Aurora's POV
The fire in the petit salon danced with decreasing vigor as midnight surrendered to the small hours, yet the air seemed charged with a different tension – one born of Maximillian DeVille's focused intent on _La Nuit Intérieure_, a painting my family had guarded like a whispered confidence for generations. I'd allowed him to know of its existence with a mixture of wariness and curiosity; now I felt like a navigator steering between Scylla and Charybdis, weighing private heritage against this collector's palpable desire.
"Monsieur DeVille," I said, voice measured as I set my empty cup on a low table, " _La Nuit Intérieure_ is… a work not often shown. My great-grandmother Augustine Laurent painted it in a period of her life… marked by intense personal preoccupations. It's a piece with… family associations extending beyond mere artistry."
Maximillian's eyes narrowed slightly, like a hunter assessing terrain ahead. "I understand such paintings often hold more than aesthetic value, mademoiselle. Augustine Laurent's inner world… I imagine it transfused that canvas with particular force. Which is why I'm drawn to it – not merely as a collector but… perhaps for reasons resonating on a different plane."
I rose then, movement signaling both a physical shift and an intangible boundary being approached. "If you wish to see _La Nuit Intérieure_, monsieur, I'll… consider it. But not here. Not in this generic salon where anything could be discussed or seen by… unintended ears. If we proceed, it would be in a space… appropriate to the painting's nature."
Maximillian DeVille stood with the contained energy of someone used to pursuing desired outcomes. "I appreciate your caution, mademoiselle. Where would you… deem suitable?"
"The atelier," I decided aloud, leading him now through château corridors hushed except for the dying storm's whispers outside. We walked amidst shadows cast by waning sconce lights, passing ancestral portraits whose eyes seemed to watch with varying degrees of approval or curiosity – a Laurent gallery stretching back centuries.
In my atelier, easels held sketches; half-finished canvases awaited like promises; the night's earlier creative tumult still lingered like scent. I moved to a tall, old armoire – its wood carved with motifs echoing Augustine's own preoccupations – and unlocked it with a key kept with deliberation. From within, wrapped in dark cloth like a veiled presence, I withdrew _La Nuit Intérieure_.
As I unveiled it slowly like lifting a shroud in a ritual act, the painting emerged – dark, almost menacingly introspective, swirls of black and deep blue conveying an inner night both threatening and hypnotic. Augustine Laurent's mastery was evident; so too was the turmoil she'd transfused into this work. Maximillian DeVille drew a breath like someone entering colder, rarified air as he beheld it.
"_La Nuit Intérieure_," he murmured, words carrying an involuntary softness. "It's… more potent than I envisioned. The darkness… it seems to move."
I felt a proprietary flutter mixed with validation; this was a response Augustine's painting often elicited from sensitive viewers. "My great-grandmother was… consumed by certain obsessions when she painted this," I said quietly, watching Maximillian now as he seemed to absorb the canvas's dark pull like a man drawn into interior contemplation.
He didn't touch it; didn't move closer in a physical sense – yet his entire focus narrowed onto _La Nuit Intérieure_ like a narrowed aperture admitting only specific light. "There are… things in this painting," he said after a protracted stillness, voice low as if speaking in a chapel, "things aligning with patterns I've… encountered elsewhere. Not coincidences, mademoiselle."
Patterns? Encountered elsewhere? I sensed now edges of something beyond ordinary collector's enthusiasm; an undercurrent suggesting motivations possibly labyrinthine. "What do you mean, monsieur?" I asked, feeling a slight drawing-back like a creature sensing peripheral dangers.
Maximillian's gaze lifted from the painting to meet mine with an unnerving intensity. "I deal in… correspondences, mademoiselle Laurent. Links between artworks, between certain… personal histories and objects holding concentrated essence. _La Nuit Intérieure_ appears to fit… particular coordinates I've mapped in my… researches."
Coordinates. Researches. The words dropped like stones into a dark well within me, causing unease-spawning ripples. "I'm not sure I follow, Monsieur DeVille," I said carefully, a hint of distancing myself creeping in.
He seemed to weigh something inner; then: "Forgive me, mademoiselle. I've perhaps spoken too elliptically. Let's say I believe certain artworks… channel forces, carry… imprints beyond their surface