A Refuge Assured

by Jocelyn Green

  “Not exactly,” Monsieur Lemoine answered. “The revolution inspired the declaration.”

  The heat cut short a detailed history lesson. By the time they reached Market Street, Henri was flushed, and poor Martine’s complexion was mottled with peony-pink blotches. Hoping for a few degrees of relief, Vienne stepped beneath a tavern’s awning, and the rest of them followed.

  Matched horses clip-clopped over the cobblestones, a stately beginning to the celebration.

  “I can’t see!” Henri cried, releasing Vienne’s hand. When she turned, he was already gone.

  “Henri!” she shouted, and Martine’s face flooded with horror before they spied him scrambling up the few steps of the tavern to get a better look. Martine flew after him, and Vienne held back with Monsieur Lemoine while Martine scolded her son.

  He leaned close to her ear to be heard. “I hope you don’t mind. I told a friend he could meet us here.”

  The air was full of English, French, German, and the rich accents of slaves born in the West Indies. The gathered masses pressed them together. She laughed. “I hardly think I’ll notice another person.”

  “You’ll notice this one, I wager.” He looked toward Martine, who was waving them up the stairs. “Shall we?”

  Lifting the hem of her skirt above her ankles, Vivienne climbed the stone steps with Monsieur Lemoine right behind her.

  Following the sleek horses came veterans of the Continental Army in blue and buff uniforms, their faces red and glossy beneath their cocked black felt hats. Stars and Stripes billowed in the heat-laden breeze, while fife and drum played “Yankee Doodle.”

  Cheers erupted on both sides of the street, and Martine clutched Vivienne’s arm. The crowd. The shouts. They must have sounded like an angry mob to her ears. Vienne patted her hand, for no words could be heard over the roar. Discreetly, however, she pointed to Henri, whose eyes were alight as he watched, though he leaned on the iron railing for support. Lips pressed in a thin, tight line, Martine nodded. She would stay, enduring heat and clamor, for her boy.

  At the touch of Monsieur Lemoine’s hand on her elbow, Vienne turned her gaze back to the throng. A man was weaving his way toward them, a French émigré, judging by his embroidered silk suit. When he looked up, her breath hitched.

  “Armand?” she said to Monsieur Lemoine. “Your friend is Armand de Champlain?”

  His smile was sheepish. “He told me not to tell you.”

  Eyebrows spiking in his aristocratic brow, Armand waved, then continued jostling his way toward her, his blue suit shimmering like the sun-sparked ocean. She sighed. When she was a child, she would watch the men in the street, wondering which of them might be her father. From the safety of her imagination, she shopped for a papa—or at least an uncle, by way of marriage to Tante Rose—the way ladies shopped for jewelry. She was looking for a man who was brilliant and dazzling, but even more important, a man of integrity. A man who was honorable, through and through.

  She would not have chosen Armand. And yet here he was, clicking up the tavern steps in silver-buckled shoes, ornately carved cane in his pale hand. He gave a firm handshake to Monsieur Lemoine, a gallant bow to Martine and a kiss to her fingertips. Another handshake for Henri. The smile he offered Vivienne was tentative, a reflection of her own restraint, perhaps, as she gathered her manners about her.

  He bowed to her but did not reach for her hand, as he had for Martine’s. “I would speak to you, Vivienne. Somewhere I can be heard.”

  How easy it would be to look away from the entreaty in his eyes. If she allowed the crowd to overwhelm his presence, if she could submerge herself instead into her new life, her new country, she might be able to ignore the pain that accompanied his person. For to face Armand was to face rejection. Her own, and Sybille’s—and the family he betrayed. To Vienne, he was a reminder that she had been unloved and unwanted.

  “Vivienne?” he tried again.

  Before she could respond, a commotion on Market Street caught her eye. A tangle of men jumped into the parade behind the veterans’ band, red sashes at the waists of their red-and-white-striped trousers. Their red, white, and blue flag was not American, and they were celebrating not just July 4 but July 14, as well: the fête nationale celebrating French revolutionaries’ taking of the Bastille. The sans-culottes waved red caps on poles and marched and shouted and sang.

  The crowd went wild. But were they for the French Revolution or against it? Or were the shouts merely in support of the French, whose fleet hemming in the British at Yorktown had helped the Americans win their own revolution?

  Martine seized Vivienne’s arm again. “We’re going,” she mouthed.

  Monsieur Lemoine half shouted, “I’ll escort you back to the pension.”

  Vienne began following Martine down the steps, but Armand’s hand caught her wrist. “Stay, I beg of you.”

  Martine, Henri, and Sebastien were already disappearing into the crowd, but Armand held her firm, and standing on the steps of the tavern, they caught the eye of one of the sans-culottes.

  “Aristocrats to the lampposts!” he shouted. “Long live the French Republic! Join the war for liberty! Death to tyrants!”

  The words were ice picks in Vivienne’s ears. Chills raced over her skin despite the sodden heat.

  Laughing, the rogues flung insults, then rocks and handfuls of horse manure at them. Vienne stepped back as Armand banged his cane on the railing and raised his fist, his shouts weak and lonely against a sea of so many others. One sans-culotte downed the last of his drink, then smashed the bottle on the street. With a sloppy grin, he plucked up the shards of glass and hurled them at Armand.

  Vivienne’s arms bent over her head as bottle fragments flew toward them. Then came the bright sound of breaking glass and a rush of air that smelled of coffee and eggs and bacon grease.

  Shouts crashed against the jeers. The door behind her flung open, and a strong arm cinched her waist, pulling her inside. Armand stumbled in, as well, and the door slammed shut again.

  Pulse throbbing, Vienne felt sun-blinded until her vision recovered enough to recognize the man who’d pulled her to safety. The hand still on her shoulder belonged to none other than the American veteran she’d met at the Binghams’ party, William Delaney. The man who favored liberty and freedom above all.

  “Mademoiselle Rivard? Are you hurt?” The concern in his tone surprised her.

  She shook her head, awash with relief that at least Martine and Henri had been spared that scene. Mr. Delaney released her and angled toward Armand, who was sputtering beside her.

  A tall woman with copper hair looked out the window, fists on her aproned hips. “What in the name of all the saints in Christendom is going on out there? Another one of them so much as lifts a finger in my direction, Finn, you have my permission to blow it right off!”

  “’Twould be my pleasure!” came a voice from outside. Through the broken window, Vienne caught a glimpse of a man holding a gun to his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry about your window,” she managed to say.

  Mr. Delaney shepherded Vienne and Armand away from the door. “As if it were you who broke it. Never mind Tara and Finn. They enjoy getting mad, and they aren’t upset with you. Besides, the pane can be replaced.”

  A curse fell from Armand’s lips. Wincing, he cradled his right arm. The silk sleeve was sliced open, the hanging shred of fabric blooming a darkening shade of red.

  Vienne stepped forward to inspect it. The gash on his forearm was not long, but deep.

  Tara rounded on them, her milky complexion paling further still. “Ach. Is it bad? We have bandages.” With broad, strong cheekbones, her face was honest, if not refined.

  “I’m afraid we’ll need more than that.” Vienne watched Armand’s face. “Stitching.”

  Tara covered her mouth.

  “You’ll have to excuse my sister.” Mr. Delaney swiped a clean napkin from a nearby table and pressed it to Armand’s arm. “Never could stand the sight of blood.
Nor the suggestion of it.”

  Vienne thanked him and took over holding the cloth to Armand’s wound. “If we could exit from the alley door—”

  “Will you not stay and call a doctor?” Tara asked from a safe distance.

  The front door swung open to admit a lean, blond man with a musket in his hands. Finn, Mr. Delaney had called him. With one appraising eye, he seemed to assess the situation.

  “No need, my pension isn’t far.” Vienne kept her hand clamped over Armand’s arm, though the cotton grew warm beneath her palm.

  “The rascals have moved on, but they could still be lurking about, eager to pounce on wounded prey.” Finn leaned his musket against the wall. “I’m sure Tara has what you need right here.”

  “Then I’ll stitch you up posthaste,” Vienne told Armand.

  His brow creased. “You would do that? Ma foi! I don’t require this of you.”

  “I was a lacemaker for the queen,” she reminded him. “I believe I can handle a needle and thread.”

  “And I confess I never could. Not even for a sampler, to my dear mother’s everlasting dismay. I’ll send up what you need!” Tara called over her shoulder as she hustled from the room.

  Mr. Delaney ushered Vienne and Armand out of the dining hall and down a long central hallway toward the rear of the tavern. He glanced at her. “I thought you were an aristocrat fleeing for your life.”

  “Half correct,” she said. “I did flee for my life. But I’ve worked since I was a child.” If he’d intended to disguise his astonishment, he failed. “Should I be flattered or insulted that this surprises you?”

  Rather than answer, he called back to Finn to bring some whiskey to the yard in the rear, then opened the door and led them out. Rubbing a hand over his jaw, he glanced around. “You would rather sit for the procedure, yes? I’ll be but a moment.”

  While he ducked back into the tavern, she tucked the lace at her elbows up into her sleeves, then helped Armand remove his coat. The gold embroidery on his vest shone in the corner of her eye as she rolled his linen sleeve above his elbow, refolded the napkin, and placed it over the wound once more.

  Armand winced. “Hang the sans-culottes,” he muttered. A grasshopper flitted among the blades of grass near his shoes. “I have missed you.”

  “You miss Sybille. You don’t know me.” Her voice was calm.

  “I miss you both. And I would like nothing more than to know you better. But you—”

  Mr. Delaney and Finn returned, bringing an end to the exchange. They set ladder-back chairs on the ground. With them came a woman with skin the color of walnuts, her black hair bound up in a red kerchief. After spreading an apron over Vienne’s lap, she extended a threaded needle. “Boiled it myself. I’m Rachel, by the way. I do the cookin’ for Miss Tara here at Four Winds. I do a great many other things, too.”

  Briefly, Vienne made introductions while Mr. Delaney peeled the napkin from Armand’s skin. Bottle in hand, Finn came forward, his body sinewy and taut, a strung bow arcing over the émigré clutching his cane.

  “Drink.” After Armand obeyed, Finn poised the bottle above the wound. “Mind you keep your tongue free of your teeth, now. You’ll feel a pinch.”

  Armand held his arm away from his body, over the grass-tufted earth. “Do it.” Whiskey splashed into his wound and onto the ground. The cords of his neck tightened with the force of the groan he trapped.

  “Mercy.” Rachel backed away.

  Swallowing, Vienne untied the ribbon beneath her chin, lifted her straw hat from her hair, and hooked it on the back of her chair. She leaned forward and with one hand squeezed the edges of sliced flesh together. The arm in her grip had embraced Sybille, then clasped his own wife to himself. Inwardly, Vienne recoiled at the feel of his skin against hers.

  Shoving the thoughts aside, she began to stitch.

  The silver needle winked in the sun as it pierced Armand’s skin. Vivienne pulled the thread through and adjusted her grip on his arm, slick with blood and whiskey, the smells unsettling her stomach. Mercifully, a broad, tanned hand gripped Armand’s arm to help reunite what the glass had separated. Mr. Delaney, on his knees beside her chair. Finn leaned against the well, carrying on in Armand’s ear, no doubt trying to distract him. Rachel stood in the background, flapping her apron to create a breeze, prayers lifting from her lips in quiet bursts.

  Sweat trickled from Vienne’s hairline as she worked with fingers quick and sure. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, grimacing.

  “Don’t be.” Armand panted between stitches. “Go on.”

  With his free hand, Mr. Delaney dug a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to Vienne’s brow before the sweat dripped into her eyes.

  Nodding her thanks, she continued until the work was done. “Finished.” She released a pent-up breath and knotted the thread as Armand, too, exhaled. “Well done,” she told him, for he’d managed the pain as well as one could.

  Rachel stepped forward again to snip the slender strand, then produced a small pot that smelled strongly of some herbal ointment Vienne didn’t recognize. “It’ll aid the healing. Keep it from sticking to the linen.” Tenderly, she dabbed salve on the puckered skin and stitches before Vienne wound a fresh bandage around Armand’s arm.

  He grunted when she tied it, then sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Merci,” he whispered.

  Mr. Delaney brushed the dirt from the knees of his trousers as he stood.

  Rising, Vienne gathered the apron from her lap and handed it back to Rachel. “Thank you. Thanks to all of you.”

  “Stay a moment. Tara told me to fetch her once the sewing up was done,” Mr. Delaney said. “Then, when you’re ready, I’d like to escort you back.”

  She agreed, and he turned and walked back into the tavern, followed by Rachel and Finn.

  Armand leaned back in his chair, as wilted as the lace at his neck, his face twisted in obvious pain. Wind ruffled through the branches overhead. With nothing more to say, Vienne went to the well and washed her hands before donning her straw hat and sitting again.

  He sighed. “This was not the encounter I hoped to share with you today. I’m embarrassed to be in this state. That you would soil your fingers with this task is almost unbearable.”

  “My fingers have been ‘soiled’ before.” But Armand wouldn’t want to know the extent of Sybille’s humbled condition. And it would certainly bring Vienne no comfort to explain it.

  “Sybille hurt you. So have I. And yet you have tended to us both. I am sorry, Vivienne, for your burdens, especially those I myself have heaped upon you. Many are my mistakes.” He looked away, squinting, perhaps, into a past that haunted them both.

  A cloud drifted in the sky, a scarf of gauze diffusing the sun’s golden rays. His fist tight on his cane, Armand looked at the white linen swathing his forearm. “Could any miracle of stitching thread my life and yours into the same fabric? Need we be estranged forever?”

  Vivienne swallowed against the ache in her throat. Oh, how she had longed for a father as a child, and even as an adolescent. But the time for reconciliation was long past. “I am fully eight and twenty.”

  “Ah, ma chère. One is never too old for a father’s love. Nor is one too old for a daughter’s.”

  Tears of frustration gathered on her lashes. She untucked the lace from her sleeves and smoothed her gown from her waist with shaking hands. Her spirit rolled like a schooner on angry seas until Tante Rose’s oft-repeated words came back to anchor her. “You are not forsaken. You are mine, and you are God’s. Rest secure in that Father’s love.”

  “Please,” Armand whispered. “Don’t pretend I don’t exist.”

  At this, Vienne lifted her chin and speared him with her gaze. “Forgive me, monsieur, but it was you who pretended I’d never been born. Is it not so?”

  He flinched as though she’d struck him. “And what would you have had me do? Bring you home to my wife and children?”

  “So you knew of me. And ignored me,
just as Sybille did.”

  His jowls quivered as he shook his head. “I sent money for your upbringing every month, faithfully, until you came of age.”

  “Faithful, were you?” There was ice in her tone.

  Armand huffed. “It was more than any other man in my position would do for his—”

  She drew up straight in her chair, nostrils flaring, silently daring him to lay that ugly label upon her.

  “It was more than I was expected to do,” he finished.

  Vivienne squeezed her hands together on her lap. It was for family, not money, that she had wished upon every falling star. But Armand and Sybille were not the parents she’d longed for. She drew a fortifying breath. “Your wife’s children.” Her mouth turned to cotton. “My half-siblings. What are their names?”

  Shadows deepened beneath his eyes. “This is so unpleasant. Must we?”

  “If I acknowledge you, I acknowledge them. They are my blood, by half. I will never meet them, but I wish . . . I wish to know about them, at least.” As she had wished to be known, as well.

  The heat grew oppressive, even in the dappled shade of an elm. The heady scent of lilies puddled in the air, mixing with odors of spoiled food and dishwater wafting from the alley trench. With slow strokes, she fanned mosquitoes away and willed her heart to calm.

  “Gustave is one and twenty. Angelique is seventeen. Hyacinthe returned to heaven before she could say her name without a lisp.” Armand adjusted his hat on his head. “She was spared so much heartache. She was the lucky one.”

  Tears rose and fell as quickly as she wiped them away. After all these years considering herself an only child, if not an orphan, hearing her siblings’ names unleashed something inside her. Something tender and raw and unrelenting. “Do they know about me?”

  Armand’s lips pressed tight, as if to lock away the answer written plainly on his face. With manicured fingers, he worried the buttons of his vest. A terrible sadness issued from the ballooning silence, pressing the air from Vienne’s lungs.

  She stood and turned from him, one fist gripping the back of her chair. Head bowed, shoulders shaking, she wept silently for Gustave, Angelique, and little Hyacinthe, the family she never had. This reunion with Armand, this bungling attempt to sew the rift between them with mere words and what-ifs and wishes—this did not feel like the hurt of healing. It was the pain of being ripped apart anew.