Page 14 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
Fire snapped in her eyes. “If their male counterparts will not acknowledge them, yes. It is our country as much as it is yours. Why can we not try to shape it as we see fit, no matter our sex?” Her hands had abandoned the floral stitching along her skirt and now gripped the arms of her chair.
Émile returned to his drink. “This sort of unwomanly boldness is exactly the problem with young ladies who refuse every proposal that comes their way. They think they know things, even when they don’t. They need husbands to direct them.”
His sister burst from her seat, the heels of her leather mules thumping against the wood floor. She clenched her fists. “You are mistaken,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice. “I have never refused a proposal, as I have received none.”
“Little wonder,” Maxence murmured—loud enough to be heard by all—to Mademoiselle Poulin, who tittered behind her fan.
“Max!” Gilles hissed. His gut twisted as he glanced at Mademoiselle Daubin—alone in her beliefs but still unwilling to back down. He may not agree with her views on the government, but the sinking in his heart whispered that many of her points were not without reason. Émile and Maxence were speaking as they always did. Nothing they said was new, and yet tonight their remarks seemed harsher and more unfeeling.
“I could not agree more,monsieur,” Mademoiselle Poulin piped in, earning her a grin of false gratitude from Maxence. How young she looked beside him. She couldn’t be more than eighteen. “The revolution is a man’s duty.”
“Then I expect all of you to go,” Mademoiselle Daubin said, catching each young man’s gaze. “Go and form your battalions. Do your duty. Leave the women to clean up your mess, as we always do.” Her voice caught, but Gilles could not find tears in her eyes or a flush in her face.
“Do you doubt for a moment that each of us will go?” Maxence asked. Had he moved closer to the Poulin girl? “I am glad we have come to an agreement on our respective duties.”
“What young man in the ranks of Jacobins wouldn’t gladly give his life for the cause of liberty?” Émile asked.
Some unspoken pain tugged at Mademoiselle Daubin’s austere visage, perhaps a memory or an inclination. Or was it a realization that despite her deepest convictions, her way of thinking would never prevail against the power of the Jacobins? Gilles hadn’t seen a chink in her armor since they met. Had the possibility of her own brother dying for a tenet she did not believe in cause her to falter?
Gilles swallowed at the sudden tightness in his throat. All evening his skin had been crawling at the thought of the looming decision between saving for university and marching for patriotism. If he was truly committed to the revolution, he should join those defendingla patriefrom the Prussians and Austrians.
“Marie-Caroline?” Madame Daubin called from the sofa near the hearth. “Would you fetch the copy ofle Journal de la Mode et du Goûtyou brought back from Paris? I wish to show it to Madame Poulin.”
Would Gilles do more for his country by dying or by learning the skills to save lives? Was saving lives through medicine not as noble a pursuit as defending them through war?
“Yes, Maman,” Mademoiselle Daubin said. Her footsteps did not clip against the floor with their usual conviction as she slipped through the doorway.
“How do you live with that girl?” Maxence muttered when she’d left and the older party had returned to their conversation.
“I haven’t lived with her for two years. Before that ...” Émile shuddered, then threw Gilles a knowing grin. “You were doomed from the start in our little wager.”
Not this again. “Yes, I quickly discovered that,” Gilles said. He tugged at his cravat. His seat at the window had grown incredibly warm, notwithstanding his distance from the fire.
“A wager?” Mademoiselle Poulin asked, inching closer to Maxence. She was playing right into his hands. Émile would lose those twelvelivres, and the young lady would lose her first kiss to a man who did not care one wit about her.
Gilles’s gut tightened in a way it never had before when watching his brother play the game. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. Eight thirty. Too early to leave without being rude. What a simpleton he was. If Mademoiselle Poulin was as willing as she seemed, he had no reason for this apprehension.
“Yes, a wager. Gilles thought he could best my sister in a game of wills last week,” Émile said, shaking his head. “He was sorely mistaken.”
“Ithought so?” Gilles cried. “I’m quite certain you—”
Maxence reached to thump him on the back amid a peal of laughter but knocked Gilles’s glass on the way. It plunged to the floor and shattered across the wood. Gilles whipped his face away from the tinkling of broken glass. Red wine splattered over the brothers. Belatedly, Mademoiselle Poulin shrieked as if a cannon had exploded, punctuated by Maxence’s cursing.
“Nicely done, Gilles,” Émile said, sipping at his own drink.
As though he’d had anything to do with it. Gilles glanced down at his speckled trousers. For a moment, the red liquid covering his legs was not wine and he stood not on the smooth floor of the Daubins’ parlor, but on the sea-battered deck ofle Rossignol, his clothes covered in blood. A familiar burning ignited in the back of his throat, which he choked down. He thought two years in relative safety would have stilled the impulse. “I’ll fetch a domestic,” he mumbled, skirting the mess of dagger-like edges and crimson puddles on the floor.
“We’ll ring for one,” Émile said, but Gilles waved him off. He could find the servant easily enough, and he hurried from the room through a shower of concerned questions from the older set.
Once through the door, Gilles paused and breathed in the coolness of the quiet vestibule. He did not attend many social dinners. Maman’s dinners were intimate affairs that only involved debate if Maxence arrived. A few candelabra, scattered about on side tables, lit the front hall. Their flames shimmered off a puff of light purple and white silk on the stair.
Mademoiselle Daubin?
She sat on one of the lower steps and stared unseeingly at the checkered floor tiles. Her arms wrapped loosely around herself, as though she were nearing sleep.
“Are you ill?” Gilles asked in a soft voice so as not to startle her.
She looked up as he cautiously approached. Her dark, velvety curls framed her face, and candlelight flickered in her vacant eyes. “What did you say?”
