Beyond the Velvet Door

Charlotte Bennett had discovered three things about travelling with Maximilian Reed. He always found the best coffee within a ten-minute walk. He never admitted when he was lost. And if a woman tried to close an overfilled suitcase in his presence, he considered it a spectator sport.

“Are you going to help?” she demanded.

Max leaned against the bedroom doorframe, one shoulder propping up the entire structure of his smugness. “I am helping. I’m providing moral support.”

“You’re eating a croissant.”

“An essential part of moral support.”

She put a knee on the suitcase. The zip advanced half an inch, caught and made a small noise of protest. Charlotte looked at it as though personal intimidation might work.

“The poor thing,” Max said. “It’s begging for mercy.”

“Then stop talking to it.”

“You’ve packed enough for an invasion.”

“Five days. Two cities. Different climates.”

“Paris and Venice, Charlotte. Neither is the Arctic.” He nodded towards the open wardrobe. “And I counted three dresses that appear to be held together by wishful thinking.”

“Those are evening dresses.”

“So the wishful thinking takes place after dark.”

She threw a stocking at him. He caught it, looked at it with exaggerated scholarly interest and placed it on the dresser.

“Discreet,” he observed.

“You could try it sometime.”

“I own a perfectly discreet collection of black shirts.”

“Eleven identical black shirts are not a personality.”

“No. But look how far they’ve taken me.”

Paris glowed through the tall windows beyond him, the evening sky turning the zinc rooftops to silver. The apartment had pale parquet floors, a kitchen too immaculate to have survived either of them for long, and a balcony just large enough to make breakfast seem like a film scene. Charlotte had chosen it herself. That had been a small pleasure: booking somewhere beautiful without asking anyone whether she was being sensible.

She had spent much of the previous year asking variations of that question. At Villa Aurelia she’d asked it about the hidden Velvet Room; later she’d asked it about risks, desires and rooms she could only imagine designing. Now she was travelling across Europe with a notebook, a growing collection of private ideas and a list of doors she intended to knock on. Some mornings she still surprised herself.

Max approached at last and knelt opposite her. “May I?”