Love's First Light (9 page)
“All guillotined that day. Except for Émilie. My little sister.”
Scarlett pressed her lips together, a look of profound sadness on her face. “What became of your sister?”
He shook his head. He couldn’t speak of that, not even to her.
Taking the last bite of duck he wiped his hands on the cloth she’d laid between them and stood. He held out a hand to her and helped her rise. She was so round and awkward and . . . beautiful. His hand tentatively reached toward her rounded stomach. New life. All he knew was death and more death. What he wouldn’t give to have such a fresh start knowing all that he now knew. He barely touched her, more a skimming of his fingers against her dress. “When will the baby come?”
“About two months.” She looked up into his eyes and he saw there a trust growing that he knew he didn’t deserve. But he wanted to. He wanted this chance she represented. A place to belong. A family to love and care for.
Someone to need him again.
I’ll do better this time!
Chapter Seven
Scarlett returned home to find her mother crying into a lacy handkerchief, her little sister patting her back.
Alarm filled Scarlett as she pulled off her cloak and tossed it to a chair. “What is it?”
Stacia looked up and pressed her lips together. “A letter arrived. From Robespierre.” The name sent a shiver up Scarlett’s spine. Robespierre was responsible for much of the terror of this Révolution and, after hearing Christophé’s side, she was beginning to truly loathe her husband’s uncle.
Stacia rose, strode over with a determined air, and grasped the opened parchment from a round, dark table near the door. She thrust it toward Scarlett. Before she could open it and read the first line, her mother wailed the news. “He’s cutting off the flour, Scarlett. Only one more month. What will we do?”
Suzanne Bonham had never been one to accept sudden change with grace. It always came as a shock to her. Somehow, Scarlett just rolled with it. Stacia, though, seemed to thrive in the challenge of it. Between them, they had weathered their father’s death, Daniel’s death, Scarlett’s pregnancy—and now they would have to cope with no means to continue their income.
Scarlett scanned the letter, heart sinking. Their allotment of flour was being brought to an end due to increasing demands in Paris. She felt less like crying than like throttling the man. She knew him as these others in the room did not. He was a clever, manipulative man who, she was certain, could provide them with anything he wanted should he want it badly enough. When Daniel died he assured Scarlett that, as she was carrying the Robespierre heir, he would ensure her future. Even in such turbulent times as these, he’d assured her that when she returned to the safety of the southern countryside, he would provide for her and her family.
She carefully folded the letter and pressed the wax seal against her thumb, then set it back on the table. With slow steps she walked toward her mother and sank down, placing her hands in her mother’s lap, gaining the attention of her tear-stained face.
“What will we do?” her mother repeated.
Scarlett stared at her mother and then her sister. An idea formed, and she pressed her lips together, studying her little sister. “We still have one asset.”
Stacia raised a single dark brow at her. She tilted back her head, a laugh escaping. “Is it husband hunting time?” She clasped her hands together in dramatic glee. “I have been waiting for the day.”
Scarlett gave her sister a serious look. It would have to be Stacia. Not only was Scarlett round with child and in little position to go husband hunting, she feared it was too late for her. Scarlett couldn’t tell them that she thought she was in love with a madman, a beggar, someone who needed saving instead of the other way around. It was impossible. She was loathe to put this burden on Stacia. But what choice did they have?
And, to make matters worse, there was only one place to find a good match for Stacia: Paris. In Scarlett’s condition, there was little chance she could travel such a distance. They would have to go without her. But how to convince her mother?
She rose and slowly paced the length of the room. “You and mother will go to Paris. I will write a letter for you to give to Robespierre—”even saying the name aloud made her shiver, but she plunged on—“reminding him of his promises to us.” She put her hand on her stomach. “He will take you both in, having little choice.”
“If only your cousin Louisa was still in Paris,” her mother moaned.
“Yes, it is too bad Louisa went back to Martinique. She couldn’t stomach the Révolution. Regardless, you must be strong. You have to go.”
Her mother stared up at Scarlett, brows wrinkling. “We cannot leave you alone! What will become of you?” Her shoulders slumped. “What will become of us?”
Scarlett sat down beside her mother and took her hand. Since her father’s death, her mother had been more the child than the parent when something outside the daily running of the household happened to them. Scarlett had been the one to pick up the role of her father, taking odd jobs before she married Daniel and managing the family’s bigger decisions.
She squeezed her mother’s hand. “I will be fine. There is a good doctor here, as you know. And you and Stacia will find opportunities for her that she will never have here.”
Her mother raised her head, blinked out tears, and blurted out. “I never thought, when I married your father, that he would leave us to do this alone.”
Scarlett leaned into her mother’s side, their heads touching. “I’m sure he didn’t dream of this either.” She paused, tearing up herself and catching Stacia’s gaze. “God will give us strength for what is to come.”
Stacia walked over and knelt down in front of them. “We should pray.”
Stacia prayed like no one else Scarlett had ever heard. She prayed the same way she’d always spoken to their father. Like God loved her beyond measure, like she was a valued and precious part of creation. Scarlett had always felt a little afraid of God. What if she asked for something that wasn’t His will? What if she made some mistake approaching Him? She loved hearing Stacia’s freedom in prayer. If only she could have more of that in her own prayers.
“Yes. Please pray, Stacia. Ask God to supply what we need. He will hear you.”
Stacia bent her head and closed her eyes.
“Dear heavenly Father. Dear Creator of all life. Help us as we, as I, go forward as an ambassador of this family. Scarlett must stay behind and have her baby”
—she brushed a hand across Scarlett’s knee—
“but we are much afraid and do not know where to turn but to You. Be our guiding light as Mother and I go to Paris. Let me find a husband, if that is Your will.”
She laughed.
“And let him be fine in every way. Thank You for Your perfect plan for all our lives. Thank You for Your love for us.”
“Dear heavenly Father. Dear Creator of all life. Help us as we, as I, go forward as an ambassador of this family. Scarlett must stay behind and have her baby”
—she brushed a hand across Scarlett’s knee—
“but we are much afraid and do not know where to turn but to You. Be our guiding light as Mother and I go to Paris. Let me find a husband, if that is Your will.”
She laughed.
“And let him be fine in every way. Thank You for Your perfect plan for all our lives. Thank You for Your love for us.”
They all let out a little laugh. Lightness filled the air and their spirits as they opened their eyes and said together, “Amen.”
They spent the rest of the evening planning. Stacia went through her wardrobe, and Scarlett went to great lengths to find the perfect dresses for husband lure. They decided that some of Scarlett’s elegant Paris clothes could be remade for Stacia, which should only take a few days. Scarlett figured the household accounts and went through each line of numerals with Suzanne. There was enough saved back to keep Scarlett for a few months, as long as she embraced frugality. The rest would be used for traveling expenses.
Finally they all collapsed into bed. Stacia excited. Suzanne exhausted. And Scarlett, as she wrapped the covers around her shoulders and curled into her babe, felt the taut roundness of her stomach and the ache in her back, sad and afraid.
“I miss you,” she whispered to Daniel’s ghost. And she was glad to feel in that moment that she did.
But she wouldn’t show it.
She would not tell them how afraid she was to be left alone.
A WEEK LATER Scarlett woke in the middle of the night. Was it a cramp? A nightmare? She couldn’t grasp what had her wide awake and sitting up, swinging her feet over the edge of her bed and reaching for a dressing gown.
She stood awhile, regaining the real world around her. What time was it? Was is early morning and time to visit Daniel’s grave?
Before she was even fully awake, Scarlett had her shoes on and was outside taking in the chilly night air. She looked up into the dark sky, studied the placement of the stars, and realized that it must be the middle of the night. She smoothed her hands across her stomach and shook her head. “We should go back to bed,” she whispered to the babe, but it didn’t move and she was wide awake. Before she knew it, she was walking in the direction of the old Cité.
She watched the dark water of the river, heard it slosh over the stones and ebb against the banks as her feet rang, too loud, against the stone bridge. On the other side she paused. Her footsteps would normally take her to the right and toward the graveyard. But this time . . .
She turned to the ancient castle. The original Carcassonne.
As she neared, the old stones seemed to whisper their legendary past. Built during Roman times, the city saw its greatest glory during the Middle Ages and the dynasty of the Trencevals. Scarlett had heard the tales of troubadours and knights and the grand tournaments held within the castle walls. But soon after, the Cathars—Christians who were viewed as heretics by Pope Innocent III—brought wrath and crusades to the town. Upon their defeat, Carcassonne was given to the French king.
In the years that followed, the second wall was built and Louis IX built a new town across the river. As the new town grew, the Treaty of Pyrenees after the Hundred Years War came into being, changing the southern border and ending the Cité’s strategic stronghold. The old Cité fell further and further into ruins. Scarlett couldn’t remember hearing of anyone living in the castle for over a hundred years. But as she gazed at it, she could still feel its greatness, its history leaking from the stones.
She trudged through the weed-clogged path toward the crumbling entrance. She passed the two famed walls, an outer wall and a lower inner wall. There used to be a watery moat, but no more. It had been dry, with only river rock to fill it for some time. Her footsteps took her into the inner chamber of the grand hall. Here, she paused, catching her breath, looking up into the dark ceiling. What was she doing? It seemed someone was guiding her tonight. Was it God?
A sound, a spark of light, had her spinning toward a long, narrow hall.
She veered toward it and saw a room where a light was flickering. She came to the door and stood at the threshold, her heartbeat loud in her ears. Slowly, carefully, she pushed the door open. She stood blinking in the darkness. A cold shiver raced up her spine as she took a step forward and looked about the room.
He turned. Dressed in nothing but a pair of ragged breeches, his long, blunt hair fell like a curtain over his intense gaze. He turned further toward her, impaling her with those sapphire-rimmed eyes that seemed to belong to another world—and suddenly Scarlett could neither move, nor think.
CHRISTOPHÉ SPUN AT a sound behind him, knocking off a bottle that flew to the stone floor and shattered. He dove for his pistol, rose up with it, and held it trained on the intruder.
Her features overwhelmed him, made his hand shake as he lowered the weapon. He couldn’t seem to get his breath as his mind wove its way back from calculations to this pale, frightened face staring at him with huge eyes. “Scarlett?”
She was gripping her rounded stomach, blinking at him in the dim light of the room, looking like she’d walked out of his dreams so that he woke up to find it was real.
He went to her and cradled her face in his hands. “Scarlett.” His lips lifted and he was smiling, glad she was there. “You are shivering. Come. Warm yourself by the fire.” In an underbreath he added, “Heaven knows it is the last stick of wood.”
A hint of fear shone in her eyes as she followed him toward the tiny fire he’d set up to do his experiments. If only he had something to offer her, other than his scattered wits and dusty home. But he didn’t. He hadn’t eaten anything in days so that he could buy the wood and candles for this night. He’d barely slept since he last saw her. He’d only worked.
And he was so close! Light’s mysteries, the splitting of white light into color and then back into white light with naught but specially cut glass was something that could be expressed with inked-out equations. He knew it. But there was so much yet to be written out mathematically—in calculus. He had to find the answers. Answers were the only thing that could set him free.
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