Page 66 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“It’s been a lifetime,” Souveraine returned. “A lifetime, you and me. And you…” She stopped short of saying he had promised her, because he’d never promised her a thing. Not in words. Only in company and in defiance of everyone else. “I didn’t think you could fall in love so fast.”
How the words sank into his heart like a dagger. “I’m not in love,” he whispered. But Henry’s eyes, the touch of Henry’s skin, the face and the thought of him, the sheer terror of where he was or what was happening to him. “I have to go back. To Reims. I have to go back.”
“They will kill her if you take her back,” she whispered urgently. “Have you gone mad? What is it you’re doing?”
“Not Catherine,” he replied, more impatiently than he’d meant to, his emotions boiling up inside, beginning to overwhelm him. “I need to get him out. He’s not… It’s my fault he’s been arrested. Souveraine, I feel so, so terrible.” The first tears fell down into her open hand as she caressed his cheek in sympathy. “I can’t believe I’ve done this to him. And I was trying to help. I thought they’d kill him. If I hadn’t said what I said—Souveraine…”
“I don’t understand you, Léon. I thought he was your enemy.”
“He was. I thought that too. But he’s… He’s not anymore. And…” How desperately he wanted to tell her. To spill it all. That he adored Henry. That he had fallen for a man who was brave and honourable after all. Who did one stupid, desperate thing that had driven Léon to fall for him so hopelessly that he was about to throw everything away.
But Souveraine interrupted his mess of thoughts. “So… you’re not in love with Catherine?”
The shock of the idea drove a kind of mad humour into Léon, so abstract, so completely absurd and baseless as it was, seemingly coming out of nowhere. “No. No, not at all.” He glanced at Catherine, sitting on the wet grass with Émile, then focused back on Souveraine’s eyes, the relief there, the sapling happiness. “No. Oh, no. Is that what you thought? I’m so sorry.”
She laughed at her misunderstanding, her fathomless jealousy that had changed her the last few years from a carefree girl to a beleaguered woman. And was it any wonder? She lived under the constant scrutiny of the townspeople. The shame that would have come of it, returning to Reims after days of absence, with everyone knowing Léon was absent too, only for him toannounce his engagement to a different woman. What they would have said…
Léon also laughed, relieved to see her tension eased. “No. I would never do that. Never. Every service to Catherine, every word, is for Henry’s sake. All of it.”
She asked hopefully, “Then you and I are?”
“Yes!” he cried, so happy to see her happy, to have cleared up the mistake quickly, and to agree wholeheartedly that they two were back to their usual status of ‘best friends’.
Only to find his breath ripped back out of his chest a moment later when her eyes brimmed with tears and she said, “Really?”
Really what? Had he just agreed to something?
Lest his wrong word send her back into that spiral right when he needed her help more than ever, he said, “Yes?”
Her breath caught. She was happier than he had ever once seen her, and she tipped onto her toes and placed a chaste kiss on Léon’s lips. His barely moved. The slightest ripple of acknowledgement, a polite and passionless return. And he saw it all there, the whole future mapped out, every day exactly like that polite and passionless kiss.
But she could not see that yet. She only dropped her head with a blush and said, “I love you so much, Léon.”
He murmured back, “I love you, Souveraine,” every word spoken true and melancholy, and not at all the way she wanted to hear them. But the show had to go on, as always in Léon’s life. He needed her help, and he couldn’t afford for her to fall back into her despair.
Souveraine, like a new woman, fresh and alive and ready for adventure, asked, “What can I do to help?”
“I need you to wait for me in Amiens.” He reached into his pocket and brought out all the money Henry had given him. Souveraine took it in two open hands with a gasp. “It’s Henry’s,” he explained. “And Catherine’s.” He reached for Henry’s rubyring, which glittered brilliantly in the sunlight. Something about giving it over didn’t sit right with him. He felt like he should have taken it back to Henry in person. He dropped it into his pocket. “I want you to hire a carriage. I want you to find an inn on the furthest side of the city, and I want you to stay there with Émile and keep Catherine out of sight. Use a new name.”
“How about Madame Lyon?” The words came from her mouth like a melody, one she’d spent hours composing.
Léon swallowed and gave a nod. “I should explain to Émile.”
“Émile? Darling!” she called across.
“But let’s not tell him aboutthisyet,” he rushed out, already hearing the tone of a mother in her voice.
Those big, sad eyes. “Why not?”
“Let’s um… I have to go. Right now. And I want to share it with him properly. The way things will… change.”
“Yes.” She blinked a few times. “Yes. That makes sense.”
He dropped to his knee thankfully as Émile came up. “Did Henri get arrested?” the boy asked, his mind having been on nothing else but that and sleep as he waited for his brother to be done with everything else.
“Yes. But I’m going to get him now. I’m going to talk to them, and I’m going to figure it all out. Then I’ll bring him back. I might be a few days is all. But Souveraine will take good care of you.”
Émile thought over the situation. He missed his brother, but he understood the gravity well enough to request only, “Don’t let them chop off his head.”
