raised pedestal. I took a moment to appreciate how technically challenging it would be to reproduce the exaggerated curves and graceful rolls of the large woman on display before I swept the room looking for my mentor.

  She stood in the corner furthest from me but her eyes were already trained my way, studying the changes in me with the highly trained eye of both an artist and a friend. I took a moment to do the same with her; noting with surprising gratitude that she was no absolutely no way changed. Odile Claremont was the daughter of a poor farmer from Alsace who looked more Germanic than French, with long blonde hair she braided across the crown of her head and blue eyes so pale that they appeared colorless. She was in her sixties but looked forty, her pale skin unblemished because she never spent anytime in the sun.

  I finished my examination and nervously waited for her to do the same. She had more changes to catalogue so it took her a good few minutes. I tried not to squirm and immediately come to the conclusion that she hated what she saw. The last time I had seen her, the day before I left Paris, she had expressed her joy at seeing my natural red hair for the first time but since then, I had evolved in more than physical ways and I knew she would see those.

  “Continue. I will be outside in the hall if I am needed,” she told the class in a French murmur that somehow carried across the room.

  I loved the sound of her Alsatian accent so I was smiling at her, despite my anxiety, when she came my way. Without a word, she grabbed my hand and tugged me into the corridor, closing the door behind us.

  “Giselle,” she said into my hair as she enfolded me in her arms. “You look so well.”

  I dragged in a deep lungful of her turpentine and lily of the valley fragrance, feeling my worries evaporate.

  “I missed you more than I realized,” I said as we pulled away.

  She kept my hands in hers as she smiled at me. “And I, you. You promised to write and yet you did not.”

  I blushed under her reprimand. “Things were… absorbing in Mexico and then New York. It would have been impossible to tell you in print how my life has changed.”

  “Yes,” she said, casting another critical eye over me. “I can see it has changed fast and drastically. Tell me about the man.”

  “How do you know it’s about a man?”

  She made that French sound, a huff of breath exploding between her lips, a punctuation of sound. “No woman looks like this for any other reason.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Terrified, happy and alive.”

  I laughed. “Okay, yes, there is a man. You’ll love him.”

  “He’s here?” she asked, her pale eyebrows raised.

  “He brought me here to get away. Our situation is a little… unorthodox,” I
admitted.

  “Cherie, I am French. We are the kings and queens of unorthodox relationships.”

  I laughed again because that was true. The former President divorced his wife for his long time lover, a model and singer, while he was in office. Such a thing would have been unheard of in the United States.

  “I’ll tell you all about it,” I promised. “And I have a show coming up at DS Galleries. It’s a bit different than anything I’ve ever done before but I think you would be proud.”

  “Do you have pictures?” she asked, excitement making her bounce lightly on her toes.

  “I do.”

  “Excellente, I will finish with this class in half an hour and then you and I will go for wine, yes?”

  I pursed my lips, desperately wanting to but worried that it would interfere with whatever Sinclair had planned for that afternoon.

  Understanding inherently, Odile shook her head in mock exasperation. “Text your lover and tell him that I insist on stealing you away. I will return you drunk to your hotel and he will thank me for it.”

  I laughed again, knowing she was right.

  While I waited outside the building in the courtyard, I found out she was right. Sinclair texted back immediately to let me know he would reschedule our afternoon, that it was important for me to spend time with my mentor. I loved that he supported me so wholly. Not a lot of men in Sinclair’s world, one of business and money, would understand the life and business of an artist so I was grateful for his mother’s profession and for his own investment in the arts.

  Our affair in Mexico was also the kernel of inspiration that gave root to my collection. He was the man who had introduced me to the wild passions and delicious shadows of the erotic world, who made it safe for me to explore those depths after Christopher had tainted them.

  It was impossible not to think of the Englishman who had ruined my childhood now that I was back in Paris. I had fled to the city because of him and eventually fled from it when he had found me again. I had no doubt that one-day he would discover me once more; he was a tenacious but patient stalker. He would never suspect that I had joined my family though, partially because it was him who had worked so hard to tear us apart.

  I mulled over the similarities and differences of the two love triangles I had shared with my polar opposite sister. Christopher had never presented as anything but a gentleman. Mama had loved him, Seamus had relied on him to take care of us when he himself was absent on a drinking and gambling bender and he had spent considerable time teaching English to us kids. He was all but promised to Elena, a girl eight years younger than him, from the time she was fifteen. With her, he was kind, courteous and wise, if a bit aloof. They spent hours talking about politics, history and literature, their heads together over an open book at the kitchen table while Mama cooked, I sketched, and the twins ran around the house playing games.

  With me, as soon as I turned thirteen and developed the kind of body that was hard for men to ignore, Christopher was impassioned. It began with innocuous touches, murmured endearments and encouragements to touch him back, tell him that I loved him. It had taken me years to realize that even though he didn’t beat me, he was still a monster, one who brandished love as a weapon of manipulation instead of his fists. He had groomed me to be his since I was a young girl.

  The sexual acts didn’t start until I was fifteen and they never escalated to vaginal sex. That, he always said, he wanted to keep for our marriage night. Mama didn’t suspect anything untoward when he took me ‘out for gelato’ or into Rome to see some art gallery or another. I spent the night with him often, with my mother’s blessing. He never hurt me but I was always scared nonetheless.

  I didn’t know something was really wrong with our relationship until I mentioned it to Sebastian and Elena one day when they were bickering about Sebastian’s exploits with a local girl. I’d innocently divulged that kissing was nice, the only thing I liked about sex. Even though I was eighteen at the time, I didn’t understand the consequences that my naive comment would bring. Sebastian had immediately asked if Christopher and I had made love and when I assured him that we hadn’t, not fully understanding the question, he had relaxed slightly but told Mama that I wasn’t allowed to be alone with Christopher anymore.

  Two weeks later, Cosima had sent a letter telling me that she had the money to send me to L’École des Beaux-Arts and I knew that the twins had orchestrated it to get me away from him.

  Elena had reacted differently, obviously. We had never been close but after that confession she was cruel to me, calling me names and inviting Christopher over nearly every day but never letting him out of her sight, kissing him in front of me in a way she had never done before. She must have known how desperate he was to get me alone, how much yearning filled his eyes as he stared at me while his lips were locked with hers, but she wasn’t angry with him for it. She was angry with me.

  I was happy to leave them four months later to start school in Paris. By that time, Sebastian had left and Cosima was long gone. I was alone in Naples and I would be alone in Paris, but at least I would be without the two malevolent presences in my life.

  Cosima told me years later that Christopher asked for my information all the time, that Mama began to notice his erratic behavior and that she still allowed Elena to move in with him. She also told me that for that half a year our eldest sister had lived him, he had not been kind to her. I didn’t know the details and I’d never really delved into it before but it wouldn’t surprise me to know that he had sexually and emotionally abused her, taking out his heartbreak and desperation on her because he couldn’t have me.

  At least, that was the narrative I thought up in order to excuse Elena’s blatant hatred of me over the years.

  A year after I left, the twins found enough money to move Mama and Elena to New York City and they left Christopher behind. I didn’t know the story there, if he was happy to see them go or if they fled him like I had. He wasn’t something that I had ever talked about with anyone, even Cosima. That is, until the demons he had left me with cropped up in Cabo with Sinclair.

  Of course the situation with Sinclair was different but not totally so. If you wanted to strip it down to brass tacks, the way I knew Elena would when she eventually found out about Sinclair and I, it would be fair to draw the conclusion that in both triangles, the man had chosen me over her. It wasn’t as simplistic as that. It wasn’t fair to either circumstance or either man. It wasn’t even fair to Elena or me. But it was what she would see and it was one of the reasons, maybe even the core reason that she would never forgive me.

  Chapter Six.

  “How was your evening with Madame Claremont?”

  I was lying on top of a sweaty Sinclair, my entire body aligned with his, pressed front to front. My fingers were in his hair, threading through the damp strands. We were both exhausted from jet leg and a vanilla but vigorous bout of love making that I’d instigated the second I was in the door from drinks with Odile. As promised, she had plied me with enough wine to make me just the right amount of intoxicated and definitively horny. Sin had taken immediate advantage but it was the first time in a while that the Dom Sinclair hadn’t taken me. It didn’t bother me but I definitely noticed the difference and drunkenly wondered at it before moving on.

  “It was amazing. I forgot how libertine the French are, infidelity and affairs are par for the course so obviously, she wasn’t judgmental about us.”

  In fact, Odile had been positively thrilled about my romance with Sinclair. She had waxed on about how I was finally living my life for me instead of hiding behind ugly clothes, ugly hair and an ugly outlook on love. It had helped that I’d shown her photos of my paintings for the collection. If the path I’d taken toward sexual deviancy surprised her, she hadn’t expressed concern or disgust. Instead, she had informed me that she wasn’t one to judge as she was simultaneously dating three much younger men. At which point, I had begged her to paint all of them together for the show. She�
�d agreed and we set a date for Thursday at her private studio in Montmartre.

  I told Sinclair this, my words slightly slurred together from tiredness and a lingering intoxication that made me feel heavy and content.

  “Interesting woman,” he noted when I was done. “No wonder she helped inspire your talent so beautifully.”

  I tipped my head up so that he could see my smile but I was too lazy to open my eyes to see how he received it. Happily, I could tell he was pleased because he slid a hand down the curve of my back to rest it on one of my ass cheeks.

  “Are you enjoying Paris then, mon amour?”

  “Yes. I honestly didn’t think I would come back but I am happy to be here, happier than I thought I would be. I love Paris,” I said on a dreamy sigh.

  “We could move here, if you wanted. It would take me a while to organize the transition of Faire Developments’ offices but it could be arranged especially as we are doing so much business over here now.”

  My body tightened with shock. “Are you kidding?”

  I let out a squeak as he rolled us before I could protest. I stared up at him with wide eyes, drinking in his intense scowl with mute interest.

  “Do I look like I am kidding? I meant what I said when I was wooing you, Elle. I want to be with you in every conceivable way. If it were socially acceptable, I would cuff us together and never let you out of my sight. Not because I don’t trust you but because I love every minute with you, watching you react to the world, react to me as if I am some kind of world wonder. It makes a man feel fucking invincible. You give me that? The least I can do is concede to living any where in the world that you want to be most.”

  “When you say things like that I can’t believe that you’re real,” I admitted, placing a shaking hand to his cheek.

  He bit the edge of my thumb where it lay against the edge of his mouth. “You have time to get used to it. That is what I have been trying to tell you. Forever, Elle, I mean it.”