Page 56 of Under Her Protection

Leo huffed once through her nose, almost a laugh.

"Thank you, Mademoiselle Cole."

"Madame."

Vivienne picked up the ledger off the carpet. She put it back on the desk. She gathered the tights, and the remains of the grey dress, and walked, naked from the waist down in her own study, to the interior door that led to her dressing room, and she did not look back.

At the door she paused.

"Send Guérin in to pick up the rest," she said, without turning, "and close the door on your way out."

She went through.

Leo stood in the study at eleven twenty-six on a Tuesday morning with her right hand still wet and her left hand at her side, and her breath coming in slow through her nose, and the line at her jaw set hard, and she looked at the desk and at the mantel and at the closed interior door, and she understood, with a clarity that felt less like understanding and more like weather, that Avery had been right about the window and right about the room, and that she was, all the same, going to climb through.

She looked at the interior door once. Then she went out into the corridor. The beeswax undertone of the house was the same beeswax undertone it had been at six in the morning. The Vigée Le Brun in the entry hall was the same Vigée Le Brun. Guérin was at the bottom of the stairs with a tray, waiting to go up, as she had been waiting to go up at this hour every day for nineteen years, and she did not look at Leo's face, and Leo, who had been raised to say good morning to a housekeeper, said good morning, and Guérin asked if Madame might need her upstairs, and Leo said yes.

11

Maison Noire on a Wednesday at ten was thinner than a Saturday and louder than a Monday, and that suited Vivienne, who had come out tonight specifically to see three people who would not remark on her dress.

Colette took her coat at the door with the small nod she had been giving Vivienne for eleven years, which Vivienne returned, and said "She is in the red lounge, Madame," without being asked, because Colette had known before Vivienne asked. Leo, in a black suit, at Vivienne's left shoulder, received the discretion protocol again at the door and received it in silence, as on the first night.

“Anteroom,” Vivienne said and Colette nodded.

Colette walked Leo through to the anteroom. Leo would stand at the anteroom until Vivienne sent for her tonight.

Vivienne went in.

Isabella was alone on the oxblood banquette with a glass of red and a book face-down beside her, which she closed as Vivienne arrived, and she stood up, and she did the small tap on Vivienne's wrist with one fingernail that was the opening of every serious conversation the two of them had had in twenty years.

"My love." Isabella’s voice was warm.

"Isabella."

"Sit down." She nodded at the chair.

"I am sitting down."

"You are standing."

"I am about to sit down. Do not rush me."

"Armagnac."

"Red. Yours?”

Isabella snapped a finger at the doorway without looking at the doorway, and a tray arrived in what felt like less than a minute. A glass of the same burgundy was on the low table at Vivienne's left hand. Isabella sat back down and put her elbow on the back of the banquette and her chin on her fist and looked at Vivienne for five solid counts before she said a word.

"You have a mark on your throat. And another on your collarbone.” Isabella’s sharp eyes missed nothing.

Vivienne did not touch her throat.

"Do I?” Vivienne was going to play hard to get.

"You do."

"How odd." Vivienne almost chuckled.