Page 139 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
She had certainly found a way to process it all, just as smoothly as she processed each and every one of her assailants who weren’t fast enough to escape her wrath. They were crushed into red paste, and they were amalgamated into the beast of all her fear and anger, now finally brought under her control, there in Paris, with the love of a good woman.
“You see, you shouldn't infantilise her,” Léon explained.
“I shouldn't what?” Henry blustered.
“Are you two ready?” Catherine called.
Léon grasped Henry’s hand and pulled him out into the light. They chased up the scaffold steps where Henry stopped in front of Catherine. “You did all of that?”
She grinned wide. “Are you impressed?”
“I’m so impressed.” He rushed forward to hug her, and lest she kill him with the strange power ebbing around her fingertips, she let go of all the magic. Just as his arms slipped around her neck, the glob of human refuse burst apart, sloshing across the ground, up the sides of buildings, littering the area with dead.
Léon let out a long whistle. “That’s not nice.”
“Sorry,” she replied. “I didn't see any other way to do it.”
He wrinkled his brow at her, but given how well she had managed the task of keeping bullets off them, he said only, “Henri, do you think you could call our horses back before anyone else arrives?”
He didn’t need to be asked twice. Henry whistled, the horses came right to the scaffold, and this time all three climbed on and dashed out of Place de la Révolution.
The De Villiers carriage was equipped to hold four horses, and waited in a quiet lane a half hour’s ride from the scene of slaughter. Souveraine watched at the helm with Émile by her side, a gun in her hand, not afraid to shoot anyone who took note of them.
They’d stayed far away from the procession of Louis’ execution and burial for fear they might have been thought part of a plot to save him at the last minute. Consequently, the area was quiet, which was just as well, because the sight of Léon, Henry, and Catherine, riding hard through the city, the first two absolutely covered in blood, would have drawn attention from even the most seasoned of Parisian revolutionaries.
Léon and Henry were directed to jump straight into the back of the carriage to be hidden away, a move they did eagerly just as soon as Léon had seen Émile well and happy at the front. Catherine pulled a shawl over her dress, which displayed the blood of the ex-Kings’s severed neck. She, Souveraine, and Émile made short work harnessing Destroyer and Azazel to the front of the carriage, and with a snap, they were away, Léon and Henry once again alone in the intimate space of a carriage, hidden from all the world. But how different it was to that first time.
Léon leapt on him, kissed him, pushed him down onto the seat, threading his fingers through his cropped hair. “I got you back. I did it. I got you back!”
Henry indulged fully in the next kiss, then whispered, “I still don’t believe you’re really here.” He stared at the beautiful face he never thought he’d see again.
Léon’s grip on his cheek was trembling. “I would never let them take you. Not you, Henri.”
Henry wrapped his fingers around Léon’s. “But what have you done? Ange, I’m not worth this. You’ve given your life for me. They know who you are—it’s a death sentence.”
“Don’t you see? I’m only really alive because of you. It’s only now that I have you—for the first time in so long, I have a place. And it’s not working myself to death. It’s hope. And it’s plans for the future. You gave me back a piece of myself that was gone. You’ve given me a family. You were right all along. You were the man who was going to save me. But I needed to save myself, too. And I did that today. Paris has saved us both.”
“Oh, my love. Let me look at you. I don’t ever want to stop seeing you and holding you. You have become everything to me. The man you are. You’re my angel, you're the very breath of the forest, you’re the light and the freedom and the love, and Ange…” Henry kissed him over and over. “I want to ask you to marry me. And know I can’t, but I need you to understand, I want you forever. I want you to be my husband. I want to go where you go, and I want to be by your side. I want to be buried next to you when we die, and I want you to be mine in heaven. I love you, Léon. I love you more than life itself.”
Henry dipped his head to kiss Léon’s neck. Léon arched against his lips, squeezing fingers into his naked back. “Don’t stop. Don’t.”
Henry laughed, placing a coy peck on his lips. “I think it might be very awkward when they open the carriage.”
“We’re not going to stop for hours, my love. Not for anything. Not until we’re safe.”
Henry’s beautiful eyebrows raised. “Hours?”
“Hours,” Léon assured him. “Now kiss me.”
64
LE HAVRE
They arrived at the port of Le Havre deep in the night. Émile had slept cuddled up between Souveraine and Catherine. Henry had fallen asleep in Léon’s arms, a blanket pulled over his shoulders, while Léon remained awake all the night with his bloody axe by his hand, determined to keep them all safe should they run into any trouble.
But there was none. The border checks out of Paris were lax with celebration of Louis’ death, and as they were leaving rather than entering, the drunk and happy guards thought little of allowing two women and a child to exit the city.
Le Havre was busy, and even at three o’clock in the morning, there were men at work on the docks. Léon woke Henry, and while the others took their turn in the carriage for rest and repast, they moved among the workmen, discovering their options of escape.
