Interdicted

It was a dark morning. A warm wind had come from the east to blow out the fog, but the grey clouds of the night lingered on and though the rain had ceased, it would not last. When Leger had arrived, he'd found the window to Erik's office still open and the carpet a mess. It was over an hour then before Erik had even appeared, and by that time Leger had made all arrangements. He had received a return message from their insistent widow immediately after he'd sent notice, and she had said she would be there before noon.

And so she had come, and Leger had shown her into the room adjacent to Erik's office, and there she waited.

"You were right."

Leger glanced across at Erik from where he was attempting to peel the hardened pools of melted candle wax from the wood of the architect's desk. "Aren't I always?"

"No." Erik's tone was suddenly firm in comparison to the distant quality of his previous words.

Leger waited for Erik to turn to face him, but when he remained frozen, he resumed his task. "But usually."

"Hardly."

"Occasionally?"

Erik merely shrugged and continued to stare through the one-way window in the door that gave him a view of his visitor in the next room. She was seated on the far side of another wooden desk, and she was waiting. Waiting for him.

"Then why do you listen to me?" Leger brushed the crumbling pieces into a wastebasket.

"I don't."

He chuckled and shook his head, clasping his hands loosely behind his back. "But I was right?"

"Yes."

Leger had absolutely no idea to what Erik was referring. He watched the back of the architect's black suit for a long moment of silence before asking, "What did I say?"

"She is beautiful."

"Ah!" A smile spread across the man's face. "But I did not say that, you did."

"Oh." Erik finally turned slightly to glance at his assistant. "Then I was right."

"I suppose you were…"

"What was it you said?"

"I said she looked like she had some…know-how in her. And that she has a special appetite for architects."

Erik shook his head in disdain and looked back to the window. "I shall have to see her eyes to know that much."

"Ah, her eyes!" Leger exclaimed in a breath of false infatuation, pressing his hand to his heart.

Erik ignored him and lifted a hand to the doorknob, but paused there. He turned back to meet Leger's eyes again. "From where in France did you say she's come?"

He shrugged slightly and crossed to join Erik at the window. "The north."

"Paris?"

He glanced through the glass. "No, I think she said the construction site would be closer to the border."

"I asked you where she was from."

Leger shook his head with uncertainty and could only offer, "She reeks of the city."

Erik gave him a hardened look.

"Forgive me monsieur, but as I said, she was not very forthcoming with any details. Why don't you go ask her?" He lifted a hand to gesture beyond the door. After all, Erik had been postponing his entrance now for nearly half an hour.

Erik's knuckles had begun to turn nearly transparent from how tightly he gripped the doorknob.

Leger took a step back. "I am your assistant, monsieur, not your spy."

"You had better check your tone if you wish to remain anything at all." Erik turned the handle.

"Yes, monsieur."

He did not look back to Leger again before opening the door and leaving the room, but added, "You may send in the carpet cleaners now."

"Yes, monsieur."

Erik shut the door softly behind him.

She looked up to him slowly and did not rise. Her entire frame where she sat was stiff, and Erik felt rather certain that the cause must be his appearance.

He did not speak and moved toward her with no sense of urgency, taking his time to study her. The long sleeves and high neck of the black bodice of her black dress left not one area of visible skin as matching gloves concealed her hands and a sheer veil of black lace extending from the wide-brimmed black hat that hid her hair and was adorned with what could only have been raven's feathers, covered her face. She looked much more as if she had just come up from the mortuary beneath his office than from the north part of France.

Erik took his seat on his side of the desk and was the first to speak:

"I understood that you were a widow, but I had not been told you were still in mourning."

She lifted a black lace covered hand to her veil and brushed it back over the brim of her hat to reveal her face.

"Hadn't you?" Her voice was low, and Erik could not be certain if the tone was natural or contrived.

"Well," she continued, "I understood that you usually refuse to meet with clients, but I did not think you would hide your face behind a mask."

Erik did not respond and merely placed the envelope on the otherwise empty tabletop between them.

She folded her hands, resting her wrists on the edge of the table and glanced at it only briefly before lifting her eyes again to his mask.

"Did you like it?" she asked calmly.

"I think you owe me an explanation," Erik began with measured indignation.

Her gaze broke with his and drifted to the corners of the room. "Where to begin…"

"Whose is it?" he cut in too sharply.

Her eyes returned to the envelope. "Do you want more?"

"What is it?"

She lifted a hand and turned in her seat, bending to reach below Erik's field of view. "My husband was an architect and designer, monsieur."

Erik made no move in his seat to attempt to watch her actions. "Do you mean to tell me this was his?"

She straightened, bringing with her a long tube, which she uncapped as her eyes returned to level with his. "Monsieur, I want you to build me a house."

"Madame," Erik said curtly, reaching across the table and clasping the tube to stop her actions as she had begun to pull out a roll of papers. "I will do nothing for you if you do not answer my questions."

She started slightly, but then only looked down to his hand, seeming to study it for a brief pause, then looked back up to him. "But first." She blinked. "Don't you want to see?"

It was a long moment of hesitant silence before he withdrew and allowed her to continue.

As she spread the roll of blue and white sheets out onto the table with a ginger touch, she separated them as she spoke:

"They are not in order…But you will understand."

Some of them were the whole pages of blueprints while others were small pieces that seemed to have been cut or torn deliberately from the larger sheets. A few of the drawings were barely sketches while others were fully detailed drafts.

Erik pulled the closest papers to his side of the desk, handling them nearly as delicately as she did but scanning them with scarcely concealed ravenousness.

"My husband and I never had any children," she began, a tremor in her voice only half hidden by its softening volume. "This was going to be our child."

He did not answer her. He had barely even heard her. Piece after piece, his flickering eyes devoured every detail of the designs. This was not right. This was not fair! These designs were clearly drawn by the same artist, and they were ingenious, even brilliant, but absolutely nothing in comparison to the small piece that had tormented him all night.

She had continued to speak, "These were ours. Both of ours. He drew them…I told him what I wanted, and he made it appear. It was like the miracle of creation…"

He looked up to her very slowly and she gasped softly at the sudden intensity of his gaze.

"Madame, you have deceived me."

She stared back at him and a hint of color rose to her pale cheeks, but she folded her hands on the table again so that they covered edge of the original envelope and straightened where she sat.

"Did you think I would have sent any less than the best?"

Erik dropped the sheets he held, and pushing back his chair roughly, he stood.

"It is incomplete," she said, remaining in her seat. "I want you to complete it."

"I design my own houses," he stated with flat restraint.

"I know," she insisted with gently wavering apprehension. "I have studied your progress. Your work is inspired. I have never seen anything near to it, not since my husband died. Monsieur, architecture has always been part of my life…"

"You have my condolences," Erik cut in, "Madame, on the death of your husband, but this," he gestured to the curling sheets. "It was his dream, not mine. I am not interested in tying up another man's loose ends."

She stood abruptly in a sudden desperate explosion of emotion, "Do you know how long I have waited to find an architect with even the most remote possibility of doing him justice? Do you know what it took for me to find you and come here!" Taking a sudden breath, her next words were more composed, "I am a very wealthy woman, monsieur. And I know…I know you must be interested. You've met with me. You never meet with anyone. They have all tried and they fail. I did not fail."

She looked across the desk to him where he had remained absolutely still and as expressionless as his mask as she'd spoken.

"Please, monsieur." The hard edge was gone from the lowness of her voice as suddenly as it had come. "I had to see you in person because I knew you would refuse if you did not see for yourself what this means to me."

"I am not interested…"

"When he died," she interrupted him before he could refuse too decisively, "My world died with him. We never had any children. As an artist, you must understand the meaning of passion. This house was our true passion, and I cannot complete it on my own. I cannot draw. I have so much in my mind that I want to bring into the world, but without him, I am impotent. I am a barren wife to a dead husband. When I saw the article with the etching of your design for the Baronet Von Kennt, I saw it." She bent over the table to pick up the initial envelope and continued even more softly, "Just like him…I knew you were the one. It was like waking from the darkest of dreams… There is no one else like you in all of Europe! I would know, for I have looked. I had given up all hope of ever seeing my child come into the world."

Erik turned away but could not escape her final piteous entreaty:

"Only a man of your genius could understand. How could you abort the birth of a prodigy so perfect as this?"

Erik remained silent for several moments if only to be certain she had finished speaking, then without turning back again to look at her, he moved to the door, saying only:

"I will send you word of my decision. Good day, madame."

Then before she could respond, she was left alone again in the room.

Leger was near the door when Erik reentered his office. Too near. And Erik could tell he had been watching them through the one-way glass.

"So," the man grinned. "How were the eyes?"

"Go away," Erik ordered.

He said nothing more then and slipped past Erik to go into the room to show the lady to the door.

Alone Erik moved to the window of the room, barely noticing the results of the carpet cleaners' work. He pulled back the drape to let the cold grey light in and saw that the wind had picked up again. Leaves, prematurely fallen, tumbled in gusts down the sidewalk, and he watched in thoughtless silence as a two black horses tucked their heads against it as they pulled a hearse away down the street.

Why should he help her? She was a client like any other. It was not his job to complete unfinished business. He was a contractor on his own terms. He built his own houses. But any other client would never have managed to meet with him in person… He would turn her down. If he summoned Leger right now, he could catch her before she departed and give her the news.

But then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her to the left of where he gazed out of his windowpane. The moment she left the doorframe and moved onto the steps that led to the street from the mezzanine level, a hand flew to her hat as the wind caught harshly against its wide brim. He shifted the curtain as he turned to watch her so that she would not notice him should she look. She set the tube she carried against the stone banister, and turning her back to both the wind and Erik, she pulled the pins from her hat, tucked them away, and removed it, holding it tightly under one arm. She turned again on the step and Erik saw her clearly then in all her macabre splendor. Her face could not have been more perfectly shaped and featured, but the contrast of the blackness of her garments and her now visible hair cast a waxen sallowness to her too-pale skin. And she had been wearing makeup! Too much of it, he thought, when he had been close enough to see her face clearly, and now that he could see her hair as it was blown loose from its pins, the deep black of it could only have been dyed. She was not tall, but she was fashionably thin, and he could see how perfectly tailored her black dress of mourning was styled to accentuate her figure. And her placid smile seemed almost like a smirk to him now.

Leger had been right. She was beautiful. Beautiful, and completely artificial.

Erik released the curtain as he watched her retrieve her tube and continue down the steps, her black hair whipping freely about her black shoulders.

He would turn her down.

She was helped by a footman into the hired coach that was waiting for her that, if only had it been longer, could have been easily confused with the hearse that had just earlier departed.

He scowled in irritation behind his mask and pulling the curtains completely, turned away from the window to return to the dark comfort of his office. What did he care of this black widow and her pretentious airs? He would turn her down. He wanted to turn her down. He wanted to see her smirk fade to that nervous desperation he had seen on her face, in her eyes, as her fear grew. He held the fate of her prosperity in his hands and the power was delicious. How dare she tear apart his security in a single night with one wretched envelope? She deserved dismissal and destruction.

And yet… She had been right, hadn't she? As an artist, he understood. And how could he do anything at all now…but agree?