Shuddering, he faced Celine promptly—reeling back when he caught her staring eerily at him, arms crossed. “By God! You can be scary.”
“Why did you switch my costume?” she demanded without preamble. The sound of chatter and music wafted inside the bathroom in faint notes, but Celine’s angry pitch drowned it all.
Composing himself, Bastien simply shrugged. “What’s wrong with it?”
Celine reached out her hands, her fingers curled into claws, but stopped a hairsbreadth away from his throat and threw her head back. The throbbing vein on her forehead was prominent as ever. “God give me patience,” she muttered. “What’swrong, Bastien, is that we can’t be seen dressed like this! Everyone will get the wrong idea.”
Precisely his intention. If people started gossiping about Celine and Bastien, then Jacques’s relationship with her would be hanging on by a thread. Then Grandfather would give one of his disappointed speeches, Jacques’s status as the perfectgrandson would be stripped away, and Bastien’s life would go back to normal.
Bada bing, bada boom. Easy.
And his plan was already working. Getting Celine used to him had been phase one. Kind of like Pavlov’s dog—in Celine’s case, a nagging poodle. Now Jacques would see them dressed as Antony and Cleopatra, two infamous lovers who were known for their notorious affair, setting off phase two.
“Sure we can,” he said, tapping his mask. “It’s a masked party, darling. No one knows who we are.”
“Iknow! And Jacques will. What the hell happened between this afternoon and the moment you decided to send me this?” she pressed. “I thought you wanted to be friends—”
“You weren’t seriously coming to this party as Helen,” Bastien interrupted.
“So you changed my costume because you didn’t think I could pull off the blonde wig?”
“I thought dressing like Cleopatra would suit you better. You’re not that different from her.” He moved closer. Bringing his fingers underneath her chin, Bastien caressed it lightly. “Afemme fatale. Bold. Beautiful.” A pause. His gaze fell to her lips. “Irresistible.”
Celine glanced at the motion, then slapped his hand away. “Stop flirting with me, Bastien. It’s not helping your case in the slightest.”
“The fact that you think it’s flirting says a lot more,” he drawled and, looping their arms together, guided her out into the corridor again and down the stairs. “Say, has your boyfriend left you in my care tonight, or has he ended up in a ditch?”
Celine tried to squirm away from him without much success. The hall was now at full capacity, there was nowhere else to go but cling to his side. Guests swayed along to therhythmic notes floating from the sax, some already tipsy and others seeking inebriation served in glistening flutes.
“Fortunately, no,” she said, giving up and allowing him to steer her towards a quieter nook. “But the night is long. Who knows, maybe one Ménard man might find himself in that hapless situation.”
Bastien’s smile dropped; the reminder that he wasn’t a Ménard anymore crashed against him at rattling speed. He had been trying not to think about his accounts these past few weeks, finding a few hours of distraction with Celine inside the glamorous Maison Baudelaire or with Juliana inside disreputable cabarets. But to add disownment on top of that? It was just occurring to him that the issue was bigger this time and not that easy to forget. Or side-step.
The room had become stifling. Bastien slipped off his mask.
“So why hasn’t he found you yet?” he scoffed, trying his best to suppress his gloom and drop his shoulders to a relaxed slump. It wasn’t working. His whole body was tense, partly because of the conversation he had with his grandfather, partly because Jacques hadn’t made an appearance yet. How long did it take to put on a costume and walk down the stairs?
“Do you have nothing better to do?” Celine sighed, pushing the leaves of a potted fern out of her face. “You had your fun with the costumes. Go find some other girl to make miserable.”
“And leave you all alone?”
“Good to know you’re so worried about her well-being,” Jacques’s wry voice rang from behind them.
Bastien and Celine turned to face him as one. Dressed in golden armour, he looked every inch the golden boy Celine, and everyone else, believed him to be. Except for the blue splotches that framed the right corner of his mouth. It should have looked worse. Bastien imagined his brother had spent hours before the soirée pressing a frozen slab of meat against his face to soothe it.
To Bastien’s surprise, Celine edged past him and was upon Jacques with her ministrations in seconds. “My God, Jacques! What happened?”
“Yes,whathappened?” Bastien chimed. Chances were Jacques had already cooked up some other excuse to explain the bruises. Bastien was only that more curious to know. “I thoughtPrince Charmingcould never do wrong.”
“It’s nothing to worry,ma jolie,” he told Celine, cupping her cheek lovingly. She looked up at him with the same adoring smile.
Unexpected irritation crawled underneath Bastien’s skin. When had she started looking at Jacques likethat?
“I’m sorry for not finding you earlier,” his brother went on, his thumb now brushing gently across Celine’s cheek. Bastien frowned. “I didn’t know you had changed your mind about coming as Helen.”
“I didn’t,” Celine replied, cutting Bastien a cold glare. “Francine said a Monsieur Ménard had sent me this costume, she must have thought the delivery boy had meant you. You know, Ménard for Ménard.”
“Really?” Jacques snickered. The laurel circlet that blended into his hair glinted when he cocked his head to the side. “That’s funny. Because as far as I am aware—”
