Page 21 of Love in a Mist
“Thank you,” Céleste answered.
The oldest of the Fortier siblings left, muttering something under his breath that Aldric suspected they should all be grateful to have not fully overheard. Marguerite followed close on his heels.
“Dr. Mercier,” Aldric said, “please pretend you do not hear what I am about to say.” He then turned to Henri and Céleste. “Your brother is an absolute slubber.”
A hint of mirth lit Céleste’s eyes. She had truly lovely eyes; he’d always thought so. And she had a beautiful smile, though it had not been much in evidence the past twenty-four hours.
“I’ll stay here with Céleste for a few hours,” Henri said. “She should, at least, be able to rest for that long.”
To Céleste, Aldric said, “Do rest as much as you can. None of us wishes to see you grow more ill.”
“Thank you, Lord Aldric, for all you did for me today.” Something in the softly spoken response made his heart swell a little. It was unexpected and a little confusing.
“You are welcome, Mlle Fortier.” He offered a quick bow and, with Dr. Mercier in tow, quit the room and, almost as swiftly, the house entirely.
He saw the doctor back home. “Send word if there is anything Monsieur Henri’s friends can do to help. None of us wishes to see Mlle Fortier grow worse.”
The doctor agreed to do so, but with a hint of reluctance. He likely suspected Jean-François’s control over Céleste was too ironclad for sufficient intervention.
In the moment before alighting from the carriage, the doctor said, “Mlle Fortier’s health would greatly improve if she were to remove to the country, but her brother is unlikely to allow it. If you and your friends accomplish nothing else where she is concerned, let it be convincing M. Fortier of the necessity.”
Aldric’s journey to France was to have been a simple matter of retrieving whatever his mother had left him. Instead, he was caught in a tangled web of another family’s animosity. And few things made him more uneasy than family.
Chapter Eight
It had been a longtime since Céleste had simply sat with Henri, just the two of them. She’d often wondered if it would ever happen again. Henri’s ability to come to France was very limited. Her freedom to leave was nonexistent.
She was only thirteen years old when he’d left for Cambridge. Though he had insisted he would be home whenever he could be for as long as he could be, she’d known even then that he would grow more distant. He’d found home and family in England, and she had claimed less and less of his time and attention since then. But she’d never doubted he loved her. He was the only member of her family who didn’t regularly make her wonder that.
Adèle sat on her bed beside her, growing sleepier. The little girl was very sweet and loving, but she had already taken to Henri with more open affection than she showed her aunt. Céleste couldn’t sort out why her niece kept her at a distance. She didn’t used to.
“I’m going to talk to Jean-François,” Henri said. “You need to be able to rest, and Nicolette and I can offer you that in spades if you come back to England with us. Ours is a relatively quiet life. By the time we return to London for the Season or meet up with the Gents for the annual house party, you will have had months to regain your strength.”
If only he knew how much she would love that. “Jean-François will never agree to it.”
“The doctor was very clear that it is what you need.”
“Oh, Henri, when have you ever known Jean-François to be motivated by what someone else needs? Especially when that ‘someone else’ is either of us?”
Henri, sitting on the edge of her bed, scooted closer and took her hand. She was lying back, propped on her pillows with Adèle falling asleep beside her. “You could simply come with us when we depart Paris. Jean-François could attempt to chase you down, but dragging you back to France from England would be far more difficult than he likely realizes.”
She shook her head. “He would cut us both off, Henri.”
Not a single hint of surprise entered Henri’s expression. “Your health is being neglected. You’re being mistreated. They clearly intend to marry you off, and I doubt they would do so with any degree of consideration.”
“If scampering off to England means he cuts off your income and my support and revokes my dowry, which I have no doubt he would do, what would we live on?” She hated putting it so bluntly, but she needed him not to interfere with the groundwork she’d already laid. “Nicolette’s dowry is gone, thanks to Pierre Léandre. If you and I are also penniless, we would be in dire straits very quickly. I know your poetry is doing well; Nicolette whispered to me about that. I also know it alone would not be enough to support the two of you, let alone the three of us.”
“I cannot leave you in this situation,” Henri insisted. “We would find a way to make it work.”
She enveloped his hand in both of hers. “I still have hope that Jean-François and Marguerite will eventually relent, and I will have the rest I need. But antagonizing our brother will only make that less likely.”
Henri nodded with a sigh. They both knew their brother painfully well.
“While we’re still here,” Henri said, “perhaps you would be permitted to spend some of your days with us. If we can’t whisk you away entirely, we can give you at least a temporary respite.”
“If such a thing can be managed with finesse, it might be worth requesting.” While she was waiting for the opportunity to fully escape, a chance to breathe would be quite welcome.
“Aldric will know how to manage it,” Henri said. “He got Dr. Mercier here, after all.”
