Love's First Light (33 page)
She took great gulps of air, not realizing that the cold on her cheeks was the blowing of the breeze against her tears. Stacia and her mother were soon behind her.
“Scarlett, what is it? Is André well?” Her mother sounded as distressed as Scarlett felt.
Stacia came up next to her and touched her wet cheek. “Scarlett . . .”
Scarlett struggled for the words. She saw the celebratory crowd around her and motioned them all to continue walking. After another block and then another she slowed. Her mother’s eyes widened with every step they took.
“A carriage. We must find a carriage.”
Stacia ran ahead, in search of one. After a few more minutes, Stacia was able to round up a carriage. Stacia gave the man Robespierre’s address.
They climbed in, sweaty and labored, settling themselves against the comfortable seats. No one dared speak. They all knew that the coachman might hear Scarlett’s words, and none of them wanted to discuss the festival in a public place.
“We can’t go back to his house.” Scarlett looked at her mother. “Do you remember where Jasper’s house is located?”
Suzanne looked out onto the passing cobblestones, at the houses and the street signs, for a long moment. “Oh, I do believe it is the next street.”
Stacia rapped on the window, causing the driver to stop. “We’ve changed our minds, good citizen. Please, take us to Rue Vivienne.”
The man shrugged, turned the vehicle around and continued driving.
“Scarlett, what is it?” Stacia studied her, her face, taunt with fear.
Scarlett could only shake her head and look out of the window, hoping, praying to arrive at a place of safety.
They arrived at the street, Suzanne looking closely at the houses so as to direct the driver. “There,” she said triumphantly. “The house with the red door.”
They rapped that they wanted the driver to stop, stepped down, and paid the man, who tipped his hat to them. He seemed to Scarlett to be watching them too intently. Stacia tried to distract the man by smiling up at him and motioning toward André. “He’s to see his grandfather for the first time. Such an exciting day!”
The man, sharp-eyed and broad browed, seemed mollified and slapped the reins, sending the horses cantering off.
The three women made their way to the door. Suzanne took the lead, her hips swaying, determined, toward the red door. She knocked hard, three times. And then three more.
Jasper opened the door like he’d rushed to it. His face changed from alarm to delight when he saw Scarlett’s mother. But then he noted their somber faces and quickly motioned them to come in.
“Is something wrong?”
Her mother looked ready to burst into tears at Jasper’s question. Stacia stood mute. Scarlett finally spoke. “Where is Christophé? I have to speak to him.”
Jasper took them into the parlor which was clean and tidy. Christophé had turned from the chair at the desk, stood when he saw them, and rushed across the room toward Scarlett. He immediately took her into his arms. “What has happened?”
Scarlett burst into tears.
Christophé looked up at Stacia and then their mother. “What is it? Is it Robespierre?”
Scarlett reached up and grasped his shoulders, her face pressed against his chest. “I’m afraid. Robespierre has gone mad. Today at the festival, it was such a mockery. He acted as though he thinks he is a god.”
Jasper intervened. “Come. Come and sit.”
They all sat down, Émilie pouring them each a glass of water and pressing it into Scarlett’s hand. André had fallen into an exhausted sleep, but Scarlett clutched him to her chest all the same. Her arm ached with the tension of holding him.
Christophé reached for him. “Here, you rest. Let me hold him for awhile.” He gently took the baby into his arms and sat next to Scarlett on the settee. “Tell me.”
The words and all the fears tumbled out. “We went to the festival. He’s renamed God as the Supreme Being. He claims it is to bring down the atheist, but it isn’t. He wants something. Something he can never have on his own. Do you understand what I mean? I used to think he was eccentric, back when I first married Daniel. I used to think he might be a little crazed. But now. Oh, Christophé.” She shook her head, lowered her chin, and stared at her fiancé as she never had. “He will destroy himself. And anyone in his household or associated with him will go—” she shook her head as fresh tears rose to her eyes—“to the guillotine with him.”
She grasped Christophé’s arm. “We have no more time. We have to escape now.”
NOW SHE KNEW Robespierre as he knew him. Now she knew Christophé’s daily fear. He looked to Jasper, who inclined his head. They were ready.
“You’re right. You cannot go back.” Christophé’s gaze swept to include the others in the room. “Not any of you. A ship to London leaves in a few days. We will travel to the harbor in Le Havre tomorrow.”
They all stopped and looked at one another. Scarlett’s mother looked at Jasper. “We’re leaving France? Will you be coming with us?”
Jasper rubbed his chin. “If you won’t be convinced to stay here with me and become my wife.”
All three women gasped, but unlike her daughters, Suzanne’s gasp was of delight. She put her hands to her cheeks. “Are you asking me to be your wife?”
Jasper walked forward and took her hands in his. “I suppose I didn’t do that very well, did I? You would think a man my age would know better than to just blurt it out like that. But yes, Suzanne Bonham—” they all watched as he leaned forward and held her astonished gaze—“will you become my wife?”
Scarlett’s mother nodded, her face blossoming with color. “Yes, I will.” She leaned forward. “But we’ll be married in London in a proper church.”
Jasper gave her a little kiss, as though to seal their agreement.
“Great heavens!” Stacia fell back into a chair in a perfect imitation of her mother. “What will happen next?”
“Jasper and I will be going for a little walk in his garden.” Their mother sounded positively giddy. She took her betrothed’s arm, and Jasper’s smile grew into a grin.
Stacia must have sensed Scarlett would like to be alone with Christophé, too, for she turned to Émilie. “Could you show me the house? Let’s take on the task of finding sleeping places for everyone.”
When they all left the room, Scarlett leaned into Christophé’s shoulder.
“Are you well?” Christophé put an arm around her.
“I’m better now that I’m here with you. It was just that I’ve never seen it so clearly before. I’m afraid Robespierre will find us, or worse, we will all go down to the grave with him.” Her body shuddered. “What of André? He is his blood relative. If they guillotine Robespierre, they will try to destroy anyone related to him.”
CHRISTOPHÉ LAY THE baby on a cushion on the floor. He turned and took Scarlett into his arms. He didn’t have any more words of comfort for her. He didn’t know what promises he could make and keep. Truthfully, all their heads might lay in the executioner’s basket by next week. All he had was his arms to enclose her. His head to lean towards hers. His cheek to press against her soft cheek. His lips against her yielding, seeking mouth.
Lips the color of her name.
Thy will be done.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Christophé woke in the middle of the night to a silent, peaceful shot of moonlight crossing his face. He rose, careful not to disturb Scarlett and the sleeping babe between them. She looked so peaceful with her eyes closed and body slack as she lay curled onto her side, her hand just touching André’s toes. And Emilie. Having her back . . . he could hardly contain the jolt of joy that shot through him when he thought of it. He reveled in the feel of family. His family.
Rubbing his hand across the short-cropped hair, he turned toward the window and the open curtains. He padded across to it, pulled the curtains further aside, and grasped them in each hand. Leaning forward, he pressed his face against the glass, watching the condensation form and recede, form and recede. How did breath have such vapor? How could it cling to a pane of glass? Did any of that matter anymore?
Scarlett was right. Robespierre had, this day, crossed a line that would likely mean his demise. He saw it as clearly as if he was reading about it in some history book from the future. The man’s true agenda had finally been revealed, and both he and Scarlett and all they loved hung, like hapless spiders on the thinly spun webs glowing in this moonlight, suspended, waiting time’s accounting sheets.
He pressed his closed fist against the glass and stared out. “God help us.” He wanted to pound his fist. He wanted to rail at the time of their birth. What if they’d been born before . . . during the time of Voltaire and Rousseau? What would they have been then? Would he have ever known Scarlett? His mind played tricks on him, wandering into paths he’d never considered before. What if they’d been born fifty or a hundred years from now? What would their lives have looked like then?
It was the reason he was alone, he realized. Thoughts like these. There had never been anyone very much interested in anything but the problems of the day, the here and now. Except for Scarlett. She might not understand all his thoughts, but she listened, really listened, and thought about what he said. She understood something in him that no one else had.
He turned from the window and the moon’s cold light. He walked over and stared at the woman sleeping there. Nothing had happened between them. Nothing of a marital nature would until they were wed by clerk or priest. Still, the blanket had fallen off her legs. His gaze traveled up the length of her toes and ankles and then calves. Her skin was pale, glowing in the moonlight. The sheets and her nightgown, the same one she’d worn when he had met her in the graveyard of Carcassonne, clung around a newly slim waist. Her arms were curled up, one toward André and the other under her cheek.
Her hair. His gaze traveled over the strands of her hair as it caught the moonlight in a vision of fire and embers, making him slowly sit down and then reach for a strand. He held it up, a careful move, so as not to wake her. It felt like silk between his fingers. He turned and rotated the strands into the light, watching how the colors changed. Fire and earth melded together in a single strand of hair. His chest heaved with the beauty of it.
“Christophé?”
She sounded afraid, and with everything in him, he didn’t want her to ever sound so again. He dropped the lock of hair and leaned close. “The moonlight woke me.” He leaned close enough to feel her breath over his face.
“Oh.” It seemed all she could say.
He smiled.
He’d never been the seducer. He’d never tried to convince a woman of anything, save his mother, who he often tried to convince the necessity of having taken apart some clock or destroying some household apparatus to figure out how it worked. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Scarlett sat up, whispering as he did so they wouldn’t wake André. “But you did.” She lifted her face.
Her lips stood out as they always did, red in any light. He felt a slow melting take over his limbs, imagining that even in the dark they would glow. The color of her lips defied the science of light.
He leaned toward them, unable to help himself. “Scarlett.”
She adjusted her position enough to lean across the sleeping baby and closed her eyes. As his lips reached hers, he felt her melt, let the worries and tension of the day’s events fade away.
“I love you.” She said the words against his lips, making him feel them more than hear them. He’d meant to say it first. He had asked her to be his wife and knew, in his heart, that he loved her from the moment he’d first saw her. It seemed unfair that he’d forgotten or misplaced those words and not said them. Saying it back now seemed too small. Words could never tell her how much a part of him she felt.
Instead, he cupped her cheek, feeling each molecule of silk glide beneath his thumb. As he breathed in her breath he knew her oxygen, the recently found fuel of fire. He allowed it to kindle and burn, turning the sparks within his heart into a blazing flame.
A sound escaped her throat as they kissed. He was shocked by how it resonated within him, as if there was a language only she could speak and only he could hear. He had not known the power of one woman’s love.
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