Page 33 of Our Strange Duet

We’d met in Deauville, a pretty seaside town along the Normandy coast. Father had been playing with a group of musicians at a café off the beach, and I’d spent my days wandering the boardwalk, watching the waves and the endless trains of promenading tourists dressed in pastel finery I could never hope to afford.

One particularly hot day, I’d decided to venture to the water to escape the fiery sunrays baking the wooden planks. Almost immediately, I regretted my decision. The sand was all but impossible to navigate in my boots, and the wind blew harder there as it raced toward the water’s edge. I had to keep a protective hand on the top of my straw skimmer, and even still, the breeze undid my scarf, tugging at its gauzy length with coy playfulness before yanking it away and casting it over the sea.

“No!” I’d exclaimed, watching it dance in the air before a white-capped wave swelled up and pulled it into the watery depths.

It had been well past noon, and high tide had begun to wash in. The waves were much too powerful to venture into with my long skirts, and I didn’t know how to swim.

Despite my best efforts, I began to cry. The scarf had been my mother’s. I didn’t have any memories of her, but Father kept a photo taken just after they’d wed, and I loved to study it. In it, she wore this scarf, and had tipped her head back, laughing, with a warm, wide smile. I’d always felt close to her when I wrapped it round my neck, but its red chiffon was now spread out on a wave too far from shore to retrieve.

Until…

A figure raced by me, diving into the bracing sea, sleek and athletic as the gray seals which played in the Baie de l’Orne. He plunged into an oncoming wave and disappeared beneath the surface. Seconds later, he emerged, my scarf held triumphantly in his hands.

He swam back to shore and presented it to me with all the ceremony of a knight returning with the spoils of war, even as he shivered in his ruined linen suit. When I’d wondered how I might repay such a magnanimous feat of bravery, he’d smiled and asked if I’d join him for a flavored ice at a little spot he knew down the beach. It was the café where Father played, and we all soon became fast friends.

Raoul was with his family on holiday, and the two weeks we’d spent together had been full of delicious frivolity: Picnics on the beach. An afternoon spent at the Hippodrome de la Touques, where we watched several races and placed bets on whichever horse’s name made us laugh. And even a ferry ride to Trouville, where we wandered through shops and Raoul bought me a set of tortoiseshell hair combs I still occasioned to wear.

Raoul had been my first kiss. And my second. And third.

Caught in the whirlwind of his attention, I’d spent the fortnight in fevered fantasies of romantic assignations and painfully exquisite longings, certain that he’d fallen as deeply in love with me as I’d decided I was with him. I dared to dream of moonlight proposals, of sitting in his family’s box at the track, splendidly dressed in the highest fashions with a dazzling ring on my finger proclaiming to all that I was loved, that I was cherished, that I was taken.

But I never met any of the other de Chagnys, and I arrived at their hotel one day to find Raoul simply gone.

Until now.

“No beau. It’s nothing like that,” I assured him, noticing traces of that boy still hidden in the curve of his smile. “But I…I don’t go out. The Angel of Music is very strict, you see, and—”

Raoul’s eyes lit up once more, his hope as bright as candle glow. “Then I shan’t keep you out late.” He raised the bottle of champagne. “We’ll pop this in the carriage.”

“No, Raoul.”

“Oh? Should we now?”

“No, I mean—”

“You must change,” he said, too caught up in his own visions to hear what I was desperately trying to say. “I must get my hat. Two minutes, Little Lotte,” he said, taking my hand and pressing my fingers to his lips with a rakish smile.

He hurried from the room, casting back one last grin before ducking out.

“Raoul!” I called, following after him to futilely shout down the hall. He was already too far gone to hear.

With a strange, twisting sense of guilt plaguing my stomach, I shut the door and flicked the lock with a decisive click. “Things have changed, Raoul.”

Chapter 12

I turned to face my dressing station, tallying everything I needed to do in order to make it out before Raoul returned, but I stopped short. There was something about the room that felt different. Heavier. The air seemed potent with potential, all but sparkling at its edges, and I was struck dumb, knowing what it must mean.

My Angel had returned, and he’d heard…everything.

“That boy,” he growled, confirming it, and the bricks around me seemed to shake under his thunderous timbre.

“You’ve come back,” I whispered, both giddy and heartsick, filled with a dreadful sense of shame that I couldn’t put a name to. It wasn’t my fault Raoul had come. I’d not asked for his presence. I’d not hoped for his roses. And yet…

“What a slave of fashion this insolent fool is,” the Angel raged.

“I didn’t…I didn’t ask for him to come,” I said, quavering but quick to defend myself. “He’s the opera’s new patron, and—”

“I know him. I know all about him,” the Angel snapped. “The Vicomte de Chagny. I wasn’t aware you knew him.”