Page 41 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
With a reluctant nod, he led her to the platform of the guillotine. “Would you like a blindfold?”
She looked down at the basket of heads. “No. I’m not afraid.”
She took a seat, then looked up at Léon with a conspiratorial, serious air. “How?” she asked, clipped.
“Oh. Uh.” Léon waved a hand at the guards who, up until then, had helped load the other condemned onto the plank. “Give the lady some space, please. Some dignity in death. Move to the front.”
They did as told, with a few raised eyebrows and grumbles, but they all knew better than to interfere with Léon. He looked around, judging what best to do, aware of thousands of eyes on him, not least those dangerous and black out in the centre of the square, studying his every move with a gun at hand.
He leaned down low, gathered the hem of Sophie’s skirt around her legs, and muttered, “I’m going to have to lift you ontothe platform. Lie out as long as you can when I place you down, and remember, not a sound.”
Léon’s strong arms took the bundle up easily enough, though no one paid the unusual deed too much thought—no one except Henry. He wasn’t drunk on wine and blood. It struck him as odd that those fine muscles should flex so over two legs and a satin skirt. But Henry had been far too distracted by the last beheading and subsequent mutilation to notice what had happened to the rest of that body once it was decapitated, and he had no chance to put two and two together regarding Léon’s plan.
Léon settled Sophie’s legs out long, discreetly folding Catherine’s dirty feet away in the numerous petticoats Souveraine had thought to supply. He pulled the dress down as far as it would go, and whispered, “Hold on tight.”
Standing, he glanced around for Souveraine, absently wondering that she would miss the final moment after all the work she’d done to make it happen, but she was nowhere to be seen.
What he did see were the guards below, whispering, scurrying about in a panic, exactly on schedule. He caught the eye of one and called them up with a raise of his head.
A harried whisper in his ear delivered the news he’d been expecting. “The girl’s not in her cell.”
“Girl? What girl? What are you talking about?” he responded by rote.
“The prisoner. The final one to be executed. She’s gone!”
Léon looked at the man, cool and hard, like he was an idiot. “That’s not possible.”
“She’s…” He threw his arms up in confused defeat.
“Go and look again. And come straight back. I need to know if this is the last one of the day. We can’t let these people knowwhat’s happened. But she’s bound to be in there somewhere. Check under her mattress or something.”
Now Léon was the one to receive a withering look, so he frowned at the man twice as deeply, and sent him on his way. And that was the moment. He had to act fast. It had to be smooth. The timing had to fall just right.
He couldn’t restrain the glance he sent out to Henry, tall above the discord. He didn’t want to look at him—didn’t want to let anyone know that he knew him. But wouldn’t it be natural to look at a man like that? Standing out above the crowd, nothing subtle about him, like there might have been had he had a brain in his head.
Their eyes locked across the fray, and Léon willed him to take off, to disappear to the forest like he’d instructed him, but Henry’s expression came back defiant. Distrustful.
That handshake, that brief moment in the dark… It clearly hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to Léon.
The guards were slow with their search. Taking all day, it seemed. Léon needed approval to go ahead, needed them to confirm that Sophie was the final head of the day, so no one would think he’d rushed it. He had to buy some time, but the crowd was growing restless. And Léon had nothing but himself and his axe to entertain them with.
He walked slowly to the front of the stage and brought a hand to his chest, curling the tie of his vest around and around a finger. He pulled. Loop by loop, the string slipped free until his vest fell open to a new and deafening clamour from the crowd. Black leather dropped back to reveal undulations of gorgeous muscle, trained by the axe since the day Léon was old enough to lift it. He ran fingertips up his midline, seductive, and he tried not to look at Henry—to look anywherebutHenry—yet he could feel his eyes. Even as he gazed down at the crowd, somewhere inhis peripheral vision, always, Henry loomed large and black and he watched him.
Léon’s hand tightened on his leather vest. Henry’s glove clenched around the horse’s reins. Léon flexed his abs as he pulled the vest back over his large and built chest, neck tilting, just like in Henry’s dream. Henry’s mouth went dry, his air all but evaporated, his thighs gripped a little tighter across the horse’s body.
But Léon was somewhere else, absent, as he raised his gaze to Henry’s devouring eyes. His ears were on the guards below, waiting for their final return. His hand moved fluidly, drawing the vest over his biceps, every movement charged with purpose. The show. The distraction. The fact that no one would say Léon had been anything but a loyal citizen. Reims in his pocket, beloved by all, and with the soundest alibi of any man in that city at the time Catherine went missing.
The prison doors flew open, Léon’s head turned, the crowd gasped at the flexing of a collarbone, and he saw the sorry shrug from the guard.
Time to finish it.
He ripped the vest off, ignorant of the five women and two men who fell into a swoon at the sight. He threw it down upon the heads in the basket, rounded the guillotine, and placed two strong hands on either side of the platform. “Ready, Sophie?”
“Are you sure you are? This might be the slowest execution in history.”
Léon laughed, but he felt the guilt for it. The others had been faster. What it must have been for her to wait like that, for her and for Catherine, curled up still like a rabbit in the forest, knowing she was surrounded on all sides by the sharp eyes of predators.
Léon slid the platform into place, his arms resisting the movement. He brought the lunette down around Sophie’s neck,and he fell to his knees, pretending to be occupied fixing it in place. “Do you have any true final words? For me, or for God? I won’t forget them. And I can deliver them anywhere you want me to.”
