Love's First Light (38 page)

BOOK: Love's First Light

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She blinked, and he suddenly knew.

What had he done? In the name of freedom? In the name of finding his solace? To be loved? For that was what it had really been all about.
What had he done?

Forgive me!
he cried within as they leveled his body and slid it under the blade.
For I have sinned!

Émilie turned her face away. She didn’t need to see the final moment, didn’t want to see retribution. As the crowd roared their approval of the beginning of the end to Terror, Émilie St. Laurent turned away from them, knowing that at the end he had understood. Somehow, she was sure. A little sob broke from her throat. Someday, in heaven, she would see her family, they would all be together. It was her prayer that Robespierre, too, would be there. Forgiven.

Finally whole.

Émilie looked up but she didn’t focus on the crowd of hate around her. She didn’t listen to their screams of jubilation at what they thought was a new freedom. No. She saw the light shine down on a man and a women, her brother and his beloved, and she knew that, somehow, they were all going to live. They were going to live . . .

And love each other for a long, long time.

Epilogue

Six Months Later

S
carlett walked down the aisle of lavender-strewn flowers and bright leaves, arm and arm with Émilie. They were dressed alike—simple, white muslin gowns that flowed from high-waisted ivory ribbons. The only difference was that Émilie wore an interwoven twine of ivy leaves in her hair, a green crown, the hue of which she could see. Scarlett’s crown was interwoven with blood-red roses that cascaded down her back in a leafy red train.

A symbol of all they’d known and seen.

Christophé stood at the front with the magistrate they’d hired to do the ceremony, as France had no church. Christophé wore his only suit of black breeches, a black tailcoat that fitted him none too well, and white stockings, shirt, and stock. But his face.

Scarlett grasped hold of Émilie’s arm as she looked at her beloved’s dear face.

“He has never loved anything like he loves you.”

Émilie’s whispered words caused her to falter in their walk, their silken, red slippers touching as they turned, for a moment, toward each other. Scarlett looked down at her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s young face and saw the mercy of God.

She exhaled a sudden breath on three words: “And I, him.”

Émilie handed her off to her brother, gave them both a long, happy glance, and then went to her chair in the front, beside the newly married Jasper and Scarlett’s mother, now Suzanne Montpelier. Stacia sat beside Antoine; they were never very far from each other these days and already hinting at a wedding of their own. Stacia was young to become, overnight, a mother to three small children, but Scarlett had already seen a side to her sister that showed she could take on the task. It helped that she seemed to have an inborn love for the motherless children and got along so well with Antoine’s sister.

Scarlett turned from those happy thoughts toward the man beside her. She thought back on all her dreams. As a young girl, as a young woman, as Daniel’s bride even. She hadn’t known. She had never truly grasped finding her other half . . . until now.

Christophé reached for her hands. He held them tightly, as though afraid. She looked up and commanded with her eyes that he look at her, really look at her. Standing there, while the magistrate began the words that would make them man and wife, she willed him to see the truth of her heart.

The truth of their forever.

His hair had grown. His face was shaved, but he still had the dark shadows of a beard on his cheeks and chin. As the man of the law spoke, she memorized this moment and each fleck of color in his startlingly beautiful blue eyes, each line just starting to form around his eyes, each movement of his face as he said the vows. With everyone watching them, she allowed her gaze to rove with love over this man God had given her.

The magistrate’s speech talked of man and wife and the law that would bind them together. But all Scarlett could think of was Christophé’s prism and the colors he had shown her. She broke then, crying a little as she spoke the words when they were demanded of her, but knowing . . . knowing that this man was the light in her world. She thought back on the stars in his heavens, of the microscopic world that thrilled him, the scratching of numbers and mathematical signs that she would never understand, but that gave his eyes a blazing light of passion. He would only and ever be all that brought her a new and glorious world, one she’d only been able to imagine. Until now.

She remembered his first word to her—
color
—and then she thought back on her father and the name he had given her.

And then, she considered God and how He planned it all.

CHRISTOPHÉ SAW COLOR everywhere. His vision was overly bright today. He saw the red in her lips. He saw the white of her gown, knowing it to be so pure that the color blurred away into nothing but brightness. He saw her glorious hair, and in her eyes he saw her love. He repeated his lines, not knowing what he said, not caring, as long as what they spoke made her his, forever.

He was so glad to grasp her hands and say the words of his heart out loud for everyone to hear. “I love you.”

It wasn’t raining.

It was sunny and bright in Jasper’s garden as a new day dawned for them. For France. The bloody Terror was behind them. A new day, full of possibilities, stood before them all. And it was filled with hope.

As Christophé and Scarlett took the sacraments of Communion, drinking from the cup of His blood and eating from the holiness of His broken body so that they might live, they stood in unison under an azure sky.

“Thy kingdom come.”
Christophé’s gaze glowed as he stared into her eyes.

“Thy will be done.”
Scarlett’s beautiful lips curved.

A bird screeched above their heads, and they both looked up.

They all looked up.

And there, in the clear blue sky . . . arched a bow of color.

A perfect rainbow.

The promise of a future filled the air and all their hearts. Scarlett and Christophé gazed into each other’s eyes, knowing . . .

God’s blessing, a sanctification, a benediction, a healing, and a future.

It was a great day indeed.

Christophé looked back up at the arch of color, saw each hue as a calculation, then looked at his wife’s face . . .

And saw the dawning of a new day for them all.