Aurora's POV
The petit salon's warmth enveloped us like a crafted cloak as Maximillian DeVille and I sat amidst the comfortable disarray of art books and flickering firelight, the Parisian tempest now a muffled drumbeat against the château's ancient stones. I'd sipped my coffee, feeling the caffeine sharpen my awareness of this unusual nocturnal visitor whose reputation as a discerning, somewhat enigmatic collector preceded him like a whispered overture.
"You find a certain… wrestling with absence in my paintings, Monsieur DeVille?" I asked, intrigued by his precise phrasing, wanting to understand the vector of his interest. My mind still danced with shadows of my own nocturnal creativity; now they mingled curiously with this man's palpable intensity.
Maximillian's gaze seemed to hold mine with a weight not entirely explained by mere courtesy. "Absence and presence play hide-and-seek in your work, mademoiselle – like the unseen forces shaping human contours we sense more potently than we see. It's a quality I pursue in art: the capturing of vectors, of things half-said or implied more powerfully than stated outright."
I leaned back slightly in my chair, letting the fire's warmth seep into me, contrasting with the cool calculation I sensed in his collector's eye. "You collect art that… breathes secrets, I've heard," I said, recalling Colette's words with a touch of probing curiosity. "What is it about secrets – or this interplay of presence and absence – that draws you, monsieur?"
Maximillian DeVille's expression turned inward for a moment, like a painter considering composition, before he replied, "Perhaps it's the acknowledgment that much of what moves us operates beneath explicit sightlines, mademoiselle. Art can touch those subliminal chords in ways direct language often can't. I seek pieces that… distill essences of such unspoken understandings."
We spoke of art then – of the ways light fractures in Caravaggio's chiaroscuro, of Rothko's meditative color fields implying vast interior spaces, of the Japanese concept of _yūgen_ referring to profound, mysterious beauty hinting at more than surface shows. Maximillian knew these references with an ease suggesting long immersion; I found myself responding to his intellectual passion mingled with something edgier, less definable.
As conversation flowed like a navigable river with currents and eddies, I couldn't help contrasting this night's verbal arabesques with the visceral brushstrokes I habitually used to externalize my own tangled perceptions. Art was a meeting ground here; yet I sensed territories beyond art proper where Maximillian DeVille perhaps moved with practiced, wary steps.
Abruptly he leaned forward, his eyes fixing mine with an unnerving directness. "Mademoiselle Laurent, I didn't come merely to discuss aesthetics. I have… a proposition regarding your work. One requiring discretion and, I confess upfront, involving aspects perhaps not entirely straightforward."
A frisson touched my spine like a cold draft finding a crevice; discretion and "not straightforward" combined in warning with curiosity's undeniable pull. "I'm listening, monsieur," I said, voice steady despite an internal quickening.
"The Laurent château holds… pieces beyond those publicly exhibited, doesn't it?" he asked, phrase landing like a placed stone in still water causing ripples. "Works perhaps less… exposed to general view, retained by your family over generations?"
My mental antennae twitched; he knew or guessed more than most about the château's holdings, some kept private like family heirlooms wrapped in protective tissue. "We have… certain works in private keeping, yes," I allowed cautiously, wondering now at stakes possibly higher than simple art commerce.
Maximillian's gaze didn't waver. "I'd like to see those pieces, mademoiselle. Specifically, there's mention of an early Laurent painting… _La Nuit Intérieure_ (_The Inner Night_). Rumors place it within this château's collection. I have… particular interest in that work."
_La Nuit Intérieure_. My breath caught fractionally like a held note; that canvas was hardly something I'd discussed with outsiders – a dark, intense piece my great-grandmother had painted, embodying secrets and perhaps shadows of her own troubled story. Few had viewed it; fewer spoke of it. How did he know?
"A collector's… instincts, monsieur?" I asked with deliberate lightness masking my internal stirrings, finishing my cooled coffee as a subtle distraction.
"Let's say specific… alignments draw me to _La Nuit Intérieure_," he replied, voice opaque as the shadows gathering thick outside the firelit circle. "I'd compensate handsomely for viewing rights – possibly for acquisition, should you and I find terms agreeable.But seeing it is... essential to me