Chapter Twenty-Six
“I don’t think I can keep driving safely,” Aldric said in tense tones.
Céleste had been expecting him to say as much for some time now.
He’d now and then caught himself tugging unknowingly on a rein as he fought sleep and inadvertently telling the horse to veer in one direction or another.
As a result, he’d been driving slower and slower and growing increasingly more tense.
“I’m struggling to stay alert,” he said. “We can go farther if you drive for a time.”
Her heart dropped. Aldric was exhausted. It had been at least two hours since they’d left the inn, and he hadn’t slept before their departure as she had. What he was asking was so reasonable.
“I can’t.”
“Even for just a little while?” he pressed.
“If I could close my eyes for even just thirty minutes . . .” With the lantern hanging near him, she couldn’t make him out through the bursts of light.
But the way the sentence trailed off told her he’d looked at her and realized she couldn’t offer him even the small bit of help he was requesting.
“We’ll pull off the road as soon as I find a good place to stop for the night. ”
“I’m sorry, Aldric. I really am.”
He set his hand on hers, where it rested on Adèle’s back. The little girl was sleeping, lying across their laps. “We’re all worn to a thread, Céleste. No need to apologize for that.”
Again, she was being given consideration for something that wasn’t actually the case.
She wasn’t as deprived of sleep and rest as he was, and yet she was being excused.
He’d not been upset when she’d confessed to the ruse involving her health in Paris.
Surely he would be kind in the matter of her vision if she explained it.
Why she hadn’t told anyone, she couldn’t really say. Embarrassment, she supposed, was a significant part of her motivation. The way Society punished people for imperfections was as well.
“I am going to pull the wagon around the back of that wall.”
She could see enough to know he motioned just off the side of the road, but she didn’t know what he was motioning at.
“There appear to be some trees around it,” he said. “No one passing by on the road will see us there.”
She trusted his judgment, which kept her calm despite her inability to see any details in such a vulnerable location.
Aldric guided the wagon off the road and pulled it to a stop.
She could hear the trees rustling in a soft breeze and could make out enough of what was around them to know it matched the description he’d given.
Fortunately, it hadn’t rained the last couple days.
The ground was hard, and they were unlikely to become stuck in a quagmire.
“The wagon is old and well used, but one benefit is we won’t have to sleep on the ground.” Aldric lifted Adèle off their laps. The wagon shifted, no doubt from him climbing down.
Céleste glanced in that direction, but the sharp rays of light from the lantern hurt her eyes, and she had to look away again. When she was tired or her eyes were already strained, the impact of light in dark surroundings was intensified.
The wagon shifted again.
“Go back to sleep, ma petite douce,” Aldric said quietly.
He was tending to Adèle. Céleste would have struggled to manage it. Maybe it was for the best her niece had grown so quickly attached to him. He could be depended on.
“Céleste?”
She turned at the sound of his voice. He stood directly beside the wagon, next to her. Now turned away from the lantern, she could see him better. It lit him without blinding her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I wish I were more help.”
His brow pulled. “More help? You’ve been indispensable.”
She shook her head. “We might have reached another inn if I drove. We wouldn’t be stopped on the side of the road.”
“You’re tired, Céleste. We all are.”
“It isn’t that.” She emptied her lungs. “There is something wrong with my eyes, Aldric. My vision is so cloudy in dim light. And in the dark, every flicker of a candle or flame in a fireplace, even the moon and stars, become glaring bursts of light. I’m not entirely blinded by it, but very nearly.”
She watched him, waiting with bated breath for pity or dismissal or annoyance. Instead, she saw his mouth drop open in a small O and a look of understanding cross his face.
“You told me you aren’t afraid of the dark but that it makes you uncomfortable. I’d wondered what, precisely, you meant by that.”
Intrigue at a mystery being solved was an improvement over annoyance.
“And that would explain your concern at being alone in the dark and how often you bump into things in dim rooms.”
She didn’t hear any contempt in his recollection of her struggles. Why she’d even thought it a possibility, she couldn’t say. This was Aldric Benick, who had shown her such kindness and tenderness during their flight.
“Henri never mentioned this,” Aldric said.
“He doesn’t know. I haven’t told anyone before.”
Aldric set his hand on hers. “Why not?”
“Society is horribly uncharitable about things like this.”
“But you didn’t even tell your family.”
She shook her head. “What do you suppose my father and Jean-Francois would have done if I’d told them?”
He wove his fingers through hers. “And what do you suppose Henri would have done if you’d told him?”
Years of loneliness surged in her, breaking her answer with emotion.
“He left me behind, Aldric. He wasn’t here to tell.
This was just one more thing I had to survive on my own.
” She pressed her teeth together and swallowed several times in quick succession.
It was a trick she’d learned as a little girl when emotions threatened to flow out.
“I won’t cry, I promise. I don’t ever cry. ”
“Who was it that taught you not to cry, Céleste?” His voice was tender and empathetic.
Taught me not to cry. She’d never thought of it that way, but that was the truth of it. “My father.”
“Would it surprise you if I told you my father taught me the same lesson?”
She shook her head. “They were cut from the same cloth.” She swallowed again. Then one more time. Tears were precariously close to the surface; she fought them furiously.
He tugged lightly at her hand. “It’s very late, and you are tired, no matter that it wasn’t the reason you didn’t take over the driving. Rest will help.”
He kept hold of her hand while she climbed carefully out of the wagon.
“Do you need the lantern extinguished?” he asked. “You said the light makes things worse.”
“It’s more of a problem when I’m facing it. Behind me isn’t as much of a difficulty.”
Adèle, wrapped in a blanket, was sleeping in the very middle of the wagon bed.
The hay likely made it more comfortable than it would have been otherwise.
And though it would be crushed a bit, they’d also have feed for the horse should they struggle to find grass during the brief pauses in their journey.
The portmanteau they were now all sharing sat at Adèle’s feet.
Céleste’s violin lay just below that, and their empty food basket was below that.
Aldric had created something of a dividing wall down the middle of the wagon bed.
Placing Adèle in the middle meant she was unlikely to climb down and wander off should she wake up first.
“It’s not true privacy,” he acknowledged, “but there’s some degree of separation.”
“If word of this journey and all it has entailed ever reaches Paris or London, you and I will be truly sunk,” Céleste said, climbing with care into the wagon bed.
“We’ll go directly to Norwood Manor,” he said, handing her a blanket.
“Niles and Penelope are the nearest Gents to my home at the moment. I’ll send word to them once we’ve crossed the Channel, and they can meet us there.
I’m certain they would be willing to say they’d traveled with us through England.
Julia and Lucas would make the same claim about our travels through France. ”
She sat at the head of the wagon bed and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. The lantern was behind her, still hanging on its hook. She could see him and some of the area surrounding them. But she still felt uncomfortable and frustrated.
“I don’t like the dark,” she whispered.
The wagon shifted a little as Aldric climbed into his side of it. He grabbed a blanket and draped it over himself as he sat.
“I feel compelled to point out that I am not my father, nor yours, neither am I either of our oldest brothers. I do not exact punishments for crying. In fact, I think it a wise thing to do when a person feels the need.”
She looked at him, unable to entirely keep the disbelief from her expression. “When was the last time you permitted yourself to cry, Aldric Benick?”
He was just well enough lit for his grimace to be visible. “Touché. We both learned a very difficult lesson in our childhoods. Such things are not easily unlearned.”
She sighed a little. “No, they are not.”
“You might find it helpful to talk about what is weighing on you,” he said. “While I am not a great crier, I am a fantastic listener.”
“You remind me a little of Digby just now, and his feigned arrogance.”
“Not everyone realizes it’s feigned,” Aldric said.
“Not everyone’s as intelligent as I am,” she said with a shrug.
“Now you are the one who sounds like Digby.”
Even though unshed tears still hovered in her eyes, she actually smiled. “You won’t think less of me when you hear all the things that are making me emotional? There are a lot, and I admit I’m a little embarrassed.”
“You have experienced a lot of things that ought to make a person emotional. I’d be more shocked if you weren’t a little overwhelmed than to learn that you are.”
“But you aren’t.”
“I am. I simply keep it hidden.”
Something about hearing him admit that he was fighting with his own worries opened the door for her.