Page 41 of Under Her Protection

"Madame."

"You will not speak to me about my sleep."

"I will if it is relevant to your safety."

"It is not."

"I will be the judge of that."

"No. You will not."

"Madame."

"I engaged you to protect my body. My sleep is mine."

"Your sleep, Madame, is very much a function of your body."

"Do not be clever."

"I am not being clever. I am being direct."

"You are being both."

They were a meter apart.

Leo's pulse was in her throat. She registered it and did not care about it.

"Lara wants you to break," she said. "That is the model. She is not going to shoot at you in the street, not yet, because breaking you in the street does not give her what she wants. She is going to take your deals, and then she is going to take your reputation, and then she is going to take the parts of you that the Circle gave back to you. She is going to do it slowly. She is doing it now. The message at Maison Noire was not a threat. It was the beginning of a conversation she expects you to join. And she is doing all of this because she is angry with you about a thing she has been angry with you about for twenty-five years, and if you do not tell me what that thing is, I can’t properly help you.”

Vivienne's face did not change.

"You do not know," she said, "what you are saying."

"Tell me. Then I will know." Leo looked at her intently. The air between them felt thicker.

"No." Vivienne’s grey-blue eyes flashed angrily.

"Madame, please.”

"No." Vivienne stood firm.

"Vivienne."

It was the first time Leo had used the name and it felt both foreign and beautiful in her mouth.

“Vivienne,” she repeated.

Vivienne went very still.

Leo was a half meter from her. The scent of vetiver was faint. The fire in the grate was working quietly behind Vivienne's shoulder. Vivienne's grey-blue eyes, at this distance, were not an accountant's at all. They were a woman's. They were a woman's and they had spent a week trying not to show anything real, and now, they were so real. They held vulnerability under the armor.

Something at the edge of the evening tipped.

Leo felt it tip. She had felt, in her life, other conversations tip, and she had in almost all of those cases stepped back by half a foot, because she had trained for twelve years to step back. Tonight, with Vivienne's mouth a little parted and the grey-blue eyes refusing but less harsh, Leo did not step back.

She closed the half meter.

She put her hand flat against the wall beside Vivienne's head. The wall was the space beside the fireplace. It was smooth. The paint was cool. Her palm found it and stayed there.