Love's First Light (13 page)
“Ladies, it has been a delightful evening, and I would take my leave except for one thing.” When they just stared at him somewhat in alarm, he quickly added with a smile, “Would you like to see the surprise I’ve brought?”
They looked at him like they weren’t quite sure, but they were all smiling now.
“Come. Get your wraps. I have something to show you.” Christophé went out the front door while the ladies were putting on their cloaks and picked up the leather tube he’d hidden in the bushes outside the front door.
When he came back in, he held it out to them and smiled while they guessed what it was.
“Is it an umbrella case?” Stacia asked.
“No, it holds parchment and writing utensils,” Scarlett asserted.
“What if it’s a knife and he means to kill us in our own backyard?” Stacia said in excited glee.
Scarlett just gave her a frown.
“Good heavens, what is it?” Suzanne demanded, wide-eyed.
Christophé motioned them to the back door where they could step out into the yard and be less likely to attract any night patrols watching the streets.
“I think there is a painting rolled up in there,” Stacia announced with a light elbow jab into Scarlett’s arm.
“But why would we view a painting in the dark?”
“Hush, girls. He’s about to show us.”
Christophé soaked in the chatter, their anticipation pure delight to his heart. He waited until they came beside him in the middle of the yard, then held up the leather case with flourish.
They watched as Christophé pulled off the leather cap, tilted the tube, and pulled out the long, mahogany cylinder with brass ends.
“It is a telescope!” Scarlett laughed. “I looked through one once, in Paris. It was marvelous.”
“Can we see the moon?” Stacia gazed upward.
They all looked up at the velvety sky. Christophé smiled. Even the heavens were cooperating tonight. “It is a clear night, and the moon is nearly full. I believe, Stacia, that you will be able to see many craters on the moon.”
The women drew closer, excitement emanating from them while Christophé stretched out the collapsing telescope to its full twenty-nine inches. He turned toward the moon, opened the protective shutter, then placed the eyepiece to his eye. It was just as he thought. The perfect night for stargazing. He lowered the telescope and grinned at them.
“Madame Bonham, would you like to be first?”
Suzanne stepped up, her hands at her cheeks. Christophé showed her where to hold the telescope and watched as she lifted it to her eye. “Just here—” he instructed while he raised it toward the moon.
“Oh my!” She gasped. “It’s so big and bright.”
“Do you see the dark spots?”
“Yes, yes I do.”
“Those are craters.”
“But what exactly is a crater, dear?”
Scarlett and Stacia exchanged amused glances.
“A crater is like a deep hole, in the shape of a bowl. There are big ones and little ones, and an enormous one on the moon.”
“My turn! Oh, do hurry, Mama!” Stacia had her hands squeezed together, clearly trying to rein in her excitement. And clearly failing.
Suzanne looked through the lens for several more minutes, ignoring her youngest. When she lowered the scope, she had a look of wonder on her face. “Thank you, sir. I had not thought to ever look through one of those in my lifetime. It makes the world seem smaller somehow.”
Christophé knew exactly what she meant. “Someday, I believe, we will be able to see planets and stars that are millions of miles away.”
Stacia stepped up to Christophé and held out her hand. “May I see stars now? Through this?”
“Yes, but they still look like dim lights. This telescope is one of the best made today. But someday, as they keep improving, we will really be able to study the galaxies of the universe.”
Stacia spent several minutes oohhing and ahhing over the moon and then tried to find as many stars as she could. Christophé turned to smile at Scarlett, then paused. She was tiring. She had one hand to her low back and distress rested on her features. Christophé was suddenly grateful her mother returned to the house a few moments earlier, saying it was chilly. Without her here, he felt free to walk over and place an arm around Scarlett’s shoulders, pulling her to his side so that she could lean against him. He leaned close to her ear. “Are you feeling badly?”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “Not really. Just tired all over.”
“Come, you will see the moon, and then I will leave so that you can find your bed.” He turned to Stacia. “Miss Stacia, your sister is tired. Let’s give her a turn and then you can have it back if you like.”
“Oh, sorry, Scarlett.” Stacia immediately thrust the instrument into her sister’s hands. “I always forget your condition and how you might be feeling. Here. I’m finished.” Turning to Christophé, she dimpled. “Thank you, sir, I can’t remember when I had such a lovely night. I hope the men in Paris are as kind as you.”
“In Paris?”
“Didn’t Scarlett tell you? I am off to Paris to find a husband.” She grinned and held her arms out wide into the night air. “To save the family.”
She looked entirely delighted in her mission, but Christophé couldn’t help the tight feeling in his chest. “Paris is dangerous.” He looked toward Scarlett. “Are you sure?”
Scarlett looked down and nodded. When she looked back up at him, she cupped her stomach and her words came out a low whisper. “We have little choice.”
Stacia laughed and patted Christophé on the arm as she left. “Don’t worry, dear sir. I am looking forward to it.”
Christophé had the sudden image of Jean Paul—how perfect this woman would have been for him—and was struck anew at the tragedy that his brother would never have a wife nor children nor . . . anything. His throat tightened, and he could only nod his farewell to the young woman in front of him.
After Stacia left them alone, Christophé stared at Scarlett. This was what life was—a woman to love, children, the day-to-day living that so many took for granted. He was filled with gratitude that he had this night, this moment with her.
He moved behind Scarlett and handed her the telescope. As she raised it toward the moon, he gently tugged her back to rest against his chest. His arms, not knowing what else to do and wanting to support her, wrapped around the sides of her baby. A rush of protectiveness overwhelmed him as she allowed herself to melt back into his chest.
“Do you see it?” His voice sounded deep and low, even to himself.
“Why, yes. This must be a very good telescope as I can see so much more than the time before.”
“There are mountains and valleys and craters on the moon’s surface too.”
“How can you tell which is which?”
“Craters are the easiest to find. Mountains look more like . . . dark lines.”
“Oh, yes! I do see the dark lines. And in between each mountain there must be a valley?”
“Exactly. So the moon is not the smooth surface that we once thought. In the last fifty years or so, the moon has been mapped, showing all the stages from crescent to full. We can see what the surface looks like in each stage.”
“And stars? Have stars been mapped?”
“Ah. Stars.” Christophé lowered his head so that they were cheek to cheek, his eye next to hers. He put his hand to hers on the telescope and slowly moved the piece toward the largest star in the sky. “Here, can you see that?”
“I see a light. It is blurry and fades out on the edges.”
“A very good observation. The fading out on the edges is the refraction of the light. Now—” he moved the telescope slightly—“do you see one close by?”
“Yes, it’s slightly pink. Are stars colored?”
“Could be, depending on the refraction of the light and how it enters our eye. Some telescopes try to block out those light rays. The stars you are looking at now are in the constellation Orion.”
“The hunter? I never could find constellations.” Scarlett lowered the telescope and stared at the sky. “Can you show it to me?”
Christophé took her hand in his and raised it up, pointing with her finger. “Here and here is his body. They connect in squares, do you see?”
“Hmm, sort of.”
Christophé chuckled. “Now this one connects with this one up here to form the arrow, and these little ones going up and down make the bow.”
“Oh. I do see that!”
“And over here, to the other side of the man, behind him, is his shield.” Christophé took her finger and connected the four stars that made up Orion’s narrow shield.
Scarlett turned and stared at him. “How do you know all of this?”
Christophé shrugged and looked down, smiling. He was unused to so much feminine adoration and didn’t quite know what to say.
Scarlett pressed a hand on his chest and smiled up at him. She took a sudden breath, opened her red lips and quoted:
Snatch me to heaven; thy rolling wonders there,
World beyond world, in infinite extent
Profusely scattered o’er the blue immense,
Show me; their motions, periods, and their laws
Give me to scan; through the disclosing deep
Light my blind way.
Christophé stared down at her, undone. “Yes. That is exactly it.”
Scarlett rose up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. They walked hand in hand back to the house, a slow stroll in the moonlight.
Chapter Eleven
1794—Carcassonne, France
Christophé pushed the image of Scarlett from his mind with determination as he rose from his bed. Ever since the night he spent with her and her family, she had stopped coming to visit the grave. She hadn’t been to visit him either. He didn’t know what might have gone wrong; he only knew that she must not want to see him again.
Not seeing her had only heightened his longing for her. He’d dreamed of her again this night. Every night for the past seven days he awoke with vivid, sometimes heated dreams of her. He stood in the chilly room, teeth clenched tight, jaws throbbing. What had he done to scare her off? It had seemed the perfect night.
Turning toward his bed, he knelt down on the hard stone floor, clasped his hands, and bowed his head. “Lord, forgive me my sins. Take this from me, God. I have nothing to offer her and yet, I can think of little else than being with her. Cure me of this torment!” He clinched his eyes tight, his body shaking from the cold and the loneliness that seemed to overwhelm him at the thought of never seeing her again.
Rising from the cot, he threw on his clothes. Work was the only thing that could block all other thought from his mind. He sat at his makeshift desk—two narrow boards stretched over stacks of stone on either side for legs—and reached for the bit of bread from last night’s dinner. He would have to go out for food today, he realized as he chewed his last morsel and swallowed. Bending his head over the calculations that had kept him up until almost dawn a few hours ago, he soon forgot the need for bread. Or a woman.
Something wasn’t right. In his attempt to measure the wavelengths of light, he had shot a beam of candlelight through slits of paper and studied the properties and behavior of the wave from different distances. After some basic calculations, he changed the experiment to focus on the wavelengths of different colors, but the calculations were all wrong. Flipping open a book at his elbow he studied Newton’s calculations. Newton had used geometry and algebra to describe light as waves, which puzzled most scientists. Newton was one of the first to invent calculus, and the new math was so much more elegant, but Christophé couldn’t attain the same results with the calculus and he knew that he must. He would never have the courage to write a paper for the Academié de Sciences in Paris without the irrefutable proof of the elegant equation.
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