Chapter 18 #2
“Then you should have been here, ready to participate, not manufacture schemes to pause the competition.”
Out in the sun-drenched street, a voice was beckoning them to join the others.
“Come,” Bastien said. “We will talk outside. Gabriel is calling.”
“Forget about Gabriel.” Celine swivelled around in an angry squelch. “You know how much this competition means to me. What could have possibly gone through your head to do this?” She paused. “Do you hate me that much?”
“What?” Bastien swallowed. Where was this coming from? “I don’t hate you, Celine.”
“It doesn’t seem as if you like me, either” she returned tightly. “I know that you enjoy playing with people, and breaking their hearts, and you enjoy hurting Jacques and possibly me by proxy, but I thought you at least respected your friends.”
Bastien parted his lips to say something but her words had come out so abruptly his throat could only produce a choked sound. The more she stared at him with that gutted look, the more his skin prickled. Empty apologies seemed useless.
At his silence, Celine ran the back of her fingers over her eyes. “Forget about it,” she said and exited the designing hall. “It’s pointless trying to make you see sense.”
“Celine—wait!” Bastien rushed after her. He reached out his hand, grasping for hers, but her fingers slipped through like water. “Celine, please. I’m sorry.”
He was surprised when she brought herself to a halt, looking at him over her shoulder. But as she did, it was with tears in her eyes. It fractured something in him.
“Barring Ana?s,” she said, “you were the only person who knew about this competition and how much I wanted to win. The only person who ever saw me design something and cheered me on.” She drew out a shaky breath.
“This was my lifeline—the only way I could be who I want to be. I can’t believe you would ruin it without a second thought. ”
“Cel—”
“I do not want you to speak to me ever again.”
Bastien did not hurry after her this time.
He didn’t think it would fix anything to do so, only irk her further.
So he rooted himself on the back steps of Maison Baudelaire, dripping a pathetic little puddle on the pavement as he watched the twinkling beads on Celine’s dress shine dimly in the last embers of the afternoon sun.
Running a hand over his face, he looked down. A silver pin shone by the tip of his shoe. Bastien picked it up and turned it over in his palm. It must have fallen out of Celine’s hair when she had run outside.
“Fret not, Monsieur Reneau,” Claude Baudelaire said, resting a heavy hand on Bastien’s shoulder. “Mademoiselle LeBeau is a capable young lady. I’m sure she can find her way home alone just fine. You and I, meanwhile, need to have a little chat. Come along.”
Bastien wondered how much the couturier had heard. Though he supposed it mattered little. He was the reason for this mess, so he pocketed Celine’s hairpin and followed Claude inside obediently.
The designing hall had emptied, permeated only by a strange quiet that didn’t sit right with him. The mannequins stood dripping water on the polished floor, waiting for someone to mop it off. The half-ruined gowns seemed to have lost their shine now that their tailors had abandoned them.
“This way,” Monsieur Baudelaire said, interrupting their short moment of silence. He inclined his head towards the iron winding staircase. “To my office.”
“You know, I should really get going,” Bastien began flippantly, his eyes roaming the gown sketches that lined the wall like voguish guards. “My mother has made me promise to never deny a woman her escort if she demands one. I’d hate to go back on my word.”
“Is that so?”
Claude Baudelaire pushed open the door, beckoning Bastien to enter first.
Bastien stepped through with great hesitation, already sensing a sort of confrontational air circling him like a dark omen. This was the second time the couturier had turned a blind eye when it came to their team and he couldn’t be sure how many more he and Celine were allotted.
Monsieur Baudelaire closed the door behind them.
Seeing no way out of this now, Bastien sat himself at a cubic leather armchair by the window from where he could see the entire room in detail: two lamps on the desk, standing in perfect symmetry to the lamps bolted on the walls, two potted ficuses, three more cubic chairs as though Monsieur Baudelaire welcomed more people than just Gabriel into his office, and a giant tabloid of design sketches right behind the desk.
Oddly symmetric and much more modern than what Bastien had expected.
“You say your mother has made you promise a few things concerning etiquette.” He sat himself opposite Bastien and dragged the chair forward just a smidge. “What would she have said had she witnessed your act today?”
Monsieur Baudelaire’s words might have hit a blind spot that would have caused anyone else to spring to their feet and throw a tantrum, but Bastien’s immediate reaction was to recline further in his chair and look the perfect image of a bored dandy from the nineteenth century.
The only way he knew to combat looooong moral lessons was to muster a furrow of annoyance on his brow and a blasé tone.
“I doubt she anticipated my becoming a model. For dresses, no less.”
Monsieur Baudelaire nodded. “I’m sure you know she was a dear friend of m—”
“Be that as it may,” Bastien replied dully, “it gives you no right to chastise me. I’m an adult.”
“Oh, I really doubt that.” Leaning to the side, he pulled open a drawer on his little side table, and took out an ash tray and a silver box of cigarettes. Lighting one for himself, he offered Bastien the box.
Bastien considered it for a moment as if it were a test. His headache had returned now that the adrenaline of the fire alarm had worn off.
A cigarette would sure help. He took one and leaned back in his seat, observing the man sitting opposite him.
He knew Claude and his mother had studied together when they were younger, but Bastien had seen him only once before, when his mother had brought him along to Maison Baudelaire, telling him they would meet an old friend.
He couldn’t remember what they had talked about that day, only that he had explored every corner of the House and had refused to leave that evening, clinging with all the obstinacy of a peevish child to the dazzling, brocade suits on the towering mannequins when his mother had come to tug him away.
Bastien wondered now whether Monsieur Baudelaire recalled that day.
“If you would have let me finish,” he resumed after a silent puff of smoke, “I was saying that she was a friend of mine, and as such, I consider her offspring one too. That, and the fact that you and Mademoiselle LeBeau are contestants in my competition gives me plenty of rights to say whatever I want. Especially when both yours and my reputation are at risk.”
Bastien couldn’t rebut that. Had it not been for the subtle help he had offered them, Celine would have been the one walking out of Maison Baudelaire today. And all because of Bastien.
“Today was a minor setback—”
“Minor?” Monsieur Baudelaire clicked his tongue.
“I won’t even begin to count the damage that water has caused to my atelier.
But that girl has exceptional talent, Bastien.
What she had designed for you today could even top my own creations.
And to think she had completed it in one night…
It would be a shame to banish her from the competition. ”
“Banish?”
The words wracked through Bastien like a lightning bolt. Any portrayal of dandyism he had showcased crumbled to his feet like a discarded stage costume.
He shot up straight. “You can’t do that!”
“Yes, I can.” Monsieur Baudelaire replied in that same cool voice. “Pull something like this again and I’m afraid your place in the competition will be forfeited.”
“Give her another model then.” Bastien couldn’t let him do this to Celine.
He couldn’t do this to Celine. Hell, he had even gotten himself disowned to keep this secret for her.
The money…he could find another way to repay his grandfather.
Celine, however, only had this one chance to change her life. “Surely, that should be an option.”
“The choice of the model is entirely up the designer. You two showed up together, I am assuming you will finish this competition together?”
Bastien considered his options, though it seemed he had none, aside from being an obedient mannequin.
“All right,” he said eventually. “I apologise for today. I know your help wasn’t without a cost, so thank you. But Celine does have talent. She deserves to win.”
“Then pull your act together, child.” Monsieur Baudelaire pronounced sternly. “Your mother was the most sensible person I have ever met. There are more similarities between you two than just those grey eyes.”
Bastien looked away. “I very much doubt that.”
“I can’t make you see sense if you’re intent on being stubborn. Nor is it my place to do so.” The couturier sighed. “Let me give you an idea instead.”
“You don’t have—”
“Adalene’s old studio,” he said. His voice was distant and glazed, as though nostalgia had dragged it through a river of memories. “Last time I inquired about it, your family still owned it. Correct?”
Bastien considered him skeptically. “Yes...I still own it.”
“Why don’t you consider reopening it? I have seen the clothes you wear, the air you carry about you.
You and Mademoiselle LeBeau might contribute generously to the new trends.
You two have already dived head first into this new era in the fashion industry, while my contemporaries are just starting to dip their toes in it.
” At Bastien’s silence, he added. “Sleep on it. You don’t have to decide right away.
But it would be a shame to let that place get lost under dust motes. ”