Lavender in Bloom

by Lily Velez

  Nonetheless, they’d be pleased to return home, to reunite with the pastures they knew as their land, just as Noah would be glad in kind. If he could only leave this place behind, abandon the chateau and the world of the Perreaults, if he could only escape and do so with life and limb, then he could start anew. He’d yield the summer to the locked places of a person’s heart that were never again opened and destroy the key afterward. The secrets of these harrowing months would stay buried in his bones, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, where they’d remain to the end of his days.

  A shadow fell across a wall then. It brought with it a voice. “I thought I might find you here.”

  Jeremie moved into the stall, a streak of light signing the floor from his oil lantern. The space had already been small, less than half the size of Noah’s room at the chateau. Now it was a broom closet, a cupboard. The air warmed.

  “What are you doing here?” Noah asked. His heart smashed into his ribs, attempting a prison break.

  Jeremie hung the lantern from a bent nail that had the look of a crooked finger. The light shifted once more, rising like the sea level during a storm. “I wanted to ensure you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.” His knees were on the verge of collapsing, rendering him a scarecrow untied from its post, and his head throbbed like a jammed thumb, but he’d survive. He reminded Jeremie of his waiting guests.

  “I saw to it the orchestra struck up another dance. Everyone is far too engrossed in the merrymaking to notice I’ve momentarily slipped away.”

  Everyone except his mother, his father, and Camilla. If they hadn’t yet noticed, they soon would, and marking Noah’s absence, the Perreaults would easily decode this newest disgrace. In light of that, Noah told Jeremie he should leave.

  Unsurprisingly, Jeremie didn’t. Instead, he slowly furthered into the stall. His hands were clasped behind his back, his expression pensive. “I know you rather I not say the things I must say to you, but I won’t be a man of regret. If, after I’ve spoken, you remain unmoved, then I’ll accept the future laid out for me without further argument. But not until I’ve said my piece.”

  He stepped closer. “From the moment I first saw you, Noah, I knew my life would never be the same. It was something about your eyes. They held me in a way I’d never known before. I saw a truth in them, and it felt as if I were returning to a home I’d long forgotten. After that, I needed to know everything there was to know about you. I wanted to understand your world, your mind, your hopes, your dreams. The hours I spent on your family’s farm were hardly enough. When I left on my way every evening, all I could think about was returning to you as quickly as possible the very next day.

  “I couldn’t tell you how it happened or why. But one day I simply realized that I loved you. Deeply and purely. In a way that all but consumed me. In a way that tormented me. In a way that felt like my own salvation. I know it’s a love I shall never again know in this life. Indeed, it’s a love very few find. I suppose that’s why I’m so disinclined to withdraw from it. It would be as if the earth were to withdraw from the sun itself, the very thing that sustains it.

  “You see, despite appearances, despite how well I may fit into this world of mine, it isn’t what I most desire. It never has been. Why do you think I fled to Avignon in the first place? And if I don’t flee again now, I fear the chance to do so may never come again. And so the conclusion of my confession is this: My heart is yours, Noah. It belongs to you. It always has, and it always will. Tell me you feel the same, and I’m yours. Tell me you can’t bear to live without me, and you’ll never have to.”

  The ground became the air, the air the ground, and the walls surrounding them advanced forward to enclose them further. They were trapped in a casket, and Jeremie’s words were like Noah’s last rites. They grabbed at him, pulled at him like so many hands. He was clay in their grip, being twisted and pressed and folded and stretched.

  This had to be why Jeremie adored books, why he was so captivated by their words. For words were mighty things, each one a tonic. Expertly combined, they did more than invigorate. They cast spells.

  More than that, they were entire worlds, radiant little planets spinning within a luminous, all-encompassing universe, as varied in color and size as the priceless jewels in a queen’s treasury. With his professions, Jeremie had led Noah from planet to planet. He spent a spring in one, a summer in the next, an autumn in another. He sank into their loveliness, and it was frightening, and it was stomach-turning, and it was enlivening all at once.

  Yes, that was it exactly. Enlivening. He thought things he wasn’t to think, felt things he wasn’t to feel. The words had broken a secret dam in him and had weakened his defenses so thoroughly. Like a thief, Jeremie was stealing the last of his resolve.

  He couldn’t let him.

  “You’re engaged to be married,” Noah said, his voice almost as fractured as he felt. “You stand to lose everything.” After a beat, he added, “Possibly more than you’ve let on.”

  “It frightens you,” Jeremie acknowledged. “It frightens me, too.”

  “Does it? Your mother spoke to me.”

  “Whatever she’s said—”

  “Marry Camilla. There’s no other way.”

  The air was stifling. Crushing. Noah moved past him, exiting the stall, his heart palpitating wildly as if to make up for all the times Jeremie had caused it to still.

  “We can make a way for ourselves,” Jeremie said, following after him, securing the stall’s door and then grasping Noah’s arm to stop him. His fingers were like branding irons, and the fire shot through Noah’s nerves cruelly. Noah turned to twist out of his hold, but it only brought him closer to Jeremie.

  “Society is changing,” Jeremie went on. “The ideals of the revolution will continue to spread. Men like us are no longer criminals in the eyes of the law.”

  “And what about in the eyes of our families?”

  Jeremie’s face darkened. “I’ll count myself an orphan from this day forward if I must. I’ve found something far greater, far more rewarding. What is it my mother told you? That she and my father will stand in the way at every turn? I have no doubt they will. That she has robbed me of my happiness time and again? Oh, without question. I suppose it never mattered before. I didn’t care enough to protest. But with this, with you—now it matters. Now I will protest. But I must know, Noah. First I must know: What is it you feel for me? Do you love me?”

  His breath had the smell of mint. It touched Noah’s face like a gentle, curious breeze. Without meaning to, Noah looked into Jeremie’s eyes, and then he tripped into them. Down he fell, down, down, down, pulled into shadowy caverns, and there he met Jeremie’s pilgrim soul, and there he was enveloped by Jeremie’s promises and vows. He wondered how something could be so terrifying and euphoric at once.

  There was a time when it’d been Noah’s hand that had felt like the most alive part of him. Now it was all of him, every thought, every pulse, every heartbeat. Every memory, every action, every dream. All these things hummed to life, awakening as if they’d only slept until this moment, and now Noah was truly aware, truly present, truly living.

  Do you love me?

  Noah’s voice was low when he replied, and it left him in broken pieces. “Even if I did, what could it possibly change?”

  Their eyes caught.

  Something switched between them. It was instantaneous. Beautiful and powerful and annihilating.

  Jeremie’s eyes liquefied. His face thawed. His grip tightened.

  “Everything,” he murmured.

  And then suddenly, without warning, without ceremony, as if he couldn’t wait a moment longer, he crushed his lips against Noah’s.

  Noah’s mind shattered into a hundred thousand splinters. There was an urgency in the way Jeremie kissed him, as if he were a dying sinner and Noah’s lips the sole source of his salvation. If the fervency of his worship indicated the depth of his atonement, then they drowned in an ocean’s worth of r
edemption.

  Noah was a funeral pyre. He was burning. The flames rose to staggering heights and blazed in white, hot tongues. Jeremie had once told him a story of the burial rites of the Norse. They’d burn their dead, believing the high smoke carried their loved ones’ souls to Valhalla.

  Noah was beyond Valhalla. Beyond the creamy spaciousness above the clouds, beyond the limits of the very earth. He floated among the stars, joined them in holy communion, knew each one by name. Then they were within him, scores of them, bright and hot, turning his ribs into a furnace as they shifted and created constellations in his soul. And all the while, the summer sang in his lungs.

  There was no space between him and Jeremie. Where one ended, the other began, and still Jeremie pulled him closer like the moon pulls the tide, gripping him tightly in the same way he’d gripped Noah’s heart, had gripped his entire being. Noah felt every part of Jeremie against himself, and was shocked at what it provoked in him, by how his own body responded, gladly surrendering itself to Jeremie like an offering, melding itself into him as if they were two halves separated at the beginning of time finally finding their way back to each other. And they fit into each other with unmistakable perfection.

  Noah had never kissed another person, but there was a familiarity in Jeremie’s lips, as if he’d known them once before, as if their mouths had met on several such occasions across the span of innumerous lifetimes. His smell was familiar, too. Something like vetiver. The woodiness of it brought to mind a forest, and Noah wanted to walk its trails deep into the night.

  His fingers, which had grasped at nothing but air up to this point, unsure of themselves, finally found their way to the back of Jeremie’s shirt under his tailcoat and clutched the thin cotton in fists. In response, Jeremie made a sound, and then he pressed Noah’s back against a wall, the wood straining.

  The kiss evolved into kisses, and the kisses grew deeper, hungrier.

  They were becoming one person now, and Noah was so full of him. He dissolved, melted away, poured himself into Jeremie. Hands fumbled over clothing as they exchanged breaths. Noah couldn’t tell if it was his own hands or Jeremie’s at his shirt, at his arms, at his waist, at his trousers. They were tender and reckless all the same, palms everywhere as they sought to memorize each other’s geography of skin. Noah might’ve crumpled boneless to the ground were it not for Jeremie’s arms encircling him, slender and strong, as faithful as an oath.

  They continued kissing, moving closer and against each other, each desperately trying to merge their bodies, their minds, their very souls.

  It was more than bliss.

  It was a glimpse of eternity.

  And then eternity ruptured.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  The voice at first sounded distant, as if from a dream. By the time the five words had become more pronounced, filling Noah’s ears, his heart had already collapsed from terror. He and Jeremie startled at the same time, and when they saw who it was who’d walked into so intimate a moment, they were paralyzed.

  Monsieur Perreault filled the stable entranceway like a man intending to kill. His face was red and engorged, his hard, damning eyes like gunfire through the chest. The veins in his neck bulged so significantly, it seemed they might burst, and Noah reminded himself this was a man who took pleasure in shooting things dead.

  Flushed, he quickly disentangled himself from Jeremie, feeling as if he were pulling away from half of himself, winded from what they’d just shared, breathless at what they now faced.

  No one spoke, and the silence was excruciating, clawing at Noah from the inside.

  When words finally left Monsieur Perreault, they came like thunder, violent and gruff. “Leave us,” he said, an order directed to Noah.

  Noah didn’t move. His heart struck at his chest in fear, but he didn’t move.

  “It’s all right,” Jeremie said beside him.

  Their eyes met, spoke volumes.

  “It’s all right,” Jeremie said again, this time nodding.

  When Noah passed beside Monsieur Perreault, the fire radiating off the man nearly scorched him, but he wouldn’t look his way. He only kept moving, heart racing.

  When he left the stables, however, it didn’t feel as if he’d escaped damnation. It felt more as if damnation had just begun.

  33

  If Monsieur Perreault had any intention of exposing Noah, he gave no indication. Some time after witnessing what he had, he’d soundlessly appeared right back at the center of his swarm of guests and simply continued hosting the celebration as if nothing of consequence had happened. Clearly a master of masks, he wore a composed expression that betrayed nothing of his thoughts.

  Jeremie was nowhere to be seen. Noah’s heart lost itself in an erratic string of beats like hiccups as the minutes stretched by with nothing to show for their passage. His eyes swung again and again in the direction of the doors in anticipation of Jeremie’s return. He held himself back from returning to the stables, not wanting to incite Monsieur Perreault’s wrath any further, and besides, he didn’t honestly think anything too dreadful had happened. He’d lingered a few paces away from the stables following his leave and had heard nothing but low voices engaged in a heated back-and-forth. At least heated on what he assumed to be Monsieur Perreault’s end. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make out the words from where he stood. Convinced Jeremie was in no immediate danger, though, he’d returned to the chateau to wait.

  The more time that passed, however, the more anxious he became.

  No one, not even Camilla, who was too busy talking until her current listener’s eyes glazed over, took notice of Jeremie’s absence.

  Not until Monsieur Perreault came to the front of the room to give an announcement.

  “I’d like to invite any interested parties to join me for a hunt tomorrow morning.” Sounds of good cheer arose from the men. The ladies met it with their soft laughter, the polite kind they’d learn to master for moments like these.

  “After all, there’s much to celebrate. I’m happy to report that in addition to announcing an engagement this evening, we’re also announcing the expansion of Perreault Industries beyond the Channel, the factions of which will be managed by none other than our son Jeremie.” Heavy applause came at once, though it was muffled from the ladies, given their gloved hands. Heads turned this way and that to locate the young man in question.

  “I’ve just shared the news with Jeremie, and eager to begin in this new appointment, he has, as of a few moments ago, departed for the ports on the western coast, that he might board the next ship to England as soon as possible. As my colleagues in this business know, time is always of the essence, and we mustn’t lose pace with the opportunities that have recently opened for us. He might’ve bid farewell except that he didn’t wish to spoil the gaiety of the evening, much less reduce his fiancée to tears when she has gone to such great lengths to look so lovely for our guests.” Good-natured laughter came on the heels of the words.

  “Jeremie will spend some months in England, and once the first factories are underway, he’ll send for his bride, at which point they’ll marry and start their lives together. So let us toast to the happy couple and to new beginnings.”

  Throughout the announcement, Camilla had gasped and then gaped and then squeezed Genevieve beside her. Finally, she remembered herself and straightened, adjusting her shawl and lifting her head higher. Noah’s mother and father meanwhile exchanged worried looks. They’d never imagined their daughter would live in another country entirely, and Noah could tell in their eyes they were attempting to sort out the strange turn of the evening.

  “Did you know about this?” Margaux asked Noah, but he barely heard her. There was a thump at his temples, as if his thoughts meant to force their way out of his skull.

  Much later, Monsieur Perreault approached him as he stood alone beside a pyramid of glasses filled with glimmering, gold champagne. Another dance had begun, and Noah watched absently as the women spun arou
nd, the tails of their gowns pinned up to allow for freer movement. The rush of colors made him think of the bird-themed whirligigs his mother sometimes made by hand, which sat atop spikes on the farmhouse lawn. A breath of wind, and their free-moving wings would revolve in a cycle of reds and blues and yellows.

  “I don’t suppose you and your father will join tomorrow’s hunting party?” Monsieur Perreault asked. Though he spoke to Noah, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, facing the crowd.

  His proximity had an ill effect on Noah. He was like an animal frozen in the line of sight of its predator. “I don’t believe so.”

  “Probably for the best. Farmers among gentlemen. Could you imagine?”

  Noah’s teeth pressed together. He continued watching the dance, not even certain he’d reply until the words were already out of his mouth. “Gentlemen can only reap what farmers sow.”

  The response didn’t faze Monsieur Perreault. “Nonetheless, it takes a certain type of grit.”

  “My father has served in the militia.”

  “Has he ever killed a man?”

  Noah came up short. He didn’t know. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d ever thought to ask.

  “I have. I was a young man then. I learned one of my own factory workers was stealing from me. When I confronted him and informed him what the punishment would be for his crimes, he acted irrationally. He charged at me as if to rip me apart with his bare hands. I shot him dead without thinking twice. It was instinctual survival. I felt no remorse afterward.

  “Do you know what the authorities did in response?” He waited a beat. “Nothing. The man was no one of consequence, a faceless body among thousands in the city. I, however, was a man of means, and the law always favors my kind. It’s how the order in our world is maintained. And surely by now you’re no stranger to the fact that I embrace order in all things.”

  The dance ended and Monsieur Perreault joined in the applause for the orchestra. Noah was too struck by the man’s honesty to blink, to breathe.