You’ve changed. You’re so beautiful now, a real young lady.” She gives my mother a wink. “Looks like I’ll have to try and hide her from Gautier.”
That wave of nausea rolls through me again. Camille said it as a joke. It has to be. There’s no way she would let me in this house if she really knew what Gautier did to me back then.
My mother nods and smiles at Camille, but her eyes are curiously blank. They feel nothing, maybe even see nothing as far as this subject is concerned.
Just like before, I think. And then I remember why I’m here, and I quickly paste on a smile for Camille’s sake. “Thank you for your kind words. You look as stunning as always.”
“Oh, come now,” she says with false humility. “Can you handle the suitcases? I’m afraid I just had my nails done and none of the men are at home.”
“I’ve got them,” I say, and when my mother tries to take them from me, I shoo her away.
I walk through the house, following Camille as she sashays. We go through the foyer, past the grand study and the dining room, and through the kitchen. My heart picks up speed with each step I take until the suitcases feel like lead and I start to feel dizzy.
This place.
This kitchen.
That scene that’s embedded in my head, the fear so real.
Somehow I make it through by forcing myself to listen to Camille blather on about this and that, probably all the upgrades the house has gotten since I left, though it all looks the same to me.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I step through the french doors out into the yard, expansive, green, and well manicured as always, following the stone path that leads to the servants’ quarters that are buried back among chestnut trees. I can still hear the thud of the chestnuts that fall on the roof every autumn.
At least this house looks a little different now. It’s a miniature version of the main house, old as hell and made of stone with a gray tile roof, but even though it still seems to be the same size—two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and bathroom—there’s an outdoor patio that’s half-covered with a bistro table and chairs set up, and there are lilies growing from earthen pots. It looks a lot homier. As it should, I suppose. At this point it’s my mother’s home more than anywhere else has been.
“So,” Camille says to me after I put my suitcases outside my room. I’m not sure I want to step in there yet. Not while she’s here. “Feel free to ask me anything. Gautier is away on business until the weekend.” At those words, the relief flowing through me is as palpable as a landslide. “Pascal is at work and isn’t expected to be back until late. I’m not sure what Pascal has planned for you, but you can always start by helping your mother around the house, just to get back in the swing of things.”
“Is it just Pascal living here?” I ask, not wanting to say Gautier’s name. “Where is Blaise?”
Camille purses her lips like she just ate something sour. “Blaise is in Dubai. He moved.”
The way she says it is so clipped that I don’t need to ask what happened. Something did, and it pissed her off.
Way to go, Blaise, I think to myself. I never liked Blaise that much, but he was better than the rest of them. An outlier of sorts. It makes sense if he moved far away and distanced himself.
Come to think of it, I think I remember their cousin Seraphine doing the same. After Ludovic died, everything in the company completely changed, in Gautier and Pascal’s favor, no surprise. Now Blaise and Seraphine are both in Dubai. I’m guessing that’s not a coincidence.
I’ll have to ask Pascal about that later.
Then the thought makes a knot form in my stomach again.
Pascal.
I can’t believe I’m working for him.
I can’t believe this is where eight years away has gotten me, working for the devil’s son, in the devil’s house.
“I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted,” Camille says as she begins to leave. She pauses in the doorway. “Just don’t take too long or it will come out of your paycheck.”
Then she leaves, and I know she wasn’t kidding.
“Well, where shall we start?” my mother says a little too brightly. “Oh, we should get you into uniform.”