The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (35 page)

Augustine left nobody behind her. When she died, there was no family member left to tell. The Duc took back most of the gifts he had given her. In fact, as far as he was concerned, he took back everything. He did not know about the two pearls, the diary and the little painting of the sea.

Following Augustine’s death, Arlette had a premonition of her own lonely death and adopted two orphans from the Marais to make sure there was someone to mourn her. It was Arlette who left a provision in her own will that Augustine du Vert’s grave always be adorned with fresh flowers.

Chapter 54

So, Marco had sent me away again. I went back to Paris, since I still had to move out of the apartment. I wrote to Greg Simon telling him I needed to be released from my commission and he should work out how much money I owed him. He told me that I need not worry about returning any of my advance; the work I had done so far was more than enough. I guessed Marco must have told him to say that.

I had a few things to do before I left the city. I went to the Musée d’Orsay. Now I knew that the painting that hung opposite Remi Sauvageon’s portrait of Augustine was a portrait of Sauvageon’s wife. Both Augustine and Virginie Sauvageon were painted wearing the same pearl, the enormous South Sea Island beauty that shone with the colours of the setting sun that had been the price of Augustine’s maidenhead. The pearl which once belonged to the most notorious lesbian in Venice. I wondered if that could be my Luciana, who’d received the pearl from Ernesta, her courtesan lover. Had Luciana given up on men altogether after Casanova sprung her from the convent?

There was sadness in Augustine’s eyes. I saw that now, while Virginie’s expression shone with great contentment. Augustine’s face was all angles. Virginie’s face was plump with goodness and the happiness of a woman who had ended up with everything she wanted.

Before I left the city, I also went to see Augustine’s grave one more time. I took my usual offering of peonies and found once again that someone had beaten me to it. Her grave was freshly swept and as neat and tidy as the memorial of a beloved sister, daughter or aunt who had been dead for just a few weeks rather than over a hundred years. I knew now that Arlette had made provision for Augustine’s grave to be kept well, but I wondered if it was really possible that her instructions still had any influence more than a hundred and fifty years later.

Are there some women, like Augustine, who are destined to be unlucky in love? Could things have turned out differently? I thought of the generations of little Sauvageons who had enjoyed rich and happy lives thanks to their
grandpère
’s artistic talent, and then I thought of Augustine, who had no family to mourn for her and no family to lay claim to her story years later. It was what made her the perfect subject for a film, as Greg Simon put it, but it was still very sad to me.

Perhaps it was especially sad because it put me in mind of my own situation. Marco had made it clear this time that I was not to hold out any hope that we could have any kind of relationship. He was even willing to sacrifice any hope of friendship, since he did not want me to harbour any kind of fantasy that he might be softening in his resolve to stay alone for the rest of his life. I did not have to stay alone, however. I was getting to an age where my friends were getting together, two by two, like the animals trooping onto the ark. Several had children already. They were mapping out futures that encompassed whole generations, not just five-year plans. Marco warned me to waste no more time thinking about a phantom.

I stayed with Augustine for slightly too long. I almost missed my train back to England.

As I travelled back to London on the Eurostar, that last scene in Marco’s office ran through my mind. I leaned my head on the window and remembered that moment – so full of possibility – when I burst into his office and saw him sitting on his chair with his back to me. Could things have gone any differently?

In my imagination, I stepped forward and put my hands on his shoulders. He reached up and took one of my hands in his. He turned to look up at me. His face was as it had been in all those old photographs, when he was the gilded youth with everything ahead of him.

He got to his feet and we stood face to face. He stroked a hand across my cheek and murmured something sweet in Italian.

We kissed and the love we felt for each other blossomed between us.

Marco was right. I had made a fool of myself and embarrassed him. We could not have a future. Even now I knew the truth, my fantasies inevitably harked back to the way he had been and not the way he was now.

The train arrived at St Pancras and I disembarked with a heavy heart. London was just another temporary stop on a longer journey. In just a couple of weeks I would be on my way to Berlin.

What would await me there? I had a research project to embark upon, again, and that would undoubtedly throw up some surprises, but what would happen beyond that? Had Marco Donato surprised me for the very last time?

Epilogue

In his bedroom in Venice, Marco Donato was deep in concentration, while his doctor carefully examined his skin for signs of improvement or deterioration.

‘It’s time,’ said Marco at last.

‘What?’ His doctor came to see him once a month and the conversation was always the same. Yes, Marco was comfortable. Yes, he was looking after his skin. No, he did not want to consider the possibility of reconstructive surgery. ‘Time for what?’ the doctor pressed.

‘Whatever you can do,’ said Marco. ‘I’ve decided I want you to do it. I’ve waited too long.’

‘Because you have waited so long,’ said the doctor, ‘we might not be able to get the results you require.’

‘Do what you can. I just want to be able to go outside without attracting too much attention.’

‘Very well. And what’s brought this on?’

‘Doctor, you know not to ask.’

For Marco, his appearance had been an outward manifestation of everything that he hated about himself. He had caused the accident in which he’d been injured, and the way it had left him looking seemed like small recompense for having survived when his passenger didn’t. But at last, Marco had a reason to want to move on from the past. He could only hope that his future would still be waiting for him when he did.

Sarah’s thrilling and sensual love story continues with

Hidden Women, Book Three:

The Girl Behind The Curtain

Stella Knightley

Sarah Thomson and Marco Donato’s complicated love affair continues – their passion is a deep one but both have been badly hurt before and are wary of exposing their vulnerabilities to the other.

Meanwhile, Sarah begins to research a new subject . . .

In Nineteen-Thirties Germany, Katherine Hazleton escapes her stuffy finishing school and runs away to Berlin in pursuit of an unsuitable man. Alone and penniless when her boyfriend deserts her, she is forced to become a hostess at a cabaret bar. There she reinvents herself as Kitty Katkin. Writing her own songs to accompany her risqué dance routines, Kitty is soon a sensation. She is in love with Berlin and her handsome musician lover, Otto. But Germany is about to change.

Will Kitty and Sarah find the love they truly deserve?

Coming out in September 2013 in paperback and ebook:

pre-order now!