Chapter 23
LUCIEN
Lucien tapped his quill on the oak table as his steward went on and on about estate business. He did not usually mind listening to Stuart give his report. It was important for him, after all, to know what was happening on his estate.
But today he did not want to be bothered with it.
Henry lay upstairs still in the grip of his illness.
Marianne was with him, but he knew that he needed to be there with him too.
The fever had spiked as the doctor had said, and while they had given him the medication, it hadn’t gotten better.
Mrs. Greaves and Juliet had come in and applied poultices to his legs in hopes that it might lower the fever.
It had temporarily relieved Henry’s discomfort, but it wouldn’t cure him, not yet. He had to get through the illness first.
Lucien should’ve canceled his appointment with Stuart, but he knew that wouldn’t have been right either. He couldn’t neglect his duties altogether. And yet he yearned to be upstairs with Marianne and Henry.
“My lord? The Hendersons’ farm roof?”
“Yes, yes, we will pay for it. They can make it up by paying a higher tithe for the next year or two, however much they can afford. You will sort it.”
“Of course I will, my lord,” the steward said and stood up. “Now I shall let you get back to your son.”
“I appreciate it,” Lucien replied. He was out of the study even before the steward. He rushed up the stairs to where Marianne was sitting by Henry’s side. The look of concern on her face immediately made his heart drop.
“Is he worse?” he asked as he approached his son.
“He is. He is terribly unwell. The fever is back. We have changed the poultices, and I am cooling his head with a cloth, but nothing is helping. And he’s shivering.”
Lucien placed a hand on Henry’s side. His forehead was sweaty, as was the rest of his face.
He panted in his sleep. Instantly, Lucien got into bed with his boy and pulled him close.
Henry’s head rested on Lucien’s shoulder.
He stroked his face with his thumb as Marianne sat close by, bringing out the cloth once more.
She placed it over his head, her hand brushing against Lucien’s arm.
“What if something happens to him? What if he doesn’t get through this—”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” she told him quickly. “All will be well. You must simply believe and trust, and it will be well. All will happen as it is meant.”
“I do not know that I believe that,” he said. “I suppose it is my lacking faith.”
“Perhaps this is a good time for you to find your faith,” she said. “Surely you must believe in something. That your prayers go somewhere, even if they are not answered directly.”
“None of my prayers have ever been answered,” he said.
He had not enjoyed the earlier conversation, though it had been rather more philosophical than he had expected.
But the truth was, he lacked faith. He wet his lips.
“As a child, I believed. I would pray to God every night to keep me safe in my sleep and keep my mother safe and my grandfather, but my mother died, and so did my grandfather.”
“He looked after you, didn’t he? You survived. You lived. It was tragic that your mother died, but it happens all the time. Illness, disease, and accidents do not stop because we wish for them not to happen. And your grandfather was an old man when he passed.”
“He was,” Lucien agreed.
“I am not trying to convince you to pray,” she said. “Just to believe.”
“Believe. I would not know how to pray even if you did tell me to,” Lucien replied.
There was silence between them for a moment as Marianne turned the cloth around again.
“How would one pray if one didn’t know how?”
“Well, the nuns taught me how, but I do not know that their way is any more right or wrong than anyone else’s. I think it is perhaps best to speak a prayer quietly to yourself, sort of as a whisper, or even not aloud at all. Just in your own thoughts and heart.”
Lucien nodded, and as he looked down at his son, he knew that he had nothing to lose. He closed his eyes, and for the first time since he was a boy, prayed to whatever entity it might be that his son might recover quickly from this illness, that he would not be robbed of the only family he had.
His prayer was interrupted by a cough as Henry’s little body was shaken heavily with it. Marianne quickly placed one hand underneath Henry and helped him sit up. Lucien did the same, their arms crossed behind Henry’s back as they helped him sit and cough.
“My throat hurts. And I’m cold,” the little boy said.
“I’ll get another blanket,” Marianne said quickly as Lucien settled back down in the bed with Henry. She returned a moment later from the dressing room with two blankets and spread them over the bed. Henry still shivered.
“Come lie with me,” Henry said, looking at Marianne. He lifted his hand, but it was constricted by the newly replaced blankets. Marianne looked at Lucien, and he nodded at her. If this is what Henry wanted, this is what Henry would get.
Marianne lay down on top of the blankets on the right-hand side and turned to face Henry.
“How is that?” she asked. Henry nodded, though his eyes were closed.
She placed a hand on the child’s stomach and allowed it to rest there.
Lucien was struck by just how maternal she looked.
For a girl who had arrived a few weeks ago claiming she knew nothing of children, she surely had learned quickly.
And she had become so much more than he had thought she would.
Henry truly seemed to care for her. Indeed, in his hour of illness, he was relying on her to help provide comfort.
“Story,” he murmured.
“What kind of story would you like?” Lucien asked. “Goody Two-Shoes or The Frog Prince?”
“No, a new story,” he said.
Lucien looked at Marianne helplessly. “I have never been good at making up stories,” he said quietly.
“I have never tried,” she said, “but I have read a great many. So we shall try.”
“If it helps him.”
“I can hear you,” Henry said.
“We know,” Lucien replied and kissed his temple.
“Well,” Marianne said, “all right. Let me tell you a brand new story. Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in a house with her father, the king. And with her lived her two sisters, who were as beautiful as the stars in the night sky. They sparkled and shone, and everybody paid attention to them, but our little princess didn’t like any of that shine.
She wanted to be something else. A great explorer. And people thought that rather odd.”
Lucien looked up. She was telling her own story in the version of a fairytale that the little boy could understand. He smiled.
“And across town, living in another castle, was a young prince,” he added.
“And this young prince had a beautiful mother who always encouraged him to seek adventure, to let his heart guide him. Even though his father wanted him to stay at home and learn how to be a proper king, our young hero decided to ride off one day to seek adventure as his heart commanded him.”
Henry’s right eye fluttered open. “Do they meet?” he asked.
“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?” Marianne said.
“One day, there was a grand ball at the princess’s home,” Marianne continued.
“Everybody was there—the beautiful sparkling sisters and our young heroine. She didn’t want to be at the ball.
She was terribly bored. She stepped to the window, and she saw a falling star in the distance, and she was determined to go and see where it was.
She had heard great stories about treasure that could be found at the end of a falling star.
So she snuck out of the ball, and she stole a horse.
” She paused. “She did not ride the horse as a lady would. She swung her leg over the back of the horse and rode it like a knight, off into the night.”
Lucien chuckled. “That is a good thing, for if the princess had been riding sidesaddle, she might have fallen off.”
She stuck her tongue out at him as Henry opened his eyes again.
“My story,” he said.
“Of course,” Marianne said. “So the princess rode out in the direction where the star had come down.”
“And the young prince,” Lucien picked up the story, “likewise saw the falling star on his adventures and decided to ride out after it. For he, too, had heard stories that stars would lead to treasure. And he thought that perhaps he might find that at the place where the star had fallen, there would be a treasure trove that he could bring home and show his father, so he might be proud and see the value of his adventuring. But he rode and rode, and he couldn’t find the place where the falling star had landed.
By then, many hours had passed, and he could not recall where it had happened. ”
“The same was true for the princess. She rode and rode, and night turned into dawn and dawn turned into midday, and her legs felt heavy and her arms too, and the horse was tired, so she stopped at a little bubbling brook to let the horse drink. She sat there on a rock, wondering if she was ever going to find the treasure, for she had planned to take the treasure and sell it all so that she could have her freedom and explore whenever she wanted, wherever she wanted, free from her father’s grasp. ”
“And our young hero likewise rode along the same brook looking for his treasure. But instead, he came upon the princess and her horse. He looked at her and saw that she had ridden all night, for her hair was disheveled, and she looked awfully tired. He sat with her and shared with her a piece of bread that he had brought, and she let him drink from a little pouch of water she had been refilling in the lake. They sat together and spoke, and each told the other that they had been following a falling star. And neither had found it. And that made them both very sad.”