Chapter Twenty-Five
Céleste and Adèle were sleeping in the narrow bed in the room.
It was not terribly late, but both of them had been too exhausted to stay awake long enough even to take their evening meal.
Aldric needed to keep that in mind as they tooled their way toward the coast and England.
Journeying as quickly as they could was important, but he couldn’t risk their health or their well-being in doing so.
He sat on the floor near the small fireplace. There were no chairs in the room, but he didn’t overly mind. They had a roof over their heads. The room was warm. The soft glow of the embers offered just enough light for him to see.
As he’d done every single night since the day they’d visited Versailles, he pulled from his pocket the twine-tied parcel his mother had left him. He held it and studied it, feeling uncomfortably emotional and nervous.
He turned it over in his hand. The shape of it gave away nothing. It wasn’t heavy, though it also wasn’t featherlight. It was small enough to hold in his hands, but only just. It tucked easily into his coat pocket but could not fit in the much smaller pockets of his waistcoat.
What was your final gift to me, Mother?
An ember popped in the fire, sending a spark into the air. A slight breeze outside rattled a pane of glass.
He wished his mother were there, and not merely because he missed her. She would have known how to comfort Adèle. And she would have lifted some of the burden from Céleste. She could have helped Aldric sort out what to do with these feelings building inside him.
He dare not run the risk of letting himself depend on and be too wholly depended upon by another person.
He’d already unwisely let himself grow attached enough to Céleste that he would be heartbroken when they parted ways.
It was more than just the fact that Céleste was Henri’s sister.
She was becoming so much more than that to him.
“Have you not opened it yet?” Céleste’s voice was quiet and soft, yet it still startled him.
Aldric did his best to hide that reaction, feeling too vulnerable already. “I can’t bring myself to. I’m trying to sort out why. It is something from my mother, offered long after I had any reason to think I would have anything more from her.”
“Perhaps that’s why you’re reluctant to open it. Once you have, there won’t be anything else.” And quick as that, she’d opened a wound, exposing a part of him that could be injured far too easily.
Had he not just scolded himself for letting this attachment between them grow as much as it had?
Yet he didn’t end the conversation there and then; he actually pressed forward.
“Retrieving this”—he held up the parcel—“and discovering what my mother left for me is the entire reason I came to France. I am not one who can usually sit comfortably when I haven’t finished something I set out to do. ”
“It is too dark in here for me to see you very clearly, but I am absolutely certain you are not at all ‘sitting comfortably.’”
“I should just open it.” But he couldn’t even inch his fingers toward the knot holding it closed.
“We have far bigger things to be dealing with at the moment, dangerous and threatening things. This is neither and yet . . .” The sentence dangled unfinished because he didn’t quite know how to complete it.
He was not generally a nonsensical person, but he couldn’t seem to help himself in this.
Céleste sat up on the bed, moving slowly and carefully, no doubt in an effort not to wake Adèle.
“For the past two years, every goal I had, everything I attempted to do, was focused on surviving the misery Jean-Francois inflicted on me. I had no aim other than to endure long enough to escape Paris and his house in whatever way I could.” She slid off the bed.
“I have, in essence, managed that now. And, I will admit, I don’t quite know what to do with myself.
” She moved slowly toward the fireplace, then sat on the floor beside him.
“We have much more pressing matters at the moment than what my next chapter in life will look like, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still weighing on me. ”
“You’re saying that another part of my reluctance might be that, once I open this package, I have in every conceivable way finished what was motivating me, and I will no longer have the distraction I’ve been depending on in order to avoid the thought of severing this final connection with my mother? ”
“We are both a little at sea, and those waters are currently being whipped into a frenzy by a hurricane of problems caused by my extremely frustrating brother. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t still attempting to navigate future troubles alongside the current ones.
” She squinted as her gaze wandered toward the fire, then she shifted her gaze to him.
“Troubles don’t come neatly lined up, one at a time.
They overlap in complicated ways. Finding all the answers isn’t meant to happen in an instant. ”
Stanley had been generous in the grace he offered them all, having full faith that they would sort everything out or manage to find life’s elusive answers.
Aldric had depended on that for so long.
What Céleste was offering him in that moment was something different, something he hadn’t even realized he needed so much.
“I can’t remember the last time someone gave me permission not to know what I was doing,” he whispered.
“When was the last time you gave yourself permission?”
He shook his head. “You have a most disconcerting ability to strike right at the heart of matters I am working very hard to ignore.”
Céleste set her hand on his where it rested on his mother’s parcel. “You—”
Shouting outside the room cut off whatever she was about to say.
The public room was just down the corridor from where they were staying, which had to be where the angry voices were coming from. It wasn’t necessarily an indication of danger specific to them. Yet Aldric knew Céleste was pondering that possibility every bit as much as he was.
He stood and moved to the doorway and slowly, so as not to make any noise, slid open the bolt. Then he inched the door the slightest bit ajar. He leaned in close to the tiny opening, listening and holding his breath.
“I’ve a job to see to,” someone barked. “Don’t think I won’t go through you to get it done.”
“I’m telling you truthfully.” That was the innkeeper. He had a gravelly quality to his voice that made him easily identifiable. “I know everyone who is here just now, and no one matches your description.”
Aldric opened the door a teeny bit more, trying to catch a glimpse of the public room. It would be a helpful thing to know what this suspicious shouter looked like. He sounded as though he came from even lower a class than Aldric and Céleste were affecting to be.
“I know they’re here,” the angry man barked out. “I know they are.”
“And I’m telling you, we haven’t got any of the privileged classes here. They wouldn’t stop at this inn for anything.”
“They’re deceiving you, and you are letting yourself be fooled.”
There was no mistaking it, no excusing it away. This angry arrival was exactly what Aldric feared.
He closed the door again and slid the bolt back into place. By the time he turned toward Céleste, she was standing and carefully feeling her way back toward the bed. “We have to get out of here,” she said.
Aldric nodded. “If we go back through the public room to the inn door, we will be spotted. But I don’t know any other way out of the inn.”
Céleste lifted Adèle off the bed and rested the girl’s head against her shoulder, and then she snatched up one of blankets and wrapped it around the girl. “See if the window will open.”
Aldric crossed to it. He turned the latch, then pushed firmly with his shoulder. It opened outward.
Nothing had been unpacked after their arrival at the inn, Céleste and Adèle having fallen asleep almost immediately. Aldric set their portmanteaus and Céleste’s violin directly beside the window.
“It’s very dark,” Céleste said.
“A bit of good fortune,” he said. “We are far less likely to be seen.”
She moved carefully to the window, then transferred Adèle to his arms.
“You’ll help us get to the stable?” she asked.
“I’m not going to abandon you, Céleste.”
That seemed assurance enough. She set her hands on the windowsill, then climbed over and out.
No one in Paris Society would believe it if they saw the famously proper and pristine Céleste Fortier scrambling out the window of a countryside inn.
But most of what had happened the last few days would shock Society.
What was happening in Paris had no doubt shocked them as well.
With her feet firmly on the ground, she turned back to face the open window. It was low enough in the wall that he could see her from just below the shoulders up. Dim light from the fire behind him illuminated her face. She looked determined but also unsettled.
“I’ll hand you the bags and your violin,” Aldric said. “Then I’ll hand over Adèle.”
She fumbled a little as she reached for the items he handed out. They needed to be fast, but she seemed to be struggling.
“Now Adèle.” This last handover was the most precious one of all. Care was needed.
He made certain the little girl was safely held by her aunt before letting go.
He deposited a few coins on the mantel—the innkeeper didn’t deserve to be cheated—then he climbed through the window himself, dropping onto the grass outside.
He pushed the window closed once more. Where they’d gone and how they had escaped wouldn’t be known immediately, which would be helpful.
Aldric took Adèle in one arm and a portmanteau and their basket in the other. “Quickly, to the stables,” he urgently whispered.
“It’s so dark.” Céleste took hold of her violin and the other portmanteaus.
“We’ll light the lantern in the cart once we’re on the road.”
“I—” She took a deep breath. “I swear to you I’m not a coward.”
“I know you aren’t.”
They hurried to the stables, with Céleste struggling a little to navigate. Was she so discomposed by the dark?
A groom sat at a rough-hewn table inside the stables, repairing a rope. He hopped to his feet as they stepped inside. Céleste, despite her concern over the darkness outside, seemed to almost recoil a little at the lantern light inside.
“Our apologies for disrupting your work,” Aldric said. “We need to be on our way as swiftly as we can manage.”
“So late at night?” The groom looked concerned rather than suspicious.
Céleste set her bags down and crossed to him, one hand lifted a little the way one did when feeling her way through the dark. But the stable was lighter than the outside had been.
“Please, we need to reach a port town. What road ought we to take?”
Aldric crossed to their pony cart and set the basket and bag he was carrying inside.
“There’s a break in the road up ahead,” the groom said. “Take the branch to the left. You’ll arrive in Le Havre in about four days’ time. Go to the right, and you’d reach the Three Sisters a bit longer than that.”
“Which port is busier?” she asked. “With more regular departures?”
“Le Havre.”
“That is what we need,” she said.
Aldric turned to retrieve the other bags.
“Do you have any carts or wagons you’d be willing to trade for?” Céleste asked the groom.
“I have a farm wagon that I’d trade for,” he said.
Aldric realized quickly why Céleste had suggested a trade. Their cart was likely known to their pursuer. But so was their horse.
“Would you trade horses as well?” he asked the groom.
The man hesitated a little.
“What if we added to the trade?” Céleste asked. “We’ll include two portmanteaus: clothing, pomades, various grooming items.”
Two portmanteaus. They were traveling with three.
“I’ll accept that trade.”
Céleste turned to Aldric while the groom left to, apparently, prepare the wagon they had just obtained.
“Take out of your bag anything you cannot do without. I’ll do the same for myself and Adèle and consolidate everything into one bag.”
It would not only secure them a less recognizable conveyance but would also lighten their load. Quick thinking on her part.
Céleste Fortier would never stop amazing him. A lifetime spent in the ballrooms of Society ill-prepared a person for this kind of situation, yet she was navigating it with the brilliance of an actual general.
Aldric set their remaining bag into the back of the wagon the groom prepared for them, atop a layer of hay that filled it.
He placed Céleste’s violin there as well, tucking it safely against the side.
The blankets he draped over the bench; they would want those.
The horse was hitched and ready to go. He climbed onto the bench seat once Céleste and Adèle were situated there, and they were nearly on their way.
The groom hung a lit lantern on a hook at the front of the wagon. Céleste turned her face a little away.
“Left at the branch in the road?” she asked the groom.
“Left. That’ll take you to Le Havre.”
“Thank you.”
Aldric began at a very slow pace, not wanting to make noise. Who knew what was happening behind them in the inn or how quickly their pursuer would be near enough to see them. Traveling with a lit lantern increased their risk of being seen, but without it, they had no hope of navigating the roads.
Only after the inn was no longer visible behind them did either of them break the silence.
“At the fork in the road,” she said, “we need to go to the right.”
“The groom said to go left.”
“And should whoever was looking for us at that inn get from him information about our destination, the groom will tell him we are on our way to Le Havre and will be sent in the wrong direction.”
“Brilliant, Céleste Fortier. Absolutely brilliant.”