“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 Anaïs,” she said, “you were the only person who knew about this competition and how much I wanted to win. Theonlyperson 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 combatlooooongmoral 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.”
