Page 78 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
Gilles took a step back. He’d anticipated sorrow, not anger. “What can I do?”
She pulled in her chin, the candlelight glinting across her gaze. “Leave.”
He blinked. “Caroline, please. Let me help you. I love—”
“Leave!” She turned on her heel. “Do not come back.” Her pale purple skirts fluttered as she stormed toward the salon doors. “We were fools.” Her voice dropped so that he barely heard it against the rustling of the hortensia bushes.
She moaned, or perhaps it was simply the hinge of the door as she slammed it shut. Gilles flinched. She didn’t really mean that. Couldn’t mean that. Grief had overcome her.
The music of the pianoforte cut off abruptly, replaced by hysteric shrieks. Wetness gathered below his eyes, and he dropped his head to his hands. He’d seen derision on Caroline’s face and incredulity. But he’d never seen a fire so like hatred on her countenance. Not directed at him. The look she’d thrown him when he tried to kiss her that first evening paled in comparison.
Gilles backed away from the house, which seemed to tremble with the horrid realization coming to light for all within. Fatigue suddenly weighed down his limbs. He did not retrieve Maxence’s letter but trudged to the gate. Caroline wanted him gone. He would obey her wishes tonight. Anything to lessen the unthinkable anguish.
Gilles glanced over his shoulder before he shut the gate. He ran his tongue over his dry lips, then whispered the phrase he had never muttered aloud, and which she had cut off before he could finish.
“I love you.”
Would she ever give him another chance to say it?
He’s gone, Sylvie. Just writing the words, I can hardly believe them. Everything familiar suddenly feels strange. How dare the world keep on existing as before, when all our light has been snatched away? Three days has done little to dull the confusion. Or the ache.
I let myself hope that the deaths would end. Perhaps someday they will, but not soon enough for our family. Just now it seems this purgatory of twisted thought and patriotic fervor will only continue to swarm, like an infestation no one can exterminate. And though I may further call down His wrath for such thoughts, I have begun to wonder whether even God Himself can interfere.
Maman weeps herself into fitful sleeps. Papa has hardly spoken a word since Saturday evening. And I wander the corridors gazing at phantoms of former times, before Émile took up his wild ideas. I see his face at every turn, mostly the ecstatic grin he wore as he marched off to Paris. What more could I have done to beg him to stay? Did I push him away with my arguments? Should I have agreed more with hisrévolutionnairereasoning and made certain he felt as much at ease here as he did in his cafés and club meetings?
The Lord only knows. We’ve passed the point of reconciliation forever.
The Étiennes’ servant brought the news, sent by Gilles’s brother. Perhaps I only imagined seeing hints because I so wished it, but I thought Gilles was about to propose. He set the evening up so wonderfully. I was nearly ready to throw myself into his arms despite both my parents watching from the windows. How I thought I wanted those words. How I held to every sound that escaped his lips, anxious for the question. What was I thinking, believing in such a fantasy? It took the stroke of death to bring me back to my senses.
I’ve prayed so many hours for Émile’s safety. For Guillaume’s. For my whole family’s. I believed He would hear. What have we done to deserve this? What has any French man or woman done to deserve their loved ones being ripped from their arms by distrust and hatred and war? Why is it our lot to walk the path of martyrs?
Things that held such weight this morning—the fate of thesavonnerie, the turmoil in Marseille, Maman’s fits of nerves—now seem insignificant. But there is one thing that I wish would fade like the rest. In the midst of so much sorrow over my dear brother, why is there a hollow place inside that laments those impossible dreams of Gilles?
Gilles grasped a lower branch of the tree and planted his foot part way up the trunk. It felt sturdy enough to bear his weight. Moonlight guided his path as he climbed. Twigs and leaves scratched against the side of the balcony as he positioned himself as close as he dared.
His heart galloped, and not just from the climb, though he hadn’t scaled something this tall sincele Rossignol’s mast two years ago. But then he hadn’t had the added worry of being discovered at a young lady’s bedroom window by her parents.
Though nothing had changed about the façade, the Daubins’ house seemed to hunch in the night, bowed down by the weight of what had transpired. Windows reflected a weepy moon in their rippled glass, the rooms behind them empty and black. Most were tightly shut, but those just above the balcony had been opened. Specter-like curtains fluttered on the midnight breeze, which exhaled across the balcony. The wind lifted his curls, drying the sweat on his brow.
She’d listen. That was the only thing he knew for certain. Grandmère’s ring weighed heavy on his finger, and he pulled it off. It shone softly as he stroked the gold letters across its surface with his thumb.Jamais en vain. Never in vain.
“Caroline?” It came out too hesitant, so he tried again. “Caroline, are you there?”
He held his breath, listening. Was that a creak? Were those footsteps? He called again, as loud as he dared.
The door handle shifted, and a face appeared shrouded in shadow. “What are you doing here, Gilles?”
A tremor swept through him at the sound of her voice. It had been only three days, and yet it felt as though he’d waited an age to hear that sound once more. “Were you asleep?”
“No.” She sighed, then stepped through the doorway and onto the balcony. “You shouldn’t be here.”
For a moment Gilles stared, his mission forgotten. Her long hair hung over one shoulder in a satiny plait. The breeze played with the hem of her gauzy dressing gown, which she held tightly across her front with folded arms. He’d only ever seen her in a state of high fashion and immaculate dress. This unpretentious vision served a sharp pang to his chest. “How are you?”
“Well enough.”
He squeezed the ring against his palm. “Truthfully.”
She pursed her lips. “How do you think I am?”
