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CASSIE<br />
THE LAST TIME I was invited to the Mansion I was naked beneath a full-length coat and led upstairs<br />
blindfolded, where a sensuous feast (and lover) awaited me. This time was a little different. It was<br />
Matilda waiting for me, looking somber on the porch in the middle of a hot August Saturday. I already<br />
knew what preoccupied her. After I had gotten off the phone with an angry Dauphine the night before,<br />
I’d had a hard time sleeping, so I called Matilda and told her about the auction, and Pierre’s stunt.<br />
“I cannot believe Pierre,” I said, greeting Matilda on the porch. “Dauphine’s shaken.”<br />
“I don’t blame her. In the almost forty years that we’ve been doing this, we’ve had trouble with<br />
only one man: Pierre. I should have trusted my instincts when he first joined, but we were all dazzled<br />
by his charms.”<br />
“Well, there’s one consolation in all of this: his fifteen million will keep S.E.C.R.E.T. running for a<br />
long time,” I said.<br />
“If we keep it.”<br />
I had never questioned whether we’d keep the money. But the way Matilda was talking, giving it<br />
back suddenly seemed a possibility.<br />
“Anyway,” she continued, “whether we keep the money is a decision for the whole Committee, not<br />
just me. I’m heading to Dauphine’s house now.”<br />
“Should I come? Can we postpone this … session?”<br />
“No. This is a job for the head of the Committee and time is of the essence. I may be able to<br />
convince Dauphine to stay in S.E.C.R.E.T., but if not, I hope I can at least convince her to accept our<br />
apologies. Meanwhile, you, my dear, have an exciting task at hand that also needs to be completed.<br />
Are you sure you’re ready?”<br />
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”<br />
“Nervous?”<br />
“Yes.”<br />
“Has Jesse contacted you?”<br />
“I’m seeing him tonight.” I couldn’t help but beam a little.<br />
Matilda didn’t echo my enthusiasm; instead, her tone shifted back to one of concern.<br />
“After all that’s happened, and how wrong I was about Pierre, I do hope I’m not wrong about Jesse<br />
too.”<br />
“I don’t think you are,” I said, wondering why she continued to plant these doubts about him.<br />
I followed her into the Mansion, up the stairs, then down a long, cool corridor, where she stopped<br />
in front of a narrow door. She unlocked it. Inside the small room was a single grey club chair facing a<br />
wall of glass. Matilda pulled the chair out for me. The room on the other side of the glass was dimly<br />
lit but spectacular, with two floor-to-ceiling windows to my right, draped in thick burgundy curtains,<br />
cupids carved into the wooden valences. Ancient oil paintings of beautiful women in shoulder-baring<br />
gowns hung along the ivory-colored walls. The bed itself was a piece of art, each poster carved to<br />
look like a willow trunk, fronds decorating the oak fascia. In the center of the room sat a tufted chair,<br />
armless, with gilt legs, the seat and back embroidered with burgundy roses.<br />
I felt more nervous than I had during one of my own fantasies.