Love's First Light (12 page)
It hadn’t taken more than a few weeks for her to fade into the background of his life.
She tried one night to speak with Daniel, have him reassure her.
He was turned on his side, away from her. He hadn’t touched her in weeks, but he wasn’t asleep and she felt brave enough that night to reach out and stroke the suppleness of the muscles of his arm with a light touch.
He sighed. “I’m sorry, my dear. But this body is tired.”
“Do you still love me?” She wished she could take the words back the moment they left her lips, but she waited to hear his answer.
He turned over, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. “Of course.” He looked over at her, their gazes locking. “How can I make you understand?” He looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t belong to myself now. I belong to the Republic.”
“You certainly don’t belong to me.”
He looked back at her, his eyes bright with the passion of his beliefs. “Neither of us can belong to the other until this battle is fought and won. We must deny what we want for the greater good. Do you understand?”
She’d nodded, but didn’t really. How was this liberty? What face wore the name freedom? But she agreed outwardly, determined to be better, demand less . . . let go of the man she’d only just won and begun to know.
It was a bitter pill indeed. She’d met her prince. Married him within a fortnight of that meeting. But she grew up little by little, and in the process faced a sad realization:
The world around her—and, more to the point,
her
world . . . her marriage—was nothing like she hoped it would be.
her
world . . . her marriage—was nothing like she hoped it would be.
Chapter Ten
The household was in an uproar. They had two more weeks to prepare for the trip to Paris, and Scarlett had decided to have a dinner party.
“Tell me again, Scarlett, why are we having this man to dinner?” Her mother turned from the stove, wiped curling tendrils of dark brown hair out her face and stared at Scarlett.
Scarlett turned from lighting the candles on the elegantly set table. “Mother. I’ve explained it. He is a scientist. I met him in the graveyard where he walks every morning to—oh, I don’t know, to clear his head. He’s brilliant and so, so smart. And I like him. I think he could be a friend. And he has no family and barely eats.”
“Probably can’t cook a carrot.” Her mother’s smile softened the complaint.
Scarlett laughed. “Exactly. That’s why I have asked him to come here and have a good home-cooked meal.” Scarlett moved into the kitchen and took up a steaming bowl of leeks and greens and lentils savored with caraway seeds and butter. She leaned toward her mother as she passed by her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “He will be in raptures upon tasting your good cooking.”
Her mother pressed her lips together, but more to suppress a smile than scold. “I suppose it will be good for us to extend some charity. He has no family? How did he come here?”
Scarlett placed the heavy bowl on the table, one hand to her low back, which had been aching more and more of late, and sighed. “I don’t know all of his secrets yet, but—” she turned and smiled at her pretty mother—“I trust you will wrest them from him.”
Her mother pulled steaming hot loaves of golden bread, made from their personal hoard of flour, from the oven. “You can depend on it, my dear.”
They shared a glance, each knowing what the other was thinking. This man was something more to Scarlett than mere charity.
A loud knock on the door had all three women pausing and shrieking. He was early! Stacia curtsied to her mother and sister, then smiled her cat’s smile. “Allow me.”
She took off her apron on the way to the door, hanging it on a hook by the front door, smoothed back her straight dark hair and swung the door wide. Scarlett hurried behind her.
He stood there, tall and darkly dressed in clothes that Scarlett could hardly credit to the meager belongings she’d seen thus far. He was dressed as a gentleman, as the Count he claimed to be, in dark blue satin from head to toe with a snow-white shirt complete with lacy, belled sleeves and an intricately tied cravat. He stepped inside, took off his hat with a flourish and brought, from behind his back, a delicate bouquet of cherry red poppies. He held them a bit awkwardly to his chest and then thrust them toward Scarlett’s mother. “I heard you liked the color.”
She gasped, fluttered her eyelashes in a way that Scarlett had not seen in years, and reached for the flowers.
“Welcome, to our humble home.” Scarlett’s mother waved him in, then turned and walked into the kitchen, holding the flowers like a prize from the fair. Over her shoulder she chattered, “Such lovely blooms! Wherever did you find them this time of year? Why, I thought poppies were all spent out, but they are one of my favorites.”
Christophé placed his hat on a low side table and walked further into the room, his gaze never leaving Scarlett’s. “Why, good madam, I found fortune is all. I could not arrive empty handed.”
Her mother started to say something, and then stopped and dug in the cupboards for a vase to place her prize in.
Scarlett took advantage of the silence. “Christophé, this is my sister, Stacia. And my mother is Suzanne Bonham.”
Christophé took up Stacia’s hand in his, leaned over it for a brush of a kiss and said, in such a gallant manner that Scarlett nearly threw back her head to laugh, “Stacia. So good to meet you.” He looked over her hand into her eyes, and Stacia giggled, looking toward Scarlett with a knowing twinkle.
“How kind you are, sir, to grace us with your presence. Scarlett has talked of little else.”
Christophé’s brows rose as he looked into Scarlett’s eyes. “Has she, now?”
“Why, yes. We hear that you are a scientist and have a laboratory in the old Cité. Is it safe, do you think?” Stacia’s eyes were wicked with suppressed laughter.
“I think your sister can answer that question, mademoiselle. She has, of late, been an assistant of sorts.”
Scarlett glared at Christophé. “Dinner is ready. I hope you’ve brought your appetite along with your wit.” As she passed him to fetch more glasses she grasped his hand and squeezed it in warning.
Christophé’s deep chuckle filled the room. The women all paused to hear the sound, for it had been too long since a man was about the place.
They sat down to the laden table. Stacia reached out for the hands on either side of her and bowed her head. They all followed suit.
“Dearest Lord,” Stacia began. “Thank You for Your bountiful goodness in this food and this company. Thank You for new friends and for loved ones that we will not forget. Thank You for Your provision as we travel to Paris and to meet our . . .” She paused, and Scarlett heard the emotion clogging her sister’s throat. “Our destiny. Thank You for Your care and love and fortitude in all our wanderings. Thank You for Christophé—I don’t know his surname Lord, but we thank You for Christophé. Amen.”
There were boiled eels and quail in a lemon sauce, vegetables, hard to find this time of year, and fresh-baked bread still steaming as Suzanne took away the cloth and passed the basket. Then they brought out dumplings swimming in chicken broth with bits of chicken. There was so much. It was like a Christmas feast really, and Scarlett didn’t know how they had done it. There wasn’t that much in the cupboards; it had all just come together.
After dinner they gathered in the sitting room.
Scarlett’s mother inclined her head to Christophé as they settled into their chairs. “I am sorry we haven’t a bottle of sherry or anything to offer. I’m afraid the times have affected us as well.”
“No need to apologize, madam. I am thankful for such a wonderful meal. It has been a long time since I’ve had such a good time among friends.”
His deep voice was filled with a sadness that struck Scarlett’s heart. She wanted more than anything to reach out to him, but knew she couldn’t. Instead she lowered her gaze to her lap. “For us too.”
Stacia, bright as always, stood suddenly and gasped. “Music! That is what we need.”
They all looked at her, and she waved her hands and hurried up the stairs.
“Whatever can she be about?”
Scarlett could tell from her mother’s tone that, though she smiled, she was a bit embarrassed. “If I know Stacia, she has something in mind.” Scarlett smiled at Christophé.
“Resourceful, is she?”
“Oh. That’s the least of it,” Scarlett assured.
They laughed and sipped their coffee until Stacia descended the stairs, a porcelain box in her hands. Scarlett smiled at her sister. It was a grand idea!
On the bottom stair, though, Stacia tripped. In trying to regain her balance, the music box flew from her hands and landed in the middle of them. It bounced, broke, and then landed at Christophé’s feet. He slowly lifted the pieces into his cupped hands.
“Oh!” Stacia’s face was white. “Father gave that to me.”
She looked ready to burst into tears. Scarlett rose, a slow and awkward movement in her hurry. “We will fix it.”
She looked to Christophé, whose eyes told her all she needed to know.
He would keep her promise to her sister.
Christophé studied the box. The workings of soldered metal fell out of the broken porcelain into his hands. He worked the gears and the key to test it, made sure that the mechanics were sound, and then set the metal piece back into the base of creamy white. With a few more maneuvers with his fingers, he had the thing put back together. Only the porcelain was cracked. He turned the key a time or two with a neat twist of his wrist, then held the box out in his palms.
Tinkling music filled the air. The three women around him breathed a collective sigh of relief. He couldn’t help his grin. “The box can be fixed. The rest of the piece is sound.”
They didn’t speak. Just gazed at him as though he were their savior. Then they all rested back into their chairs and let the tinkling of the song fill the room.
After the last notes fell away, Stacia said with a gleam in her eyes, “Did you know, sir, that my sister is a wonderful dancer?”
Scarlett huffed and put her hands to her round stomach. “Not now! Stacia, stop!”
Christophé grinned at the little sister. She was a firebrand, that was certain. But he preferred Scarlett’s gentle strength and wary love. He turned to her. “What say you, madam? Would you do me the great honor?”
Scarlett’s mother let out a delighted laugh. They were all so sweet, so feminine, so missed. Christophé rose and held out his hand toward Scarlett.
“I will be clumsy.” She spoke as if they were the only two in the room.
“As will I.” Christophé let his smile assure her. “Have always had two left feet on the dance floor. Maybe now I will have a slight advantage.”
Stacia took the music box and wound it as far as it would go, grinning. “Dance, Scarlett. Go ahead and dance.”
Christophé took her right hand in his. Scarlett placed her left hand on his shoulder. Christophé grasped what little was left of her waist and swung her into a four step, the only step he knew.
She glided in his arms, so smooth it seemed they were underwater. She must not know how slight she was, even with the babe. How quick she felt . . . how her softness in his arms made him light-headed. Holding her like this, moving with her to the tinkling music . . . it made him feel alive for the first time in a very long time.
There in front of her family, he gazed down at her upturned face and allowed the music to overcome their bodies. He had heard concerts from some of the greatest musicians in the known world. He had attended the opera and musical soirée’s in the finest salons in Paris; he had attended symphonies written for the king. But he had never felt so happy while hearing a simple music box.
For it was listening to this music that he discovered heaven in his arms.
WHEN THE MUSIC died away, when his feet and Scarlett’s finally stilled, they stood there, silent. Scarlett’s mother and sister sat transfixed, gazing at them. The air was too intense, too infused with something beyond them all. The mother’s and sister’s expressions showed they felt it too—and both looked away. It was like the sun—too intense and bright to be seen by the naked eye. Christophé’s gaze returned to his beautiful partner . . . and he suddenly remembered. His surprise! He broke the spell on the room with a deep laugh.
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