“Were you not listening just now?” Bastien snapped. But his anger was wasted on Anaïs, so he faced Jacques again, hauling him closer. “If my life goes to hell, so will yours, brother. I will make sure you regret this.”
“Yeah?” Jacques challenged. One glib remark was enough to have them at each other’s throats again. “We’ll see if you’ll have time between finding a job and looking for a new home.”
“Jacques!” Anaïs exclaimed, shoving them away from each other. “Stop it!”
Bastien didn’t look at her. He knew that if he met her gaze his outrage would dissipate. So his resentment remained. And with nowhere to be spent, it accumulated.
Bastien stared at his brother, a smile forming slowly on his lips. “Watch out, Jacques. I have plenty of time on my hands tonight.”
And where better to continue their family drama than a family dinner at the LeBeaus?
Chapter 3
Those Reckless New York Flappers
By the time Celine had torn herself free from the idling atmosphere of neon lights and cigarette haze that surrounded Boulevard de Clichy, night had already swiped a dark finger across the sky. Only gold stars peeked between clouds, shedding some semblance of light along the shadowy cul-de-sac where the LeBeau residence was being prepared for festivities.
The dinner with the Ménards was tonight.
“Merde,” Celine muttered when she reached the gates. All the windows of the first floor shone bright with lights, and she could see her mother’s slim figure glide agitatedly back and forth as she waited.
Celine sneaked quickly through the driveway. A prickling scent wafted from her clothes as though she had dusted herself with cigarette ash. There was no possible way she could walk past her mother’s bloodhound senses and not get chided for attending another cabaret show tonight.
Plan B it is then.
She stopped by an open window and crouched behind the bushes. Leaves tickled her arms, but Celine tried to keep quiet until her mother’s silhouette skimmed past the curtain and disappeared down the corridor. Then she hopped inside.
Celine was certain no one had detected her; the phonograph playing in the dining room was loud enough to muffle even a clumsier burglar from being caught. She was wrong.
A soft, furry tail brushed against her ankles, sending goosebumps up her limbs. Celine stiffened.
Meow!
“Milady, shush!” she whispered. “Go. Go away.”
Meow!
Celine winced. “Shoo, shoo.”
Miffed, Milady sank her claws into Celine’s calf and let out another high-pitched meow. A second later footsteps sounded through the corridor.
“No more treats for you,” Celine huffed, picked the cat up, and clambered up the stairs as stealthily as she could, while her broken heel click-clacked discordantly on the steps.
To her relief, the corridor on the second floor was empty, save for her father’s booming voice coming from her parents’ room, complaining about cufflinks. Celine pushed open the door to her own room, enough to creep inside, then quickly closed it behind her.
“You went to that cabaret again, didn’t you?” Francine’s voice bellowed.
Celine startled, accidentally dropping Milady on the floor. The cat hissed.
“Jesus, Francine,” Celine bemoaned, chucking the broken heel onto a pile of dresses on the floor. It had snapped when she had jumped over the driveway fence and dropped into the bushes down below, trampling the flowers into their beds. Not her most elegant moment, but if she was honest, there had been worse. “Let my mother do the chiding, I beg of you.”
Being Celine’s nurse for ten years now (though Celine had outgrown the need for a nurse ages ago), Francine felt it imperative to chide every once in a while. She tutted at Celine when she began shimmying out of her clothes.
“Do help me, Francine,” Celine pouted. “I smell like papa’s smoking pipe.”
“You smell worse than that. Why you even like going to those places is beyond me, Mademoiselle.”
“I don’t go there for fun,” Celine argued. “If only you could see their costumes. I doubt the jewels are real but they’re sewn in such a way that they sparkle as though they are.”
