La Femme Read online

  “Forgive me,” said Zachary Wilde. “I didn’t mean to alarm you, but I would very much like to talk to you.” He smiled in a boyish fashion. “You look so very fierce. Please. Just a few moments of your time.”

  “I… I don’t mean to look fierce,” Areta said, feeling far from that. “But everyone is looking at us, Mr Wilde. Perhaps you should let go of my arm.”

  “And if I do, you won’t vanish?”

  “I’ll try not to.” She smiled then. He hadn’t learned her deceit, after all.

  Wilde let go of her and for a moment appeared unsure of what to say. People were so close and because of who he was, and the fact they did not know or recognise Areta, they were curious.

  “Mr Wilde, you are on the brink of causing a scandal. What is it?”

  He appeared to control himself. “This might sound uhinged, but you’ve become rather a mystery to me. Let me explain. I see you so often, at nearly every public event I attend, yet I do not know who you are or why you’re here. You don’t arrive or leave with any companions. No one talks to you, almost as if they can’t see you. And yet – I am happy to say – you are not a ghost. Will you satisfy my curiosity?”

  “People can see me now all too well,” Areta said sweetly. “In fact soon the whole room will be gossiping about me.”

  “Must you always remain a mystery?”

  “There’s nothing mysterious about me. I visit public events because I like to get out of my house. I enjoy them. But while I like to mingle with people I don’t necessarily want to talk to them. What’s mysterious about that?”

  Wilde pondered her words for a few seconds. “Yes, I can see that now it is me who is being the mysterious one. But there is…” He narrowed his eyes. “No, to say more would make me sound even more unhinged. I do apologise. But despite that, I would like to know you better. Would you care to meet my wife and family?” He gestured towards the far wall.

  Areta glanced in this direction and noted that Mrs Wilde was not paying attention to her husband’s conversation – yet. She wondered if this was the invitation she was supposed to accept, but he’d made no others yet. “That’s kind of you, but… I was just about to go home. I’m sorry. I have guests later.”

  Wilde pulled a face of disappointment. “What a shame. Perhaps you would be free to meet me at the Café in my emporium tomorrow?”

  All around Areta, the occupants of the room seemed to be slowing down. Arms rose and fell as if under water. Heads turned languidly, but away from her. Voices became a low murmur. But it was not yet the moment to comply; she was sure of it. “This sounds as if I’m making excuses, but really I can’t meet you tomorrow. I have prior engagements.”

  Wilde grimaced, raked a hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t blame you for refusing, excuses or not. The request was perhaps importunate. How about this? Every year, we hold a party at our home just before the Winter Festival. I would very much like you to attend. If you’d give me your address, I could ask my wife to send you an invitation.” His hand went to his jacket pocket, presumably for writing implements.

  After a pause of three heartbeats, Areta said, “Thank you, I would gladly attend.”

  Wilde relaxed as if in great relief. He grinned, again with that almost heart-breaking boyish air. “Your address?” He held a pencil, poised, over a small notebook. Around them, the cacophony of voices started up again and people moved swiftly.

  “If you will indulge me, I’d rather not give you my address. Might I simply turn up, or will I need the invitation to pass your threshold?”

  Wilde considered. “I can leave your name with the Welcomer at the door.”

  “Splendid.”

  Wilde sighed, rubbed his face. “This is going to sound extremely rude, but…”

  “But what?”

  “What is your name?”

  Areta laughed. “Areta Winward. Perhaps you should write that down.” She held out her hand to him. “And now, I really must go. Congratulations on a marvellous party, Mr Wilde. I shall look forward to your Festival celebration.”

  He took her hand. “I haven’t told you the date…”

  She let her fingers lie cool, but not limp, in his own dry palm, resisting an impulse to squeeze him. “The whole city knows what the date will be. I doubt there’s any risk of me missing it.”

  “The 18th, at 8 o’clock.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  She felt him watch her wind her way through the crowd to the entrance. Of course, she must not attend. And yet… She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder.

  *

  “He has my name, Mimosa,” said the countess, “and this time he wrote it down, so he won’t forget. He might try to find out things about me.” She had recently arrived home and Mimosa had been waiting for her in her dimly-lit boudoir. While the countess had yanked off her hat, pins and all, and thrown her coat onto a chair, she still wore her gloves and a vanity purse dangled from her left wrist.

  “There will be more than one woman in Graserve named Areta,” Mimosa said, “and the chance of him discovering the name of your great-grandmother’s surname on your mother’s side is remote.”

  The countess put her hands to her face. “Oh! I am unnerved.”

  “This is plain to see,” said Mimosa. “You look like a girl – a very excited girl, I might add.” She was sitting on the wide canopied bed with her legs drawn up, her arms clasping her knees.

  “Now, stop it, you naughty minx!” the countess declared, making a vague slapping gesture in Mimosa’s direction, but she was smiling widely. Then her hands flew to her face again. “Oh, what am I doing? This is madness, and also dangerous.”

  “Isn’t that the attraction?”

  The countess picked up a cushion from the chair and threw it at the girl, who dodged. Then they were hurtling about the room, laughing, ultimately throwing themselves onto the bed, out of breath. “You are the first proper witch I have ever met,” said the countess.

  “Your mirror might disagree,” said Mimosa.

  *

  That night, Zachary Wilde dreamed of Areta Winward. In the dream, he was walking through a garden that was rather complicated with winding paths and too many trees, and shadowy people strolling among them. The shadows did not interest him. He was pursuing Areta Winward down a narrow walk. She was wearing a cream-coloured summer dress, but did not carry a parasol as the other women did, nor wear a hat. This must be her garden, he thought and called out her name. She turned, put a finger to her lips and then gestured for him to come to her. He saw there was a fountain of stone fish beside her, which had created silvery rippling patterns on her skin.

  “Come with me, Zachary,” she said. “I would like you to see the real garden.”

  She held out her hand and he took it.

  Areta led him between high hedges of boxwood and then they were in a maze, the hedges towering over them, closing in. The woman increased her pace and eventually they were running, along narrow pathways, round corners, again and again. He supposed she was taking him to the heart of the maze, which would be magical, but then they turned another corner and were beyond the hedges. A landscape of extraordinary wonder and beauty spread down before him, as if an enchanted carpet was being shaken and unrolled before his eyes. He stood hand in hand with Areta Winward gazing over this sparkling vista. A white city of spires and turrets and banners reared over a green lake. Beyond was the lilac smudge of high mountains. From where in Graserve could this be seen? Or was it merely an image conjured by the soft sunset light in the peach-coloured sky, the fire-edged wispy clouds, that made it all so lovely? “Incredible,” he breathed. “What a view you have.”

  Areta’s hair was loose about her shoulders now, and her feet were bare beneath the hem of her dress. He drank in the sight of her; her noble height, her sculpted patrician face, her long hands and feet, the wheaten-gold of her hair. He had never beheld a woman so stunning to the senses: a pagan priestess, a witch, an oracle. “This is my garden,” she sai
d, “and it extends forever. Fear cannot live her, nor madness, nor despair.”

  “This is a dream,” Zachary Wilde said sadly.

  “Yes,” Areta said, “but it is ours, and it exists, here beyond the portals of the mundane world. Inner life can be rich beyond imagination. We need discover only how to meet here, to step beyond.”

  And with these words she transferred to him the kiss within her eyes, hardly more than the passing of a breeze and yet so potent. Then she was some distance off, down the hill before him, eventually dwindling to nothing. She had a small green cat by her side.

  *

  On the night of the party, the countess dressed in a clinging robe of white silk velvet that had an enormous hood trimmed with snowy marten fur. Over this she flung a white satin cloak that had no hood but which reached to the floor. Mimosa arranged her hair so that coils of it were wound upon her head, while other locks flowed down over her breast, carefully curled.

  The countess felt removed from reality. Over the past weeks, she’d been living two lives, one in the mundane world, the other… the other somehow lost in a dream of impossibilities. She had dined with her husband and had enjoyed his company. She had met her lover twice and had laughed at his wit. But all the while she’d been thinking of Zachary Wilde. Mimosa had done something terrible to her and part of the countess yearned to undo it before anything else could happen. But at the same time, she could not act.

  When Mimosa told her the carriage was waiting for her outside, the countess moved slowly out of her room, down the wide, sweeping staircase to the hallway of her home. Her husband was absent at some men’s gathering; he would not be back until dawn. The snow was heavier now than on the night of the Glass Fortress party; it came down in flakes the size of florins.

  *

  The Wilde manse stood upon a hill, surrounded by farming land and forests. The house shone like a festival tree; every window blazed with golden light. As if in a trance, the countess stepped from her carriage, passed the stamping horses, and climbed the shallow white steps to the main entrance. Here, her name was a charm that allowed entrance, and she became this other woman.

  “May I take your cloak, madam,” murmured a girl in uniform and Areta surrendered this to her.

  She was late, intentionally, so that that Zachary Wilde and his wife would not still be in the hall, greeting the first of the guests. Now, they would be mingling among all these people. Areta knew she did not have to concern herself with speaking to anyone. Unless Zachary anchored her physically, she would remain unnoticed here. Servants, however, were immune to this effect and offered her wine in an indigo glass, and a small dish of delicacies. Areta drank the wine and nibbled on a few of the delicacies before discreetly leaving the dish on a table. She wandered through the radiant salons, looking at all the people. At one time, she’d attended parties like this at least once a week; now they were strange territory to her, no longer compelling.

  Presently, a young footman approached her and asked her to accompany him. Languidly, half dazed, Areta complied. She followed the boy through the blazing caves and tunnels of the house, past many doors flung wide, until they came to a region, at the top of several stairways, where all the doors were closed and there was neither light nor noise. They were in a corridor, lit by the moonlight that fell through a tall, arched window at the far side. Here, as far as Areta could see, was a dead end but the page opened a door to the right, which revealed a flight of descending stairs. Alone, Areta walked down them. The footman closed the door behind her.

  She came to an oriel hallway, dominated by an immense stained glass window depicting stylised blooms and peacocks that was circular at the top with a rectangular pane beneath. Two curling flights of stairs led down, one opposite to where she stood, these eventually conjoining into a single flight that led to a bare, dark chamber beneath.

  And here Zachary Wilde was waiting for her, sitting on a simple wooden chair, such as you’d find in a kitchen. He did not notice her at first, lost in his own thoughts. He seemed so sad. Was she causing this, bringing a kind of madness into his life? Did he wish he hadn’t asked her here, wished desperately he’d never met her so he wouldn’t have to feel like this? Resigning oneself to an arid life was one thing, invoking the flaming follies of youth was another.

  She could turn now, glide back up the stairs, find her way out. She didn’t need to subject them to this; the power was hers. But then he raised his head, and while the sadness remained in his eyes for several long seconds, this was presently replaced by joy. He stood up, held out his hands to her.

  *

  Zachary Wilde regarded this creature as she came to him; a snow goddess, an ice nymph, a sorceress of blizzards and storms. How could she possibly be real? Yet here she was. “I didn’t think you’d come,” he said. “I’m not sure anymore what is a dream and what is reality.”

  “I feel, Zachary, that this is both,” Areta said, and took his hands in hers.

  “I’ve realised I have somehow fallen in love with you,” he said, “and yet I don’t know you. What I love is hardly more than a ghost, or the woman I would like you to be. The fact that you are here…” He frowned, shook his head, gazed at her once more. “Do you feel anything of what I feel? Or are you really a delusion, a vision?” He laughed sadly. “Can you even answer that?”

  “You don’t have to worry you are going mad,” said Areta gently. “I am real enough, and yet perhaps our meeting here like this is not. I think we are perhaps seeking something we have lost – the gardens of our youth. In each other’s company, those gates hidden by ivy and cobwebs and years are somehow unlocked. Will you follow me?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  He went after her out into the silent garden, over the snow-crusted lawn and then onto cold paved pathways. He followed her into the ice-mantled trees at the edge of his estate, and then into the winter fields beyond. White, winged creatures that were not birds flew across the gemmed sky, which looked as hard as frost. If he reached up, perhaps he could pluck the gems right from it. And still he followed her, across frozen rivers, through sleeping hamlets and into the foothills of white mountains. She ascended the snowy slopes with ease, never faltering, while now he was stumbling, the cold biting right into his bones; his shoes and trousers were sodden, his feet numb. But above him, in the mountains, he saw the soaring turrets of a marvellous citadel, golden lights gleaming from all its windows as if in welcome. Near, yet far. He was too weak in body to reach it, the icy frost too severe for his flesh. When he thought he must die of cold and exhaustion, he called to Areta to stop and wait, and she did.

  “We have come too far,” he said.

  She smiled. “No, not far at all.”

  Then he turned to follow her gaze and saw the lawn of his house, with their prints in the snow – his shoes, the serpent trail of her hem – and beyond this the festive shine of his home. There were no mountains, no shining citadel. He fell to his knees, panting.

  “When I first saw you tonight,” said Areta, “I thought of turning back, for I have no wish to cause you pain. But then I knew how I could show you the truth. Do you see now?”

  He shook his head.

  She leaned over him, took his face in her hands. “What are the passions of youth but fantasies, idealised landscapes and blissful dreams? We can be this – in some precious moments. I don’t know how to explain, nor truly understand it, but perhaps it is a gift we should not question.”

  He clasped her legs. “Is there not a danger we could vanish into that world? It seems…” His gaze shifted to the trees beyond the lawns. Snow had begun to fall again. “It seemed so real.”

  She stroked his hair, which was dappled with snowflakes. “We all know, Mr Wilde, that dreams – like this festival snow – do not last.”

  *

  The countess arrived home in a tranquil yet thoughtful mood. As before, Mimosa was waiting for her in the boudoir. “Well?” she asked.

  “A dream happened in reality,” sai
d the countess, slowly taking off her cloak, her gloves. “Zachary Wilde and I both saw this; it was quite real. I don’t know how I took us there, but I told him I could do so again. Is this true or was I deceiving him?”

  “You have the ability now,” Mimosa said.

  “Rather more than a mask.”

  “Yes. Rather more.”

  The countess pinned Mimosa with a stare. “I noticed you weren’t there tonight. I saw no green cat.”

  Mimosa smiled and rose from the plump chair where she was sitting. “What makes you think the cat is me?”

  The countess merely laughed.

  “Did he declare his love for you?” Mimosa asked.

  “I don’t think he knows himself what he feels, other than bewitched.” The countess frowned. “If he does indeed believe he loves me, it is not through my own doing, or the charm of my personality, is it?”

  “You’re not supposed to care about that,” Mimosa said.

  “I care about hurting people, stupid though that may be.” The countess sat down in the chair Mimosa had vacated and rubbed a hand across her brow. “I know you meant the best for me, my dear, but I can’t foresee anything good deriving from this deceit. I am in a superior position to him, having much freedom. He has a large family that demands his time, never mind the work he has to do. He has too much to lose.”

  “His wife and family can’t follow him into a dream, especially when it isn’t his own,” Mimosa said, rather coldly. “And I don’t believe you want it to stop. You would miss him, wouldn’t you…?”

  The countess held Mimosa’s gaze for some moments, as a thread of realisation stitched through her mind. “What is this to you?”

  Mimosa turned away.

  The countess got to her feet. “There is some personal reason behind all this, isn’t there?” She shook her head. “Have I been even more foolish than I thought?”

  Mimosa wheeled around. “No, no, I want nothing evil for you, my lady. I care for you very much, but…”