Henri smiled now. ‘My mother doesn’t care what I do, as long as I’m happy. It is my brother Robert who will get the company one day.’
‘So why are you in London?’ she asked, feeling somewhat fortified by the champagne and cheese.
‘My mother lives here most of the year, she prefers London for business, so I come and visit her.’
Disappointment rose in Elisabeth that his would be a fleeting visit and she wouldn’t see him again.
‘But now I know Mademoiselle Elisabeth is in London, I will be here for a while, I think.’
She felt herself smile again and wondered if he could read her mind, or was the opoponax tapping her secrets for Henri’s benefit.
‘What are Sibyls?’ she asked, thinking of his comment about the scent he was wearing, grasping at a casual conversation to try to balance out the sexual tension she was feeling.
‘They were prophetesses or Sibyllas from Ancient Greece, who could predict the future. They were very wise and gave sage advice to the priests, but they only spoke in riddles.’
‘It’s a beautiful word “Sibylla”,’ said Elisabeth, rolling the word around her mouth like a sweet.
‘Yes, if I have a daughter, I would like to call her Sibylla. I think she will be very wise, but that, of course, would come from her mother.’
He looked at her pointedly as he said this and Elisabeth choked on the invisible sweet.
‘More champagne,’ said Henri, as he lifted the bottle from the silver bucket and refilled her glass and then his.
‘Now tell me all about you,’ he said. ‘And Australia, I’ve always wanted to go there.’
Elisabeth went through the details quickly. An only child of two working-class parents, she had excelled at school and received a scholarship to a private girls’ school. This led to an acceptance at university to study English, which she hoped to be able to teach at high school one day.
‘But why high school? Teach at university, become a professeur des universités.’ He clapped his hands happily at his decision on her behalf.
‘You will be the beauty and the brains in your long robe, all the men will desire you and be intimidated by you.’
Elisabeth laughed and blushed. The need to kiss him was disconcerting, or was it the champagne?
‘Tell me about you,’ she said, desperate to steer the topic from her.
Henri Le Marche was twenty-six years old and the second son of Daphné and Yves Le Marche. What he lacked in ambition he made up for in charm and intelligence.
‘You cannot make a living reading,’ she said, ‘unless you work in a library.’
Henri thought this sounded perfectly reasonable and decided to one day open his own library in Paris when he received his share of the business.
He wanted a simple life. Books, a woman with dark hair and dark eyes who would read him love poems, while she lay naked in their bed, and a child when the time was right.
When he spoke of his last wish, without pressure or embarrassment, Elisabeth wanted to jump up in the bar and scream, Pick me, pick me.
Instead, she felt a quiet calm cloak her and, emboldened by Taittinger and lust, she drained her champagne and stood up. ‘Shall we have dinner or go and read naked, in your bed?’
Henri’s room was upstairs from the bar, and the walk to the elevator was silent. They were silent as the elevator doors opened, and Henri took her hand and led her into the small space.
He didn’t let go of her hand until the doors opened again and he found his room key, then led her down the lush carpeted hallway, past the art that probably cost more than her ticket over to London and towards a door with the number three hundred in gold on the front.
At the door, he turned and held her face in his hands. ‘L’amour est la poésie des sens.’
Then Elisabeth kissed him. Was it the Balzac quote, or the fact that something like this moment happening was so extraordinary to a girl who lived such an ordinary life that she became someone else for a moment? Or was this who she always was?
As they kissed, he managed to open the door and they fell inside the suite, hands pulling at clothes, words in French and English being muttered.
Elisabeth felt as though she needed to feel every part of him inside her. She wanted to touch him, suck him, lick him, kiss him, caress him until she knew every single part of his body and soul.
Naked on the bed, she felt his hands slide up her slim frame, and gently cup her breast. ‘You, Elisabeth, you are my dream.’
‘Love is the poetry of the senses.’ She repeated the Balzac quote back to him in English, as she pulled him to her.
She never told him she was a virgin. It didn’t matter any more. She realised she was only ever meant for Henri.
* * *
Elisabeth spent a week in bed with Henri, learning every part of him and him, her. She was fired from Hatchards at the end of that week and, on the following Monday, she phoned her parents from the hotel.
‘Mum, I’m moving to Paris,’ she exclaimed.
‘Paris? What’s in Paris?’ her mother asked, confused.
‘Henri Le Marche, my future,’ said Elisabeth. ‘I’m going to write poetry, and become a professor and have a mystical little baby. If it’s a girl, we’ll call her Sibylla and if it’s a boy, we’ll call him Antoine.’
‘Elisabeth, don’t be ridiculous,’ her mother cried from the other side of the world.
‘There’s not a thing you can say to make me change my mind, the heart wants what the heart wants.’
And then she put down the phone and fell back into Henri’s waiting arms.
Edward
After the funeral, Edward took a plane back to London.
Daphné had died in London, but requested to have her funeral in Paris, which was fine, except it took a whole day, and Edward didn’t have a whole day to spare, not even for Daphné.
He had avoided Robert and Celeste at the funeral, which was easy since they were surrounded by hangers-on and work associates. He had felt almost sorry for Celeste, having to organise the funeral at such short notice, and, while it wasn’t as full of pageantry as Daphné Le Marche would have expected, it was appropriate and the right sort of people had turned up to pay their respects and/or to be seen.
He checked his phone and saw missed calls from the office and from Robert, but no international calls. He opened the world clock. It was midnight in Melbourne, and he wondered if Sibylla Le Marche would still be up. If she were anything like her cousin, then she would most likely still be out, he thought.
Taking a risk, he dialled the number that Elisabeth Le Marche had given him the third time he had spoken to her.
The estranged side of the family was proving to be very difficult, he thought, as he listened to the sound of international connection and then the echoing ringing of Sibylla’s phone.
‘Hello?’ came a muffled voice.
‘Sibylla Le Marche?’ he asked, needing to be sure.
‘It’s Billie March, who is this? You do know it’s midnight?’
Her accent was jarring after being with the French all day, and he screwed his face up, as though this would help