“I warn everyone. Everyone,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the whole wide world. “No one ever believes me. I say, ‘I’m going to destroy you if you let me.’ They say, ‘Ha, do you worst, Madame, you daft old lady.’ Then a few days later, they’re vomiting on my rug and seeing a psychologist for the next decade. I’m impressed with you, Kingsley. The last time I played with a man so viciously, he pulled a gun on me. He didn’t laugh. Not once. I made him think his daughter had killed herself, so…maybe I deserved it. But I did warn him. As I warned you.”
“It crossed my mind to snap your neck,” he said, sitting up and back on his knees. He wiped sweat off his forehead with his shirt. Sweat and tears.
“But you didn’t.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I will call you a piss cold whore.”
“Ah, that goes without saying,” she said with a careless toss of her head as if his insults were nothing more than a buzzing fly.
She stepped closer to him, and he collapsed against her thigh.
Now that he’d stopped laughing he was nearly on the verge of tears again. Why? Catharsis? Disappointment? Relief?
“I’m not sorry,” she said.
“I’m going to throw up,” he said.
“Not the rug, please. On the hardwood only.” She stroked his hair like he was a puppy. He didn’t throw up, but it was close. His stomach cramped again, and his mouthed tasted like copper. Yet he managed to breathe through it. Although he almost wanted to vomit if only to stain Madame’s rug.
“I fucking hate you,” he said. He felt like he’d just run a marathon, he was so spent and rung out.
“Would it help if I told you I had a reason?”
“I don’t know if there’s a good enough reason in the world for you to do that to someone. Other than demonic possession.”
A fresh wave of fury washed over him at the thought of being played so brutally. He closed his eyes tight and let loose with a flurry of insults. Putain. Salope. When he ran out of French insults, he switched to English. Madame kept petting his hair and saying over and over, “That’s fine. Let it all out. It doesn’t hurt me. Nothing hurts me.” When he finished verbally excoriating her, he lay on his stomach on the floor in utter defeat, exhaustion, and misery.
“You know now,” she said, putting her foot on the small of his back. “Yes?”
“Maybe,” he said. The floor was cold on his face. It soothed him.
“You picked your unborn child over him,” she said, toeing his hip to turn him onto his back. She gazed down at him, pointed. “You said it was impossible to want someone more than you wanted him. Not impossible at all, you see.”
“Someone who doesn’t exist.”
“But someday,” she said. “If you stay.”
Kingsley rolled up to a seated position but stayed on the floor. Seemed safer.
“If I stay?” he asked.
“If you stay,” she said again. “I want you to stay.”
Kingsley was shocked into silence.
“Do you think I would play my best games with someone I cared nothing for?” she asked. “I beat you. I let you in my bedroom. I let you kiss me. Do you think I do that with simply any man? I haven’t let a man kiss me on the lips since…”
“Your husband?”
She nodded.
Kingsley couldn’t believe it. “You really want me to stay?”
“Not only me,” Madame said. “Polly, too. And Colette. And Jacques, he told me so.”
God, Jacques. Kingsley had missed the little boy almost as much as he’d missed Madame…
“Look at me, child,” she said. Kingsley met her eyes. “I’m asking you to stay with us. Inviting you. I don’t extend this invitation often, but I am now, to you. If you stay, you can sleep in Polly’s bed with her any night she asks for you, and I promise that will be many, many nights. If you stay, you can sleep on my floor. I’ll give you two blankets and a pillow. And I will beat you often—for my pleasure and yours. And if you stay, you can have a child with Colette. In a year from now you could be a father. And…” Madame did something he never expected her to do. She knelt on the floor right in front of him so that they faced each other eye to eye.
“Madame?”
“Listen to me. Kingsley…if you fall asleep anywhere in this house, anywhere at all, wherever you wake, you’ll know you’re home,” she said as she took his face into her hands. “You’ll have a home and a family. You won’t be lost again. You won’t be cold again. You won’t be alone again. You’ll be mine, you beautiful lovely wonderful horrible wicked little boy…”
She kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her in return, passionately. She pulled away from the kiss quickly and touched her lips as if he’d burned her. Slowly she smiled.
Home.
Family.
Children.
Everything he ever wanted. Everything. Every last thing. Except for one thing.
There had to be a catch.
There was always a catch.
“But what about—”
“No,” she said, her tone sharp as a razor. “If you choose to stay with us, you must choose us and us alone. It’s us or him.”
“What do you mean, you or him? I haven’t seen him in years.”
“If he calls this house asking for you, I will not let you talk to him. Nor will you be allowed to call him if you find out where he is. If he writes you a letter, you’ll burn it unread. If he comes here and knocks on that door looking for you, I’ll send him away without you ever knowing.” She shook her head. “I can’t let you be a part of this family if you’re only going to run off the moment he crooks his little finger at you.”
“I wouldn’t abandon my child for him.”
“But you don’t have a child yet. What if he comes tomorrow? Would you leave us for him tomorrow? A week from now? If he came and asked you to leave with him, would you take Colette and the child with you? Would you tear up my family for him? I can’t allow that. I’m offering you everything you want. But there is a price. Is it really too much to ask? When a man out there in the old world gets married, he promises to forsake all others. That’s the vow. Can you make that vow to us?”
A terrible question, but a fair one. More than fair. He wasn’t being asked to commit to one woman, but to an entire house of them. Madame wasn’t asking for monogamy. He could have ten women, a beautiful sumptuous château to call his home. He could have safety, security, and children of his own.
All for the seemingly low price of turning his back on a boy he hadn’t even laid eyes on in over seven years.
Kingsley leaned forward and rested his head against Madame’s shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him, held him close, and lightly caressed the back of his neck.
“My mother used to do that,” he said, “when I was sick or had trouble sleeping.”
“Rub your neck?”
“Yes.”
“You like it?”
“Love it.”
She kissed his forehead.
“Madame…” he said.
“Yes?”
“You never told me your real name.”
She laughed softly.
“Will you ever tell me your name?” he asked.
“Never, no,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“He told me his real name,” Kingsley said. “The first time we were together.”
She stopped laughing.
It hurt worse than the beating she’d given him, but Kingsley pulled away from Madame’s arms and her tender motherly caresses.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She exhaled heavily and nodded. “Don’t be.”
“I should be. I am.”
“You know he may never find you,” she said.
“I know,” Kingsley said.
“You’re making the wrong choice.”
“Ah, I’ve done it before and survived.”
“This is it, you know,” she said. “No second chances. Next time you call me, I won’t call
back.”
“I understand.”
“Colette will be heartbroken,” Madame said.
“Tell her…tell her something that won’t hurt her,” Kingsley said. “Tell her I can’t leave my job or they’ll storm the house.”
Madame nodded. “Of course. You’re kind to want to protect her feelings.”
“I shouldn’t after the trick she pulled on me.”
“It was all my doing,” Madame said. “They take orders from me. Everyone in this house obeys me. Even you.”
“Order me to do something then,” Kingsley said.
Madame rose to her feet with indescribable grace, rolling back onto her toes and standing straight up. For a split second he saw the young girl who’d once served a powerful man who thought he’d put a puppy on a leash only to find later it was a wolf. Kingsley had always loved wolves.
She placed her fingers under his chin and lifted his face to meet her gaze.
“Leave,” she ordered.
Kingsley reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the gold band, his “wedding band,” and placed it on Madame’s ring finger, next to her own wedding band.
Then he kissed the back of her hand.
“Adieu,” he said. “You unbelievable bitch.”
37
By the time Colonel Masson arrived in his office at eight a.m. the next morning, Kingsley had already been waiting a full hour.
Kingsley sat behind the colonel’s desk, his feet on top of some very important papers.
The colonel paused in the doorway. “Lieutenant? Your feet are on my desk and you are in my chair,” he said. He didn’t look happy. “Why is that?”
“Because it would please your wife to know I put my feet on your desk, wouldn’t it?”
The colonel did not ask him again to remove his feet from the desk. He shut the door behind him and locked it. “My wife,” the colonel said at last.
“Your wife,” Kingsley repeated.
“You went back to the château.”
“I did.”
“Without permission.”
“I had her permission. Hers is all I need.”
“It’s my house,” the colonel said. “She stole it from me.”
“You don’t actually have a nephew, do you?”
“No,” the colonel said. He slowly sunk down into the chair across from his desk. “But I do have a son.”
Kingsley wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t been expecting that, but he wasn’t shocked either.
“Leon’s your son,” Kingsley said. “But not hers?”
The colonel nodded.
“You were still together with her when you had him,” Kingsley said.
“I can do arithmetic, too, Lieutenant.”
Kingsley stared at the colonel, this tall, handsome, strapping aristocratic man with his iron gray hair and obsidian eyes. A stubborn old fool dying of loneliness and male pride.
“She wanted children of her own,” the colonel said. “I told her ‘no.’ ”
“No? Why?” Kingsley asked, his brow furrowed. What man would deny his own wife a child? “She loves children.”
“Plutarch tells a story,” the colonel said, “of the Athenian general Themistocles who is famous for saying his son was the most powerful person in all of Greece. As he said to his son, ‘The Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother…’ ”
Colonel Masson glanced up at the ceiling as if he was too ashamed to meet Kingsley’s eyes.
“You couldn’t stand to share her with a child?” Kingsley asked. “Your own child?”
“Her family lost everything in the war. Everything. The Nazis killed her brother, burned the house, the fields. When I say everything, I mean everything. But my family, we were lucky. Her father and mine served side by side as spies. Her father saved my father’s life. I knew I’d marry her before I even saw her. Both families expected it. And then I met her. I’d never seen a more beautiful girl. So innocent, too. I was besotted. Before we even married I paid off all the debts her mother owed and bought her a house, sent her sisters to school. I thought she’d worship me as a god, a savior at least. I thought she did.” The colonel paused, tapped the arm of the chair. “She’s a good actress. Too good. I thought I was enough for her. Couldn’t bear to think of her loving someone more than me, of sharing her body with someone other than me, being commanded by someone other than me.”
“But you have a son,” Kingsley reminded him.
“I had an affair. Meaningless. Lasted two weeks,” he said, “and Leon was the result. I visited him here in Paris, sent money. When my wife found out I had a child…I think she’d been waiting for her moment and that was it. For years…since our marriage probably, she’d secretly kept notes and photographs and files on every man who ever dropped his trousers at that house or picked up a whip. Princes and Generals played under my roof. And they weren’t going to be happy to see their names in print. With what she had, what she knew, what she was willing to tell or sell…she could have destabilized whole regions, started wars. And I would have been a dead man. But that wasn’t enough for her.”
Kingsley had to admire the woman for her cunning—to keep secret files, blackmail material, to use it to control rich and powerful men… God, what a woman.
“I saw what you did to her,” Kingsley said. “The bloody bed. Did you keep her a prisoner in the dungeon?”
The colonel laughed. He laughed and laughed.
“What?” Kingsley demanded, ready to kill the man. He had his Beretta under his jacket. Would serve the bastard right.
“Why am I not surprised she never cleaned up that mess? She probably goes in that room and pleasures herself thinking of what she did to me there.”
“What did she do to you?”
“She drugged me, tied me to the bed, and kept me there a week until I agreed to her terms. Everywhere I looked, I saw her words to me from our wedding night. She’d scrawled them all over the walls. I’d given her a phrase to use if I went too far. Thought we’d need it. I wanted her so much, I didn’t even trust myself. I beat her and she never used the words I gave her—just kept saying, ‘I don’t like this. I want to go home.’ I gave her the phrase to protect her and now she mocks me with it.”
“Looking glass,” Kingsley said.
The colonel nodded. “I thought she was playing along, playing scared, playing innocent. I told her a hundred times before that when she wanted me to stop to say ‘looking glass’ and I would stop. But it had to be that word. It couldn’t be any other word. She never said it.”
“Looking glass,” Kingsley said. “What’s the joke?”
“You don’t know?” the colonel asked. “Thought it would be obvious.”
Finally, Kingsley got the joke.
“Her name is Alice,” Kingsley said.
“I told her I was taking her to a kind of looking-glass world where everything was a little different, a little mad. But anytime she wanted to go back to the real world, the safe world, she only had to say ‘looking glass’ and I would take her back,” the colonel said. “But she didn’t want to go back. She just wanted it all for herself.”
“I saw blood on the bed in the dungeon. Yours?” Kingsley could imagine Madame castrating the colonel on that bed. He liked to imagine it, in fact.
“Hers,” he said. “From our wedding night. Same rule. If I’m hurting her, she was supposed to say the phrase. She didn’t. The room was dark. I thought she was…”
“Wet?” Kingsley said.
“She wasn’t,” the colonel said.
Kingsley cringed and muttered “Christ” under his breath.
“She lay there in the dark,” the colonel continued, “dead silent, playing the martyr, while I fucked her to shreds. I was furious at her for not telling me I was tearing her. I would have stopped, if she’d only… Ah.” He shook his head. “She looked so innocent after when she’d said, ‘I only wanted to please you.’ Cold-b
looded and calculating even then.”
“Or a scared eighteen-year-old girl forced into marriage with an older man who her mother told to obey completely, because his family had saved them from starvation?”
“Tell yourself that,” the colonel said with a defiant lift of his chin. “But I know better. She kept the bloody sheet for a reason and it wasn’t sentimental. Kept it, saved it, and used it to torture me. She’s mocked me for years. Mocked me with love letters, then refused to see me. Played mind games with my agents. Turned my best agent against me. Kept the fucking house?” The colonel laughed, not a happy sound. “That house has been in my family for two hundred years. But if I so much as step foot on the property, she’ll send her files to Le Monde. That’s why she went after Leon, you know. I tried to go see her. She sent a note to the front gate, carried by one of her pets, the one with the scar. You know what the note said?”
Kingsley shook his head.
“It said, ‘You come here again, and I will slit your son Leon’s throat and send you the sheet he bled out on as a Christmas gift.’ ”
Kingsley’s eyes widened.
“As if threatening him wasn’t enough,” the colonel said, “she found him. I’d done everything I could to keep him hidden but she worked her magic, her connections. She found Leon, played with his mind, and seduced him into moving in with her. God only knows what she’s told him about me.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Kingsley said, “he’s very happy there. And she hasn’t slit his throat. Yet.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Kingsley stood up, looked down at Colonel Masson. He thought about saying something, then decided it wasn’t worth it. He turned for the door, but stopped when the colonel said, “Did you sleep with her?”
“How is that any of your business?”
“So you did?”
“I don’t kiss feet and tell,” Kingsley said. “I will say this: If you go near her or send anyone else to her…ah, no reason for threats. You know what I can do to you.”
They both knew. The colonel had overseen Kingsley’s training, after all. And Kingsley was thirty-five years his junior.
“She must have been very good to you to inspire this kind of loyalty,” the colonel said. “What did she do to you? Play your sweet maman? And you were her little lost boy? It’s all an act. No matter how kind she was to you, it’s nothing but a con. I was her first victim. She played the role of the perfect wife for fifteen years.”
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