The Gospel of Sheba (7 page)

Details continue to flood back to me as I draw closer to her—the tiny gap in my wife's front teeth, the faint spice to her skin, the fact that if she wishes to raise a single eyebrow, it will assuredly be the left one. So many of her aspects are unusual. She is as vain as any artist, and yet ferociously protective of her fellow singers, and refuses to put on any airs they are not likewise entitled to. She is gleefully dismissive of works others deem important and she thinks trite. She is nearly always ruminating over food and drink and luxurious surroundings, and she reads Shakespeare when in the dumps. She doesn't want more children and asked me, “But darling, how much toll do you expect my body to
take
?” but would tear apart a wolf with her bare hands if it threatened Grace. She is absent, but she loves me.

I honestly cannot conceive how I could have forgotten: when it comes to studying complex subjects, Colette has always been the most satisfying paradox of them all.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Lyndsay Faye

Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox

978-1-4976-7091-4

Published in 2014 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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