Chapter 20
That Annoying Thing Called Conscience
“Juliana!”
Bastien barrelled in through the door, tossing his jacket on the floor.
“Jules!”
“There is precious little need to shout. I don’t live in a castle.” She appeared from the adjacent room, head tilted to the side as she tried to clasp a jade earring behind her ear. Scanning him from head to toe, she pulled a wry face. “What’s gotten into you?”
It is a very long list, Bastien thought, but Juliana’s sight staggered him into momentary speechlessness.
She was wearing one of her evening dresses—extremely garconne and shorter than all the other ones she had flung around the apartment.
It dropped from her shoulders in a straight silhouette of dark cherry, almost the colour of blood, and barely made it past her knees.
His eyes glinted.
It was perfect for what Bastien needed.
“I require your help with something.”
“Did Paris run out of girls you can kiss already?”
“Even if it did”—Bastien said, barely suppressing the feel of Celine’s lips rolling from the vicinity of his mind—“Paris is still full of men. But I doubt I suit his tastes.”
Juliana’s laugh rang sweetly through the apartment. “Those people exist?”
“Apparently. So, will you help me?”
“I require your help first.” She dangled an earring in front of him. Then asked, “Have you been drinking? You look dazed.”
“Not exactly,” he muttered, walking up to her.
No, he didn’t feel drunk. He felt…strange. Something had been pulsing against his ribs all the way from the Latin Quarter, making him breathe faster, and consequently, making him dizzy. Bastien hadn’t determined what it was yet.
Surely not Celine.
No one had ever had the ability to make him so thoroughly lost in his head that he had driven his car around the block five times before thinking to stop and find a parking space.
No. He must be coming down with something. A fever or other.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, fixing the clasp behind her ear. “Voici. Now come, it is a time-sensitive mission.”
Juliana huffed as she was dragged across the room and ushered out the door barefoot. “Wait, my shoes!”
Bastien ducked inside quickly, picked a pair from the drawer in the corridor, and tossed them at her. “They match your dress.”
Juliana clicked her tongue at his choice, but didn’t protest further.
“You still haven’t told me what this mission is all about.
I love it when you act upon your eccentricities, but I’d rather be prepared if you spiral out of control.
” She slipped her heels on. Paused. Scrutinised him again.
“Don’t tell me this is part of your elaborate ruse concerning—it is, isn’t it? ”
“Partly,” he permitted.
Bastien had to be honest: he hadn’t expected Celine to kiss him.
And while it made his plan against Jacques easier, it made what he had done at Maison Baudelaire worse.
He had gone to the old house to apologise, knowing she would be there, just as she had been there every other evening he had driven to the Latin Quarter and had stayed outside, staring at the lit attic window, biting the inside of his cheek, too much of a coward to climb upstairs and face her.
He had risked both of their chances at winning.
The utter despair on her face when she’d had to tell Monsieur Baudelaire they wouldn’t be able to compete that round had haunted Bastien all night long.
“Look,” he sighed, looping his arm through Juliana’s and walking her down the little slope where her apartment was located. The exhilarating air of the evening seeped through his thin shirt, cooling his strange fever. “I made a mistake I need to atone for.”
“Adorable,” Juliana cooed. “My boy has grown a conscience.”
“I’ll have you know that I’m not doing this out of the pureness of my heart,” he sulked. “I simply need to set something right. It is your job as my best friend to help me.”
Juliana fixed a cigarette between her viciously red lips, and smiled. “So, who do I need to seduce?”
· · ·
They had gone to Casino de Paris to watch Mistinguette perform that night.
Not that Celine had paid much attention to the dance hall, or the people, or the show.
Unwelcome, Bastien’s lips had flashed across her memory the entire time Jacques had conversed with their friends.
The cocktails she had been drinking tasted like him.
The confections they had eaten afterwards tasted like him.
Everything that touched her lips tasted like Bastien.
Celine wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to eat another bite without its flavour changing.
Jacques’s driver made a sharp turn down Boulevard Saint-Germain, causing Celine to jerk from her thoughts with a start.
“Did you fall asleep?” Jacques asked, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can ask Arthur to keep driving for a while if you want to doze off.”
Celine smiled up at him, shaking her head. Neon lights streamed down on them from the convertible top, highlighting the sharp planes of Jacques’s face in a silver halo, making him look like a modern marble bust.
“I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Ana?s has been monopolising you all day?”
“Yes,” she supplied, biting down on her molars, hard, to keep her expression frozen in that state of adoration she had forged all night long. “She has.”
For the first time her wrist wasn’t itching.
Instead her entire chest had flared up, aching from all the lies she had been dealing Jacques this entire week.
It was true that she did not love him, not romantically at least, but she was supposed to have been trying.
She was supposed to have been happy to spend time with him, not think it a hindrance to the time she could have spent working on another design for the competition.
She was supposed to have been making an effort to allow him in, allow him to get to know her, not lie to him every chance she got, or tell him she was with Ana?s when she was with Bastien, or spend time with Bastien, or even kiss Bastien.
“Do tell my sister she is holding up the line,” Jacques said, lowering his mouth to her ear and kissing the spot behind it. “I’ve missed you.”
Celine summoned a quick grin to her lips, doing her best to disregard the broiling panic in her chest. The nape of her neck was covered in a sheen of sweat.
“I’m all yours right now,” she managed awkwardly.
“Why do I have a feeling that means she has claims on you tomorrow too?” When she flashed him a sheepish grin, he only mirrored it. “Then I should probably give you your present now.”
Celine’s senses sharpened at the word. “Present?” she asked with an apprehensive lilt in her voice. “It’s not my birthday yet.”
Jacques tilted his head to the side, like he couldn’t comprehend why someone would question the reason behind a gift. “Do I need an excuse to give my girl a present?”
The backseat of the car fell quiet as Celine forced her expression to smooth into a smile while she reckoned with the guilt that settled fast in her stomach. Here he was, buying her gifts, while she struggled to relieve her mind off his brother’s lips.
In a swift motion, Jacques summoned an intricately wrapped box out of thin air. “Consider it an early birthday present.”
On cue, their car halted in traffic as well, letting the lights of Champs-élysées Avenue illuminate the inside of the car. Celine’s fingers curiously undid the black bow and popped open the lid of a beautiful, white velvet box. Inside rested a perfume bottle with the inscription:
No. 5
Chanel
“When did this come out?” she asked, turning the bottle upside down to check if there was something engraved on the bottom. “I don’t think we saw it at the store that day.”
“We didn’t. I overheard the staff say something about a new shipment,” Jacques replied. “It doesn’t come out for another two months. You’re the first—after Chanel herself, of course—who will be wearing it before the rest of the world gets to.”
“Jacques—this is—” Celine couldn’t get her brain to produce any coherent thought.
The guilt in her stomach had become unbearable, and everything she had on was overwhelming her.
Her dress was itching her body all over.
The pearls around her neck felt too tight.
Even the few strands of hair that had fallen onto her face were cutting like pine-needles into her cheeks.
Carefully, she placed the box on her lap.
“Je t'adore pour ca, Jacques!” Celine managed. “Thank you.”
She didn’t deserve a gift—certainly not tonight when no matter how hard she tried to stop her thoughts, they kept weaving a web that spelled Bastien’s name.
“You’re not going to try it on?”
“O-of course,” she stammered, uncapping the bottle and spritzing it on her wrist. Her thoughts were in such a swirl that she couldn’t even enjoy the scent. “I love it, Jacques.”
A sudden warmth crept up her cheeks, and it was only an anxious heartbeat later that she realised it was the warmth from Jacques’s hand, as he fixed another strand behind her ear. “Anything to see you happy,” he said.
Whatever little food she had eaten all night turned sour in her stomach. She considered asking the driver to pull over. She was sick of herself. “Jacques…”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Taking advantage of their proximity, Jacques leaned closer. “I love buying you gifts.”
Celine was known for exaggerating, but this time, she could almost feel the flames of hell lick at her heels.
Then realisation rocked through her with perfect timing. The kiss with Bastien had been a lesson, no? This was her chance to apply it.
Her attention strayed to Jacques’s lips, parted as though he was about to say something else, and she caught his next words with her mouth.