Chapter Twenty-One
It was a good thing Céleste hadn’t discovered Aldric had a love of music seven years earlier, or she would have fallen so entirely in love with him that his indifference at Norwood Manor would have absolutely shattered her rather than simply teaching her to exercise greater caution in matters of the heart.
She finished “Il pleut, il pleut, bergère” with a flourish. A fleeting hint of a smile touched his face. He kept this aspect of himself very well hidden, and she was inordinately pleased to have discovered it.
“Another one!” Adèle eagerly requested.
For once, the dear girl was turning to Céleste for enjoyment and happiness. She so often felt like a disaster of an aunt.
From the window, Aldric asked, “Why didn’t you bring your violin to the house party two years ago? Everyone would have enjoyed hearing you play.”
The unexpected compliment made her blush. She pressed forward, hoping the color stealing up her cheeks wasn’t too obvious. “Jean-Francois wouldn’t permit me to bring it.” She offered the explanation in English so Adéle wouldn’t understand.
Aldric chose to answer in English, likely for the same reason. “He was controlling even before you made your devil’s bargain with him?”
“The men in my family have, with one very significant exception, been tyrannical for generations. I don’t know how Henri managed to become a decent person. I can only assume it was our mother’s influence for as long as we had her.”
“Is her influence the reason you also aren’t a jackanapes like Jean-Francois?” He had an inarguable knack for delivering ringing setdowns of people in ways that sounded like simple statements of fact.
“I don’t remember her very well. Henri was who I looked to in deciding the type of person I wanted to be. My other brother served mostly as a cautionary tale.”
“With Jean-Francois already such a tyrant, you must have known that your agreement to live your life under his thumb in exchange for Henri’s freedom and income would be a truly horrid arrangement for you.”
“I understood what I was agreeing to,” she said quietly. “I held out hope for a time—he had seemed to improve a little during the house party—but that didn’t last.”
“You should never have been placed in a position in which agreeing to such a thing was necessary,” he said. “And you should not have been made to remain in it these past two years.”
His voice was not one of someone merely acknowledging injustice. This was a man who understood the pain that family could cause and how unfair and unjust that pain often was.
“And I am sorry that your family and brother are not much different,” she said.
“You’ve stopped the music.” Adèle lodged the complaint in French and with a pout.
“I am neglecting you, little one,” Céleste said, returning to her niece’s language. That was likely to be their pattern while the three of them were together: English when discussing things Adéle needn’t be privy to and French when including her. “My sincerest apologies.”
“May I request a tune?” Aldric asked.
“Of course.”
“‘à la claire fontaine.’ It was a favorite of my mother’s. I don’t hear it often.”
His expression and tone always softened when he spoke of his mother. Did he realize that?
She tucked her violin under her chin once more and took up the well-known tune. Adèle began dancing again, gliding about, turning slowly and gracefully.
At the window, Aldric reached into the pocket of his jacket.
He pulled out the twine-tied package he’d obtained at Versailles: his mother’s last gift to him.
His thumb ran over the knot in the twine.
His expression was both painful and sentimental.
Aldric’s gaze remained on the window, but his thoughts, she was certain, were years in the past with his late mother.
After a moment, he slipped the package back into his pocket, then set his hand atop that pocket. He closed his eyes and took a breath so slow and deep that Céleste could see his chest rise and fall. His fingers tapped lightly along with the tune, and the tiniest hint of a smile touched his face.
Seeing that the music was bringing him a measure of peace, Céleste played with more feeling.
She was letting her heart grow unwisely attached again.
She had come to depend on Henri, and he’d left her for England so long ago she struggled to remember life before she was abandoned.
Nicolette had been her greatest, most dependable friend, and she, too, had left.
Céleste thought she had become close friends with the Gents and their ladies at the house party, but none of them had ever written to her.
And Aldric had already broken her heart once.
She needed to be wiser about these things than she was being.
The tune was interrupted by a knock on the door. Céleste froze, her heart suddenly in her neck. She met Aldric’s eye. He stood slowly and moved with care toward the door.
Without opening it, he asked. “Who is there?”
“Forgive me for interrupting.” That was the innkeeper; Céleste recognized his voice. “We are hopeful you might be willing to play your violin in the public room. The patrons would enjoy it.”
In the public room? They would be able to see people coming in and out of the inn from there. But they would also be more vulnerable. Céleste had almost never played her violin for others and might be too nervous to manage it.
Aldric stepped back to her. In a low voice, he said, “I have watched the yard and road. No one has arrived, nor does anyone seem likely to. Leaving our watch post isn’t a significant risk.”
From the other side of the door, the innkeeper added an offer to his request. “We’d give you dinner tonight in exchange for the music.”
A look passed through Aldric’s eyes that told her something he likely hadn’t intended her to discover: they had reason to be nervous about money.
She’d not given it much thought, but suddenly, it made sense.
They’d fled Fleur-de-la-Forêt without warning.
There’d not been time to truly prepare for a many-days-long journey during which they would need to pay for inn stays and food to eat.
She didn’t imagine Aldric had much money with him.
She didn’t have any at all. Should their journey last much longer, they might very well run out of coins.
They needed to save what little they had, and here was a way to do it. But the prospect was a daunting one.
“We’ll discuss it,” Aldric said to the innkeeper through the still-closed door.
The innkeeper’s footsteps sounded, growing quieter as he walked away.
Aldric turned back to her once more. “What are your thoughts, Céleste?”
Too many to quickly share. “Is our guise believable enough to withstand scrutiny all evening?”
“I think so.”
That was some reassurance. “We would be able to see anyone who enters the inn.”
Aldric nodded. “The door opens into the public room.”
Being in so public a setting with a view of the entrance was a relatively safe arrangement, though perhaps not as much as being locked inside a room no one else could enter.
But we need to save what money we can. There was too much upheaval in the area and too much animosity toward those of their station in general and Jean-Francois in particular to hope they would be safe anytime soon.
“Do you suppose we’ll still be down there when it grows dark?”
“Likely.”
A roomful of strangers she would struggle to see. She didn’t like that at all.
“You don’t have to, Céleste,” Aldric insisted. “If you would rather remain in the room, that is what we will do.”
It was up to her, then. More money to facilitate their journey.
Or remaining in a space where she didn’t have to be worried about what she couldn’t see.
As nervous as the prospect made her, the idea of having no money in another couple of days and being unable to secure lodging of any kind was a far more unsettling prospect.
“You wouldn’t . . . leave me there alone?” she asked.
He actually looked a little hurt by the question. “Of course not.”
“‘Of course not,’” she repeated in a doubtful whisper. “I have been abandoned again and again my entire life, Aldric. There isn’t really, for me, an ‘of course not’ when abandonment is a possibility.”
How was it that he, who was one of the very people who had abandoned her in his own way, had managed to pull that confession from her?
Aldric set his hands on her arms, his touch soft and reassuring. “If you decide you would like to accept the innkeeper’s offer, I will stay at your side and will keep an eye on the inn door and the other patrons for however long we are in the public room.”
“And—” Heavens, this was embarrassing, but she needed one further reassurance. “You’ll be particularly vigilant once it grows dark?”
His gaze turned a little more studying. “Are you afraid of the dark?” The question wasn’t posed with even a hint of mockery.
She had already made one unintended admission; she didn’t intend to make another. But neither did she want to lie. She wasn’t afraid, really. Frustrated and hindered. Rendered more helpless than she preferred. But not truly scared.
“If you’ll keep watch while we’re in the public room,” she said, “then I think we should accept the innkeeper’s offer.”
“You’re certain?” he asked softly.
Céleste nodded. “I’m certain.”
Aldric stepped away. Céleste pressed her lips together to prevent herself from asking him to stay at her side. He scooped Adèle up off the floor, picking up her doll and book as well. Céleste kept hold of her violin.
She would be playing for strangers, in a room that would quickly grow dark, after fleeing her childhood home and the mob that had been marching on it. And they still didn’t know what had happened to the carriage that had been following them.
Céleste had always prided herself on not being easily shaken. But now she felt horribly upended.
I have been abandoned again and again my entire life, Aldric. Céleste’s very matter-of-fact declaration echoed in Aldric’s head as he sat at her side that night. And her specific request that he not abandon her when the room grew dark always followed close after.
There was something in her expression after he’d asked her if she was afraid of the dark that had told him it wasn’t a matter of fear. What, then, made darkness a particular concern for her?
When the innkeeper lit candles after the room had grown excruciatingly dark, Céleste didn’t look relieved. She actively avoided looking in the direction of the candles, and she was noticeably on edge.
Aldric leaned in close to her and whispered, “We can return to our room if you need.”
“We haven’t had our supper yet,” she answered just as quietly.
Knowing they were meant to be giving the impression of being a married couple, he set an arm around her and tucked her up close. It allowed for a more private conversation. While that was his motivation for the arrangement, his heart instantly thrummed with excitement at the nearness.
“A free supper is not worth requiring you to spend time in the dark.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” she insisted just as quietly. “It makes me uncomfortable, is all.”
“You have endured quite enough already, and not just today. You shouldn’t have to endure more.”
Céleste turned to look at him, placing them a breath apart. Her brown eyes were nearly black in the candlelit room. The flicker of flames danced over her face, rendering her already beautiful features absolutely breathtaking.
“You promised you wouldn’t abandon me here,” she whispered.
“And I won’t; I swear to you.”
“Then I’m not nervous about remaining.”
He was the trusted strategist among the Gents.
He had a reputation even beyond that small circle for being a person of dependability, capability, and authority.
But Céleste Fortier’s unwavering faith in him in that moment was both a little surprising and a source of tremendous pride.
And the continued nearness of her lips was a source of unexpected temptation.
“Play more music!” Adèle tugged on the skirt of Céleste’s blue dress.
The spell was broken, and not a moment too soon.
Céleste resumed playing her violin. The others staying at the inn, a few men who appeared to be traveling alone as well as two other couples, requested tunes and hummed and clapped along while she played.
Adèle spun about, just as she’d done in their room earlier.
The child of a young family danced alongside her, the two children giggling with each other.
Adèle now and then ran back over to Aldric, asking him what he thought of her dancing.
And when he told her that she danced beautifully, she smiled ever more broadly.
Through it all, Aldric found his gaze continually returning to Céleste.
The events of the past days would have crushed most people.
The treatment she had endured the last two years certainly would have.
But, even in the midst of illness, she hadn’t been defeated.
Indeed, she seemed to be doing quite well considering how little rest they’d had and how ill she’d been.
She was still standing, still stalwart. Focused. Hopeful. Beautiful.
Enchanting.