Page 37 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘And Aurelian de la Tomber?’
‘He’s the least of our worries.’
‘You knew him then, before Paris?’
‘In school at Eton. We met when he was being bullied by those who just needed someone to pick on and who didn’t care for his French accent. He’s been a friend ever since.’
‘He’s a soldier like you?’
He shook his head. ‘A diplomat. Trying to play both sides of an impossible game and coming up short in both camps. I told him to get out of it years ago, but he has...stuck. His father’s family is here and I suppose he does not want a repeat of the Terror when anyone with money and lineage in Paris was dragged from their house and murdered. Or at least, he wants to have a warning of it so that he can get them out. That’s what conflict comes down to sometimes. A personal fear and a vested interest as a way to protect those you love.’
‘Is it the same for you?’
He shook his head. ‘There was only ever one reason in it for me.’
‘England?’
At that he reached for a glass she had not seen before, raising it to the moonlight so that the numerous shapes reflected back into the room. Crystal, she supposed, and of good quality. ‘For all of her faults and for all of her glory, there is no place like home.’
A dig at her perhaps, caught without a past, a future, or a place to call home?
‘Your home is still in Sussex? At Luxford?’
The stillness in him magnified. ‘It is. My brother Jeremy is ill and one day I will need to be there.’
She remembered his older brother. He was tall and thin and he’d coughed a lot. His young wife, whose name she had forgotten, had always looked sad and there had been rumours even back then that they were having trouble conceiving an heir. She said none of this to him, though, the grief in his eyes palpable.
‘If you stop struggling, you stop living,’ she gave him this truism quietly, one of the sayings that Caroline Debussy had always been so very fond of. When he smiled she flushed, for he was probably thinking of her inane lack of struggle today and was too polite to say so. A woman who might give advice and yet take none herself. Tiredness swept in about her.
Summer would one day be a lord. Viscount Luxford. He stepped further and further away from her grasp with each and every thing he told her.
‘Aurelian said the day after tomorrow is the best day to leave Paris. There is some sort of celebration that the military will be involved in which will keep them occupied, so we will lay low here until he sends word. He also brought us wine. It’s a fine white from Cabarets, outside the walls of the city.’ He lifted up both the bottle and another glass.
Celeste recognised the flavour as she took the first sip and her mind sifted back into memory.
‘It is good.’
‘Different at least to the dry whites of Paris and no excise tax either.’
Summer told her this just as memory clicked. Once, she and August had sat on a painted barge on the Loire and watched the sunset each night for a week, drinking this same brew until they had finally made their way back to Paris. Once, August had been a good father. Once, he had been exciting and gentle and kind, until he had been buried under a bitter elixir of deceit and lies.
Then the zealousness had taken over and he had forgotten all the things that should have been important to him. Including her.
* * *
Shay had been watching her for a good hour before she’d woken and knew the broken restlessness of her slumber. In sleep she looked softer, younger, less prickly. She’d removed her jacket before retiring and the lawn of her undergarment had barely covered the outline of her full breasts. When she sat up she’d hauled the thing on again despite the heat, all of last night’s intimacy lost in the gesture.
He’d wanted to touch her. That thought was surprising. He’d wanted to feel again what he had before, that desperate relief. The warmth of the night loosened restraint, caught as they were in the heat above Paris. Somewhere he could hear music playing, an accordion by the sounds of it, plaintive and melancholic. He laid his head back against the leather rest and asked his question.
‘Do you think there is a reason behind everything that happens?’
He saw a half-smile. ‘I used to.’
‘What changed?’
‘Life, I think. Hardship. Death. Now I think it’s all random and if you are unlucky enough to be in the place where the world falls in on you, then that’s just how it is.’
‘Fatalistic?’
