Heartbroken and alone, Boston art curator Sarah West is grieving the recent deaths of her parents and the end of her marriage. Ultrasensible by nature, she's determined to stay the course to get her life back on track. But fate has something else in mind. While cleaning out her father's closet, she finds a letter from the famous Parisian courtesan Marthe de Florian, dated 1895. The subject? Sarah's great-great-aunt Louisa's death. Legend has it Louisa committed suicide…but this letter implies there's more to that story.
Determined to learn the truth, Sarah, against her nature, impulsively flies to Paris. There she's drawn into the world of her flatmate, the brilliant artist Laurent Chartier. As she delves deep into the glittering Belle Époque to unravel the mystery, Sarah finds that her aunt's story may offer her exactly what she needs to open up to love again.
Following Sarah in the present day and Louisa in the 1890s, this moving novel spans more than a century to tell the stories of two remarkable women.
Release date:
November 11, 2020
Publisher:
Bookouture
Print pages:
350
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The small green chest was concealed at the back of the wardrobe. Its hinges were made of brass that must have shone once, but now it was roughened with amorphous black spots. A key was bound to the lid, almost endearingly, Sarah thought, with layers of old sticky tape whose edges curled under a canopy of dust. Sarah had no idea how long the chest had lain there, wedged underneath a pile of her father’s moth-eaten sweaters, alongside his other hoarded treasures—the pipes that he used to sneak out into the garden to smoke and the stained yellow tobacco tins that he always reused for fishing hooks. Sarah hesitated to open the curious little box for some reason. But that was ridiculous, because not a soul would know or care if she did. She had no family left at all.
Her sentimentality about unlocking this secret was even more ironic given that she curated the possessions of the dead for a living. Sarah was hardly unused to opening precious things left behind. In the end, she adopted the determination that she had assumed so often as a matter of necessity over the last tumultuous year and slid her nails under the tape. The key felt small and cold in her fingers when she inserted it in the lock. She pulled at the lid and stared at the contents. Or the content. Because there was only one thing in the box.
An envelope. And across this envelope, written clearly in the blue ink of a fountain pen, were both a name and an address that were perplexing in themselves—Viscount Henry Duval, Ȋle de la Cité, Paris. Postmarked 1895.
Sarah took the letter over to the window that looked out over the genteel Boston street where she had grown up. Blossom petals floated from the stately trees that lined the grand street below. Nannies pushed expensive new strollers along the sidewalk, dodging the inevitable well-tailored office workers and the usual array of women who looked like they lunched. But none of this could draw Sarah in, not today. She turned back to the delicious little mystery in her hands instead.
Viscount Henry Duval had been veiled in intrigue for Sarah since she was a girl. The name was linked forever with Sarah’s family, tied up with a tragedy that had captured her imagination when she was young.
The death of Sarah’s great-great-aunt in the midst of a glamorous party in Paris during the Belle Époque had never been fully explained, as far as Sarah was concerned. Louisa Duval had, so the story went, jumped out of a window one night in Paris and died on the pavement below. Even though the mysterious young woman’s death was declared a suicide, the circumstances had never been investigated.
The more Sarah had asked her father for details, the more she realized how little he knew. She hadn’t had much time for curiosity in the last few months, having been confronted with a triple tragedy of her own: the deaths of both her parents, and her husband leaving for good. Now, as she worked through her parents’ vacant apartment, the resurfacing of her ancestor’s mystery tickled her mind. These older ghosts had a more comfortable distance than the painful, fresh ones right now.
There had always been an assumption that Louisa killed herself. But had this enigmatic young woman, from whom Sarah was descended, really taken her own life?
The more Sarah had thought about it, the more she wondered if there was a reason it had been kept quiet. What on earth was her father doing, hiding away a letter addressed to Louisa’s husband in a decrepit green box?
But Sarah was late for a meeting and there was no time to linger over distant events. She had already missed some work over the past few months, and, while she was not directly involved in the new exhibition that was about to open at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where she worked, she had to go or she would wind up in trouble.
Sarah tucked the letter inside her handbag, took one last look at her parents’ apartment—it would have to be sold—locked their heavy front door, and slipped down the front steps into the street.
It wasn’t until that evening that she had the chance to pull the timeworn envelope out of her handbag. She had been accosted by emails and interruptions at work all afternoon, and while her thoughts had wanted to turn to Henry Duval’s letter, she had forced herself to remain focused on her job.
Sarah poured herself a glass of wine in her galley kitchen and moved across to her living room, with its picture windows overlooking the Charles River. The days had started to lengthen, and she didn’t need to turn on the lamps that she had bought after Steven had left during Boston’s last cold, icy winter, but she switched the lights on anyway. She loved the warm glow they created.
Sarah still didn’t know whether to sell her apartment, rent it out, or simply stay put. She had been too exhausted to face a move after Steven left. So she had replaced some of the furniture, had installed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with books on things she loved—art, old jewelry, family heirlooms, and houses. And she had stayed where she was, for now.
Sarah sat down in her favorite pale blue armchair, took a sip of wine, and turned back to the letter. And opened it. And read.
Paris, 1895
My dear Henry,
I find myself unable to articulate my shock at the events that unfolded last night.
You must be appalled, mon cher. And confused, I am in no doubt. What a tragedy, what a trauma—I simply cannot think how you are bearing up.
And to have something as dreadful as this happen in Montmartre, our little homeland! Louisa’s death throws a villainous shadow over our menagerie sociale. The atmosphere is quite changed after one single night. I saw not a soul from the party when I rode in the Bois de Boulogne today. The park was empty of our little groups—and it suffered for it. It suffered with the stuffy bourgeoisie gliding like old ghosts on the paths—because we were not there, my dear.
Later, I found myself extremely agitated at home in the apartment. I could not settle, and the idea of visitors! Can you imagine? No I think not!
Following this, I was in a mind to visit you. I even had on my kid gloves, but I feared that the sight of my carriage at your house on the Ȋle St-Louis would simply bring more gossip—and we cannot afford that, my dear friend, not at all. Which brings me to my next awful thought.
I know that you come to Paris to enjoy our wonderful “attributes”: the cancan dancers, all our friends, and the razzle. Not to mention our wonderful theaters and dance halls. But my fear is that you need to think like one of us, my Henry. I want you to think like a true modern, I want you to move and move very fast. My darling, I sense that it is vital that you leave Paris, today.
Tragic as it is, tragic as must be your feelings about Louisa and about last night—no matter what she was, or what she was to you, she was your wife.
Go home to England. Bury yourself at Ashworth until it is over. You need to encircle yourself within your family. They will protect you. You must let the wheels of your parents’ influence take over now. The authorities will want to question you if you stay here—you know everything, and that is too much.
Your father will be able to get rid of the press. And you will deal far better with the inevitable police investigations from the safety of your home. Your parents will shield you. They are not emotionally invested. They will know exactly what to say.
Just leave, or I will worry until it kills me.
When we meet next, we will talk as if we were never apart. It will be like it always is, but for now, à bientôt, my friend.
I will miss you, but I am always, always with you, you know that.
Au revoir,
Marthe de Florian
Sarah stared at the signature at the bottom of the page. No matter how used she was to researching other people’s heirlooms, no matter how used she was to hearing about other people’s pasts—this was her own family.
This was her past.
The fact that Viscount Henry Duval, Louisa’s husband, seemed to be connected with one of the most famous Parisian courtesans who lived in the Belle Époque was one thing. The fact that the famous courtesan was telling Henry to leave Paris was quite another again.
Marthe’s handwriting stared back at Sarah as if it were the most casual thing in the world. But Sarah knew how famous this woman had been. Sarah knew that Marthe de Florian’s apartment had been rediscovered in Paris in 2010. Her granddaughter had fled Paris in June 1940, abandoning it on the eve of the Nazi occupation.
For seventy years, nobody had entered Marthe’s grand home, no one had set foot inside. And nobody knew why the granddaughter had never returned. The discovery of Marthe’s apartment had caused more than a buzz in the art world and had been a topic of interest among Sarah’s colleagues.
The story had become even more fascinating. Marthe’s apartment was not just a frozen replica from 1940, it was a time capsule from a generation before that. Sarah could only imagine how the curators who had discovered Marthe’s gifts from her countless gentlemen “clients” must have felt walking into the veritable time warp when it was discovered. Imagine the jewels, paintings, furniture, objets d’art.
While getting her degree, Sarah had studied, albeit briefly, the life of Giovanni Boldini, the artist whose unsigned portrait of Marthe de Florian had been found in the apartment, causing such a stir in itself. It had sold at auction for over two million euros, no less.
But the thing that had touched Sarah, what had intrigued her most of all, was the discovery of a stash of letters to Marthe from her gentlemen admirers. They had been wrapped up in silk ribbons, all left intact.
And now, Sarah was holding such a thing right here, in her hands.
While she was tempted to sit and let some of the magic distill itself onto her, she knew that she had to investigate, and now.
Sarah went to her computer. First questions first.
When she read that the courtesan’s apartment was now available for rent, Sarah simply stared at the screen in front of her and sat back in her seat.
But then, as she sat there, a thought began to kick in. It was mad, creative, the sort of plan that she would normally laugh off as ludicrous—but then, ideas that seemed mad at first were often valuable; how many artists had she studied over the years to learn that?
What if she were to go to Paris?
What if this was her chance to get close to her mysterious ancestor—to find out whether Louisa had ended her own life? If Sarah had no living relatives left, why shouldn’t she find out about the past? After all, Louisa’s father had lost nearly all of his old Boston wealth as a result of his terrible grief, and the family had been shunned by society because of the taint of suicide.
Sarah knew the feeling that gossip could bring. Rumors had led her to the sickening awareness that her ex-husband, Steven, had a girlfriend, an old flame of his whom Sarah had known nothing about. Once the horrible truth had come out, Sarah had avoided every place that she knew Steven frequented in Boston. In spite of this, she bumped into him and his girlfriend all too often—the woman always stared at Sarah as if she were something unpleasant that had crossed her path. Not the other way around.
But that was nothing compared to the death of a young woman at a party in Paris. Sarah looked at the letter sitting on the table in front of her. The idea that had started forming in her head was turning into a plan.
What if somewhere there were letters from Henry to Marthe that were as revealing as the one she had just found? If the courtesan had kept all her correspondence, this was not a long shot. What was more, the idea of getting away from Boston, from her own past, for a while was more than tempting; it seemed like a release. What if she could rent Marthe de Florian’s apartment?
Summer in Paris was starting to sound like the perfect idea.
The following morning, Sarah steeled herself against any further doubts. Over breakfast in the museum’s elegant café, she convinced her boss, Amanda, that she would like to use her sabbatical right now. Before she could think again, she would call the owner of Marthe’s apartment—a Monsieur Loic Archer. What if Marthe had corresponded regularly with Henry? What then? There had to be more clues to Louisa’s life and end in the apartment.
Once Sarah was in her office, she closed her door, swept a hand through her glossy black bob, and dialed France.
She explained, in her halting schoolgirl French, her reasons for wanting to rent the apartment. She said that she was hoping to make a reservation for the entire summer, but Loic Archer, the charming-sounding Frenchman who replied to her in English, speaking, curiously, without any French accent at all, sent all her hopes sinking like liquid down a smooth drain.
“I understand your interest in the apartment, Sarah, and to tell the truth, I’m intrigued by your ancestor’s seeming connection with Marthe. But there is one problem. We have a clash. Laurent Chartier, the artist. I’m sure you’ve heard of him?”
Sarah nodded in silence down the line.
“Laurent,” Loic Archer went on, “needs to be in Marthe’s apartment for the entire summer—there is nothing I can do about it. He’s one of my oldest friends. We grew up together in Provence. I’m sure you know how famous he is. He’s been commissioned to paint a series of portraits for Vogue magazine in the style of Giovanni Boldini. You know, models, actresses, the sort of celebrities whom Boldini would have painted, were he alive now.”
Sarah had heard of Laurent Chartier—he was a wunderkind, the next big French artist. He had held wildly successful exhibitions in Paris, London, and, more recently, New York. His style was ever changing. He adapted all the time. And that had made him extra famous, one to watch. His paintings sold for record prices because no one knew what mode of expression he would take on next.
“Laurent needs to be in the setting where Boldini painted while he works—the lighting, the props, Marthe’s things. Vogue is fixated on the idea of using the famous courtesan’s rediscovered apartment as a backdrop for the series of paintings. It makes sense that he stays there. I’m sorry. He paints all night when he’s on a roll.”
Loic was quiet for a moment. “This is a commission from the leading fashion magazine in the world in honor of one of our most famous portrait artists. The only option I can offer is that you share the apartment with Laurent. You would have your own bedroom, of course… otherwise, I’m happy to help you find somewhere else to stay in Paris.”
Sarah stood up and paced around her office. While she adored her job, she hated to think how many hours she had spent stomping around this room during the past year. Typically, the stomping would be followed by a good dose of staring out the window at the street below, trying to contain her grief.
Sarah closed her eyes.
Loic Archer remained quiet.
Sarah moved back to her desk. She collected the folder of notes for her next appointment. A woman wanted to bequeath her mother’s jewelry collection to the museum.
She ran a hand over her trouser suit. “Please, could you ask if I could share the apartment with Laurent?” She steeled herself and waited for Loic’s response.
“I will.”
“Thank you.”
There was a silence. “There’s a few things you should know about Laurent.” Loic’s voice dropped so low that it sounded as if he were about to reveal state secrets on an international scale.
Loic paused for a moment before he started to speak. “It might help—if you are going to live with him—if you understand what’s going on. Laurent is a very refined individual. He has a strong aesthetic. He abhors anything obnoxious, tasteless, or crass. But at the moment…” Loic coughed.
Sarah stopped still for a moment, before moving toward the elevator.
“Nowadays, he’s abandoned all that.” Loic went on in a rush. “He seems to think he’s some sort of Toulouse-Lautrec. He’s hanging with models. His behavior is a bit… wild.”
Sarah had also heard stories, gossip. Laurent hung around with the elite set and he had done something naughty at Miami Art Basel last year, but Sarah couldn’t recall exactly what. She bit back her instinctive response and pressed the elevator button instead, gazing at the red numbers on the screen. She had made an art of focusing on what was right in front of her just to move forward every day after what had happened with Steven.
Was she a magnet for out-of-control men? And yet, why should she be intimidated or put off? What if this was a chance to get some behind-the-scenes experience with an artist? Usually she only dealt with people who owned the art. She realized that she was conjuring up excuses to leave Boston, but in the end, did it matter what this artist was like?
“I’ve read about him.” She kept her voice deadpan.
“I’m sorry.” Loic sounded resigned. “I guess some people might find it hard to… deal with Laurent right now. He’s going through a rough patch. Something went wrong. But it’s not my place to tell you. That’s his story. It’s just that, it might help you to understand that he is a good person. He is brilliant, you know—”
“Oh,” Sarah felt a chuckle rising in her throat. “Well, that will help.”
“He’s incredibly talented.”
Sarah stepped into the lift and felt her eyebrows rise to the roof.
“Anyway, by rights the apartment belongs to my wife, Cat. She’s flat out with our first baby right now. Our little daughter is a month old. So I’m going to have to be the person you deal with, I’m afraid.”
Sarah stepped out of the elevator and walked to the street. “Congratulations.” She knew she sounded vague, but her mind was locked onto Paris and wild artists and, for some extraordinary reason, Toulouse-Lautrec. “Congratulations on the baby.”
She shook her head, rounded the corner, unlocked her car door, slipped inside, and memorized the address of the house she was visiting.
“Laurent will be working hard all summer,” Loic said. “Just tell him to be quiet when he comes back in the door late at night. If you have real problems, then I’ll simply move you out. I can talk to him anytime too.”
Sarah looked at her watch. It was time to go. She was never late. Never.
She took a few seconds to think, right there, right then. After what she had been through, what was an artist in a tailspin? He didn’t have to affect her. No doubt Laurent would be all over his models and actresses anyway. He wouldn’t even notice Sarah was in the apartment at all.
She collected her thoughts. “Alright then. I’ll still share with him. You know, I do appreciate this, thank you. I’m sure we will be fine.”
“Thank you,” he said.
They agreed that Loic would meet her at the apartment once she had arrived.
“I’ll see you in Paris,” she said. And hung up. And shook her head. She had let a mad idea run to fruition. So unlike her. What she was doing, she had no idea. But she had to get away, she knew that. She wanted to find out about Louisa. For some reason, she felt closer than ever to her ancestor. For some reason, Sarah felt as if Louisa were calling to her from the past.
Sarah’s boss, Amanda, insisted on hosting a farewell dinner for Sarah at her favorite tapas restaurant in town. It was one of Boston’s hardest-to-get-into places, but Amanda had cultivated a friendship with one of the hip owners, and she liked to show off the fact that she could get a table at the drop of an emerald brooch.
Sarah knew the food would be as good as the tapas in Barcelona, or so everyone said. Long wooden tables ran down the center of the room. An artisan bar sat along the length of one exposed brick wall, and an oversize blackboard showcased the menu. Sarah hung her favorite leather jacket over the back of her chair, shook her coworkers’ hands, and ran a hand through her black bob. She had taken great care with her makeup this evening—had spent some time on her dark brown eyes. This evening she wanted to look particularly professional. She suspected her workmates were stunned that she was going to Paris.
The first part of the evening passed well enough. Sarah found herself chatting her way through the entrées of smoked eggplant and wild mushrooms with summer herbs and plates of melt-in-your-mouth grilled corn, while her colleagues—graphic designers, along with art educators and marketing people, curators of paintings, and staff on research fellowships—kept up the sort of steady banter that Sarah always enjoyed on nights out.
But once the food was done, Brian Doolan, one of the museum’s longest-standing curators, addressed Sarah, and the table fell quiet. “What we’re going to miss is your efficiency.” His eyes twinkled, and Sarah found herself raising her brow.
Sarah toyed with her dessert wine, watching the sticky liquid move around in the bottom of the glass. “My efficiency?” she said. “Wow. Thanks.” She kept her tone light. She knew Brian. And she knew what he said was only a half joke.
“You have to hand it to yourself,” Amanda chimed in from Sarah’s other side. The older woman tossed her long blond hair and fixed Sarah with her green eyes. “It’s what you do best. Don’t know how we’ll manage without you for the summer.”
“Thanks.” Sarah knew her voice sounded as flat as a sunken soufflé.
“You’re so reliable.” There was nothing nasty in Amanda’s tone, but Sarah had heard these words too many times to count. Responsible, efficient, sensible. Rational. Sarah had to push away a sigh. Was that how Steven had seen her? Reliable? Not novel enough?
“You know,” Brian said, “I always say, if we need someone dependable, then Sarah’s our girl.”
“Thanks.” Sarah knew she was sounding like a record player with its needle stuck on one song.
“And you know what the best thing is?” Brian warmed to his theme. “You do things in an orderly fashion. Nothing is spontaneous with you. You work to a plan. Logical. We need people like that. I find you invaluable. Wish I had more of your qualities myself.”
“So when you said you were going to Paris,” Amanda laughed, “I nearly died on the spot. What, I thought, could Sarah possibly be wanting to do in the city of love? I mean, Paris is totally out of character for you. It’s not the city I’d choose for you at all. London, yes, but never Paris.”
“Are you planning a little liaison of your own? You know, revenge and all that on that vile ex-husband?” Brian leaned in closer to Sarah. “Do tell.” He sounded wicked.
Sarah pulled away. She liked Brian, but right now she could smell stale wine and garlic on his breath.
“It’s not that,” she said.
“So you just want to go to Paris for the summer, because you can?” Brian was not giving up.
“Yup.”
“Good for you.” Amanda sounded cheerful.
“I don’t believe you,” Brian went on. “I’ve known you since you were twenty-three. Nine years is a long time, Sarah. You’re too strategic to do this for no reason.”
“I admit that I do enjoy a plan.” Sarah shrugged. “But I don’t have one this time.”
Brian’s eyes narrowed into a pair of tiny chinks. “I still don’t believe you.”
Sarah pulled her jacket on. She was not, she reminded herself, boring. She wore leather jackets. And she used to have a life. Until it exploded into a million tiny shards, and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing at all.
“Well. You have a great time in Paris no matter why you’re going.” Brian had reverted to his usual affable self.
He leaned forward, kissed Sarah on the cheek. Chatter started up among the people at the table. Sarah smiled and patted her colleague on the arm. Hugged Amanda. Moved around the table and said good-bye to the rest of her workmates. As she walked out of the restaurant into the cool Boston air, she let her thoughts escape to Paris.
The next morning, Sarah took a last look around her apartment from the top of the spiral staircase to the living area below.. . .
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