A Refuge Assured

by Jocelyn Green

  “I can see it,” Mr. Delaney said. “If you come visit me and the lads, I’m happy to give you a hand. Bring Mademoiselle, too.” He smiled.

  So did Henri. He loved whittling with Mr. Delaney before the parlor fire, with Mr. Fortune and Mr. O’Brien there, too. Mademoiselle usually made lace on her pillow. Sometimes one of them would pick up a book and read aloud. But mostly, Henri looked forward to having help carving the horse. He still felt awful about losing Bucephalus and wanted his gift to be ready in time. Wouldn’t Louis-Charles be impressed when he learned Henri made it himself?

  “When will you all come to our house in the evening?” Henri asked. Last time they paid a visit to Mr. Fortune’s house, Mr. O’Brien’s lungs still sounded gravelly.

  “Everyone is welcome, of course.” Vivienne poured her cherry mixture slowly into her pastry-lined pans. To Henri, she added, “But it’s still not good for Mr. O’Brien to be out in the cold, even to come to this house. Hopefully his cough will clear before too long.”

  “Are his feet better yet?” Henri rolled his ankles under the table, trying to imagine they were frozen blocks of flesh.

  Mr. Delaney opened the oven door while Vivienne slid in her tarts. “He lost a few toes this week. But he had ten to begin with, so he’ll get around just fine real soon. After all, he’s made do with just one eye.” He shut the oven.

  Henri paused to consider this, sorry that Mr. O’Brien kept losing his body parts. Handing his slate to his teacher, Henri hopped down from the bench and walked about with one eye closed, toes curled inside his shoes, to see for himself what it was like. It felt funny. He stumbled a bit, balance thrown off, but he still made it over to the pegs on the wall, where he tugged on his cloak and hat.

  Mr. Delaney chuckled at Henri’s experiment, but as he looked over the slate, he could find no fault with his work.

  Good. It was hard being so well behaved all the time, but this was the bargain Henri had made with God, and he wasn’t going to forget it. He hoped God wouldn’t, either. Please bring Louis-Charles back to me, he prayed again and pulled his boots over his feet. “Coming?”

  “Of course.” Mr. Delaney tapped a smudge of flour from Mademoiselle’s nose before pulling his own cloak off its peg. “We’ll be back before dark,” he told her, picking up the snowshoes.

  When they left Vivienne, her cheeks were red. She shouldn’t stand so close to the fire.

  Like water wearing down a canyon, Vivienne and Henri were eroding Liam’s boundaries, their presence coursing through his life in ways he didn’t expect.

  Or mind.

  Sconces illuminated Jethro’s parlor beyond the firelight’s reach, casting halos upon the whitewashed walls. Liam sat in a wooden chair of his own making, Henri standing at his side, watching him whittle. Across the braided rug from them, Vivienne bent her head over the lacemaking pillow in her lap. With a ready smile, she looked up from the bobbins dancing between her hands whenever Henri had more progress to show her.

  The boy took his wood to where Jethro and Finn were hunched over a game of chess. “What do you think that is?” he asked.

  Jethro leaned back, taking the object in his broad hand. “Well now! Could be wrong, of course, but I do believe . . .” He glanced at Liam, who scratched the side of his nose. “The muzzle,” Jethro proclaimed triumphantly.

  “Correct!” Henri cried. “Do you see it, too, Mr. O’Brien?”

  “Aye, lad.” He paused to clear his throat. “You’ll out-whittle ol’ Liam there in no time.”

  Looking pleased as a peacock, Henri resumed his spot on the rug before the fire. Vivienne caught Liam’s eye with a gleam in her own. Shaking her head, she concealed a laugh, then looked down at her work again.

  “Make your move, man!” Finn boomed as Jethro brooded over the board. After weeks of brooding himself, Finn’s outburst was a good sign, more in keeping with his natural temperament. Between the illness in his lungs, the frostbite in his toes, and all that the Whiskey Rebellion had entailed, he’d had much to recover from. And as much as Liam sympathized with the loss of Finn’s home, he was grateful that his cousin was recuperating here, away from influences that might have steered him toward revenge. Granted, there were fools enough among the laborers who worked at Asylum, Derek and Ernest Schultze topping the list. But under Liam’s watchful eye, surely Finn would mature beyond their sway.

  “Check,” Jethro said, and it was Finn’s turn to contemplate his next move. Not something that had ever come easy to him, even when they were kids.

  Liam pulled his chair closer to Vivienne’s. A mess of silk threads splayed from the pins stuck in her pillow. How she managed to weave those strands into such intricate patterns defied his understanding. “Making lace is a lot like whittling, isn’t it?” He kept his face blank as he teased her.

  Her eyebrow popped up. “In what way?”

  “Well, with whittling, we carve away the excess wood to free the art locked inside. That’s what Michelangelo said once about carving marble, anyway, and I agree with him.”

  “Aye, you and Michelangelo, the best of friends, always seeing eye to eye on art!” Finn ribbed. “And how is that like making lace?”

  “It’s similar, because with lace, you . . . you . . .”

  Game forgotten between them, Jethro and Finn stared at Liam expectantly. They looked about ready to burst.

  “Ain’t a blessed thing like about it!” Jethro hooted. “You couldn’t do what she does in a million years.”

  Finn slapped the table, bouncing some chess pieces out of their squares.

  Liam and Vienne joined their laughter. “They’re right,” he confessed. “It’s not at all the same, except for the fact that we both make something with our hands. How did you ever learn it?”

  “My Tante Rose taught me when I was a child.” A smile slowly curved her lips.

  “She raised you, didn’t she? You mentioned her before. What was she like?”

  Vivienne’s hands slowed a notch but kept moving. “Wonderful.” She slipped into French, perhaps without realizing it, as she spoke her memories. Sipping chocolate together at outdoor cafés. Filling vases in their shop with white roses. Making lace while strolling violinists played Mozart in the public gardens of the Palais-Royal. “When the Jacobins killed her, I lost the only person in the world who really knew me and loved me.”

  Liam was not sure if her voice was serrated from love or anger or grief, or all three. “How did you get out?”

  “The grace of God.” The bobbins flew between her fingers.

  “Tell him about Félix!” Henri came between them, the unformed horse in his hand. Of course Vienne and Henri would have shared their escape stories, and many other memories of which Liam could form only the barest concept.

  “Yes, tell me about Félix.” Liam coached Henri on his whittling before resuming work on his own project. The child crossed his legs on the floor by Vienne’s skirt.

  Her eyes remained on her work. “Félix is the man who let me get away. I rode in a market wagon to leave the city and was stopped like everyone else at the barricade. They were searching for enemies to the revolution, which, as a lacemaker, included me.”

  “But would they have known that by looking at you?” Liam asked.

  “Not unless they already knew me and knew my trade. The inspector assigned to my wagon was such a man. Félix and I grew up together. We were friends once, and he let me pass.”

  “More than friends,” Liam guessed. For what man would not have wanted more with Vivienne?

  “He courted me but proved faithless, just as Armand—” She stopped, laying down her bobbins and folding her hands. “Félix was not courting me during the revolution. We had broken it off before then, and glad I was of that, for he proved as untrue to his country as he had been to me.”

  “Untrue? In what way?” Finn abandoned the chessboard, swiveling in his chair to face her.

  “Like so many other revolutionaries, he disguised his love of self with a claim
for love of liberty.”

  Liam caught Finn’s eye and stayed him with a look, for her comment was a spark that could ignite him. In truth, Liam’s own blood began to warm.

  “Félix said he loved me, but he loved his own ideals more than anything else. The liberty he worshipped included the freedom to take a secret lover while courting me. It was for liberty’s sake that he turned his back on the teachings of the Church, calling them too confining. And it was for the liberty of ‘the people’ that he became a citizen soldier working for the Committee of Public Safety, which sent to the guillotine people who did not agree with them. Félix cast off moral authority as easily as he threw off the monarchy’s rule. And so you see, it was only the grace of God that kept him from detaining me that day at the barricade. For certainly he was ‘at liberty’ to arrest me.”

  Liam tried not to chafe at the equation of liberty and moral failure. He strained to focus on her personal experiences, but despite his best efforts, he felt a thin veil of judgment drape the room.

  “What of us, then?” Firelight flickered in Finn’s eye. “All three men here fought for liberty, too, though it’s true we cut off no heads to do it. Do you say we fought for selfish gain? Out of moral corruption?”

  Vivienne met his gaze. “I say nothing of the kind for your American Revolution. You fought a conventional war, and you won.”

  When she did not tack on a commentary about the Whiskey Rebellion, Liam relaxed a bit and put blade to wood once more. He glanced at Jethro and wondered how he felt about white people talking about liberty for white people, when countless souls had none at all, just for the color of their skin.

  Finn gave a huzzah and burst into a racking cough. An elbow over his mouth, he hobbled out of the room. Jethro bade them a good night and followed him.

  Sympathy etched Henri’s brow as he inclined his ear to Finn’s coughing. “Mr. O’Brien would be so much worse if he was in jail right now, wouldn’t he?”

  “He would.”

  The boy nodded. “Then it’s good you rescued him. When I grow up, I want to be like you and Robin Hood. I want to do what’s right, no matter what the law says.”

  Eyebrows plunging, Vivienne pressed her lips together. “Henri, it is important to obey the law. Isn’t that right, Mr. Delaney?”

  “Then why did he take Mr. O’Brien away before they could put him in jail?”

  Liam rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated, lad.”

  “For a boy, it is not. Rulers are to be respected, for their office alone, if nothing else. The law is to be obeyed.” Vienne leaned toward Liam, a curl swaying near her cheek. The aroma of the cherry tarts she’d been baking wafted from her dress. “Remember, his father was killed by those who defied both order and authority.”

  “Those were bad men who did that,” Henri protested. “Mr. Delaney is a good man.”

  “Sometimes even good men make bad decisions.” Her voice was soft but cutting.

  Bristling, Liam felt the rebuttal gathering on his tongue. “You refer to French revolutionaries now? Or to me? Or maybe to Armand, for surely you don’t agree with every choice he’s made?”

  Henri frowned. “I guess Mr. Delaney knows which laws should be followed and which ones shouldn’t. And there are some laws which should not have been passed. Right?”

  Liam scraped at the wood in his hand. “I would say so.”

  The wrong thing to say.

  In a flash, Vivienne gathered up her work and tucked it into her basket. She rose, and Liam stood, too, leaving his whittling project and knife on the chair. “In the future, Mr. Delaney, I would thank you to restrict your lessons for Henri to his official schooling and leave his moral education to me.”

  “His moral education?”

  Her nostrils flared. He’d hit a nerve. Well, so had she.

  “If anyone’s got the right to be offended just now—”

  “Ah, yes. More talk of rights. Forgive me, Liam, but I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime. Henri, we’re going.”

  “Vivienne. Not like this.” He held her by the shoulders until she looked at him.

  “And why not?” she said at length.

  “Because tomorrow I’m going, too.” And another two weeks would pass, at least, before he’d return. Blast these winter trips to the capital. Since he had switched trips with the rider who had been ill, Liam had been able to stay in Asylum since bringing Finn back. But his turn had come again.

  “Then Godspeed. Give Tara and Rachel my best.” Vienne twisted from his hold, assuring him she needed no escort back.

  Moments later, Liam stood in an empty parlor before a fire that sputtered behind its grate. He scooped up the wood he’d been whittling, the rough edges sharp against his thumb. Maybe Michelangelo had been wrong. Not every mess held something beautiful inside. He stepped toward the fire and tossed his half-shaped wood into the flames.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Asylum, Pennsylvania

  March 1795

  Winter in Asylum proved severe, but it was a savagery not without beauty. February passed in pearlescent splendor. Snowdrifts dazzled like crushed diamonds in the sun, and ice encrusted trees with crystal. The stillness of winter in the wilderness was like nothing Vivienne had ever known. Still haunted by the lost signet ring, she took comfort in the settlement’s isolation. The remoteness means safety, she told herself. This is asylum, indeed. Most of the time, she and Henri were cocooned in warmth and light with books and baking, whittling and lacemaking, and with their landless American neighbors.

  A wry smile curved her lips when she recalled how strongly Sebastien had argued that Henri needed a man in his life. Well, now the boy had plenty, even without a hasty marriage to the eager Monsieur Lemoine. Fleetingly, she wondered if she’d ever see Sebastien again. She could not imagine him in this setting, for all his sparkling words about the place. And now that she was here in this isolated hamlet, she could not imagine leaving.

  Liam did enough of that for both of them, and Vivienne did more than her share of looking for his return. She should not have said so much when last they were together. Or perhaps she should have said more. And now he was gone. Could he be arrested, she wondered, for snatching Finn the last time he was in Philadelphia? Worry made a cold companion.

  She closed the curtains in the dining house as night blotted out the blank expanse of snow. At six o’clock, the first week of March, the sun had already set.

  Henri sat at the table and surveyed their meager spread. Bread made with rice, since there was no more wheat flour, baked beans, and smoked pork chops, the latter a gift from Mr. Fortune.

  She bowed her head and prayed over the meal.

  “And please bring Mr. Delaney and Louis-Charles home to us soon,” Henri added, as he did every night.

  A knock at the door, and Henri’s fork clattered to his plate. “Mr. Delaney!” he cried and bounded from the table to greet him.

  Vivienne rose, pulse quickening, as Henri opened the door. But it was Armand instead of Liam on the threshold, holding a hatbox, and she felt her relief snuff out.

  “May I come in, monsieur?” Armand bowed to Henri but looked past him to Vivienne. The age that showed in the sag of his earlobes had not yet taken the aristocratic grace with which he moved. His back was straight. His shoulders, though thin, did not slouch.

  “But of course.” Henri stepped back, and Armand entered, bringing a raw wet wind in with him. He set the box on the floor near the door, its lid slightly askew, then hung his cloak and hat on a peg.

  Staying, then. Vienne sighed.

  “You don’t take meals at the Grand Maison.” Armand smoothed his graying hair back into his queue, then straightened his lavender silk waistcoat. “But I can see you’re not suffering for that.”

  She knew she should invite him to dine, so she placed another setting on the table before resuming her seat. “You know as well as I do that children are not welcome there. And we get along fine on our own.”

&nb
sp; “I expected nothing less of you.” Smiling, Armand sat and helped himself to a serving of pork. His cutlery scraped his plate as he cut through the pink meat. “You are comfortable here?”

  “I am well provided for. I’d be more comfortable if my gain was not Mr. Delaney’s loss.” But Vivienne had no appetite to talk in circles about this property tonight. She told Henri to serve himself before she spooned beans onto her own plate.

  “How are you this evening, Monsieur de Champlain?” Henri asked, displaying manners she seemed to lack at the moment.

  “I can’t complain. But I am a little lonely.” The embroidery that ran like a vine among his buttons swayed as he reached to pour himself a drink.

  “You are?” the boy asked. “Have you no friends here? Father Gilbert seems very nice. And Monsieur Sando, the silk merchant. Or would you rather a count? Count du Page?”

  Armand sipped his wine. “All fine men, indeed. But I really wanted to see you. I brought you something.” His gaze slid to Vivienne.

  She swallowed and let her napkin drop beside her plate. “Armand, you really, truly shouldn’t have.” Their relationship was muddied enough as it was. A personal gift would do nothing at all to clear it.

  But when Armand lifted the lid of the hatbox, it was to Henri he showed the contents.

  A cry of wonder burst from the child. “For me?” he gasped, and then turned sideways in his chair to lift a tiny, mewling ball of gray fluff from the box. “A kitten for me?”

  “If your—If Vivienne says it’s all right, of course.”

  As if she could say no now. Not that she was tempted to in the least.

  Vivienne left her dinner to see the kitten for herself. With the tip of her finger, she stroked the silken fur between its ears, laughing with Henri over its tiny nose and paws. “You’ll have to take good care of her, mon cher. You don’t happen to know anything about cats now, do you?”

  “Oh, mais oui! There were cats everywhere, just everywhere in Versailles! Dogs, too, but they were so noisy. I’m very good with animals, you know.” Cupping one hand beneath the kitten’s hind legs, he held her close, and she promptly fell asleep. “Thank you, monsieur. Thank you. I will name her . . . Madame Fishypaws.”