Chapter 33
From the Start
The Jardin du Luxembourg was in full bloom when Celine arrived; vivid and kaleidoscopic, with orange and pink and purple buds opening to let the sun brush a warm finger against their petals.
It was quite early for children and their nannies to swarm the park; most benches were empty, save for those under the shade where elderly couples had stopped to rest from their morning stroll.
She found their family car parked by the gate, with Charles leaning against the door, smoking. He was about to put the cigarette out once Celine approached, but she waved him off.
“Mademoiselle Celine? What are you doing here so early?”
“Don’t fret, Charles. I don’t need a ride. I just wanted to know if my mother was here already?”
Confused, the driver pointed at the small palace. “She just went inside, along with Francine.”
“And Jacques?”
“Monsieur Ménard was walking around the gardens earlier…”
Celine was rushing inside before Charles could finish. The quicker she got this over with, the better. “Merci, Charles!” she tossed hastily over her shoulder. “Enjoy your cigarette.”
She found Jacques by the Medici Fountain. An obscene amount of petals littered the ground beneath his feet, the stems discarded into the fountain behind. He must have plucked at least a dozen flowers and scattered them all around in his agitation.
Despite all that, he looked like the poster image of everything a girl could dream of.
His striped suit gleamed pristinely under the sun-flecked shade of the magnolia foliage above, as did the gelled finger waves he had fixed along his forehead.
Her eyes fell to the outline of a ring box on the left pocket of his jacket—so close to his heart.
Celine took a deep breath and approached him quietly.
Her bones vibrated with tension. She was doing the right thing.
A year too late, she thought with heavy regret, but better now than when they were both older and filled with hatred for each other.
The long-term hurting would be inevitable unless she untangled her thorny self from his side now.
Jacques looked up from his botanic massacre, noting her presence with a start. His hazel eyes fell on her, darkening with confusion.
“You didn’t think you could hide from me today too, did you?
” Celine asked, though not unkindly. Her resentment had waned since the last time they had seen each other.
Celine understood him more than she liked to.
The need to bend all sorts of ways to please others was, unfortunately, the only thing they had in common.
“Not really, no,” replied Jacques. “But I knew why you were calling. I just needed time to process everything.”
“I see that”—Celine nodded at the flowers around him—“you haven’t changed your mind.”
“How can I?”
“So you didn’t process any of the things I said?”
Jacques was pacing anew. “Do not start again, Celine.” He shook his head as though he could simply dispel the thought just by doing that. “We can forget about what happened on your birthday, okay? I will forget about it. I have already forgiven you for it, so let’s just go back to how things were.”
“The only thing we’d be going back to is pretending. Jacques…I can barely forgive myself that quickly, I certainly don’t expect you to.”
“You said it yourself—” He lifted a hand, as though to run it through his hair.
Then his fingers contracted before he could make contact with the gelled waves, and his arm dropped down.
“—all of this was planned. We can’t just go and make stuff up now.
Our parents expect us to get engaged today. They want us to—”
“And what do you want, Jacques?”
The question took him aback. No one had asked him that before, just as no one had asked Celine before, not until Bastien.
“Do you think it matters what I want? Do you honestly think that if I could have that option I wouldn’t have told Grandfather no when he asked me to give up Emilie?
” His irritation melted from the smooth angles of his face, contorting them into an expression of pain.
“I cannot be like Bastien and live just to please myself. Grandfather will not turn a blind eye for me.”
“So you are fine with pretending for the rest of our lives? With being miserable for the rest of our lives, just to fix something that we didn’t even break?
” Gently, she cupped his face. They had both been wasting their lives away to please others, but if she was willing to break the cycle, she wanted Jacques to do it with her.
“I am sorry your grandfather forced you to give up Emilie for me,” Celine said and tensed when Jacques shut his eyes tightly.
“I know you were hoping I would love you so that all the hurt and the pain wouldn’t be for nothing, and believe me when I say that I did try. But I couldn’t.”
Jacques’s eyes flew open. “You couldn’t,” he repeated, more to himself than for her to hear as he struggled to make all of it make sense. “You couldn’t love me.” He held her stare for a moment, brisk realisation settling in. “This is not just about the contest, is it?”
“No,” she admitted. “It is about Bastien, too.”
A muscle feathered along his jaw as Jacques carefully unclasped her hands from his face, and stepped back. “You said there was nothing going on.”
“There wasn’t,” she said faintly. “At first.”
A short, delirious laugh left his lips. “I can’t believe this.”
Celine reached out to touch his arm. “I know I should have told you earlier—”
“No.” He waved her hand away. “I cannot believe you. How gullible you are.”
Celine staggered back a step, crushing the yellow petals under her heel. “Gullible?”
“You know,” he broke off, rubbing a hand over his face. “I realised what Bastien was doing when you told me about the contest. I just assumed he was desperate enough to get the money that he wouldn’t try anything. But I never thought you would be naive enough to fall for his games.”
“It wasn’t a game,” Celine insisted quickly. “He loves—”
“Oh, please! You don’t really think he loves you?” Jacques scoffed, splaying his arms as if to show some sort of invisible evidence in the very air between them that would convince her. “Bastien doesn’t even love himself, do you truly believe he is capable of loving another?”
It wasn’t true. She knew Jacques liked to believe what everyone else did. But last night had cut short all those rumours of Bastien being the cruel man who had no regard for the hearts he played with.
“You’re wrong,” Celine insisted.
“Am I? He was using you!”
“It was a mutual deal.”
“Now you’re just being stubborn,” Jacques shot back. “What about the rest, then? How do you think he was trying to settle the score between us?”
“I knew about that too—but—”
“And you still managed to fall in love with him, but not me?”
“He saw me when you didn’t,” Celine snapped.
She hadn’t meant to—she had wanted this conversation to unfold peacefully between them—but Jacques’s obstinacy was making it difficult.
“At my birthday,” she tried to soften her voice, “when I was so anxious about the proposal that I thought I was going to pass out—he was the only one who noticed I wasn’t happy, even though you were standing right there.
When you found out I had left, you didn’t even ask why.
You didn’t want to hear it—and I do not blame you for that—but it is not the kind of life I want either of us to have.
For me to be dying inside and for you to pretend everything is okay. ”
This last sentence found its mark. Jacques blinked at her as though she had said the most horrible thing she could to him.
“Is that,” he managed with some difficulty, “how you’ve been feeling all this time? Miserable?”
“Some of the days,” Celine uttered quietly.
Jacques let out a humourless laugh. “Truly, then, it was all a fake. It was all for nothing.”
“That’s not true—”
“What was it for then, huh? That look of disappointment on Grandfather’s face when I tell him I couldn’t carry out the one thing he asked of me?
He had no qualms disowning his real grandson, do you think he will hesitate for me?
” Jacques loosened a breath, his posture slacking in semi-defeat.
In that moment, Celine saw all the fears that used to cripple her, and some that still did, flicker across his eyes, and her heart seared with compassion for him.
“You know I have no room for mistakes, Cel.”
“And I do?” she cut in, her voice faint with desperation.
“You think I don’t know how selfish I am being right now?
That I don’t know how much this will hurt you and my family?
But I am sick of living for others without enjoying a single thing for myself.
” She met his desolate stare with a gentle one.
“And I do not wish you to live like that either, Jacques.”
Afraid that Jacques would tumble into the fountain if he took one more step back, Celine took his hand and linked their fingers like they were about to play a game.
“Do you remember what you told me on the bridge when we were playing thumb war?”
He nodded absentmindedly. His eyes remained fixed on the petals at their feet.
“You said you would rather see me happy than win. Do you recall those words?” Something in his expression softened at the memory.
“I may not love you, not the way you hoped I would, but I do want you to be happy.” Celine turned his palm over and traced the lines that cross-crossed on his skin.
“I cannot say yes today, Jacques. I can’t and I will not.
I don’t want us to pretend we never said any of these words, or that we never wished things would be different. ”
Jacques’s gaze remained distant as he followed the movements of Celine’s index finger on his palm. A warm breeze fluttered from the branches above and filled the air between them with the sweet perfume of the magnolia blossoms. Celine clasped his hands tightly.