Chapter Eight
C hapter E ight
“Z ut alors… ”
Gilles shook his head as he read his most recent letter of instructions from his Faction handler. It was the same sort of nonsense he had been asked to do over and over again, without much variation. Take the letters he received, change the seal to one with the crest he’d been given when he joined the Faction, and send them on to a contact in England, who would see them distributed to all the intended Faction members. It allowed them to send messages from France to England with more secrecy and security, but it was such a hassle, and more than half of the information in the letters was speculative now.
Of course, Gilles did the same thing for letters coming from supporters in England to the Faction in France. Those were usually more interesting, and allowed him to take better stock of the situation brewing there. That was when he could take up what Heloise had begun and relay information to his British contacts.
He loved doing that. He almost never had proof that his tips were successful, but occasionally, Trick or Trace or Briar would inform him. More often than not, though, they had messages sent to him asking for specific information on a person or situation arising in their particular sector of the London docks.
They never messaged him directly, of course. Their information went to a man in a pub in Poplar, and he received it from a ship captain whom Gilles trusted implicitly. The man did not know Gilles’s name, but he knew where his loyalty lay. He knew Gilles was called Briton to those in England who knew of him, and that was enough. Gilles had loved when Heloise had coined that name for them. It played on Gilles’s home province of Brittany, a place he would always adore but might never reside in again.
Perhaps one day…
The man who delivered Faction mail had no idea what he was delivering, so he had no need to care about loyalty, alliances, or the like. He only wanted his fees for doing the thing, which were handsomely paid on both sides.
The lovely thing about living on Guernsey was that people were neither French nor English, and yet somehow both. Not in all ways, but certainly in some. So whatever the Faction wanted to do left Guernsey and the other Channel Islands alone for the most part. And since England did not want to get too close to France, they felt the same. Perhaps it would serve England to have one of their officially trained operatives here, but until Gilles was involved in actual discussions with those who made such decisions, he would keep that opinion to himself.
Gilles sighed as he looked down at his letter now, shaking his head again. He didn’t even have letters from the Faction to send on right now, just this note for him alone. He operated under the assumption that unless his instructions changed, he was to keep acting as he was and forwarding letters accordingly. The constant reminders to keep working for the cause were utterly pointless and a waste of parchment.
But what did he know? He could only glean information from the letters he received and try to piece things together.
Heloise would have had some creative and derogatory remark for this note. She always did and had always managed to turn Gilles’s annoyance to humor.
There was no pain with remembering this about her—only fondness and a little sadness to color it differently.
That was progress, surely.
Shoving the letter into his desk, Gilles rose and glanced out of the window, noting the downpour of rain. There would be no beach outing today, then. The girls and Abigail would be in the house.
He smiled at the idea and rapped his knuckles on the desk surface as he rounded it, leaving the room in search of them.
It took some time to locate the trio, as they were not in the nursery, schoolroom, or kitchens. He found them in the library, of all places, each with a large tome of literature on their laps.
He folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb with a curious smile. “What in the world is going on in here?”
All three looked up at him with grins. “Atlases, sir,” Abigail chirped with as much eagerness as a child. “We are exploring the world.”
Gilles tilted his head, his smile growing. “I have three atlases?”
“You do,” she confirmed, returning to her own. “Different years of publication, but three all the same.”
“How excessive of me.” He pushed into the room and sat on the floor in front of his girls. “And what are we exploring today? Ah, South America. Mariette, would you like to see such a place?”
She shook her head very firmly. “Too far,” she said simply.
He grinned and ruffled her beautiful curls. “Oui, c’est vrai, ma chérie. You’d better stay here with Papa. And you, Madeline? Where have you gone today?”
“Belgium, Papa!” She showed him the map on her page. “Is that too far from us?”
“Non, ma chérie, that is not far at all.” He tapped her cheek with a gentle finger. “I have been to Belgium before.”
The girls looked at him with gaping mouths. “You have?” Madeline asked in a hushed voice.
Chuckling, Gilles traced his finger around the map of Belgium until he found Brussels. “Oui. When I was a boy, my parents took my brother and me there for a summer. It was a marvelous place, especially for boys who had rarely left Quimper. Even Paris could not compare for me then. I’d seen Paris a few times when we visited my aunt, and so it was no longer exciting. Brussels, though, was an adventure.”
“I want an adventure,” Madeline said with pure longing as she looked at the map again.
Gilles glanced at Abigail, noting the suspicious tension at the corners of her lips and the lines forming at her eyes. Her eyes flicked to his, and he caught the mirth within them, echoing his own that was steadily growing in his chest.
“You have plenty of adventures, ma fée,” Gilles assured Madeline. “Hasn’t Mademoiselle Chorley taught you about your imagination yet?”
Madeline’s head bobbed in a series of nods. “But I want a real adventure, Papa. Somewhere that isn’t Guernsey.”
That was fair, and Gilles couldn’t pretend otherwise. His daughters had never left the island, and he’d never been particularly inclined to take them anywhere. He and Heloise had discussed visiting France as a family one day, but until the Faction was either eliminated or under control, they hadn’t wanted to take the risk of entering the country. England was almost as dangerous, considering the game he was playing. Risking his daughters was not something he was willing to do, but he did not want them to lead secluded lives either.
He would lose them to adulthood one day, but he wanted to keep them his precious little ones as long as he could.
“Someday, we will get you a real adventure or two,” he relented with a heavy sigh, smiling down at his oldest and stroking her cheek. “I promise. You just need to be a little bit older.”
Madeline made a face at him, then giggled as she went back to her atlas.
Gilles looked at Abigail again. “And where has Mademoiselle Chorley decided to go for her atlas adventure?”
She turned the book to show him. “Australia, sir.”
He raised a brow at her. “Do you have some criminals you wish to visit? Or some you wish to send off?”
Abigail laughed easily, the sound catching him in the chest just as it had done that day he’d shown her the caves. “No, I’ve simply always been curious about it. So far away, so different from England, but part of the kingdom. I would say that I’d love to see it myself, but I think a journey on the sea that long would be a very slow, excruciating death for me.”
Gilles tsked softly, fighting further laughter. “So no far-off adventures for Mademoiselle Chorley either. My, my, what are we going to do about this?” He put his chin in his hand and frowned darkly, pretending to think hard.
The girls watched him, both frowning exactly as Heloise used to when she was thinking.
It was a pleasant reminder that she would never be fully removed from his life.
“How can we take far-off adventures without having to board a ship?” Gilles asked, as though it were a troublesome puzzle he could not solve.
Madeline gasped and raised her hand high as though in a schoolroom.
Hiding a smile, Gilles looked directly at her. “Yes, Madeline? You have an idea?”
She nodded eagerly, her hand returning to her lap. “We can read books, Papa. Maman always said that stories are adventures for our minds and imagination, sometimes even better than playing.”
“C’est vrai, ma chérie,” he praised, smiling fully. “She loved books very much.”
“Mademoiselle Abby likes books, too,” Marie-Claire added quickly. “She’s going to start reading to us before bed.”
“Is she?” Gilles looked at Abigail with interest, something warm and ticklish unfurling in the pit of his stomach.
Abigail nodded without reservation. “I could get lost in books for weeks on end. It was one of the few things in my life that did not change in the least after my injury. Books saved my sanity during recovery.”
Gilles softened at that, his warmth spreading from shoulder to shoulder and down to the tips of his fingers. He couldn’t help the smile he sent her way, knowing it was gentle and tender and probably far too familiar, but not caring. Abigail needed to know that she had his sympathy, his understanding, his support. She also needed to know that he was not only her employer, but her friend. At least, he would be if she would let him.
She needed to stop calling him Mr. Bichard or sir. He wanted her to call him by his name, and he wanted her to take her meals with him. He wanted her to come to the library after the girls were asleep so the two of them could discuss their favorite books. He wanted to go for a stroll in the gardens with her and discover her favorite flower. He wanted her to go to the pool in the cave and try exercising in the warm water and then come back and tell him if it worked. He wanted to help her get stronger and more flexible, if there was even the slightest possibility. He wanted to dance with her at a ball.
He hadn’t wanted to even attend a ball since Heloise had died. He’d never really wanted to go when she was alive, but he endured it for her because he loved dancing with her. Only her.
And now he wanted to dance with Abigail.
And from what she had told him, she could not even dance.
He didn’t care. They could dance in the privacy of this house, away from other dancers, any finery, and even musicians to serenade them.
He just wanted to have her in his arms.
His throat tightened and he felt his eyes widen as the desires and ideas he now had raced upon him with a vengeance. He lowered his gaze to the rug to keep from showing anything to Abigail or the girls. It was too much too soon, and not well-defined. It was just… it was only…
He hadn’t wanted anything of the sort in so long, and now suddenly his heart was breaking free of its cage and being lit on fire.
How was that for a revelation?
“Zut,” he whispered to himself, shaking his head. He cleared his throat and forced a smile on his face as he raised his head, looking at the girls in particular. “Would you like to hear my favorite story I’ve found in books?”
“Yes, Papa!” they cheered, setting their atlases aside and scooting closer to him.
His eyes slid to Abigail just enough to see her tilt her head in curiosity as she set her own atlas aside.
Good. He wanted her to hear this as well.
“A long, long time ago,” Gilles began, lowering his voice dramatically, “there was a soldier named Odysseus, King of Ithaca. He had been fighting in the Trojan War for ten years, but he was now trapped on the island of Ogygia when he just wanted to go home.”
“How did he get trapped?” Marie-Claire asked in a loud whisper, her eyes round.
Gilles gave her a very serious look. “We don’t know. Odysseus hasn’t told us that yet.”
Her mouth formed an O, and she said nothing else, watching him.
He nodded at her attention. “But he is being kept on this island because he has angered Poseidon, god of the seas.”
“How?” Marie-Claire gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks.
Annoyance and amusement rose together on a gentle wave within him as he gave his daughter an exasperated look. “We don’t know yet, petite. ”
She nodded slowly, still gaping, as though in a trance.
“Back at his home in Ithaca, Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, lives with his mother, Penelope. And there are many young men who want to marry Penelope, as they believe Odysseus is dead.”
Gilles continued to tell them the very beginnings of The Odyssey , keeping everything at an appropriate level for children of their age. Given the sheer volume of the epic poem, there was no way he would be able to tell them the entire story in one sitting, but he didn’t mind that. It had been some time since he had shared a story with his girls, and if he could extend their desire for such a thing for a few days or weeks by sharing his favorite story, he would gladly take it.
He only got the story to the end of perhaps the fourth book or so by the time they were interrupted by Mrs. Corbin about the usual teatime for the girls.
Madeline and Marie-Claire groaned at being interrupted. “Mrs. Corbin!” Madeline scolded, propping her hands on her hips much like the housekeeper did on a regular basis. “Not yet! We need to get back to Odysseus on the island! Telemachus is going to find him!”
Mrs. Corbin blinked at the girls, then looked at Gilles in utter bewilderment. “What in the name of St. Sampson is she talking about?”
Gilles barked a loud laugh at the invocation of the patron saint of Guernsey. “I was telling them my favorite story, Mrs. Corbin. The Odyssey. ”
She only stared at him. “The odyssey of what?”
Abigail snorted a very soft laugh before coughing to cover it up, looking down at the rug beneath them with great interest.
Gilles was no less amused, but contained it well. “The Odyssey, Mrs. Corbin. The original epic poem from Ancient Greece. Written by Homer, most likely. Trojan War. Greek gods. Family. Battles. Desperate suitors who meet an untimely end out of vengeance.”
There wasn’t a scintilla of recognition in her eyes, and Gilles clamped down on his lips hard to keep from laughing further.
Mrs. Corbin exhaled shortly. “And that is your favorite story?” She shook her head at his nod. “We need to have you read a wider variety of books, sir. Come along, girls. Cook has made several new biscuits for you to try. You may hear more of the story later, if you wish.”
Grumbling but obedient, the girls rose and gave Gilles quick hugs before following her out of the library for their tea.
Only when they were gone did Gilles and Abigail look at each other, exploding into roaring laughter almost at once. Abigail’s warm, throaty laughter echoed all around them, her eyes squeezed tightly shut with mirth, one arm going around her stomach as though trying to protect her ribs from the laughter. Her cheeks grew flushed the more she laughed, and just as before, her throat danced with the sounds.
Gilles could barely catch his breath for his own laughter, but when combined with the stirring sight that was Abigail’s amusement, he was finding air in short supply, making his own laughter sound like wheezing. Which, of course, was even more hilarious than anything else already was.
Neither of them could stop for the longest time, and tears were streaming from both of their eyes before long.
Abigail wiped at hers, still giggling breathlessly. “Oh, that was too perfect. Her face!” She tried to recreate the unimpressed, confused expression Mrs. Corbin had worn, but there was too much mirth in her face to manage anything convincing. She dissolved into giggles again, leaning back on both hands and trying to steady her breathing.
Gilles brushed his sleeve along his cheeks, exhaling slowly in his own attempt to soothe the hilarity. “I had no idea that my taste in reading would be such a disappointment.”
“She didn’t even know what you were talking about,” Abigail scoffed with another bright laugh. “Not that I can blame her. Many people don’t know The Odyssey unless they’ve been fortunate enough to have tutors who enjoy it, and outside of the upper classes, who would even have the opportunity?”
That was true, and something Gilles had never truly considered before this moment. He had taken so many things for granted in his life, especially with the station he was born into and the fortune he’d inherited. He tried not to live his life wearing the same blinders that others did. But, it seemed, he had not quite succeeded there. He had presumed his housekeeper would know The Odyssey without considering anything else.
He didn’t feel guilt over that, exactly. Gilles was quite certain Mrs. Corbin knew plenty of stories that he did not, and perhaps someday they could share them with each other. It could create a more level education and imagination for them both.
Chuckling, Gilles stretched out his legs and leaned back on his elbows. “Perhaps I ought to invite her to listen to the story with the girls. She might find a new favorite story for herself.”
Abigail laughed softly, almost to herself. “Somehow, I doubt it. She would heartily disapprove of Calypso keeping him captive and falling in love with him while he is her prisoner. Who knows what she would make of Circe seducing his men?”
Gilles looked at her in surprise, not bothering to hide his delight at her knowledge. “Ah, so you know the story, then.”
“I do,” Abigail replied simply, her smile wide. At his questioning look, she laughed once and shrugged. “I have siblings, we’ve discussed that before. Our family’s library contained several books intended for my brothers’ education. I have always been a voracious reader, so I read everything in there. Including The Odyssey and The Iliad. ”
“You ready everything in there?” Gilles asked with some suspicion, teasing entering his voice without any real intention.
Abigail rolled her eyes, her lips curving to one side in a wry grin. “Fine, I started to read every book in there, but did not finish them all. It is not entirely my fault; I don’t think anyone has ever read A Dedicated History of the Livestock Farming of Shropshire from cover to cover. And I am sorry to the author, but A Treatise on the Application and Understanding of Greek Philosophies on Birds was intolerable. I could not read beyond the second chapter; it was too abysmal a prospect.”
Gilles was back to laughing without realizing it at first, and Abigail soon joined him again.
“But,” she managed when her laughter faded, “I did enjoy The Odyssey . I did always wonder about the sheep, though. How in the world could grown men hide on the underbellies of sheep? I have seen many, many flocks in my life, and not one of the sheep in a single flock could actually hide a man, let alone carry one.”
“Polyphemus was blind by that point!” Gilles cried out, still laughing. “Odysseus and the men were hiding their footsteps.”
Abigail turned to face him, her expression incredulous. “That is one point for them, but it does not address how the sheep managed to actually carry a single man! It’s a sheep, not a cow.”
It was impossible to avoid smiling at this woman sitting on the floor of his library and debating The Odyssey with him so vehemently.
He wanted…
“Perhaps the sheep in the twelfth century were larger,” Gilles began seriously, forcing his smile to fade. “I wonder if completing your reading of that livestock farming book would have given you insight there, but hélas, we will never know now.”
Abigail’s eyes went wide for a moment before a rather indelicate and drawn-out snort escaped her. One hand clapped over her mouth as her eyes scrunched shut with silent laughter.
Gilles heaved a dramatic sigh. “Quite a lesson we have learned today, would you not agree, Mademoiselle Governess? One must always complete one’s reading.”
Her laughter could not be contained by her hand now, and she fell back onto one elbow, her delight and amusement on full display.
He wanted.
Gilles shook his head, letting himself give in to more laughter as his head swam with the wonderment of his feelings.
“Would you like to join us for more stories from The Odyssey, Abigail?” he asked softly as his laughter eased.
She beamed, still wreathed in mirth. “Of course, sir.”
“Gilles,” he corrected quickly. At her surprised look, he shrugged. “When we’re like this, can I not be Gilles?”
“I don’t… know…” she murmured, tilting her head a little, her eyes surveying him with a light he could not interpret.
He swallowed the temptation to close the distance between them and kiss her, looking away. “Just consider it, Abigail. I think I’d like to be Gilles to you from time to time.”
Abigail made no response for so long, he wondered if he might have offended her. But then, so softly he almost missed it, she replied, “All right.”