A ripple of admiration runs through the crowd.
I can’t tear my eyes from Gustave. He doesn’t look rattled, doesn’t even glance at his opponent. He simply lifts his paddle once more, wrist relaxed, gaze cool, like a man who won’t be denied.
When the auctioneer’s gavel comes down, the applause rises like a wave.
I feel it in my bones. Gustave’s untouchable, out of my reach, out of my galaxy.
“Wow! I’d love to be invited to the de Valois estate.” Cece squeezes my hand. “They say he has some amazing art.”
I’m about to tear my gaze from him when, across the glittering crowd, Gustave looks up. His storm-grayeyes lock onto mine, and the impact is a jolt of live current.
My breath catches.
I look away quickly, slipping into the stream of people drifting back toward the lobby now that the auction is over.
The evening is winding down, and after a few more drinks, there is the slow shuffle toward the exits.
“Tara, how are you?”
I freeze. He’s at my elbow, impossibly close, standing by one of the tall windows that frame the Paris night.
Beyond the glass, the city glitters—streetlamps haloed in mist, car lights threading along the Bois de Boulogne, and in the distance, the faint shimmer of the Eiffel Tower.
“I’m well. Ah…congratulations on the Cimabue.”
“Thank you.” His voice is smooth, cool as glass, but his eyes burn when they meet mine. “He’s a favorite of mine. What do you think of him?”
“Well, he is one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style,” I remark.
And Cece thinks you like him because you’re both equally haughty!
“Have you seen his mosaics in Florence?”
“Yes. Santa Maria Novella.” I smile faintly, remembering. I had gone there right after I graduated with my master’s, before I started my PhD at NYU. “The Crucifixknocked my socksoff.”
His lips tilt. “Cimabue’s work suggests that divinity can bend, even break.”
It feels as if he’s not only speaking of the artist but something else.
I wet my lips, suddenly warm. “And yet, for all his innovation, Giotto eclipsed him within a generation.”
“The man who breaks the path is rarely the one who walks it,” Gustave says quietly.
“Giotto was simply a superior artist,” I say airily, in my comfort zone.
“Was he?” he challenges.
“Absolutely! While Cimabue’s figures were linear and stylized, Giotto conveyed complex human emotions.”
“You know your art.”
“I do.”
We fall silent for a long moment, and the space between us thrums with meaning neither of us dares to voice.
I clear my throat. “I should?—”
“I trust you’re finding Paris agreeable,” he cuts in, stopping my retreat.
