Page 79 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
Exhausted. Confused. Angry. In despair. “I can imagine it, but I wanted to hear it from you.”
Caroline looked away. “It will take time, but we will recover. You needn’t worry yourself.”
Needn’t worry himself? “I cannot help but worry over you. I love—”
“Don’t say it.”
His throat tightened. “Please. I wish to help.”
“There is nothing that you can do.” She squared her shoulders. “I thank you for your concern. Now I should get my rest.”
“Wait.” Gilles’s gaze dropped to the circle of gold in his hand. The ring sat warm against his skin. “I came to give you something.” He held it out to her.
She hesitated, then crept forward to see. Her chest rose and fell before she recoiled. “No, I cannot accept that.”
“Why not?” The refusal didn’t surprise him, but he hadn’t anticipated so sharp a sting.
Backing away, Caroline shook her head. “I think we should have listened to our own reason from the beginning. We knew it couldn’t work. Why torment ourselves needlessly any further?”
Jamais en vain. The words on the ring clasped tightly in his fingers pulsed through his frame. “I will never look on our time together as needless.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “Nothing will come of it.”
“But something already has.” He extended his arm, pushing the ring closer to her. “I am a better man having known you these few months. Nothing will take away the effect you’ve had.”
Her mouth curled reluctantly at the corners. “You were already a better man. You just didn’t know it.”
“Then you helped me discover it. And showed me there was more beyond my limited vision.”
“I can hardly take credit.” Her stance had relaxed, and she finally looked at him. “We should not be discovered here.”
Of course not. Monsieur Daubin had been sullen and easily provoked since the news of Émile’s death. Gilles hardly blamed him but did not want to excite any greater anger. “Please take this.”
When she pulled back again, he hastily added, “I mean nothing by it. I only wish you to remember me when you see it. And remember that despite all that has passed, our ...” He swallowed against the tightness in his throat. “Our friendship was never in vain.”
Seconds ticked past before Caroline finally raised a hand toward him. Rough bark bit into his skin as he reached. Her fingertips grazed his as the ring lifted from his grasp. The sparks at her touch raced over him one last time, the whisper of wind across a stagnant sea. If only it would carry him through the void forming in his middle.
“Thank you.” She turned her back on him and retreated to the door. “Now go. And I beg you not to return.”
“Bonne nuit, mon amour,” he whispered through the bitterness on his tongue.
She paused in the doorway. Her hand formed a fist around the ring as her shoulders lifted and fell under the white dressing gown. “Good night.”
And then she was gone.
29 August 1792
Marseille
ChèreSylvie,
Why do you not write? The choking emptiness that has permeated this house these past weeks is more than I can bear. I’ve longed for the brightness of one of your letters. I only hope no ill has befallen you. I must trust your silence is due to some matter of great importance, and I imagine pleasant possibilities, mostly involving a certain dashingmonsieur.
Everywhere I turn, I find memories. Émile and his grin striding through the front door. His laugh over a glass of wine at the dinner table. His quizzical brow in the corner of the salon while discussing the revolution with the Étienne brothers.
I ventured into his room this morning. I don’t think anyone has been inside since we received his last letter through Maxence Étienne. It felt as though nothing had changed. Surely he would be returning from Montpellier any day and retiring here to muse on the grand revolutionary ideas his Jacobin friends had planted in his head. How could it all look and feel the same when our entire world has changed?
I have not seen Gilles Étienne since that night on the balcony. I try not to think of him, but the hole inside me gapes open like a fresh wound. Can you mourn the loss of someone who has not died and who has not even really left? Especially when you are the cause of his absence. What ridiculousness. And yet I mourn as much as I did with Nicolas. Somehow knowing that Gilles is in this city, still going about his work, still planning for his future as a physician, still interacting with my father makes it just as difficult to bear. Is everything around me continuing on its normal path while my life has halted?
