Chapter 20 Gustave
Gustave
The photograph is everywhere.
They spread faster than I can breathe—gossip sites, glossy tabloids, even the politics column of Le Monde that’s pretending to have gravitas.
The photo is a selfie. She took it that first time she met Aubert.
It’s taken in my living room.
My arm is around her, and Aubert leans in between us, his grin wide as Tara stretches her phone to take the selfie.
So ordinary. So intimate. So ours.
Now dissected by strangers.
Headlines scream across the screen:
De Valois American Mistress Sells Her Story.
Louvre Restorer Cashes In On Her Affair.
Exclusive: Tara Gayarre with Gustave and Aubert de Valois
The articles are venom.
They quote friends close to the restorer, who claim she bragged about her relationship with le Comte and confided in a journalist friend about meeting Aubert. According to sources, Tara sent the photo to France Dimanche herself.
The intercom buzzes. “Monsieur de Valois,” my assistant says softly, “Mademoiselle Gayarre is here.”
The taste of acid floods my mouth. My hands shake. I can’t believe it—can’t fucking believe she’d do this. Betray me. I can’t….
Hell, I can’t breathe.
“Send her in,” I say, my voice raw.
The door opens, Tara steps inside like sunlight spilling where it doesn’t belong—hair in a ponytail, her brown eyes wide with…something…panic? She’s in a summer dress and her face is as pale as the beige linen she wears.
She looks shaken, but when she sees me, relief flashes across her features.
“Gustave.” She crosses the room quickly, her voice unsteady. She frowns when I stay seated behind my desk. I wave a hand to a chair across from me.
She sits, and I can see her discomfort.
She knows!
“I…Simone came to the Louvre.”
“Not surprising.” I keep my expression cool.
I’m breaking inside. Angry. But she won’t see any of that. I am Comte de Valois. I know how to take care of leeches like her.
She sighs. “She knows about us?”
“Everyone does.”
Her eyes are wide then. “What?”
I can barely hear her. The sound of my own pulse fills my ears.
I turn my phone that’s on my desk around so she can see it.
The screen glows with the headline, my name in bold beside hers.
She stares at it, frowning at first, then she picks it up and reads through the article. Her French has improved; she can pick up some of it, I’m sure. And even if she can’t, the photograph should say it all.
“Do you see what you’ve done, or do you want it translated into English?” I fling at her.
She sets my phone down. “I…they…how did they get that photo?”
“According to the article, you sent it to a journalist.”
“Dios mio!” Her hand flies to her mouth. “No…no, Gustave, I didn’t—”
I laugh bitterly, and that shuts her up. “Don’t lie and insult both of us.”
She reaches for my hand across the table, but retreats when I sneer at her. She looks so small and lost that I want to comfort her.
I get up because I’m unable to sit any longer.
“I swear on everything I am, I didn’t do this. Gustave, please—”
She walks up to me, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She steps forward as if to kiss me, to make it right the only way she knows how—to close the distance, to reach me through touch.
But I catch her wrists before her lips can find mine.
“Don’t,” I bite out. “Don’t touch me.”
I push her away, though every instinct in me wants to hold her. But that’s weakness speaking, not strength—and strength is what I need now. She dragged Aubert into this, and that’s something I can’t forgive.
She trembles. “Gustave—”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” My voice rises, fury burning through every word. “My name is being dragged through filth. My family’s name. My son’s face—our photo—is on a gossip site. Every website in France is running this.”
Her tears shimmer as she holds my gaze. “I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t tell anyone about us.”
“You’re something else, you know that?” I snarl, pacing away from her. “I was going to ask you to stay, to….” I trail away, feeling like a fool.
“Gustave, I…I love you.” Her voice cracks.
“If this is love, I don’t want it, chérie,” I shout.
She stumbles toward me, shaking her head. “Please, Gustave, listen to me.”
“Don’t come near me, Tara,” I warn. “You won’t like it.”
“But—"
“?a suffit!”
The words crack through the air.
“You’ve humiliated me,” I grind out. “You’ve humiliated my son.” I point to the door. “Sors d’ici*.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t recognize me. “Gustave…you can’t believe I’d do this.”
I harden myself against her, this woman who’s made my heart ache for weeks, this woman who has wrecked me.
“Go,” I say, my voice low, ominous. “Get out of my sight.”
For a moment, she stands there, shuddering. Then she nods, tears sliding down her cheek, and turns for the door.
When it closes behind her, the silence in my office is deafening.
I sink into my chair, staring at the phone screen still glowing with her name beside mine. I throw it against a wall.
When I pick up my phone an hour and a half a bottle of whiskey later, there’s a crack in the glass, a jagged line running right through her face in that incriminating selfie—splitting her smile clean in two.
* Get out of here (French)