Page 23

‘Take it,’ she cries, and with a shake of his head he scoops it from her hand.

‘Genevieve, wait,’ he says to her, but that only makes it worse. She turns around, starts running up the steps. She will go to her room and hide there in the bed, in the lavender-scented sheets and the darkness. It is the only thing she knows how to do, the only thing that helps.

‘Genevieve!’ he shouts after her.

But she is still running, and she does not answer.

Leander does not follow her, although he wants to, of course he wants to. But what would he do once he reached her? There had been such a sudden distance in her eyes, as if she were seeing something invisible to him, something drawing her inwards, crumpling her up like paper to throw to the fire. And now here Leander stands alone, a man without a past, without memory, without self: arms empty, throat tight. He cannot offer her comfort, not really. In truth, he can offer her almost nothing at all. ‘Leander Sterne’ isn’t a person, after all: he is a cicada shell left on a tree, an empty imitation of something once real.

So he returns to the rose garden, to the miniature Château. He lays Genevieve’s figurine in the foyer first, closest to the exit. Then he puts his own in the bird room, in amongst the cages. They stand there, the pair of them, silent and still, with painted-porcelain smiles. So content, so obedient. They know nothing of the past or future. They were made by his mother, and to his mother they will return.

‘Congratulations,’ comes a voice from behind him.

He turns to see Saliha Sultan standing by a rosebush, a plucked bloom held pinched between forefinger and thumb. He hadn’t heard her approach.

‘Madame,’ Leander replies, somewhat awkwardly. He’s made no further attempts to speak with her so far, nor does he intend to in future. Whatever secrets this woman has, they are kept locked tightly away.

‘You are the winner of the treasure hunt,’ she comments, spinning the rose in her grip.

‘Mademoiselle de Vienne is, actually,’ he replies. ‘I placed her figurine first.’

She smiles sharply. ‘I see she has charmed you, sir. I suppose that’s unsurprising. Such a pretty little thing, isn’t she? And so tragic, also, considering what she has been through. No doubt your sympathies were swayed.’

Leander knows she wants him to ask, and yet he still does so. ‘. . . Tragic?’

Saliha Sultan lays a hand over her chest in exaggerated shock. ‘You did not know? Her story was all over society papers, in France and England both. I travel extensively and encountered the tale several times. I recognised her name immediately: Genevieve de Vienne, the comte’s daughter. A refugee who daringly escaped the jaws of la Révolution.’

Leander doesn’t know what the Revolution is; the knowledge doesn’t emerge slowly into his mind, as it sometimes does, and so he assumes that it’s something that occurred after he first arrived at the Company. ‘I hadn’t heard.’

‘She was fleeing Versailles, as so many nobles did at that time,’ Saliha Sultan says. ‘To avoid the wrath of the Revolutionaries. She went through Normandy to Le Havre—that is where ships were ferrying the nobility to refuge in England—but her carriage was beset by bandits on the road. According to some accounts, they killed her lady’s maid, who martyred herself in order to allow her employer to escape. That detail was particularly popular; I suppose it made good fodder for the Royalists. See how true daughters of France will fight and die for their betters!’ She snorts in affected disgust. ‘I am a princess, sir, and I find such things absurd. The maid was an unfortunate victim of circumstance, nothing more.’

Leander says, ‘What was the maid’s name?’

‘I do not recall. Does it matter?’

Leander turns his head to look back at the miniature Château. There is Genevieve’s figurine, smiling its tiny painted smile, standing at the base of the steps where they had embraced.

‘You have yet to place your figurine, madame,’ he says. ‘You should search for it.’

‘I know where it has been hidden,’ Saliha Sultan replies. ‘It is clear enough from the miniature.’

‘Then why not retrieve it?’

Saliha Sultan steps closer and gestures with her rose to a small room on the third floor—a room that Leander hasn’t visited before, or at least doesn’t remember visiting. A nursery, complete with a tiny cot carved of ivory and a stuffed lion the size of a pistachio nut.

‘A perfect re-creation of my son’s bedchamber,’ she says. ‘I do not know how they have managed it, but they have. I am certain that my figurine is waiting there.’

‘Do you need someone to retrieve it for you?’

Her eyebrow raises. ‘Are you offering to do so?’

‘No,’ Leander replies blandly. ‘I’m certain someone else would.’

She laughs. ‘Mademoiselle de Vienne, no doubt. But no, Monsieur Sterne—I am quite capable of retrieving it myself, and I shall do so soon enough. I must simply. . . prepare myself for the task.’

‘Your son is the reason you’re here?’

‘He is unwell,’ she says curtly.