A Refuge Assured

by Jocelyn Green

  Vivienne rolled her lips between her teeth to catch her laughter.

  “It suits her, for she will grow to love fish, I’m sure of it.” Armand’s smile creased his face. “We found this little one all alone in the visitors’ stable. No telling what happened to the mother, but she hasn’t come back for it in too long.”

  A look of solemn understanding came over Henri. “Ah. So her parents are dead. She’s an orphan.”

  “Not if you take her.” Armand slipped his finger under the kitten’s paw. “I thought you might enjoy having a little friend of your own. Something to care for, yes?”

  “Yes.” Henri dropped a kiss between the kitten’s ears. “My friend is coming. Madame Fishypaws will keep me company until then.” Thoughtfully, he looked to Armand. “Would you mind very much, Monsieur de Champlain, if I give her to Louis-Charles when he comes?”

  Armand placed his hand on Henri’s shoulder. “Young man, what a fine notion. If that would make you happy, then that is what you should do.”

  “He loves cats as much as me. And in prison, I don’t suppose he got to see a single one.”

  Vivienne’s hand went to the pang in her chest. “No, Henri. I don’t suppose he did.”

  Smiling, Henri slipped down from the table. “She’s very small, you see, and so she would like to be near the heat.” He paused. “Oh—may I?” With Vivienne’s permission, he abandoned his food and sat cross-legged on the rug before the fire.

  Vivienne watched him cradle the tiny creature and turned back to Armand. “Thank you. You surprised me tonight.”

  “Then I consider this a good night, indeed.” Seating himself at the table once more, he refilled his cup of wine and raised it. “To surprising you. In a good way.”

  In spite of everything, she laughed.

  “You’re doing so well with the child, Vivienne. He is thoughtful and courteous, a marvel considering what he’s been through. He is fortunate to have you.”

  Vienne smiled. “We are fortunate to have each other.”

  Quietly, they ate together, until she gathered her courage and asked, “Are you lonely for your family, Armand?”

  His scraggly eyebrows shot up before lowering back into place. “And now it is you who surprises me, Vivienne.” A sadness flowed into his voice. “Yes. If I am truthful, I miss them more than I can say.”

  She took a sip of wine, swallowed, and prayed for grace. “You loved your children very much, didn’t you? You miss Angelique and Gustave.”

  He rubbed the stem of his goblet with his thumb. “Hyacinthe, too. And their mother. And yours.”

  Her glance swept over Henri and his kitten before returning to the careworn face before her. She forced herself to see the pain in his eyes, to acknowledge that he had experienced loss and grieved the loved ones no longer in his life. He was imperfect—selfish, stubborn, and given to carnal temptation. But a villain? Perhaps not.

  “You must know, Vivienne, that your mother missed you, too.”

  She wiped a napkin over her mouth before she could call him false. Instead, she asked, “When was that?”

  “More than she admitted, I’m sure. There were two times, in particular, that I recall.” He inclined his head. “Shall I go on?”

  The armor over her heart screwed tighter. “Do.”

  “Once when you were eight. She had just met you for the first time since placing you as a baby in Rose’s arms. You were so bright and so—wholesome, Sybille said. Yes, that was the word. Wholesome. Just shining with innocence, like an angel. You lavished attention on her, though she felt she didn’t deserve it. Over ice cream, was it?”

  Le Caveau. Chocolate ice cream. White lace.

  “Well. She knew then that placing you in her sister’s care was the best thing she could have done for you. Sybille was too far down her own road to ever hope to make amends—these were her own words, understand—and she knew she ought to stay away from you from then on. She felt she would be a polluting influence on you.” He rubbed a hand over his face and looked into the distance.

  An ache swelled within Vienne. “Did she?”

  “Yes. I didn’t like hearing that she suddenly felt soiled, of course. I loved her with a passion and didn’t want to think that acting on it was a sin. Forgive me, Vivienne, but I didn’t want to think of a little girl without parents. I told her I didn’t want to hear about you again.”

  The air went out of Vivienne’s lungs. Her hands functioned separately from her mind, twisting her napkin in her lap, refolding it. She might have taken another sip of wine to hide the tremble of her lips, but if so, it was like one in a deep fog, for Armand’s words clouded everything around her.

  “I was wrong.” His voice pierced through. “God help me, I was wrong in so many ways. And she did talk about you again. I was tired, and Hyacinthe had just died, but I didn’t tell Sybille that. All she could talk about was that she had seen you through the window of Rose’s shop. She hadn’t dared to go in. It was enough for her to see the poised young lady you had grown into. You were consulting with a patron, perhaps. Bah.” He waved his hand. “I don’t recall how it went.”

  But Vivienne did. She had seen Sybille on the other side of the glass and recognized her at once, for her own reflection matched so nearly the image of her mother. “You don’t serve courtesans like her, do you?” a patron inside had asked. It was the first time Vienne understood what Sybille did and why Vienne had come into this world. By mistake.

  Armand kept talking. “I was grieving the loss of my own girl. I didn’t want to hear about any other. Even though you were as much mine as Hyacinthe and Angelique ever were. The fact that I didn’t claim you—until too late—does not change that fact. And you deserve to know that Sybille loved you in the only way she knew how. By staying away.”

  Until she didn’t. For Sybille had come back to visit Tante Rose a couple of times, and then returned during the revolution to help Vivienne and Rose both.

  Armand pushed back his plate and leaned forward, the lace at his throat quivering as he spoke. “You should know that the note you intercepted—the one inviting Sybille to Le Havre? It was not the first one I’d sent. I had asked her to leave Paris, if not the country, right before the monarchy fell. She refused, Vivienne, because you and Rose were there. She wanted to be near you more than she wanted to escape with me. Do you hear me, ma chère? She wanted you.”

  The lines of his face blurred as she stared at him. Words and memories formed a lance to her blistered heart, and tears were the relief that spilled free. She had not dared to believe Sybille when, during her illness, she had told Vienne she loved her. Vienne had convinced herself it was only madness that made her say it. But perhaps it was the one thing that made any sense. Her mother had loved her, after all, in the only ways she knew how.

  “Judging by how much you cry when I am near, I am beginning to think I would do well to follow Sybille’s suit. You’ve been telling me as much for months now, but I finally understand. If the best way for me to show you love is by staying away from now on, I will.”

  Henri appeared at Vivienne’s elbow, Madame Fishypaws nestled in the crook of his arm. “You will what, monsieur? What did you say?”

  By degrees, Vienne realized how weary she was of guarding herself from Armand. She cautiously lowered the shield that had become more burden than protection. And prayed she would not regret it.

  “Monsieur will come again, sometime,” she said, “to see how Madame Fishypaws grows into a lovely fat cat.”

  Armand smiled as he rubbed the kitten’s downy belly. Eyes welling with tears, he looked at Vienne. “I would be delighted.”

  Philadelphia

  March 1795

  Paulette glowered as she headed down to the wharves, empty pail bumping against her threadbare dress. With all the rooms full again at the Pension Sainte-Marie, Paulette worked from sunup to sundown, picking up after more French refugees who couldn’t look after themselves. Even though only breakfast was served to the boarder
s, she still cooked three times a day for Madame, and the cleaning and laundry for the entire pension kept Paulette’s hands chapped and raw. She peered at her knuckles as she gripped her bucket. Almost as red and rough as a fishwife’s. And now Madame wanted oysters for dinner.

  Oysters. Paulette’s least favorite food. Their odor whisked her back to the French coastal town of Marseille, where she’d wished, more than anything, that she could sail away. The memories attached to these mollusks were ones she’d much rather forget. And yet, those hard years had made her who she was. Tough, resilient, strong. Which came in handy for a pension maid, especially when a man like Corbin Fraser was among the residents.

  He could bully, and he could charm. But Paulette was moved by neither, for she didn’t have the information he wanted.

  Lips clamped tight, she marched to the vendor calling out his prices and made quick work of the transaction that filled her pail with oysters.

  “Paulette?”

  She turned at the sound of her name, skirt billowing, hair lashing about her neck. Gulls circled against a tarnished sky that promised rain. “Monsieur Lemoine.”

  He strolled over to her, using an umbrella like a walking cane. As ever, he was spit-polished to a shine, even down here at the docks. What a fop.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she said when he was near enough to hear, with an emphasis on the fancy. She snickered at her wit. If she wasn’t intimidated by Corbin, she certainly wouldn’t be daunted by the dandy before her, even if Vienne had reason to distrust him.

  “It shouldn’t surprise you. Didn’t Vivienne tell you I recruit at the docks for Senator Morris’s settlement?”

  “As it happens, Vivienne did not tell me every detail about you.” And if that surprised him, he was even more arrogant than she took him for.

  Blinking, he held up his palm and looked at the clouds, then wiped a bit of drizzle on his breeches. “It’s for Asylum. Sometimes French refugees arrive with no idea where to go, you see, and if they are looking for land, they’re more than happy to consider what Asylum has to offer.”

  Sebastien spoke as if she knew all about this place. She let him.

  He leaned on the handle of his umbrella, one ankle crossed at the other. “I might have guessed that’s where Vivienne and Henri disappeared to. Arranged the details myself, all except for her transportation. How was I to know she’d go in the middle of winter like that?” He shook his head. “You might have told me that’s where she’d gone and saved us both a headache or two. But I expect she told you to keep that a secret, for Henri’s protection, in which case—well done, good and faithful servant.”

  A Bible verse? How quaint. She might have known he was religious. “So I suppose you know they’re all right now,” she tried.

  “Oh yes. Armand de Champlain and I are on quite friendly terms, and he assures me they get on splendidly.”

  Fat drops of rain spotted the brick sidewalk like copper coins. “You seemed in such a hurry to find them before. I’m surprised you’re not with them now, if you know their location.”

  Sebastien leaned in closer. A sharp wind sliced and swirled between them, mixing the smells of his pomade with that of her oysters. Paulette muscled back a gag. “Between you and me,” he confided, “the boy could not be in a better place. I confess I want to be with them again, but now?” He gestured toward the swollen river and toward the unpaved roads, so thick with mud that planks of wood from the shipyard were required to cross them. “No one is getting to Asylum until the river slows and the roads dry out, that much is sure. And in the meantime, Louis—I mean, Henri—is not going anywhere.”

  Paulette made her face a mask as pieces flew together in her mind. Sebastien opened his umbrella, raindrops pattered on the oysters in her pail, but she did not feel the water on her skin. With searing clarity, fragments of information and shards of memory snapped into place, creating a picture so bright she marveled that she’d been blind to it before.

  Sebastien drew his satchel closer to his body, beneath the protection of his umbrella. “A convoy of refugees will make the trip later, when the season allows for travel. I daresay I’ll join them. Really, I don’t know why she felt the need to keep her whereabouts a secret from me, of all people. I only want what’s best. For everyone.” Thunder rattled, sending stevedores and porters running for shelter. With a simple, “Good day,” Sebastien left, too.

  Paulette stood with her pail in his wake. It grew heavier in her hands until she realized it was filling with rainwater. Carefully, she tipped out the rain and began walking home, turning a single truth over in her mind.

  Henri was Louis-Charles Capet. Vivienne and Sebastien knew it. And so did Corbin Fraser. But Corbin didn’t know where he was.

  Rain plastered her hair to her neck and smeared the dirt on her hem into mud. Wet skirts slapping her ankles, Paulette rolled her discovery this way and that, looking at it from every angle, deciding what to do. If a stinking oyster could turn sand into something precious, she could do something wondrous, too. Her knowledge was one small grain, hidden inside her shell. And there she would keep it, until the right moment came to harvest that pearl.

  Asylum, Pennsylvania

  May 1795

  Liam smoothed the soil around the bushes he’d just planted, relishing the feel of damp earth between his fingers and the smell of it in the air. Spring had come to Asylum almost as an afterthought this year, the ground reluctant to thaw, trees hesitant to bud. Liam could relate.

  Standing, he brushed dirt from the knees of his trousers and returned his shovel to the barn, casting a glance toward the kitchen house on his way. He had come and gone on two more trips to Philadelphia. On each return, he found the atmosphere surrounding Vivienne considerably cool. And it was she who made the weather, at least for him. Her smile could shine like the dawn, but a clipped word pelted hail. The only thing predictable about her was that she was as stubborn as Tara had ever been, but far more difficult to ignore. Which meant he’d have to be the one to crack the ice between them. He would not leave her again with their differences unresolved.

  So when Jethro had volunteered to take Henri fishing that evening, while Finn went wherever he went these days, Liam had stayed back with Vienne. After placing the shovel with his other tools, he crossed to the kitchen house and knocked.

  Vienne opened the door with a tub of dirty dishes on her aproned hip. Curls strayed from the braided hair that crowned her head.

  “Let me help with that. Free of charge,” he added, lest she think he expected Armand to credit this service to his account.

  With a sideways glance, she agreed.

  Liam took the tub from her, and she walked beside him toward the creek. Wind billowed like cool sheets against his skin. Above hills lush with forest green, shades of lavender banded the sky. Words amassed on his tongue, arguments and apologies tangling together. “I’m not Félix,” he blurted.

  “What?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him.

  Clover crushed beneath their footsteps, releasing its sweet scent into the air. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about what you told me about your escape from Paris. And I’m not like Félix. I’m not a man who loves a principle more than he loves a person.”

  Vivienne slowed her pace but said nothing. Her cotton skirt ballooned before her as they walked, and he saw for the first time that she was barefoot in the grass.

  “It would be easier,” he continued, “if I did not care how you regard me. But I do. And I care about Henri a great deal. The fact that you don’t trust me as a moral influence for him—” He had no words for how that made him feel. He’d always been a shepherd for his family, especially for Finn. His mother and Tara relied on him, and he’d never betrayed their faith.

  “Liam.” Vivienne touched his elbow. “I trust you, but you must tread lightly where law and revolution are concerned. I understand your point of view, and I understand your point. But do you see mine? Or are you so concerned with being
right that you have no time to consider other perspectives?”

  He lowered the tub to the bank of the creek and knelt. Cold water covered his hand as he plunged a jug into the creek to fill it. “My trouble is not that I don’t see other viewpoints. It’s that I see them all, all at once.” He poured water over the dishes and dipped the pitcher back into the creek for more. The shade from the overhanging trees was restful to his eyes.

  Kneeling beside him, she took a sponge to the pans. How different she was from what he’d first assumed her to be. How mistaken he’d been.

  “I’ve been wrong before,” Liam admitted. “You are right to teach Henri that laws are for obeying. They are.” Except in the case of tyranny, but he knew better than to pull that thread right now. “I’ll talk to him about it, if you like. And if I have hurt you, I have erred there, too.” For it was not just Henri’s father the revolutionaries had killed, but her beloved Tante Rose, as well. “Forgive me.”

  Vivienne handed him a pan to dry, then watched a family of ducks paddle downstream. Dragonflies winged silently above the water, and a cricket perched on a moss-furred stone and began his nightly song. “I do. And I share my portion of the blame. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember regretting how it all shook out.”

  “‘Even good men make bad decisions.’ Sound familiar?” The line had lingered like an illness in his mind. After swiping a flour sack towel over the pan, he set it aside.

  Her lashes dropped to her cheeks. “You are a good man, Liam. But—”

  He braced himself as she peered up at him. “But what?” he asked. “I followed the rules. I went on that campaign against the whiskey rebels, as I was ordered.”

  “Yes, but then you broke the law when you took Finn home with you on Christmas Day. I’ve been sick with worry each time you return to Philadelphia! Are you not fugitives, you and your cousin both? Could they not arrest you, too, for helping Finn evade his sentence? Every time you leave, I tell myself I might not see you again. And when you come home—I’m angry that I spent all that time worrying, and angry that you don’t seem worried at all! As if you’re above the law entirely. But you aren’t.”