Chapter 34 #2
“My God, where have you been?” Lady Ocerne crossed the floor with rapid strides, lifting the skirts of her ivory gown. She enfolded her son in an embrace that looked almost painful in its intensity.
I could barely look at her face. I remembered her only from a distant glimpse twenty years prior, and she had been but a girl, newly arrived to meet her betrothed. And now this was her house, and I an uninvited and very likely unwelcome guest.
Now in her thirties, Lady Ninette Avenel d’Ocerne was taller than her children and, I deduced, impeccably fashionable.
Her cream-colored gown was decorated with cerise ribbons and white lace, with a sumptuous stomacher of embroidered gold peonies and blister pearls.
Her face was powdered to milky whiteness, and her dark brown hair was piled up on her head in elaborate curls.
“I went to get help, Mother,” answered Jacques, when she released him.
“Without leave from your father? Or from me?” she countered. “We needed you here, Jacques. Your wife needed you here.”
“Where is Eloise?” he asked.
“She does not know you are here; I decided to let her rest. She has barely slept these past few weeks, with the worry of your disappearance and the killings in the villages. She has requested more than once to return to her family in Saint-Chély. I suggest you go to her as soon as you have bathed and dressed properly. And where are Gerard and Henri? Their father is near mad with worry. I have had to give him time away from his duties in the kitchen.”
Oh dear, I said to Sarmodel. I had forgotten about them.
Indeed.
“Mother, I’m sorry.” Jacques’s eyes brimmed over again. “They will not . . . they will not return. There was an accident in the mountains, and . . .”
Lady Ocerne was silent in shock, her eyes wide. “No, Jacques. Oh no.” The housekeeper behind her gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
Jacques’s mother took a step back from him and slapped him sharply across the cheek. He did not resist or even react. Her own tears cut through the powder on her face and she looked at him in despair.
“Oh, my son. Now, perhaps you will begin to learn that you are not a child anymore. My God—your father.” She shook her head. “I cannot tell him.”
“I will tell him myself,” said Jacques, with some bitterness. “We have many things to talk about. Where is he?”
“He is not here, Jacques,” replied his mother. “When you absconded, he traveled the length and breadth of the barony seeking word of you. And when he found none, he went himself to find aid against this Beast.”
He’s not here?
“Aid? From whom?”
He’s not here!
I was relieved beyond words. Though it was only postponing the inevitable, it would at least give me time to prepare myself before I saw Antoine again. Or at least to have a bath.
“I do not know, and you have no right to ask,” Lady Ocerne said. “Were our troubles not great enough? Did you think to prove yourself by abandoning your home—your family?”
“Mother, I went to find help and I have returned with help.” He gestured to me. “This is Professor Sebastian Grave. He helped defeat the Beast during the Red Winter.”
Lady Ocerne closed her eyes in a moment of private mortification; she had clearly failed to notice me in her agitated state, and this was a scene most unbecoming for the lady of the house.
“I apologize, Professor Grave. This is quite unforgivable. You are not meeting us at our best.”
“My lady, please do not trouble yourself,” I replied with a bow. “I remember well the terror of the Red Winter. It is an extraordinary household that can keep decorum during such a scourge.”
She looked at me steadily. “The Red Winter. You must have been a young man indeed. Did you know my husband?”
“I did, my lady.”
“Mother, please,” interrupted Jacques. “Professor Grave has saved my life more than once. He has earned our hospitality at the least.”
Lady Ocerne seemed to gather herself. “Certainly, he has. Margeurite, please prepare a room and a bath for our guest,” she said to the housekeeper, who curtsied and left immediately. “Professor, you must join us for dinner. Please allow me to make amends for this most discourteous reception.”
“I would be honored,” I said, though there was nothing I desired less than to spend the evening exchanging witticisms with the bewigged nobility of Gévaudan.
“Of course. I have much to do before dinner, beginning with deciding how to tell my cook that his sons are dead,” said Lady Ocerne. Then she turned to Jacques once more, pointing a shaking finger at his face. “Go and see your wife.”
Lady Ocerne took her leave, along with the housekeeper Margeurite. We were left with the butler, who introduced himself as Dimitri.
“I will have your belongings brought up to your chamber, Professor Grave,” he said. “Your horse is being cared for and should be ready by tomorrow, should you require it.”
“My thanks,” I said. Then I gave Jacques a meaningful look.
“There is one more thing, Dimitri,” said my young companion. “The professor has incurred expenses on my behalf, not least of all in caring for me after I was injured.”
The elderly butler scratched nervously under his wig. “My lord, I recall a great sum was disbursed for you, only last month. Yes indeed, you came to me with Gerard and Henri—”
“Yes indeed.” Jacques spoke through his teeth. “And the money was lost in the mountains, along with them.”
“My lord, you lost three hundred livres?”
“It was closer to two hundred and fifty1 by then, but yes.”
“If it is of any assistance, gentlemen,” I interrupted, offering the butler a rolled sheet of paper, “I have run an account.”
1. Two hundred and fifty-seven, to be precise.