Page 64 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“She didn’t come this way,” Léon replied. “Or if she did, I haven’t seen her.”
“Good lad.” DuPont squeezed a familiar, loving hand over his shoulder, and Léon pulled the blade slowly back from the neck of the man he had just kissed.
“Be careful with him,” Léon warned. “Tie him up. Keep a gun on him. And don’t let him out of your sight, not for one second.”
“Slippery, is he?” DuPont replied knowingly.
“No,” Léon replied. “It’s so much worse than that. He’s incredibly dangerous.” Drawing heavily on all the respect and authority he’d garnered over the years, Léon looked DuPont dead in the eyes and declared, “He’s a witch.” Before DuPont even had time to reply, Léon instructed, “Don’t take any chances. Carry him back to Reims and lock him in the old Witches’ Tower.”
30
RETURN OF THE RED RAIN
Léon rode hard for Saint-Quentin, praying he would find Souveraine and Émile there. He had told DuPont to take Henry, that he would return to Reims the next day to explain it all. And DuPont had let him go. For he trusted Léon. Léon had done him a good turn, but DuPont didn’t even realise how good.
Léon had saved his life.
Maybe at the expense of Henry’s.
But Henry would have cut the man down without a second thought had he not interfered.
The way Henry had directed the horses with that eerie whistle repeated on Léon… It frightened him. Yet it also didn’t. It made a strange sort of sense with everything else he’d seen leading up to that moment.
What else could Henry do? Why, if he possessed magic, hadn’t he used it to free his sister?
Plagued by confusion and guilt, Léon rode on until he finally arrived in Saint-Quentin. A fog all about the place was just lifting to a bright blue sky, golden sun cutting through the mist. It was a morning more beautiful than any he’d seen since the day Henry arrived. Nothing but ochre clouds and red rain in Reims, untilthe moment Catherine climbed out of the pit and fell safe into Henry’s arms.
He stopped at the first lodging house he found and inquired for his party. Finding they’d had no callers of the sort, he left his name as Henri De Villiers, then moved on to the next. Then to the next, and the next, and on and on, and still nothing. But just as his mind set into a panic that he’d lost them entirely, lost Henry, that he was quite alone, many hours from home, in a part of the country he’d never set foot in before, he heard a loud whinny.
“Destroyer!” Léon nudged his horse over to the beautiful animal, who trotted towards him just as far as his restraints would allow. Léon climbed down and rubbed the beast’s neck, getting an approving snuffle that threw a breath of steam up into the cold air. Léon found the caramel pony nibbling grass beyond. “Are they inside?” A loud snort answered him.
The building was a low-ceilinged coffee house, thatched on top, opaque and milky windows, few and dark above a pretty garden. They must have stopped for breakfast, waiting for Léon and Henry to catch up.
He hated to go inside, to tell Catherine what had happened. But it had to be done.
He took a deep breath, put a hand to the door latch, and dipped his head. Henry’s words came back to him.Always, always, tell her I’m coming.
With a heavy heart, he pushed the door open and stepped into the establishment. They had only just opened, but there were a surprising number of patrons inside. It took him a moment to spot his group at the far side of the room, huddled up at a small table by a window. But they had already seen him. Émile, exhausted, sat up bleary-eyed on his approach. Souveraine looked as close to haggard as she ever came, going ontwo days in the same dress, dark shadows beneath her eyes, but still her face lit with hope on sight of him.
Not so, Catherine.
Catherine searched over Léon’s shoulder. She scanned the door repeatedly after it closed behind him. She ran eyes over all the windows.
Souveraine was immediately up and in Léon’s arms, having her cheek kissed, while Émile hugged him around the waist.
And Catherine waited.
The tension in the air that only he and she knew was there was killing him, and he was too caught up in what he had to say to notice the dimming of the windows as the bright sun was blocked out by gathering clouds.
He pulled a chair up to the table, leaned close to her, and reached for her hand.
She wrenched it away, fearful, and a crack of thunder sounded outside.
Léon glanced towards the window, knowing subconsciously that it wasn’t right, not with the way the morning had been when he walked in, but he was too focused on how to break the news to her.
He couldn’t lie. Henry was sweet to want to spare her feelings, but she had been through enough, and he had to tell her the truth.
He didn’t mince words. “Henry’s been arrested.”
