19. Chapter 19
Chapter 19
N ow that she knew about Brayden’s letters, Fabienne was curious to discover more about her own. She made several travels to the past, but so far, she hadn’t had the luck of landing in the middle of writing one.
During one try, she landed in Hartford, shopping with Caddie. Her neighbor got chatty with the apothecary, so Fabienne stepped outside. She was on one of Hartford’s main streets, and it was appropriately busy, with the muddy road as full of carriages as the pavement was of people.
A high, raised voice got her attention. Fabienne turned, and her heart jumped in alarm as she noticed two soldiers cornering a young woman. They hadn’t touched her, but based on her drawn-back posture, she didn’t welcome the attention.
The woman moved a step back but only met the wall of the nearby shop. One of the soldiers did a half-circle around her, closing off her escape.
Fabienne clenched her fists. “Stop!” She strode toward them, but it took her a few seconds and two more calls until the soldiers realized she meant them. She stopped beside the taller one and looked him in the eye. “Can’t you see the lady doesn’t want your attention?”
“This is none of your business,” the other man said.
“And besides, we weren’t doing anything she wouldn’t want. We’re just standing. Talking.”
“Are you, now?” Fabienne gave him a disbelieving smile and turned to the woman. “Do you wish to converse with these gentlemen?”
The woman looked at her with scared, wide brown eyes—frightened, but also relieved. “N-no, miss. I was waiting for my sister. She’s inside.” With a trembling hand, she pointed to the building behind.
“There.” Fabienne moved in front of her and faced the men. “Clear enough for you?”
They shared a look, and the taller one smirked. “Bossy, aren’t you? Even when you’ve no right to be. Now, why don’t you get your traitorous little heels back to your country, huh?” He poked her shoulder. “Go complain to daddy once he’s done beating the slaves.”
Fabienne used all her force not to slap him, or lash out in another way. Everything in her screamed. She was here, in this mess, because of people like him . But then she took a breath, and another one, and another one. The mess was also of her making—and caused by acting too rashly. So she calmed down and pasted on a fake smile.
“Since you’re perceptive, I’m sure you also know the women of New Orleans have a certain reputation. They don’t take too kindly to soldiers.” A few days before the Beaumonts left the city, General Butler issued an order proclaiming all women who showed any contempt toward a soldier, prostitutes. The women didn’t take the Northern occupation well; cursing and spitting were the least of it.
“Heard of it,” the man said.
Fabienne put her hands against her hips. “Would you care for a demonstration?”
The man stared at her with narrowed eyes; she could almost see the steam coming from his nose. Then his friend clapped his shoulder. “Come on. She’s not worth the trouble.” He had to practically drag him away, but in the end, they left.
Fabienne turned to the woman, who seemed to shrink into herself. “Oh, no. Don’t be afraid. I wasn’t…” She waved a hand in the general direction of the soldiers. “I just wanted them to leave. I wasn’t really going to dump excrement on them.”
A muted laughter followed; but not from the woman—somewhere behind Fabienne. She whipped around and in a second, forgot all about the quarrel and even her surroundings.
Brayden stood not too far away—definitely within earshot—and was looking straight at her. His uniform was a bit wrinkly and dusty, and the sun shone from behind him, lending a golden halo to his hair. Fabienne’s heart jumped again, not from fear, but from a pleasant surprise. In the moment before she remembered this was the past, she thought— He’s back, and he’s safe .
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear.” He approached cautiously, with a nod to the woman. “Are you all right, miss?”
The woman stuttered, but the door behind her opened, and another woman came rushing out. “Come, Anne, we can…” She took in the odd company. “What’s going on?”
“N-nothing,” Anne said. “The lady… she helped me. Kept me company.” She gave Fabienne a shy, but grateful smile, and let her sister lead her away.
“You witnessed all of it?” Fabienne asked Brayden.
“From the man’s, uh, colorful description about how you should leave.”
“And you hadn’t considered to intervene?”
“To be honest…” He made another step forward. “It looked like you had it all covered. I didn’t wish to steal your thunder, and given the problem, I wasn’t sure the lady would take too kindly to another soldier defending her.” He glanced back—by now, the two men had disappeared. “I would apologize for my compatriots, but I’m afraid it won’t do.” He bowed his head. “Sadly, a uniform does not manners make.”
“It’s quite all right.”
“And apparently, I lack them, too.” He flashed her a self-deprecating smile. “Brayden Marshall.”
Dieu merci. They hadn’t met yet! Fabienne froze for a moment before extending her hand. “Fabienne Beaumont.”
“French?”
A shriek cut their introduction short. “Brayden! Oh, my darling boy!” Caddie rushed to him, and a round of fussing as Fabienne had never seen before followed, with Caddie brushing his sleeve, walking all around him, straightening a lock of his hair. “Just look at you! Your hair is so short! And you’re thinner, too. Nice to see they finally gave you boys a proper uniform.”
Over Caddie’s shoulder, Brayden caught Fabienne’s eyes; his shone in amusement.
“Now tell me.” Caddie crossed her hands under her generous bosom. “How did you two manage to find each other already?”
“I’m sorry?” Fabienne and Brayden said simultaneously.
Caddie huffed. “Fabienne, this is the Brayden I was telling you about. Remember, he’s arriving today on his furlough and we came to the city to pick him up.” She shook her head and redirected her attention to Brayden. “I see you’ve already met, but let us do it properly. This is Fabienne Beaumont, my companion.”
“Companion?” Brayden looked at Fabienne with interest. She hoped he wouldn’t ask—she held the same interest herself. What was going on here?
“The poor girl has—oh, well, I suppose it’s not my story to tell,” Caddie said.
“No!” Fabienne blurted. “I mean, of course you may. You are… an important factor.”
“Then let us do it on the way back.” Caddie looped one arm around Fabienne, the other around Brayden, and they set for the carriage. Fabienne listened as eagerly as Brayden, nodding occasionally to make it look like she was confirming the story. “First, there was some kind of mix-up, and Fabienne ended up at the hospital in Hartford instead of somewhere else. Dr. Byrne—Brayden, you know him—cared for her, and I helped him as a nurse because Mrs. Truman was sick… And she had no one left—all her family, gone… Of course I had to invite her to a proper supper once she got better, and one thing led to another… Gertie’s all curmudgeonly, as always, but I welcome the company very much, and the help with the housework…”
Fabienne covertly kept her gaze on Brayden as they boarded the carriage and left the city. He hadn’t changed much physically, but there was something—an energy, an aura that gave him warmth, lightness. When he laughed, his laugh was clear, melodic; when he looked at her from the seat across, his eyes were free, unburdened.
A Brayden of the past—while she was Fabienne of the present. Although Robbins told her there was a way to ‘submit’ to her old self—feel and say what she would back then—Fabienne hadn’t yet grasped the technique. But then, Robbins also said changes were hard to make; so her going to the past wouldn’t endanger anything, would it?
“So you’re from France, but you’ve lived in New Orleans,” Brayden said.
“For several years, yes. We came to visit our aunt.”
“You liked it there?” His voice took on a bit of sharpness.
“I enjoyed the life. Being with my aunt meant a lot to me and my sister, since we lost our mother not long before that.”
“I see.”
“Just because someone lives in a country, doesn’t mean they subscribe to the wide ideas of that country.”
“True,” he admitted. “And if you’re willing to make the claim for the South, I hope you’ll also allow an exception for us. Not all soldiers are the same.”
“No.” Her mind flashed back to the letters. “They aren’t.”
“Did I miss something?” Caddie asked.
“Nothing worth reminiscing.” Brayden patted her hand for reassurance. Light caught the golden specks in his eyes as he looked through the window. “These times don’t show the best of humanity. We all do things we never thought we would.”
Fabienne felt a lump in her throat, and busied herself with picking on her skirt.
The carriage stopped at Caddie’s house; Fabienne nearly forgot she had to disembark here, and as a result, Caddie was already halfway up the path by the time Fabienne got out.
“Miss Beaumont,” Brayden’s voice stopped her. He edged closer to the door. “I was wondering… I’ll only be here for a week. Would you allow me to visit you tomorrow? Perhaps you’d like to go for a walk? I can throw in an argument if that’s what convinces you.”
“Yes.” Her speedy response surprised her. “Argument not necessary.”
“I’ll come around in the afternoon.” He nodded goodbye, and the carriage started off.
Fabienne waited some more, then willed herself back to her bedroom. This meeting hadn’t been intended, but… she didn’t regret it. In fact, her fingers were itching to use the watch again right away.
Brayden had said afternoon the next day, didn’t he?
***
“Tell me something about yourself.” Brayden pushed a branch off the forest path to allow for passage.
“Me?”
He flushed. “Is that too personal?”
After a few tries, Fabienne had located the promised walk. They’d been strolling for around twenty minutes now; Brayden had picked her up at Caddie’s house, and they trailed a pleasant path close to the edge of the forest, allowing for both sun and the shade of trees.
She cleared her throat. “ S'eu saubés la gen enchantar, mei enemic foran efan, que ja us no saubra triar, ni dir re que’ns tornes a dan. ”
Brayden, walking a few steps ahead, turned. “What was that?”
“That’s good old Proven?al for you, sir. It’s a local dialect of Provence.”
“It doesn’t sound very French.”
“No, it’s rather different. They used to speak only Proven?al in our region, but it’s being replaced by French now, especially in the cities. My mother was insistent we speak both it and French perfectly. I wasn’t too pleased by that.”
“Not that I’d know, but you didn’t sound bad.”
“I learned it in the end. Maman suggested studying works of literature. Antoine did quite well. Marion, too. I’d much rather be running outside. Especially in the summer. I liked going to a pond that buzzed with dragonflies. They were gorgeous, with their blue and green iridescent colors. I could watch them all day. I tried to catch them, too.”
She stared into the distance. It was so long since she’d thought of those times. Dragonflies. Brayden had bought her a dragonfly pin, just before he—
“Miss Beaumont?”
She forced herself back to the present. “Anyway, Maman insisted. ‘You’re not going outside until your lessons are done, and your lessons are done when I say so’, she’d tell me. So, I learned a poem, the entirety of it in Proven?al, and recited lines from it, day and night, just to vex her. It wasn’t the one she recommended.”
An amused smile played on his face. “Did she let you go out?”
“I escaped a few times, so I got my victory.”
“But you still know the poem, so she got hers.”
“I don’t know if that was enough of a victory. I was a terrible child. Papa was too busy with work to ever discipline me, and Maman had to give up at some point.” She looked at Brayden. “I bet you were a perfect, angelic child.”
“Why would you think that?”
“A feeling. The way Caddie treats you.”
“You’d treat anyone you like with fondness if you hadn’t seen them for a while. I may have done a rascally thing here and there, too.”
Like playing darts with his father’s set? “Did you get away with it?”
“Never.” His smile turned nostalgic. “But the punishment rarely deterred us from trying something new.”
He waited for her to catch up, and they continued together. “What was the poem? The part you recited?”
She concentrated on the translation. “If I knew how to cast spells on people, my enemies would become children—or babies, as you wish it—so that none of them could make a discovery that could be turned against us.”
“That’s an interesting way of dealing with enemies.”
“Bloodier ways would be too much for Bernard. He dealt in love poems. You should hear the rest of it.”
“That depends on your goodwill.”
She laughed, skipped a few steps ahead, and continued reciting and translating. “I know now I will see my lady, and her fair eyes and fresh color…” She tore a small branch off a tree and used it as a fan to mask her face. “And I will kiss her on the mouth every which way, so that for a month the marks will be visible.” She stopped and lowered the branch. “I asked Antoine how many ways there are, but he didn’t want to tell me.”
“What did your mother say to you quoting that?”
“Many things. None were approving.” She thought forward in the poem. “You know, Bernard had some strange notions of chivalrous love. First that thing with the marks, and then…”
“Then what?”
“I would like to find her alone, sleeping, or pretending to sleep, so I could steal a sweet kiss, since I am not worth so much that I could ask it of her.”
“I’d say his kissing methods conflict each other.”
“No wonder he had so many problems with women. He was either mauling them or kissing them while they didn’t even know it.”
“And you said the French are great at poetry?” Brayden mused.
She folded her arms. “Well, what could you recite?”
He looked at the sky, then back at her. “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air.” He quirked an eyebrow. “ The Federalist number 10. My father’s way of saying, ‘No, you can’t go out and play yet.’”
“Now I have to pity you. That might be worse than love poems.”
She came to an obstacle on the path, a fat fallen tree trunk, and Brayden hurried forward to help her. He crossed it first, then offered his hand. It wasn’t necessary, but he steadied her with a grasp on her waist. His touch lingered for a moment—warm and safe, just like the time he caught her rollerskating—before he broke off and gestured to continue.
They walked side by side in a comfortable silence, two partners, enjoying a peaceful walk in nature.
Another line in the poem came to her mind. “Little do we profit from our love. Time passes… and we are losing the best moments.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught Brayden looking her way—for a second, before he went back to observing the forest.
Then, after half a minute of silence, he spoke. “Maybe he wasn’t so bad at poetry, after all.”
Something in the way he said it, so simple and honest, clenched her heart. I know him now. She could never go back to him being a stranger in a uniform. But she couldn’t do anything with her new realization, either.
In another half hour, they made it back to Caddie’s house.
Brayden paused at the doorstep. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Accompanying me today. I…” With the slightest coloring to his cheeks, he looked away. “I do wish I didn’t have to leave so soon. Don’t tell Caddie. She’ll only start an argument.”
“Do you save those for me?” Fabienne blurted, immediately regretting the words.
Luckily, he took it with a smile. He wasn’t yet burdened with the implication that statement would gain in a few years.
“Have a good day, Miss Beaumont.”
She raised her hand for a handshake—but he took it, turned it palm up, and pressed a feather-light kiss on the sensitive spot of her inner wrist. Beads of sensation shot out, traveling under her skin, enveloping her body in a shiver, and finally gathering deep in her belly like a bright, warm ball of energy.
He released her. Fabienne barely noticed when he’d left, only coming to her senses as Caddie sought her out.
“There you are,” her hostess said, an enigmatic smile on her face. “Had a good walk? Come on, then. We’ve laundry to finish.”
Well… she could let her other self deal with that. Fabienne waited until Caddie left, then returned to the present.
She rubbed her wrist. Even if it made no sense—the kiss had happened years ago—she could still feel it.
Maybe she was imagining it.
Frustrated about her reaction, she blew out the candle and went to sleep.