Love's First Light

by Jamie Carie

  He glanced down at the baby. “Don’t run. Be careful.”

  Her look was mischievous as she answered, “I am always careful.” But they both knew that wasn’t true. She never would have spoken to him had she been careful.

  Christophé was glad she was a bit of an adventuress instead.

  He walked her to the door and watched her leave. Just as she was out of sight, it began to pour down rain. His teeth were chattering by the time he made it to the laboratory and the last embers of the fire. He stripped off his clothes, worrying that Scarlett would be soaked and chilled. He hung his breeches on the back of a chair, close to the fire to dry. Then he wrapped his only blanket around his shivering body and sat in front of the fire, staring into the ash.

  Why, Lord? He closed his eyes against the weariness and sorrow seeking to overpower him. Why now?

  He trusted God’s goodness. His promises. But as Christophé sat there, chilled to the bone as much by his thoughts as the rain, he couldn’t help but question.

  Why did You let me meet my Eve now . . . when I’m not whole enough to give her anything?

  Chapter Nine

  Scarlett, soaked to the skin, her nightgown and the cloaks clinging to her, crept back into the house. Sleep. That was all she needed. Maybe she could feign illness. It would be easy enough in her condition.

  She crept up the stairs, the loose, sodden hem of her nightgown nearly tripping her.

  “Scarlett, is that you?”

  Her mother’s voice sounded from the bottom of the stairs. She turned, grasping hold of the handrail. “It’s me—”

  “Good heavens, what happened to you?” Her mother raced up the stairs and grasped hold of her. “You must stop this nonsense. Visiting his grave when so pregnant, even in the middle of such a storm!” She grabbed her daughter’s waist and helped her up the stairs. “You must stop, Scarlett. He wouldn’t want you to risk your health and the child’s.”

  Tears stung her eyes, and Scarlett looked away. What was she doing? How could she be so irresponsible? She was a mother now; she should act like one. She should tell the truth. “You are right. It won’t happen again. It’s just that, I met someone and I was delayed, and then it started pouring rain.”

  Her mother’s brows rose and her lips thinned. “Met someone? Who could you meet at the graveyard?”

  Scarlett ignored the fact that her mother thought she’d been visiting Daniel’s grave and plunged in, but her teeth started chattering as she blurted it out. “His name is Christophé, and I–I in–invited him to dinner.”

  “To dinner? A stranger to dinner! What could you be thinking?” Her mother reached for her arm and braced her up. “You are shivering!” Her mother sounded frantic. “Hurry, we must get you into some dry clothes and into bed. We will discuss this man later.”

  Weakness coursing through her, all Scarlett could do was allow her mother to take charge. She let her mother pull her through Stacia’s room, not even caring that her mother didn’t bother to be quiet. She bustled about Scarlett’s bedchamber, stoking up the fire, then came to pull the nightgown up and over Scarlett’s wet hair—thankfully not noticing the ragged hem—and handed her a towel. As soon as Scarlett was dressed, her mother led her to her bed, clucking at her and tucking her in. In moments Scarlett’s eyes dropped shut and she drifted in the first deep sleep she had had in months.

  A FEW HOURS later Stacia crept into the room with hot chocolate and scones. She rattled the tray enough to make Scarlett turn, sleepy-headed against her pillows.

  “Mother sent me to check on you. Can you eat a little?”

  Her sister’s concerned face made Scarlett’s heart skip a beat as the fact that they would be gone soon slammed into her. Dear Father, I am going to miss them so. She would live the last month of this pregnancy and the birth without them. Tears stung again, but she lowered her head and reached for the tray. “Thank you.”

  “You are crying!” Stacia planted the tray on the side table and reached for Scarlett’s hands. “Tell me.”

  Scarlett shook her head and leaned back into the pillows. She tried to stop the sadness racing down her cheeks in wet streams.

  Stacia gave her a moment—she was so wise for her years—simply picking up and stirring the chocolate in the cup and handing it to Scarlett. “Is it that we must go? I cannot imagine being left alone at a time like this. You are so brave.”

  Scarlett took a long swallow of the warm sweetness. She reached for Stacia’s hand and squeezed. “You will have to be braver than I. Mother will be a mess in Paris. You will have to navigate the politics, the horrid uprisings, and constant watching eyes. You will have to find the man who can save this family and one that you can love.”

  Stacia tossed back a lock of dark hair and smiled at her. “I have been waiting for this. My turn. Let me carry us this time.”

  Scarlett shook her head. “You are so young. I can’t bear it. Robespierre can’t be trusted. You must trust no one.”

  Stacia had tears in her eyes too, but her steel-blue depths held the passions and certainty of youth. “I will pray.”

  Scarlett drained the cup, holding on to its comfort. “Yes. As will I. Every day.”

  Stacia took the empty cup and passed Scarlett a delicate plate of light, flaky scones. “You didn’t go to the grave this morning, did you?”

  Scarlett’s eyes grew round. “How did you know?”

  “That man, in the street at the market. You have met him before.”

  “Yes.” She wouldn’t say more.

  “Who is he?”

  Scarlett took a giant bite and chewed slowly, assessing her sister. “He is a secret.”

  Stacia grinned. “I love secrets. Tell me.”

  Scarlett chuckled and downed another fluffy roll, her mouth so full she could only smile around it.

  “Tell me!”

  She swallowed. “You won’t tell Mother? Not anyone?”

  Stacia reared back in mock offense. “As if you couldn’t trust me!”

  “All right. All I will say is that his name is Christophé and he is in hiding . . . living in the old castle.”

  “Who is he? Why would he live there? It could come crumbling down upon his head while he sleeps! Is he a beggar?”

  “Of course not!” Though she wasn’t sure if that was true. “He is . . . he is . . . I don’t exactly know what he is except that he is a . . . scientist.”

  Stacia’s eyes grew round as she clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed. Then, seeing her sister’s serious face she stopped suddenly and gasped. “You love him!”

  “No!”

  “You do! I see it in your eyes. Even more than Daniel.”

  Scarlett let the words sink in. She stared at the third scone in her fingers, then put it slowly back down on the plate, which sat precariously on her belly. “I don’t know. I loved Daniel. But this is different. I feel . . . I feel I know him.” She looked up at her sister’s pretty face and grimaced. “But I really don’t know him at all.” She paused. “I think of him all the time. I want to see him . . . and when I’m with him, it is as if—” she shook her head at her sister, tears rising up again—“I feel I’ve come home.”

  “Oh, Scarlett.” Her sister gathered her into her arms. “Have a care. Have a care, my dear sister. From the sound of things, he could be anyone.”

  CHRISTOPHÉ FELL INTO a deep sleep beside his parchment. His head lay on his arms, the fire flickered out, and the room grew cold. But he dreamed of wide, luminous eyes and alabaster skin. Then he saw his sister, crying out to save him. And Scarlett, with her red lips, mouthing forgiveness to him . . . and then he saw them together, riding into Paris where Émilie cried out from another graveyard. Her voice was so strong. It cried out to them both—

  He awoke, sat up suddenly, chanting his sanity verse: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” He broke into a sob, half-awake and half-asleep. Her face was so clear—it seemed so real. He slid off the chair and onto the cold stone floor. “Help me, Lord
. Please, please, help.”

  AFTER HER SISTER left, Scarlett fell back into the pillows, her stomach full and contented. She thought of Christophé. Of that kiss. It had been little more than a touch of his lips to hers, but it had made her feel more than any intimacy she’d shared with Daniel. She thought back on the days after her wedding. They’d only had four months of marriage before he left for the battlefield in Nantes. Four months of confusion, sometimes hurt, sometimes anger.

  It was during that time she learned how the hand’s movement on the clock could seem interminable. There were days when she lifted her head at every carriage sound below her window in hopes that Daniel would walk through the door. But even when that finally happened, even when she tried to say something sweet enough or witty enough that he would come out of his world and notice her, it was as though she wasn’t even there.

  Daniel was passionate, but only about his street speeches to fire the citizens’ blood-thirst for revenge. The Révolution was his mistress, and Scarlett was beginning to hate it. In that world, there was no room for her at all. The clandestine meetings in her parlor, which she wasn’t allowed to attend. The speeches he sat up late at night to write while she blinked, alone, in the darkness of their bedroom. The faraway look in his eyes when she spoke of everyday things.

  It hadn’t taken more than a few weeks for her to fade into the background of his life.

  She tried one night to speak with Daniel, have him reassure her.

  He was turned on his side, away from her. He hadn’t touched her in weeks, but he wasn’t asleep and she felt brave enough that night to reach out and stroke the suppleness of the muscles of his arm with a light touch.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry, my dear. But this body is tired.”

  “Do you still love me?” She wished she could take the words back the moment they left her lips, but she waited to hear his answer.

  He turned over, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. “Of course.” He looked over at her, their gazes locking. “How can I make you understand?” He looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t belong to myself now. I belong to the Republic.”

  “You certainly don’t belong to me.”

  He looked back at her, his eyes bright with the passion of his beliefs. “Neither of us can belong to the other until this battle is fought and won. We must deny what we want for the greater good. Do you understand?”

  She’d nodded, but didn’t really. How was this liberty? What face wore the name freedom? But she agreed outwardly, determined to be better, demand less . . . let go of the man she’d only just won and begun to know.

  It was a bitter pill indeed. She’d met her prince. Married him within a fortnight of that meeting. But she grew up little by little, and in the process faced a sad realization:

  The world around her—and, more to the point, her world . . . her marriage—was nothing like she hoped it would be.

  Chapter Ten

  The household was in an uproar. They had two more weeks to prepare for the trip to Paris, and Scarlett had decided to have a dinner party.

  “Tell me again, Scarlett, why are we having this man to dinner?” Her mother turned from the stove, wiped curling tendrils of dark brown hair out her face and stared at Scarlett.

  Scarlett turned from lighting the candles on the elegantly set table. “Mother. I’ve explained it. He is a scientist. I met him in the graveyard where he walks every morning to—oh, I don’t know, to clear his head. He’s brilliant and so, so smart. And I like him. I think he could be a friend. And he has no family and barely eats.”

  “Probably can’t cook a carrot.” Her mother’s smile softened the complaint.

  Scarlett laughed. “Exactly. That’s why I have asked him to come here and have a good home-cooked meal.” Scarlett moved into the kitchen and took up a steaming bowl of leeks and greens and lentils savored with caraway seeds and butter. She leaned toward her mother as she passed by her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “He will be in raptures upon tasting your good cooking.”

  Her mother pressed her lips together, but more to suppress a smile than scold. “I suppose it will be good for us to extend some charity. He has no family? How did he come here?”

  Scarlett placed the heavy bowl on the table, one hand to her low back, which had been aching more and more of late, and sighed. “I don’t know all of his secrets yet, but—” she turned and smiled at her pretty mother—“I trust you will wrest them from him.”

  Her mother pulled steaming hot loaves of golden bread, made from their personal hoard of flour, from the oven. “You can depend on it, my dear.”

  They shared a glance, each knowing what the other was thinking. This man was something more to Scarlett than mere charity.

  A loud knock on the door had all three women pausing and shrieking. He was early! Stacia curtsied to her mother and sister, then smiled her cat’s smile. “Allow me.”

  She took off her apron on the way to the door, hanging it on a hook by the front door, smoothed back her straight dark hair and swung the door wide. Scarlett hurried behind her.

  He stood there, tall and darkly dressed in clothes that Scarlett could hardly credit to the meager belongings she’d seen thus far. He was dressed as a gentleman, as the Count he claimed to be, in dark blue satin from head to toe with a snow-white shirt complete with lacy, belled sleeves and an intricately tied cravat. He stepped inside, took off his hat with a flourish and brought, from behind his back, a delicate bouquet of cherry red poppies. He held them a bit awkwardly to his chest and then thrust them toward Scarlett’s mother. “I heard you liked the color.”

  She gasped, fluttered her eyelashes in a way that Scarlett had not seen in years, and reached for the flowers.

  “Welcome, to our humble home.” Scarlett’s mother waved him in, then turned and walked into the kitchen, holding the flowers like a prize from the fair. Over her shoulder she chattered, “Such lovely blooms! Wherever did you find them this time of year? Why, I thought poppies were all spent out, but they are one of my favorites.”

  Christophé placed his hat on a low side table and walked further into the room, his gaze never leaving Scarlett’s. “Why, good madam, I found fortune is all. I could not arrive empty handed.”

  Her mother started to say something, and then stopped and dug in the cupboards for a vase to place her prize in.

  Scarlett took advantage of the silence. “Christophé, this is my sister, Stacia. And my mother is Suzanne Bonham.”

  Christophé took up Stacia’s hand in his, leaned over it for a brush of a kiss and said, in such a gallant manner that Scarlett nearly threw back her head to laugh, “Stacia. So good to meet you.” He looked over her hand into her eyes, and Stacia giggled, looking toward Scarlett with a knowing twinkle.

  “How kind you are, sir, to grace us with your presence. Scarlett has talked of little else.”

  Christophé’s brows rose as he looked into Scarlett’s eyes. “Has she, now?”

  “Why, yes. We hear that you are a scientist and have a laboratory in the old Cité. Is it safe, do you think?” Stacia’s eyes were wicked with suppressed laughter.

  “I think your sister can answer that question, mademoiselle. She has, of late, been an assistant of sorts.”

  Scarlett glared at Christophé. “Dinner is ready. I hope you’ve brought your appetite along with your wit.” As she passed him to fetch more glasses she grasped his hand and squeezed it in warning.

  Christophé’s deep chuckle filled the room. The women all paused to hear the sound, for it had been too long since a man was about the place.

  They sat down to the laden table. Stacia reached out for the hands on either side of her and bowed her head. They all followed suit.

  “Dearest Lord,” Stacia began. “Thank You for Your bountiful goodness in this food and this company. Thank You for new friends and for loved ones that we will not forget. Thank You for Your provision as we travel to Paris and to meet our . . .” She paused, and Scarlett heard the emot
ion clogging her sister’s throat. “Our destiny. Thank You for Your care and love and fortitude in all our wanderings. Thank You for Christophé—I don’t know his surname Lord, but we thank You for Christophé. Amen.”

  There were boiled eels and quail in a lemon sauce, vegetables, hard to find this time of year, and fresh-baked bread still steaming as Suzanne took away the cloth and passed the basket. Then they brought out dumplings swimming in chicken broth with bits of chicken. There was so much. It was like a Christmas feast really, and Scarlett didn’t know how they had done it. There wasn’t that much in the cupboards; it had all just come together.

  After dinner they gathered in the sitting room.

  Scarlett’s mother inclined her head to Christophé as they settled into their chairs. “I am sorry we haven’t a bottle of sherry or anything to offer. I’m afraid the times have affected us as well.”

  “No need to apologize, madam. I am thankful for such a wonderful meal. It has been a long time since I’ve had such a good time among friends.”

  His deep voice was filled with a sadness that struck Scarlett’s heart. She wanted more than anything to reach out to him, but knew she couldn’t. Instead she lowered her gaze to her lap. “For us too.”

  Stacia, bright as always, stood suddenly and gasped. “Music! That is what we need.”

  They all looked at her, and she waved her hands and hurried up the stairs.

  “Whatever can she be about?”

  Scarlett could tell from her mother’s tone that, though she smiled, she was a bit embarrassed. “If I know Stacia, she has something in mind.” Scarlett smiled at Christophé.

  “Resourceful, is she?”

  “Oh. That’s the least of it,” Scarlett assured.

  They laughed and sipped their coffee until Stacia descended the stairs, a porcelain box in her hands. Scarlett smiled at her sister. It was a grand idea!

  On the bottom stair, though, Stacia tripped. In trying to regain her balance, the music box flew from her hands and landed in the middle of them. It bounced, broke, and then landed at Christophé’s feet. He slowly lifted the pieces into his cupped hands.