He wasn’t lying when he said his life is a shitstorm of constant gossip, a never-ending soap opera played out in glossy magazines and tabloids. Every move dissected. Every expression photographed and analyzed. When he was going through the divorce, there were camps, people who sided with him, others with Simone, and the ones who wanted blood from both.
Even his son wasn’t spared.
Aubert’s school photos had been splashed across websites, dissected for likeness—does he look more like his mother or his father? And how ishefeeling about the divorce? Was there a reason Aubert is an only child? Is that the reason for the divorce?
Simone was a piece of work!
She’d been recorded on the steps of theirhôtelparticulierscreaming at Gustave, calling him a ‘cheating sack of shit’. That video went viral, igniting a firestorm of hashtags and trending threads.
Overnight, Paris was speculating on what the de Valois marriage truly looked like behind the gilded doors, and who Gustave was stepping out on his wife with.
His world is lived under glass, where every mistake is amplified and every slip-up is sold to the highest bidder. No wonder he’s careful. No wonder he hesitates.
But a relationship lived in the shadows feels sordid. It’s less than what I want, less than what I deserve. I’m not asking for forever—but I’m also not willing to be someone’s secret.
If Gustave were an ordinary man, someone the gossip pages didn’t orbit like moths around a flame, none of this would matter.
But he isn’t ordinary.
And maybe that’s the problem.
Because I’m not sure if I want to stand beside him under all those watchful eyes…or if I’m terrified that I do. The thought makes the air inside me contract sharply. I ease my hand out of his, needing space to breathe.
“I’m going to go.” I hop off the stool, and give him a tentative smile. “Thanks for the beer.”
“It was my pleasure,chérie.”
The warmth of the pub evaporates the moment I push open the door and step outside. The cool, damp March air slaps my cheeks.
I tighten my scarf and start walking, the Seine glimmering like a black ribbon beside me.
Somewhere behind me, Gustave is still at the bar. I don’t look back because, if I do, I’d go running to him and tell him that I want him, too, and to hell with the cost.
CHAPTER 12
Gustave
Our family name is inscribed on plaques in the Louvre, whispered on donor lists, and echoed in marble corridors.
Tonight, I attend yet another patron event—part gala, part board meeting, part performance of aristocratic duty.
I make my greetings, nod where expected, letting my name do most of the work.
It has been this way for centuries.
Henri de Valois, a seventeenth-century ancestor, served as a close advisor to Louis XIV.
When the Sun King decided the Louvre should no longer be a medieval fortress but a palace worthy of France, Henri was one of those who oversaw commissions with the royal architects.
In the records, his name appears beside Le Vauand Le Brun—not as brightly, but he was there smoothing conflicts and securing contracts.
Years later, during the Revolution, another de Valois—Étienne—risked his life to protect the art in the Louvre from the mobs. He smuggled canvases through side doors, hiding them in cellars until they could be restored to the nation. One of those, a luminous portrait of a de Valois matriarch painted by Nicolas de Largillière, still hangs in a quiet gallery in the famed building. Tourists pass it by, but for my family, it is proof that ‘our blood is in these walls’as my grandfather would say.
When Napoleon decreed that the Louvre would become a museum for the people, a de Valois signature was on the first list of donors. Ever since, generation after generation, my family has written its name in stone and in paint here.
But when I step into the Salle des États, my gaze is no longer my own. It looks forher.
Tara is the antithesis of everything I have been raised to expect—of dynastic marriages, calculated alliances, and the suffocating choreography of the French elite. The monarchy may have fallen, but the old order lingers. Our names still carry weight, our influence seeps into boardrooms and museums, into salons and society pages.
