Twenty-One Nights in Paris: Chapter 1

‘Why is he holding his own severed head?’ Ren grimaced at the chipped stone sculpture propped up on her friend Malou’s desk. It wasn’t the usual beaux-art or haute couture found at a fine art auction, but the grisly sculpture was certainly antique.

When Malou didn’t answer, Ren glanced around the cluttered office, tucked up under the slate roof of the stately stone building. If she pressed her face to the glass of the dormer window, Ren could make out the dreamy, slender pyramid of the Eiffel Tower past the chimneys and rooftops. On the floors below her were the extensive Paris galleries of Asquith-Lewis, the renowned auction house and fine art dealer. The tree-lined Avenue des Champs-Élysées paraded by around the corner, the grand axis of an illustrious city.

‘He carried his head from Montmartre to the monastery in Saint-Denis,’ Malou finally explained, carefully turning the statue and making notes as she examined it. Ren waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.

‘You’d think he’d put it in a bag or something,’ Ren muttered, but Malou was deep in her work and Ren was only distracting her. As she was now technically her best friend’s employer, she probably shouldn’t do that. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure he’d look good on my mantlepiece,’ she commented.

‘I know, your precious Instagram aesthetic, courtesy of the Asquith-Lewis social media experts. But this one comes from the estate of Pierre Leclercq. That alone is enough to sell it.’

Ah, yes, the important work of winning estate auctions, which her grandmother excelled at, while joking that it must be because she was close to the grave herself. Not that Ren believed her. Grandmama was too tenacious to ever fall off her perch.

She caught sight of a fragment of stained glass in a wooden frame, propped up on the desk behind the ghastly statue. It showed three men with crowns and coloured robes on a vibrant blue background, surrounded by thick, irregular leading.

‘This is perfect for an auction just before Christmas. Is that the Leclercq estate, too?’

‘He was something of a collector of historic artefacts, it seems,’ said Malou. ‘Since was such a hit, this stuff is sure to fit aesthetic.’

‘Are you going to have dinner with me tonight?’ Ren asked. ‘I’m heading home on Sunday. If I have to do without you in London these days, you can at least let me buy you dinner at the Ritz once.’

‘Wouldn’t it be awkward, though? I think Charlie’s still mad at me for quitting.’

‘Charlie… didn’t come with me this trip.’

‘Oh? He always comes with you.’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Ren mumbled around the lump in her throat.

‘Okay, I’ll come if I get to return the favour next time,’ Malou said with a grin. ‘There’s this fabulous Ivorian street food café around the corner from my apartment.’

‘What… kind of hygiene certificate does a street food café need?’

‘You are such a snob!’ Malou said fondly. ‘I have no idea why you’re my friend.’

Ren mustered a smile. She knew Malou was joking, but friendships were a sore point since she’d been forced to realise how few she truly had. She hated to think how lonely she would feel, now, if Malou hadn’t decided to befriend Ren five years ago simply because she her. ‘You know very well why you’re my friend,’ Ren said defensively.

‘Because you needed to make appointments to see your fiancé and I used to organise his diary!’ Malou laughed. ‘I was worried when I got this job and moved back to Paris that his new assistant would replace me.’

‘No one will ever replace you,’ Ren said earnestly. These days, she was dealing with Charlie’s new assistant so she have to see the man himself. ‘If I wasn’t so happy for you that you got this job, I would be annoyed that you left me.’

‘I left Charlie. Never you.’ Leaving Charlie might turn out to be another thing they had in common, Ren thought bitterly.

‘But okay, let’s go for dinner. Anywhere but the Ritz,’ Malou insisted.

‘What’s wrong with the Ritz?’

‘You never leave the Ritz. I’m not suggesting you suddenly get your hair braided or a tattoo, but there are nineteen other arrondissements of Paris you’ve never visited – or eighteen, since you obviously come here to the eighth occasionally.’

‘I’ve been to the seventh, too.’

‘Ah, of course. To visit the Tour Eiffel, I assume?

‘No, the Musée d’Orsay. I’ve never been up the Eiffel Tower.’ Ren glanced at the window and stifled a sigh. ‘I should leave you to it. Text me when you’re done for the day and meet me at the Ritz.’

‘I said the Ritz!’

‘Just meet me there.’

‘You’re hoping to lure me into l’Espadon!’ Malou accused, not without grounds. L’Espadon Ren’s favourite of the restaurants at the Ritz.

‘Just think: scallops, or pork medallions in jus – or lobster salad!’

‘And I’m thinking you’re afraid of change,’ Malou replied. Her friend had no idea.

Ren’s phone buzzed and she fetched it out of her pristine white leather handbag. When she saw the short message, her breath deserted her. Her throat seized up.

… Not now. Not like this. She hadn’t finished preparing the company, her grandmother – the world – for this.

Oh, God, she’d held it all together for nothing.

‘Are you okay?’

She fumbled to shut down her screen before Malou saw. Not that it mattered. Those four words in the text message meant even Malou would find out – probably before the day was out.

Just before Christmas, before year-end. The investors would have a meltdown, after everything her grandmother had done to build up the business.

As if on cue, her phone rang, Grandmama’s face flashing up on the screen. She quickly silenced the call.

didn’t feel like something she could blurt out over the phone.

‘Ren? Seriously, you’re scaring me. You look white as a sheet!’

‘I have to go – now.’

‘Go?’

‘Back to London. I’m sorry about dinner.’

‘Is your family all right? Charlie?’

‘Yes, everyone’s okay.’ At least until her grandmother had a heart attack at the news. She twisted the marquise-cut diamond ring on her finger in agitation. She’d been wearing the four carats of vintage Cartier on her left hand for over a year, but now it felt like it was burning.

Ren wanted to flee back to the Ritz, dive under the embroidered silk duvet and forget who she was. Unfortunately, the world would always remind her that she was Irena Asquith-Lewis, and by the end of the day, she knew her name would be splashed all over the news.

Without stopping to kiss Malou on the cheek, she stumbled out of her friend’s office and clutched the banister of the grand marble staircase as she made her way through the galleries to street level. She dismissed the photographer and the social media assistant who were waiting for her in the lobby. She had to get back to London and formulate a new plan, even if it meant talking to Charlie.

Ren burst out of the double doors and fumbled for her phone to call her Paris driver. The message was still there.

Everyone knows. I’m sorry.

She swiped it away and made the phone call.

Bilel was much too diplomatic to comment on the fact that Ren was quietly hyperventilating in his Mercedes. He took her to the Ritz and waited while she threw her things into a suitcase and hastily settled her bill. Less than half an hour later, her assistants had sent a ticket to her phone and she was on her way to the Gare du Nord for a five o’clock train.

She might have been nervous about travelling alone in the gathering dusk, but she was too worried about Grandmama, and about how they would fix this mess, to care. She’d had six months to find a solution of her own and had failed.

The boulevards of Paris were a blur as she stared out of the window without seeing. It felt as if everything had fallen apart at once. Six months, she’d held onto her sanity, her despair, keeping the secret, and now it was all for nothing.

Charlie Routledge didn’t want to marry her. What that meant for the proposed merger of their family businesses – the eminently sensible union of a real estate empire and a centuries-old auction house – was unclear, but Ren was sure it wouldn’t be good.

And what it meant for Ren herself? She was an heiress and a socialite, the personification of the Asquith-Lewis brand that traded on exclusivity and mixing in elite social circles. But she was also thirty and now single, with a lifestyle that made it almost impossible to meet people.

Charlie had been perfect. He was an old family friend, good-natured and attractive, and they had a lot in common, she’d thought. He’d shared Ren’s commitment to her aspirational social media feeds and the expectations of the family business. Apparently that just hadn’t been enough for him.

The black car slowed in traffic and Ren roused herself to some kind of attention. The red lights of the car in front were out of focus. The windscreen wipers were on full. The boulevard shone in the dim light of the waning December afternoon as the car rolled to a slow stop.

‘I’m so sorry, Mademoiselle Ren,’ Bilel said. They inched along the road another few feet. Ren peered out of the window and checked the map on her phone.

‘I’ll just get out here. The station’s not far.’

‘But it’s raining!’ Bilel protested.

. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said faintly, thinking of more than just the rain. She glanced at the sky, willing the light to hold out. If darkness fell before she got to her train, she’d have a whole host of new problems.

‘What about your suitcase?’

Ren pictured the buckled, monogrammed monstrosity in the boot of the car with another dart of panic. ‘I’ll manage,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll have to. Thank you again for all your help, Bilel.’ She felt unexpectedly sad to be leaving Paris. Her phone was still buzzing non-stop in her pocket, but at least in Paris nobody took a moment’s notice of the heiress who had been dumped and struggled to get herself to the train station on her own.

‘Let me park by the trottoir.’ Bilel swerved and the front wheel jumped the kerb as he attempted to drop her off more safely.

Her mind a jumble, she shoved open the door – and snatched her hand back with a shriek. She heard a piercing cry of, ‘Putain!’ and then a metallic crunch.

Ren cowered on the seat with her hands over her head as the window shattered. There was a heavy thud and a long groan. With the bang of Bilel’s door and shouts of alarm in Arabic, the world came suddenly back into focus.

So much for ‘it’ll be all right’.

A cyclist lay prone on the tarmac, his feet tangled in his ruined bicycle, and he wasn’t moving. Ren sprang into action despite her pounding heart and when Bilel tried to hold her back, she wouldn’t let him.

She heard a clatter that sounded like her phone as she rushed to tend to her victim, but she ignored it. Kneeling beside him and positioning his arm carefully, she grasped his leather jacket at the shoulder and the waist and managed to haul him into the recovery position. Her fingers groped for the snap of his helmet and she supported his head while she unwound her cashmere scarf and settled it underneath as a pillow. She took deep, even breaths to keep the panic at bay as she searched for injuries.

The man’s hair was black and curly and tumbled over his face. He had an inch of unkempt beard. She ran her hands over his head, searching for any indication of injury, and she spied a line of cursive script that was tattooed on his neck. Ren couldn’t help worrying it might be needed to identify his body, but she couldn’t see any blood.

She cursed, realising she should have checked his airway first. She dropped her ear to his mouth and to her relief, his breath tickled her ear. Before she could draw away and check the rest of his body, he opened his eyes – wide open – and stared at her.

He had fine, dark eyes, framed with thick lashes. He drew in a deep breath and she felt him exhale on her cheek. His eyes were too dark for her to check the pupils for signs of concussion, but she tried anyway.

He was breathing evenly. She drew back a little, not quite trusting the good signs enough to remove her hand from his head – or tear her gaze from him. His face was oval, with high cheekbones, and his brow was thick and lopsided. His was an undeniably interesting face.

As the rain flowed in freezing droplets down the back of her neck and turned her hair into a frizzy orange mess and her cardigan to a sodden lump of cashmere, she held his cheek and stared into his eyes until she could barely believe he was a stranger.

Suddenly the man frowned with a deep twist of his brow and looked away, glancing at his legs and shifting experimentally.

‘Careful,’ she said softly, hoping he understood English. ‘You might be hurt.’

He met her gaze again and raised a hand in front of her face, tugging up his sleeve and presenting his wrist. A pattern of tattoos in bold, geometric lines peeked out of the cuff.

‘Do I have a pulse?’ he asked. He mispronounced the ‘u’ and Ren was so distracted by his earnest frown that she didn’t realise he’d made a joke until it was too late and she was already reaching for his hand.

She took his wrist hesitantly, pressing on the warm skin. His pulse fluttered under her fingertips.

‘I think you’ll live,’ she murmured, breaking eye contact. ‘This was entirely my fault. I shouldn’t have tried to get out of the car onto the bike path – especially without looking. Whatever you need, I’ll pay—’

‘C’est bon, ça va. It’s fine. I’m fine.’ He pushed himself up with a grunt.

‘Stay still! Bilel, call an ambulance!’

‘Vraiment… really. Can I check my vélo, uh, my bicycle?’

Ren glanced at the mess of his bike, lying twisted and pathetic on the kerb. Behind it was a single-wheeled trailer which had tipped over and spilled a few boxes onto the bus lane. Not only had she possibly injured the poor man, but it looked as if she’d taken away his livelihood too, at least until he could repair his bike.

She grasped his arm and carefully helped him to his feet. ‘Don’t worry about anything. I will compensate you, if this means you can’t work until the bike is fixed. We’ll take you to the hospital and… Let me know how much it is and I can… Here, take the money I have on me.’

Ren dived to the footwell for her handbag and produced a wad of Euro notes. The man took a long look at the cash, but didn’t accept it, even when she shook it at him in agitation.

He stooped to gather up her scarf and handed it to her. Why wasn’t he taking the money? Was he planning to sue? It was certainly his right.

‘Let me take care of this,’ she pleaded. ‘I can pay my driver to deliver the rest of these packages for you today. If your employer—’

He gave an unexpected laugh, short and sharp. ‘I’m not a courier.’ He ran a hand through his unruly hair. The way he said ‘courier’ danced off his tongue and Ren noticed that his accent was much stronger than those of the employees at Asquith-Lewis. She spent several heartbeats marvelling at how lovely it was to listen to him talk, before his words sank in, along with her confusion.

‘Oh. What?’