Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
éduard raised a weary hand and lifted up the heavy iron latch. The noise caused an echo to ring out in the valley, and though it was a sound he knew well, it brought him no joy. The echo of the castle door seemed to mirror the echo in his soul.
The door opened, and éduard stepped into the hall of Aviroux Castle. He was home. He had been home for a week now, and yet he hated being inside, always longing to take rambles around the estate that took hours, until he was forced by the inclement January weather to return home.
Home, and yet somehow, no longer his home. This castle had once been one of the most important places to him in the world: a sense of peace, a sense of family, the feeling that your ancestors had lasted for hundreds of years and your name, too, would continue after you for many generations to come.
He cast his eyes around the hall, and it felt hollow, empty now. He had forced them to take down the Christmas decorations well before Twelfth Night, every branch of holly, every ribbon reminding him of the Christmas Day he had spent with a firecracker of a woman, on a cold island.
The little wintery sunlight that managed to filter through the door behind him glinted on the suits of armour that lined the room, made the gold gilt frames around the paintings of princes past gleam, and yet no joy rose in his heart to see them.
éduard sighed. Perhaps that was to be his lot, then. To be alone, here in this great rambling castle. It had never felt too large when he had been born here, raised here, and even after his parents had died, this was his place. He did not belong anywhere else.
Now he was not sure where he belonged.
There was almost complete silence in the air, but in a castle, there is never total silence. Footsteps in a corridor echoed, and a lilt of a local lullaby started as a maid went about her work.
éduard wandered towards the billiard room.
The last thing that he wanted was to strike up a conversation with anyone.
He would continue to avoid his servants for as long as possible, though of course he could not do so forever.
He had been at home a week, after all. He had duties, responsibilities to attend to.
The billiard room door snapped shut behind him, and éduard leaned against it in relief. Here, at least, he could be alone. The smell of the leather and the dark green of the felt were intensely masculine. No maids would dare enter here while he was there.
He picked up a cue, and stared at it for a while.
Even his appetite for sport was gone, and he had thought that insatiable.
Of course, he had thought that after six long weeks of searching, of near misses, of close calls, that knowing the true identity of the Great Whisperer would make him feel elated.
But he just felt empty. Empty, and alone.
“There you are, mon prince.”
éduard spun around to see Berlioz, his butler, stride into the room with a silver tray balanced precariously on one hand, a cut glass of brandy resting on it.
“And do forgive me for saying so, mon liege, but your time in England really did not suit you.”
Berlioz placed the silver tray on the table, and turned to look, positively servile, at his master.
éduard glared at him. “It was not being in England that has done this to me,” he retorted, moving around the billiard table and laying out the balls. “It was being left perilously close to starvation on an island, completely alone for two days that did it.”
Berlioz raised an eyebrow. “That does indeed sound perilous, mon prince.”
éduard shot at a ball, and missed. Kicking the billiard table gave him no satisfaction from his irritation, and instead just added a form of pain that was more physical.
“If that shipping boat had not picked me up,” he snarled, “I would have starved.”
Without looking at his master, Berlioz strode around the table, picked up a cue, and in one smooth motion potted the ball that éduard had just missed.
éduard stared at him in surprise, and Berlioz laughed.
“You do not think that I have been idle in your absence, do you sir?” Berlioz placed the cue back into the cue rack, and brought his hands behind his back in his more typical servile position.
“And now if you will excuse me, mon liege, I need to instruct one of the under footman on the correct way to close a door behind you. I will say, if you do not mind me saying so my lord, that I am glad that after a week you are starting to look more yourself again.”
He took a few steps towards the door but before he opened it, he hesitated and turned to look back once more at éduard. “Drink your brandy, mon prince. It will do you the world of good.”
The door snapped shut behind him.
éduard stared at the closed door for almost a minute, lost in thought, and then his eyes slid slightly to the left where a looking glass was affixed to the wall.
Does he look like himself? It was hard to remember, in many ways, what he had even looked like before he had taken a step onto English soil.
All he could see was a haggard man, once young, once handsome even, if he was permitted to think so.
But there were silver hairs now where there had once been purely dark, and lines around his eyes that he did not recall.
No, the more that he looked into the looking glass, almost mesmerised, the more he lost sight of his own reflection and saw only Giselle.
Giselle, quiet and elegant in the inn. Giselle, ripping off her own clothes to swim across the ocean.
Giselle, building a fire. Giselle, hair tangled and flowing down her back, laughing at him for being surprised that she had brought food with her.
Giselle, Giselle, Giselle. The most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, was ever likely to see, but also the Great Whisperer.
éduard broke the gaze between himself and his mirrored self, and turned back to the billiard table.
He tried to pot a few more shots, but his heart was not in it.
All he could do was run through his memory, try to recall every conversation, every moment that they had had together, every word that she had spoken, every glance that she had bestowed upon him.
Did she ever let anything slip that could have suggested that she was the Great Whisperer? Had he been given the clues, but simply not seized them?
“Perhaps when we return to shore,” she had said, and he had been so captivated by her beauty that he had hardly take in the words, “we should go to London. I am almost certain that that is where the Great Whisperer will go next.”
éduard shook his head, took a wild shot at a ball, and was surprised to see it go on. How could he not have known? All of the pieces were there, just waiting for him to put them together, but he had not even realised that there was a puzzle to solve.
He had been stupid: dazzled by her beauty, led by his loins not his brain.
Another shot, and another missed ball.
“God’s teeth!” He thundered, and brought the cue over his knee, breaking it in two.
He stood there for a moment, holding the two broken pieces of wood in each hand and panting with the effort of breaking them. They are not too dissimilar to myself, he thought painfully. Broken, snapped, useless.
Without Giselle, there did not seem to be much point in anything anymore. That was the true reason that he had gone, restless, up and down the land that he owned, never able to stop moving, never satisfied unless he was pacing outside.
Because the one person who seemed to ground him was somewhere out there. Out there, acting as the Great Whisperer, and far away from him.
éduard’s throat was very dry, and very sore, but no tears fell. He could never love or respect anyone like he does her. No one, but no one, could compare to Giselle.
The churches chimed out, one after another. No one had thought to align them, and so they all marked the hour at slightly different points, never all starting at once. It was one of the quirks of London that every newcomer noticed, and every Londoner had forgotten.
Giselle took a deep breath, and sighed. The chimes had beckoned her home, and she had made it – well, to as close as anything could be to a home in this England. She had made it through; she had finally managed to make her way to London, even with the detour. She was late, but she had made it.
Giselle swallowed as she walked up Evertree Street. Yes, it was easier to think of it as a detour, her time on the island with éduard, rather than what it was: a heady, emotional, wonderful, terrible time with a man that…with a man that…
She shook her head slightly, as though ridding water from her ears.
It was not possible to define him, to understand him, to even explain him.
It had been bad enough attempting to explain to the terrified fisherwoman that she had met on the shores of Kent when she had staggered out of the sea, almost naked, sopping wet, and without any money.
A loud street seller attempted to grab her hand as she passed.
“Hot pie, miss – hot pie to keep you warm? Christmas meat, my dear, still fresh!”
“No, thank you,” Giselle murmured, pulling her hand away, but the man would not take no for an answer.
“Come on now sweet, a young girl like you,” he leered at her, and Giselle flinched to see but two teeth left in rotting gums. “If you ain’t got a pie to keep you warm, I can think of another – arghh!”
Sentence unfinished due to the dagger that Giselle had pressed against his ribs, his eyes widened as he gasped to steady his breath.
“I said,” muttered Giselle in his ear, “no, thank you. I think that should have made my opinion abundantly clear, do not you?”
A gurgle was all the reply that she seemed likely to get, but that was enough.
“I recommend that you do not harass any other young ladies like myself.”
“Like – like yourself?” The pie man managed, and whimpered as the blade pushed more deeply against his coat. His thoughts were clear: could there be any other women like her?