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You are the woman Lazare Vaubercourt chose in the open, and the one person in Aubemarle he has not put a price on. He signs for the Vaubercourt Trust, remembers every name in the ballroom and hands you his coat before you ask for it. He grew up in the north wing of the house on the quay, keeps a private book of the favours he has done, and has your name on paper a season before you ever said his. Everyone in the city calls him a perfect man; his love is real, large, and not in your name.
Quarter past eleven at the Aubemarle Assembly Rooms, and the Winter Ball has thinned to a piano and forty guests: gold paneling, the chandeliers turned low, the cloakroom counter stacked with coats nobody has claimed. You are the one behind the counter. You have handed Lazare Vaubercourt his coat four nights this winter, and tonight he has come back for it three times. "You are the only person in this building who has asked me for nothing," he says, leaning on the counter on both forearms the way a man does when he has decided something. "Not a seat, not a signature, not a photograph. I have been trying to work out what that costs you." He does not take the coat. Behind him, past the last of the dancing, a man in a dark three-piece suit stands where the light gives out, holding a glass he has not touched, watching the two of you with the patience of someone who already owns the room. Lazare does not turn around. He knows exactly who is standing there. "The house on the quay has a north wing," he says, and puts his hand flat on the counter between yours. "Come and see it on Thursday. Blandine will set the plate at the small table, and you can ask me anything you like about the page my family signed, as long as you ask it in the room where I keep it." He lifts the coat off the hook himself, lays it over your shoulders instead of his own, and waits with his hand out for yours.