Chapter Thirty-Two
“Someone was asking about you.” The innkeeper tossed that out just as they were leaving the next morning, as if it wasn’t a jarring bit of information.
Aldric stopped a step from the door and turned back, breath catching. “When?”
“A little less than an hour ago. He described you all well enough that I knew you were who he was talking about.”
Céleste spoke before Aldric could. “What did he want?”
“As near as I could tell, he was trying to find you.”
Aldric held tighter to Adèle’s hand. “Did you tell him we were here?”
The innkeeper shook his head. “He sounded Parisian. Nothing’s coming out of Paris just now but trouble. I told him there wasn’t anyone staying here matching who he was looking for.”
He sounded Parisian. The extortion victim, most likely.
“Did this Parisian seem to believe you?” Aldric asked.
“Asked where else someone might lodge for the night in Le Tréport. I sent him to a few houses that take boarders.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, then.” Céleste looked to Aldric.
“Do you know of any ships leaving for England this morning?” Aldric asked the innkeeper.
“Find l’Horizon. It’ll sail this morning.” The innkeeper turned directly to Céleste. “Are you heading somewhere you’ll be happy?”
“I don’t know yet.” Her quiet response sounded resigned and heavy. Everything had felt that way since they’d nearly lost Adèle the morning before.
Céleste had spoken with some degree of hope for her future in recent days, even in the midst of uncertainty. That was entirely gone now.
I failed her. The guilt of that was eating away at him.
Aldric studied every face they passed as they walked toward the sea. No one took much notice of them. No one watched them overly long. And no one looked familiar. But somewhere in this seaside town, someone knew precisely who they were.
L’Horizon was docked down the pier. Activity on board indicated the ship was indeed setting out to sea shortly. This was his chance to get Adèle and Céleste to safety.
“Stay with your tante Céleste,” he said to Adèle. “I will be back quickly.”
He moved with determined steps to where the boat was docked. A man stepped off onto the pier.
“Are you sailing to England?” Aldric asked.
“We are. To Portsmouth.”
“That is fortuitous. My family and I”—how he wished that weren’t a ruse—“are hoping to get to Portsmouth. What would you ask in payment for passage?”
The man didn’t call back up to the boat for the captain, meaning he himself was likely the captain. He thought a moment, then quoted a price that was more than Alric had left.
“We won’t take up much room,” Aldric said. “And I would do what work you might have for me if that price could be lowered.”
“I have all the hands I need on board, but I could use the money. And you need to get to Portsmouth.”
Aldric had made a strategic misstep. He ought to have made Portsmouth sound almost what they wanted. Now the captain knew he had the upper hand. Truth be told, what he was asking for passage for three people wasn’t exorbitant. Aldric was only objecting because he couldn’t afford it.
“There’s no other ship crossing the Channel today,” the captain said. “And l’Horizon will be leaving port shortly. You need to make a decision.”
Yes, he did. He returned to where Céleste stood, holding Adèle’s hand and watching.
“He’ll give us passage, but he’s asking for more money than we have left.”
“And he can’t be convinced to lower that price?” Céleste guessed.
Aldric’s frustration must have been more evident in his expression than he’d intended. “No.”
Adèle reached her free hand out to him, holding her arm upward in a gesture he had come to recognize very quickly. He bent down and picked her up. Holding her close, he glanced around the pier, as he’d repeatedly done since arriving, watching for threats and danger.
“What do we do now?” Céleste’s exhaustion-tinged question caught him off guard.
She generally jumped right into strategizing with him, offering thoughts and ideas and suggestions.
She’d ascertained very quickly the innkeeper’s objections the night before and had quickly thwarted them.
But since then, she’d collapsed into herself, and he couldn’t seem to find her again.
He firmly dismissed that thought. It wasn’t his place to find her. He was charged with getting her and Adèle safely to England. That should be the entirety of his focus.
She didn’t quite look at him, another thing that had changed at the inn. Though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, he suspected he knew what had put up this wall between them. He’d kissed her. Again.
His entire world had been turned upside down by those two moments. He would spend the rest of his life reliving them, wishing he could hold her again and truly kiss her over and over again. But she’d not reacted at all the way he’d thought she might.
She’d seemed embarrassed or maybe confused by their first kiss. She’d closed off entirely after the second.
He ought to have predicted as much. A Benick didn’t get to have a happy ending with the family of his dreams. He could save all of them a lot of difficulty by reminding himself of that, something that wasn’t overly difficult when he looked at Céleste and saw the distance she very pointedly put between them.
I need to get her safely to England. That must be my focus.
With his free hand, he pulled his mother’s parcel from the pocket of his coat. “I suspect the captain will accept a trade.”
For the first time since the night before, she looked at him fully. “You can’t do that, Aldric. This is your mother’s gift to you.”
“Her reason for leaving it for me was the monetary value it has. I would be using it for that.”
“That is your entire future. That necklace will allow you to break free of your brother. Not everyone gets that chance.” She swallowed in just that way he’d come to recognize as her forcefully pushing back emotions and feelings.
“Your mother left you a means of breaking free. Don’t throw that away. ”
“It will not take long for the person inquiring after us at the inn this morning to locate us in a town this small. We have to leave this morning. We have to get as far from here as we can, as quickly as we can.”
“That necklace is worth hundreds of times more than the captain could possibly be asking,” Céleste objected.
“I know, Céleste. Believe me, I know.”
Adèle wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck. He hated that they were discussing this in front of her, but he didn’t know what else to do. They didn’t dare speak in English, as that would draw far too much attention at a moment when they needed not to garner any notice at all.
“Your mother wanted you to be free,” Céleste said. “You can’t be without this.”
His mother would have been heartbroken for him, to know he would never be able to escape Crofton’s crushing thumb. She would likely have felt like she hadn’t done enough to help Aldric, and he hated that.
“She would understand,” he said to Céleste as much as to himself. “She wouldn’t have wanted any of us to stay here in danger. Mother would understand.”
Had his voice actually quivered? What happened to the General who had made his reappearance yesterday, finding his footing and his firmness again? He was dissolving.
“There’s no other option?” Céleste asked.
“None.” That single syllable emerged strained.
“Let me trade the captain for it.” Céleste squared her shoulders. “It took you so long just to open the parcel; I can’t even imagine how it would feel having to use it for this.”
“I can’t ask that of you,” he said.
A bit of the fire he’d long admired in her returned, but it was tempered by the gentleness he’d come to depend on during this perilous journey.
“You aren’t asking it of me, Aldric. And, at the moment, I’m not even asking you to allow it. This is something I can do that will help.” She held her hand out for the parcel. “And I will do it.”
He couldn’t bring himself to hand it over.
“Is this hesitation because you don’t trust me with it,” she asked, “or because you’re struggling to let it go?”
“The latter.”
She nodded. “Precisely why you need to let me make the trade. As difficult as it is giving it to me, giving it to the boat captain will likely be almost impossible.”
Blast it all, she was right. He was willing to make the sacrifice, to give up future freedom in order to save them now. But he would struggle. He might even, he feared, lose his nerve, and he would never forgive himself for that.
Aldric set the parcel in her outstretched hand, a weight settling in the pit of his stomach.
After everything his mother had done to secure this gift and make sure he could have it when he was in a position to need it .
. . he was giving it to the captain of a fishing vessel and arriving in England as powerless as he had been before her generous offering.
“We’ll wait here,” he told Céleste. Was there to be no end to the frustration he would feel with himself?
“Tonton Aldric?” Adèle’s little voice managed to soothe a little of his unhappiness.
“Yes, ma petite douce?”
“Will you tell me about the flowers again? The ones your mother liked that look like a star?”
“Do you like hearing about them?” he asked.
“Flowers make my heart feel less worried.”
He rocked her slowly. “Are you feeling worried?”
“A little.”
He stood there on the dock, rocking the sweet little girl, telling her about the rare flower he’d planted at his home, a flower that reminded him of Mother and a home that, in reality, belonged to his brother.
He set his eyes on the sea, telling himself that gaining passage was a good thing, even with all it was costing them.
Céleste would be making an exchange in that exact moment, giving away his mother’s final gift to him, and it felt like losing them both.