16. In a Faraway Land of Entrances Well Made
IN A FARAWAY LAND OF ENTRANCES WELL MADE
C hiara Conti indulged in gossip as much as the next person. With Aoife bouncing off the walls in her studio, she allowed herself some time to do just that.
“I can’t believe I missed it!” Aoife seemed inconsolable.
Chiara sat on the windowsill, Binoche curled up next to her, a paw almost touching her thigh, and watched as Aoife wore a stripe into the runner on her studio’s floors.
For the past hour, ever since both Arabella and Renate had departed the townhouse—supposedly to go their separate ways in pursuit of whatever errands—Aoife, who’d been eavesdropping and had managed to hear the end of the bombshell revelation, had alternatively been sulking and exclaiming while throwing her hands up in the air.
Chiara sighed. “I have to say, it was quite the spectacle. And certainly a revelation. But, all in all, I would have preferred to avoid it.”
Aoife whirled on her. “Well, of course you would have. I’ve never seen anyone more averse to scandal! You are seriously missing out.”
Chiara uncoiled from her position, the chill of the window glass leaving her slightly uncomfortable, and not even her knitted dress could ward it off.
Or perhaps it was the earlier visit and everything it entailed.
And not just the revelation of Renate’s early-in-life sapphic relationship and the broken heart she’d apparently been nursing ever since.
Certainly not the small, sharp sliver in Chiara’s chest that felt suspiciously like premonition. Absolutely not that.
“I did not miss this one, Aoife. And yes, it was all you’d imagine it to be. The drama, the action, the romance. If you want to call a decades-old betrayal and abandonment, and what appeared like sincere, late-in-life regret ‘romance.’”
“Oh, this is grand. And who’d have thought? Renate? Four decades of longing!” Aoife bounced on the balls of her feet.
“If her reception for Arabella is anything to go by, I’m not sure ‘longing’ is what I’d call it. More like holding a forty-year long grudge—”
“And nobody holds a grudge quite like I do.”
Aoife squeaked, while Chiara managed to school her features to not look guilty at being caught gossiping about their friend. Renate seemed unperturbed by either.
“Are you all right?” Chiara searched those austere features for any remaining distress and found nothing but the usual composure.
“Are you ?” Trust Renate to see through her.
“I shouldn’t be?”
Renate tsked. “A question for a question. I should have known. And I should have told you never to meet with that old crone. I knew she’d push you way out of your comfort zone. She has that effect on people. Making them take risks. Oftentimes unnecessary ones.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Aoife piped up, then blinked owlishly and winced at her own audacity.
But Renate didn’t snap at her, nor did she dismiss the question. She sat down on the corner of a workstation and wrapped her arms around herself, a faraway look overtaking her eyes.
“She was my first. For the longest time my only. To this day, the only woman. And no, that doesn’t speak ill of her in that sense.
Perhaps it says more about me? Or about just how much she influenced me, how she pushed and pursued until I relented and let her in.
As I said, she has that effect on people.
” Renate took a long breath, and Chiara could see her eyes slowly clear.
She could sympathize. Letting people in, then being betrayed by them, was also something Chiara was quite intimately familiar with.
But then there’d also been the longing in Renate’s voice.
For what Chiara did not know, but she recognized it.
After all, she had five years of feeling the same, even if the object of her yearning was to never darken her doorstep again as Arabella had Renate’s.
She was pulled out of her thoughts by Renate’s businesslike tone. “In any case, Benedict’s assistant has already been in touch, and while some wheels are in motion, we can still back out. Say the word, it will be my pleasure to tell her to go to hell. Again.”
And now it was Chiara’s turn to take a steadying breath.
“No, she didn’t make me do anything. And while I can’t say I’m eager to jump into the celebrity aspect of the business, it’s past time to be seen. I hid behind Frankie for years. I hid behind the mystery of Chiaroscuro for the last few. Perhaps I should stop hiding from things.”
Binoche’s meow was quiet, almost pensive, and Chiara smiled.
“See? Even the cat agrees.”
“That cat is the devil’s spawn.” Renate’s face showed all the earlier distaste for the cat, who simply rolled into a fuzzball with her back to the room and went back to sleep.
Aoife picked the scissors from the workstation and twirled them in her fingers, eyes excited.
“And seen you shall be, babe! An entire special issue of Poise and all, with your face all over it! Like old times. Goddess, it’s been twenty years since your last cover.
In fact, wasn’t Poise the last one you did before becoming a recluse?
” Aoife dropped the scissors and cracked her knuckles as Renate glared at her.
Chiara rolled her eyes, amused by her friend’s theatrics.
“A bit heavy on the drama, Aoife. I was never a recluse. And while being somebody’s wife was not a career ambition, it is what it is.
Arabella didn’t twist my arm, and a Poise cover is beyond prestigious.
God knows, Frankie would have killed to have her face on it years ago and would probably die for it now.
” Chiara ran her fingers over the silky ear of the sleeping cat, who twitched, but otherwise remained unperturbed.
Renate’s phone pinged, and she stood up scrolling through it.
“And speaking of being seen… Well, it looks like the photographer will be here in an hour or so. I guess once Arabella is in, she’s all in…”
“I mean, you’d know!” Aoife giggled at her own joke, and Chiara groaned.
Renate raised her eyebrows, her countenance tense. “Is this how it’s going to be now?”
“It’s what the two of you get since I missed the fireworks. But sure, I’ll tone it down for a bit.” Aoife danced away from Renate’s swiping hand.
“You should do just that, Sully. With only two weeks to fill an entire issue, there really is no time to waste.” Renate did manage to pinch Aoife’s side before both of them mercifully settled.
Chiara shivered. In the cacophony of her friends teasing and laughing, she felt chilled and even hugging herself didn’t help. Surely it was the cold from the open window creeping in. And premonitions be damned, it was time to get this show on the road.
* * *
She’d never considered herself remotely superstitious despite all the fashion industry’s canons. And any and all senses she may have had, clearly left her absolutely unprepared for the major events of her life. Frankie cheating, Vi selling her out to the gossip rags… She’d had no inkling.
Was it a wonder that, when her psyche actually did throw her a bone, she missed it entirely?
Because that splinter from earlier in the day, that foreboding chill should have alerted her to something.
Although how was she to know that, out of all the photographers in the world—so many of them available to Poise at the snap of fingers—the one Arabella had hired for Chiara’s special edition would be… her?
Vi Courtenay did not stumble at the steps of Chiara’s townhouse this time around, despite once again not watching her own feet. As déjà vus went, this one was quite momentous. Because just like last time, Cinderella crossed the threshold without taking those gray eyes off Chiara’s.
The parallels stopped there, however. This was an older version of Vi, somehow even lankier than she’d been five years ago, the youthful fullness of the face transformed by chiseled cheekbones that were surely able to cut glass.
She didn’t walk in as much as she swaggered, taking space and seemingly sucking all the oxygen out of what had been a large and airy room just seconds before.
Chiara steeled herself for those first words, her mind playing tricks on her again and reminding her so clearly of those tremulous, innocent, slightly breathy ones uttered by a twenty-five-year-old girl, shy and embarrassed and maybe a bit awed.
This girl was neither shy, nor embarrassed, nor awed. The glasses Chiara adored so much, were gone. And along with chiseling her face, time had done something to Vi that Chiara thought she’d never get to witness. It had taken away the girl.
In what looked like bespoke Oxford shoes stood a woman.
One of means and style, if the rolled-up sleeves of a linen shirt tucked carelessly yet artfully into slightly loose trousers that sat tantalizingly low on sharp hip bones were any indication.
Chiara’s mouth went dry. Sleeves of tattoos covered both sinewy forearms, and she tried very hard not to stare.
She must have failed, because an eyebrow rose, and the full mouth curved into a knowing smirk.
Both of these gestures were so new, Chiara couldn’t help but keep cataloging the differences, even as Vi took the last few steps towards her.
She licked her parched lips and watched Vi’s eyes narrow as they followed the movement with something lurking in those depths.
Chiara was never more thankful for the carefully applied concealer, sure to be hiding her cheeks she could feel paling by the second, when fate in the form of Aoife intervened and saved her from the impending need to speak and to do so now, before Vi had the chance to take her by surprise with anything she might say first.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Vi Courtenay sneaking in after all these years. You’re wearing better shoes this time around, Cinderella.”
The smirk turned lethal on a dime, so much so, Chiara could hear Aoife inhaling loudly next to her.
“I did not sneak in, Sully, someone buzzed me in.”
Oh, the voice. The voice was the same. The gentle cadence of it, the high and low notes, the caress of the vowels in that slightly British accent.
Years. It had been years, and those Paris months came flooding back.
Slowly at first, blooming in front of her eyes, then faster, all at once, shaking her to the core.
“Lean on me… I have you, Chiara… I love you.”
The same voice. The same eyes. All these words. Poignant, beautiful words. All those lies. The same voice. The same eyes.
“Ms. Courtenay.”
She was pleased when her own tone did not waver.
Neither did her hand when she extended it, feeling her own fingers like ice before they were enfolded in a warm handshake.
Had the knuckles grown more prominent with time?
Did the hands grow rougher? Their softness seemed to be missing, or it was possible Chiara simply didn’t remember them all that well.
She clung to that last conclusion with enough force to make Vi give her a strange look.
Chiara extricated her still cold fingers from the handshake and inclined her head for Vi to follow when Renate’s cough made them all turn towards the staircase leading to the studio space above the showroom.
“Courtenay.”
“Ms. Lilienfeld.” If Vi’s reply to Aoife held warmth and mischief, the four syllables addressed at Renate held none.
“I counted the silverware. And the gowns.” Renate’s lips thinned further, but Vi’s eyes crinkled at the corners before she spoke.
“I appreciate it. I will try not to commit any acts of commercial espionage while on this assignment. My NDA and contract with Poise are both ironclad to that effect.”
Aoife’s gasp was quite audible this time around, and the splinter in Chiara’s chest twisted harder, rending more stitches, reminding her of that one emotion she’d been suppressing for many years.
Because despite all her guilt and all the self-flagellation she had indulged in quite often on account of this girl—no, woman—her anger at the betrayal was also ever present.
How dare she? How dare Vi, who’d fucked her and then fucked her over, speak of everything that happened with such nonchalance? How could she mock what had been Chiara’s torment for years?
“Just reminding you of some things, Courtenay.” Oblivious to the storm rocking Chiara—the second one Arabella had unleashed on her—Renate snarked even as Aoife shook her head.
“Look, Renate, maybe now is not the time—”
Vi’s cutting reply was only marginally softened by a hand on Aoife’s forearm.
“No, Sully. There will never really be a time. And there will never really be a place. Because I have an assignment. I assume you have things lined up here, because you agreed to whatever terms Arabella set for this absolutely harebrained idea of hers.” Vi’s smile was infused with so much warmth at the name that Chiara had to blink.
“But all her harebrained ideas pay off. The woman doesn’t miss.
And I have a job to do. We have less than two—four, if I get my way—weeks to do about eight thematic photoshoots and some small, adjacent ones.
All that in addition to the interviews, the cover shoot and the personal profile images.
If you can’t work with me, I respect that.
I will walk away now, and no matter what Arabella told you, I will get another photographer assigned—”
Renate looked her up and down. “Such sway you hold with the powers of the world, girl. I see some things have not changed.” The derision in her words was downright malicious, and Chiara felt something she’d forgotten had been her primordial emotion for three months that fateful summer: protectiveness.
And maybe the woman didn’t deserve any of it, but the girl?
That girl, before the world had ended, before all hell broke loose on them, she’d been someone worth protecting.
And Chiara couldn’t quit now. No matter how much her mind was screaming at her to do just that, her heart was not to be stopped.
“I don’t care about any of this.” All three other occupants of the foyer observed her with such differing expressions, she actually smiled.
“Ms. Courtenay, welcome to Chiaroscuro. I will show you around and we will talk setup and requirements and logistics. We’ll bring Aoife and Renate into this, depending on whatever it is you require. Follow me.”
She turned on her heel, for once not fearing whether anyone followed. She knew Vi would. If only to finish this wretched assignment Chiara herself, in a roundabout way, had set in motion. And there was some modicum of comfort in that knowledge.
That, despite everything, she could still make this woman follow her.