Love's First Light

by Jamie Carie

  Jasper opened the door like he’d rushed to it. His face changed from alarm to delight when he saw Scarlett’s mother. But then he noted their somber faces and quickly motioned them to come in.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Her mother looked ready to burst into tears at Jasper’s question. Stacia stood mute. Scarlett finally spoke. “Where is Christophé? I have to speak to him.”

  Jasper took them into the parlor which was clean and tidy. Christophé had turned from the chair at the desk, stood when he saw them, and rushed across the room toward Scarlett. He immediately took her into his arms. “What has happened?”

  Scarlett burst into tears.

  Christophé looked up at Stacia and then their mother. “What is it? Is it Robespierre?”

  Scarlett reached up and grasped his shoulders, her face pressed against his chest. “I’m afraid. Robespierre has gone mad. Today at the festival, it was such a mockery. He acted as though he thinks he is a god.”

  Jasper intervened. “Come. Come and sit.”

  They all sat down, Émilie pouring them each a glass of water and pressing it into Scarlett’s hand. André had fallen into an exhausted sleep, but Scarlett clutched him to her chest all the same. Her arm ached with the tension of holding him.

  Christophé reached for him. “Here, you rest. Let me hold him for awhile.” He gently took the baby into his arms and sat next to Scarlett on the settee. “Tell me.”

  The words and all the fears tumbled out. “We went to the festival. He’s renamed God as the Supreme Being. He claims it is to bring down the atheist, but it isn’t. He wants something. Something he can never have on his own. Do you understand what I mean? I used to think he was eccentric, back when I first married Daniel. I used to think he might be a little crazed. But now. Oh, Christophé.” She shook her head, lowered her chin, and stared at her fiancé as she never had. “He will destroy himself. And anyone in his household or associated with him will go—” she shook her head as fresh tears rose to her eyes—“to the guillotine with him.”

  She grasped Christophé’s arm. “We have no more time. We have to escape now.”

  NOW SHE KNEW Robespierre as he knew him. Now she knew Christophé’s daily fear. He looked to Jasper, who inclined his head. They were ready.

  “You’re right. You cannot go back.” Christophé’s gaze swept to include the others in the room. “Not any of you. A ship to London leaves in a few days. We will travel to the harbor in Le Havre tomorrow.”

  They all stopped and looked at one another. Scarlett’s mother looked at Jasper. “We’re leaving France? Will you be coming with us?”

  Jasper rubbed his chin. “If you won’t be convinced to stay here with me and become my wife.”

  All three women gasped, but unlike her daughters, Suzanne’s gasp was of delight. She put her hands to her cheeks. “Are you asking me to be your wife?”

  Jasper walked forward and took her hands in his. “I suppose I didn’t do that very well, did I? You would think a man my age would know better than to just blurt it out like that. But yes, Suzanne Bonham—” they all watched as he leaned forward and held her astonished gaze—“will you become my wife?”

  Scarlett’s mother nodded, her face blossoming with color. “Yes, I will.” She leaned forward. “But we’ll be married in London in a proper church.”

  Jasper gave her a little kiss, as though to seal their agreement.

  “Great heavens!” Stacia fell back into a chair in a perfect imitation of her mother. “What will happen next?”

  “Jasper and I will be going for a little walk in his garden.” Their mother sounded positively giddy. She took her betrothed’s arm, and Jasper’s smile grew into a grin.

  Stacia must have sensed Scarlett would like to be alone with Christophé, too, for she turned to Émilie. “Could you show me the house? Let’s take on the task of finding sleeping places for everyone.”

  When they all left the room, Scarlett leaned into Christophé’s shoulder.

  “Are you well?” Christophé put an arm around her.

  “I’m better now that I’m here with you. It was just that I’ve never seen it so clearly before. I’m afraid Robespierre will find us, or worse, we will all go down to the grave with him.” Her body shuddered. “What of André? He is his blood relative. If they guillotine Robespierre, they will try to destroy anyone related to him.”

  CHRISTOPHÉ LAY THE baby on a cushion on the floor. He turned and took Scarlett into his arms. He didn’t have any more words of comfort for her. He didn’t know what promises he could make and keep. Truthfully, all their heads might lay in the executioner’s basket by next week. All he had was his arms to enclose her. His head to lean towards hers. His cheek to press against her soft cheek. His lips against her yielding, seeking mouth.

  Lips the color of her name.

  Thy will be done.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Christophé woke in the middle of the night to a silent, peaceful shot of moonlight crossing his face. He rose, careful not to disturb Scarlett and the sleeping babe between them. She looked so peaceful with her eyes closed and body slack as she lay curled onto her side, her hand just touching André’s toes. And Emilie. Having her back . . . he could hardly contain the jolt of joy that shot through him when he thought of it. He reveled in the feel of family. His family.

  Rubbing his hand across the short-cropped hair, he turned toward the window and the open curtains. He padded across to it, pulled the curtains further aside, and grasped them in each hand. Leaning forward, he pressed his face against the glass, watching the condensation form and recede, form and recede. How did breath have such vapor? How could it cling to a pane of glass? Did any of that matter anymore?

  Scarlett was right. Robespierre had, this day, crossed a line that would likely mean his demise. He saw it as clearly as if he was reading about it in some history book from the future. The man’s true agenda had finally been revealed, and both he and Scarlett and all they loved hung, like hapless spiders on the thinly spun webs glowing in this moonlight, suspended, waiting time’s accounting sheets.

  He pressed his closed fist against the glass and stared out. “God help us.” He wanted to pound his fist. He wanted to rail at the time of their birth. What if they’d been born before . . . during the time of Voltaire and Rousseau? What would they have been then? Would he have ever known Scarlett? His mind played tricks on him, wandering into paths he’d never considered before. What if they’d been born fifty or a hundred years from now? What would their lives have looked like then?

  It was the reason he was alone, he realized. Thoughts like these. There had never been anyone very much interested in anything but the problems of the day, the here and now. Except for Scarlett. She might not understand all his thoughts, but she listened, really listened, and thought about what he said. She understood something in him that no one else had.

  He turned from the window and the moon’s cold light. He walked over and stared at the woman sleeping there. Nothing had happened between them. Nothing of a marital nature would until they were wed by clerk or priest. Still, the blanket had fallen off her legs. His gaze traveled up the length of her toes and ankles and then calves. Her skin was pale, glowing in the moonlight. The sheets and her nightgown, the same one she’d worn when he had met her in the graveyard of Carcassonne, clung around a newly slim waist. Her arms were curled up, one toward André and the other under her cheek.

  Her hair. His gaze traveled over the strands of her hair as it caught the moonlight in a vision of fire and embers, making him slowly sit down and then reach for a strand. He held it up, a careful move, so as not to wake her. It felt like silk between his fingers. He turned and rotated the strands into the light, watching how the colors changed. Fire and earth melded together in a single strand of hair. His chest heaved with the beauty of it.

  “Christophé?”

  She sounded afraid, and with everything in him, he didn’t want her to ever sound so again. He
dropped the lock of hair and leaned close. “The moonlight woke me.” He leaned close enough to feel her breath over his face.

  “Oh.” It seemed all she could say.

  He smiled.

  He’d never been the seducer. He’d never tried to convince a woman of anything, save his mother, who he often tried to convince the necessity of having taken apart some clock or destroying some household apparatus to figure out how it worked. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Scarlett sat up, whispering as he did so they wouldn’t wake André. “But you did.” She lifted her face.

  Her lips stood out as they always did, red in any light. He felt a slow melting take over his limbs, imagining that even in the dark they would glow. The color of her lips defied the science of light.

  He leaned toward them, unable to help himself. “Scarlett.”

  She adjusted her position enough to lean across the sleeping baby and closed her eyes. As his lips reached hers, he felt her melt, let the worries and tension of the day’s events fade away.

  “I love you.” She said the words against his lips, making him feel them more than hear them. He’d meant to say it first. He had asked her to be his wife and knew, in his heart, that he loved her from the moment he’d first saw her. It seemed unfair that he’d forgotten or misplaced those words and not said them. Saying it back now seemed too small. Words could never tell her how much a part of him she felt.

  Instead, he cupped her cheek, feeling each molecule of silk glide beneath his thumb. As he breathed in her breath he knew her oxygen, the recently found fuel of fire. He allowed it to kindle and burn, turning the sparks within his heart into a blazing flame.

  A sound escaped her throat as they kissed. He was shocked by how it resonated within him, as if there was a language only she could speak and only he could hear. He had not known the power of one woman’s love.

  When the kiss broke off, they leaned together, his forehead resting against hers, the sound of their mingled breathing loud in the room. He tried for words. “You are my life now.”

  It was bad. It wasn’t the first “I love you” or the poetic words his heart strained to offer to her. It was too broad a stroke, not at all the words that told her she’d given him all the colors in the world like a prism never could. But it was all he had. It was all he knew.

  “Oh, Christophé.” She raised her arms to his shoulders, wrapping her hands around his head, and brought his cheek next to hers. He closed his eyes, reveling in her femininity—the grace in her movements, the softness of her skin, the softness of her form pressing against his chest, so much softness and yet such strength. Strength in her voice and convictions, strength in the way she took care of everyone around her, strength to love him just as he was. He wanted to kiss her again but knew that roar of blood in his ears was a sign that he should stop.

  Scarlett must have sensed the change in him. She’d been married before and must know the constraints on a man’s resolve. She let him go, but softness rested in her eyes.

  “If we move André to the cradle Jasper brought in, we could sleep side-by-side for the remainder of the night.”

  Christophé didn’t need to be asked twice. Tomorrow they might be chased down. Tomorrow they might be captured. Tomorrow they might be imprisoned.

  Tomorrow they might be struck down by the guillotine’s blade.

  Tonight.

  Tonight.

  They would sleep in each other’s arms.

  ROBESPIERRE RECOILED AGAINST the roaring clapping and shouting of the crowd as he walked down from the mountain. They shouldn’t be looking to him, they should see the carefully arranged drama for what it was—wisdom overcoming all that had come before: atheism, egoism, and insincerity, the core of France’s mistakes. Instead, it seemed the people wanted a king.

  A god even.

  The fact that it felt good and right when he looked down at their upturned faces, at their longing for fathering, was not to be considered. He would ignore it as he’d ignored so many other emotions since his mother’s death and father’s abandonment. He could not save these people, though he tried. He could only direct them; point them to the one and only hope they had.

  The Law.

  The next day he would give a thundering speech at the Convention about ridding the party of snakes and conspirators. There were those among them that didn’t love the purity of the law as they should. These evil fiends had personal gain in mind—power, wealth, and a rise to infamy. He called out his enemies by name for the first time. A part of him knew this naming was born of fear. That these men were conspiring not against France, but against him. But he had become very good at squashing conscious truth and pretending first to himself and then, more easily, to everyone else that they were enemies of the nation. His greatest enemy, Fouché, and his supporters would come to their end. Fouché would know the voice of the people.

  Robespierre left the Convention and went home, a surety that he had done the right thing uplifting his mood. The house was quiet. Good. Scarlett and her family were taking his suggestion and inquiring about rooms for rent in the area. Or perhaps they were visiting his sister, Charlotte, for advice on where to room. Charlotte might even offer to take them in. He sincerely hoped so. The Duplays would like the return of their daughter’s room, he was sure, although they said nothing.

  Shaking off the concern, he set out for a long walk in the Marbeuf gardens by the Champs-Elysees. The streets were now filled with summer dust, but he hardly noticed. His mind was clear of all but the cadence of his stride in the night.

  THE NEXT MORNING Christophé and Jasper were down in the laboratory, leaning over the freshly written passports. They were perfect, the ink dry.

  “Do you think it will work?”

  Jasper held up and studied the work in the dawn light. “They are my best work to date. Now we only have to rehearse the story with the women and prepare for the journey to Le Havre.”

  “We leave tonight?”

  “Hmmm, if nothing impedes us.”

  Christophé paused, looking at his old friend. “You don’t have to come along, you know. I think you and Madame Bonham might be safe here together.”

  Jasper shook his head. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But no, I’m an old man. I’ve lived my life. I would rather risk the scaffold helping you than hiding here. And besides, if Robespierre discovers Suzanne is here, he would force the truth from her.” He rubbed his chin and made a face of admission. “Quite easily, I’m afraid. There is no one safe anymore.”

  “Scarlett is convinced Robespierre will fall. Do you think so?”

  Jasper gathered up the papers and pushed his glasses back on his forehead. “She has good reason to believe it. The Festival of the Supreme Being is only the latest sign of his madness. The numbers who hate him are growing by the day.”

  “I want to champion his enemies, Fouché and that crowd, but they are all atheist. Fouché is bent on taking God and church from the nation.”

  Jasper put a hand on Christophé’s shoulder. “There is no side of good left in France. They will destroy each other.”

  The men made their way upstairs to the main floor, where they found the women in a flurry of activity of cooking and packing necessities for the journey. The baby was crying in his cradle, which had been moved into the sitting room from Christophé’s bedchamber. Christophé went over, picked up the babe, and buried his nose into André’s soft hair. The memory of holding Scarlett throughout the night rushed back over him. He looked down at the child and felt a fresh pang of fear and sorrow. What if they were caught? What would they do with a child that traveled with aristocrats and was the blood relative of Robespierre? André had quieted and only stared at him from slate blue eyes, his tiny fists waving as if to catch Christophé on the chin.

  Scarlett called over to him from the counter where she was kneading bread dough. “Thank you for quieting him. We are trying to pack as much food as we can for the journey.”

  Christop
hé walked over to her and kissed her cheek, smiling at the smudge of flour on her chin. He reached up and rubbed it off with his thumb. How beautiful she was! They gazed into each other’s eyes—until Stacia giggled, breaking the tension.

  “No more love gawking, you two. We have work to do.”

  Christophé leaned over and kissed Scarlett, a quick peck on the mouth, but a public declaration that he didn’t care what any of them thought. He had the most intense understanding that these could be the last moments of their lives, and he wanted to soak in each one.

  Scarlett’s eyes told him she understood all. “Have you and Jasper finished the papers?”

  “Yes. The man missed his true profession. He has the most astute hand for forging documents. They look authentic.”

  “What are our new identities?” Mrs. Bonham queried from another flouring board.

  Jasper came through the doorway and paused, his eyes lighting on the older woman. “You, madame, are now Lucille Marie Burlier.” He bowed at her. “My wife.”

  She dimpled at him and cocked her head. “Have we been married long?”

  Stacia and Scarlett exchanged amused glances.

  Jasper took up his role with a side nod, all serious intent. “Oh, yes. A very long time. You harangue me with your nagging and incessant chattering.”

  Scarlett’s mother broke out in laughter. “And you, Citizen Burlier, try my patience daily with your interests in science.” She sighed dramatically. “You are always so distracted!”

  All three women burst out laughing.

  André turned his head at the sounds and wrinkled up his face, but did not cry. Christophé jostled him the best he could to keep him content, feeling the happiness of the moment wash over him. He looked up and caught Émilie’s gaze. She had been washing pans and was standing stiff and silent as they all joked. Her eyes reflected pain.

  Christophé knew her thoughts. He had them too, at times. A gaping hole that opened at his feet when he thought of his family. He’d found love again and that had helped heal him, but Émilie was still fresh from the grip of Robespierre. He had still not heard everything that had happened to her since that night of disappearance.