Chapter 21
Let Her Eat Cake
“And what do you plan on doing there?” Francine asked as she stepped into the corridor, a heap of laundry in her hands.
In the shadows, she resembled the Grim Reaper to an eerie degree.
Celine shivered and followed sluggishly up the stairs.
Once Francine opened the door to Celine’s room, she plopped the clothes down on the bed where Milady was curled, asleep.
Fortunately, Bastien hadn’t forgotten to drop her off.
“I was not aware purgatory was a popular destination this time of year.”
“It’s not. I need to expiate all the guilt of this night,” Celine answered. Upon entering, she noticed a confectioner’s box sitting on her nightstand, a silver fork tied to it with an elegant blue bow. Like a moth, she crept towards it to read the cream lettering that decorated its top.
I’m sorry for what I did.
-B
Smudging the words as she scooped a bit of frosting on her finger, Celine frowned. It was light and sweet, with a hint of berries. It soothed something inside her chest, much to her chagrin.
“Though, the way that my life is going right now”—she mumbled through a mouthful of frosting—“you might have to tell my parents I will be staying indefinitely.”
“I am glad your appetite isn’t suffering along with your conscience, Mademoiselle.”
Celine scrunched her nose in disapproval. “I can’t possibly go to hell on an empty stomach, can I? You wouldn’t let me go to school without feeding me like you were going to cook me afterwards. And I’m fairly certain that purgatory has much more strenuous tasks than arithmetics.”
And the cake was too delicious to put down anyway.
Celine turned on her phonograph and restarted the song she had been playing last night. A cheerful little jazz sequence poured out into the room, drowning out the current of thoughts sizzling in her head. She couldn’t be thinking about Bastien anymore.
Never again!
“Have you fallen in love with Monsieur Ménard yet?” Francine inquired with a subtle levity in her voice. Somehow, she continued folding the laundry as if the question was something Celine should have predicted.
Unfortunately, it was something that plucked at a very sensitive nerve at the moment.
Celine was beginning to loathe all stories and poems that had built up love to be this singular, powerful emotion that could fix everything, even curses. In reality, love was yet another volatile thing that changed as quickly as a rose shed its petals and a leaf turned brown.
She heaved a long exhale, opting to stay quiet and let the phonograph fill the silence.
It was the only time in the day when she could simply hide from everything and everyone, forget her myriad of problems that needed solving, and let the night stretch out for as long as it wanted, granting her hours upon hours of peace.
“So?” her nurse pressed.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Celine allowed. “The timing is not—Oh, do not give me that look! As I said, it’s a work in progress, and progress has been made. Only…perhaps…with the wrong Ménard,” she added with a wince.
Francine’s head snapped up. Her nimble hands stopped in the middle of folding an intricate chiffon dress. “But he is Jacques’s brother.”
“Step-brother, and before you say anything, I’m not in love with him.” Even the thought made her bristle. “No, I would rather fall in love with a slimy toad than Bastien Ménard. I just…can’t help but think I have become better acquainted with him than with Jacques.”
Going back to folding the rest of the laundry, Francine muttered: “Despite all the things he does? You complain of him incessantly.”
“Annoying demon or not, he has become my friend. Sort of. We keep going back and forth on that.”
Francine produced a small, muffled sound—something akin to a sardonic mhm.
“What?” Celine inquired, pausing the fork midway to her lips.
“You are smiling.”
“I am not.”
“You like him.”
Celine gaped at her. “I do not!”
“I have as good as raised you, Celine LeBeau. Try as you might, you can’t hide anything from me,” Francine concluded. “Just now, you smiled each time you said his name. I was young once too. I know stuff.”
Celine didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh at Francine’s stuff or protest again when—
Thwack.
“What was that?”
They turned their heads towards the phonograph simultaneously—even Milady’s ears perked at the sound—but it didn’t come from the music.
Thwack.
“Don’t tell me—”
Francine nodded, an expectant smile playing about her lips. “I think it’s coming from the window.”
“Probably a bird,” Celine dismissed, shuffling her feet between the folds of her blanket. She munched down on another forkful of cake. “It will go away on its own. No need to romanticise every little soun—”
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Placing the cake on her bedside table, Celine hoisted herself up from the mattress begrudgingly.
She winced as her feet hit the cold floor, but her blood was beginning to boil a little and she didn’t feel the iciness of the tiles immediately.
Tilting her head upwards, as if to seek divine guidance, she shuffled with great reluctance towards the window.
“I swear if it is a Ménard, please let it be Jacques or Ana?s—”
In the empty driveway of the LeBeau residence, Bastien stood with something that looked like a book underneath one arm, while he prepared to throw whatever it was he’d been tossing at her window with the other.
Annoying demon, indeed.
Celine sighed, still looking upwards. “The one time I need you to be on my side.”
She supposed God was enjoying this too much to reply. Throwing one of the panes open, she stuck her head out to furiously whisper: “You have officially lost it, haven’t you?”
Bastien halted mid-throw and flung what he had in his palm into the bushes. She realised with a lag that it was a cherry pit. Three more were stuck on the sill.
Where the hell had he found cherries in April?
“It is my lady!” Bastien whisper-yelled.
Celine plucked one of the pits and chucked it at him. “Are you insane?”
“Celine LeBeau, you murder romance.” Stealthily, he dodged a rapid procession of cherry pits. “Don’t be hostile. Come open the door, I need to give you something.”
Unbelievable. The daylight hours were not enough for Bastien Ménard to torment her, now he was intent on plaguing her nights too.
“Who is it?” Francine asked, slowly approaching the window. She didn’t wait for Celine’s reply before she scuttled closer and peered at Bastien. Her eyes widened. “Well, you certainly have made progress, Mademoiselle.”
Celine scoffed softly. Even Francine was taking Bastien’s side. “Just go make sure neither of my parents have heard him. And you,” she turned to Bastien. “Go play Romeo under some other girl’s window.”
“I told you I have something for you. Just toss me a rope and I will climb up.”
“I assure you, Bastien, if I had a rope, it would be to strangle you with it.”
He tapped his foot on the pavement, looking around for something. Under the moonlight, she could see a twinkle enter his eyes when his vision landed on what he was searching for.
“Don’t you even dare,” Celine warned. “You will fall and crack your skull open.”
“I appreciate your worry, darling”—Bastien grunted as he latched onto the drainpipe that ran along the side of the house—“but I’ve done this plenty of times before.”
“Who said I was worried about you? I’m just not particularly big on overworking the staff to scrape brain matter off the driveway.”
“Good for you, because I really am an expert in the subtle art of sneaking in and out of a house.”
“Philanderer and thief,” Celine hummed. Crossing her arms over the sill and placing her chin in the crook of her palm, she watched as Bastien climbed up the drainpipe.
His head materialised into view. Moonlight washed over his narrow cheekbones. “Is that what gets you hot and bothered?”
“I am already considering pushing you out, Bas. Do not make me actually do it.”
“What a brutal way to get men to fall for you,” he teased and reached out a hand. “Help me in.”
Celine’s fingers strained as she hesitated. She didn’t actually believe Bastien was demented enough to show up at her house like this for one of his little games. Maybe he really had something important to give her.
The windowpane creaked.
“Celine, darling, I’m growing roots here. So unless you want a Bastien tree on your window—”
“Just take my hand,” she relented, if only to get him to stop talking. To her terror, Bastien let go of the drainpipe instantly and was only holding onto her while he checked his footing on the sill.
“If you do end up falling,” she warned with a grunt as she lugged him inside, “I hope for your sake, Bastien, that those bushes underneath you don’t have any thorns in them.”
His head snapped up. “Thorns?”
And that’s all it took for Bastien Ménard to lose his balance, tumble forward through the open window, and collide with Celine.
They crashed onto the hard, polished floor, and for the first time, Celine regretted not listening to her mother and placing that rug she had gotten for her beneath the window.
It might have softened the fall a little bit.
On the contrary, the impact rattled all the bones in her body, just like she imagined the loud thump of their tumbling frames to have rattled the skeleton of the house. Bastien groaned.
Celine didn’t have time to blink away the pain. She craned her neck towards the door as it opened to reveal a terrified Francine.
“What happened?” she asked at the same time as Madame LeBeau’s imperial voice echoed the same question through the house.
“Nothing, maman!” Celine quickly shouted a reply. “I just dropped a stack of books, I’m sorry.” Then she waved a hand at Francine. “Go distract her. Say anything you want, but do not let her come up here. If she sees Bastien, she will murder all three of us.”