Page 115 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“We’ll call on Guillotin,” he soothed. “I’ll get up.”
He tried again, gritting his teeth against the pain that did in fact feel like he was about to lose the arm, but that would neverhave stopped him from attempting to convince Léon he was fine. It was the full-room swoon that took him this time, flinging him back to the bed when he tried to stand. “I’m fine.”
Léon’s hands were on his chest, pushing him back into bed. Léon pulled the sheet up by instinct, trying to help, then flung it back, remembering his fever. “Tell me where to go.”
“The address is…” He looked at the desk. “There’s a letter from him. The return address is on it.”
Léon scooped up the huge pile of correspondence Henry had managed to amass in the space of one afternoon, throwing the lot down next to him. “Tell me where. I’ll be back within the hour.”
Shaking fingers sorted through them. “I’m sure I’m just tired. We’ve slightly overdone it the last few days, is all.” He found the letter. “He’s at twenty-one Rue de la Comédie.”
Léon snatched it, then strode to a mess of clothes on the floor to get dressed. He picked them up, then stopped. “Henri?”
Henry looked across to see Léon quiet, his eyes teary and pleading. He held out an arm which Léon dived into, his body trembling in his hold when he whispered, “Please don’t die.”
“I won’t. Léon?—”
“If I bury you here, I think I will die with you. I think my heart will remain here, and I’ll be dead always. Walking dead for the rest of my life. I can’t take it.”
Henry touched his forehead to Léon’s. “I would never leave you. We’ve been through so much—and it’s all been for this. This is our happy ending. You can’t imagine I would let one stray bullet keep us apart.”
“Bullets kill a lot of people.”
“Not me. I’m a survivor. Just like you are. And you’re worth living for. You’re all the world to me. I want you to know that. I love you.”
“I’ve just found you,” Léon whispered. “You said you would save me. You promised this was it. Paris, you said.”
Léon’s tears dropped hot onto Henry’s shoulder. Henry held him close, trying to quieten him. “Léon, listen to my voice. Do I sound so ill?”
“Yes,” Léon muttered.
Henry chuckled. “I’m really okay. Go get Guillotin, and I bet by the time you come back, I’ll have slept it off.”
Léon gave an unwilling nod, then kissed Henry’s good shoulder. He climbed back out of the bed, and despite the chance of worrying him even more, Henry had to remind him, “Just don’t tell Catherine. You know what she’s like.”
The return glance came accusatory, but Léon lowered his head in acknowledgement. However bad this might have been, Catherine exploding the house would be worse.
Henry watched him until the door clicked safely closed between them. Then he flung his head back against the headboard, letting out a shaking breath, tears stinging his eyes. The pain had grown unbearable. He wanted to cry like a little boy. But he let only one tear fall before he pushed it all back down.
A doctor like Guillotin, a home visit… It would not come cheap. Henry knew their food stores were next to dire. And as the sickness raged inside him, Henry knew it was only about to get worse.
All the things he’d promised Léon, all the love and trust in Léon’s eyes, his beautiful words from the night before… Was this to be how he repaid him? An unpayable debt, destitute in a city he didn’t know, and with a partner who, on their very first day together in Paris, had proved himself utterly useless?
No. Never.
Clenching his teeth, he snatched his quill and paper from the bedside table, and instead of getting the sleep his body screamed for, he set to work on his article.
The curtains remained drawn, though he barely needed light; the letters he laid down crept and crawled away from his dizzied sight. He wrote by memory of the shapes rather than by seeing. The lines he shot off were well-loved, well-tried, oft-repeated in his head. It was all the passion of years building up to that grand revolution that he spilled onto the page, and sick to near fainting, he wrote on and on.
He scribbled until his fingers ached, desperate to get the words out. He had so much to say, because not only was he trying to build a new Paris—he was trying to build a future for Léon, for Catherine, for all of them. And it felt so close in his fevered imagination. So close he could almost touch it.
There was no money beyond what the article would bring them, but if it sold, if he got more work…
At that moment, his words seemed, in every way, their salvation.
50
A VISIT FROM DOCTOR DEATH
