Page 50 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Henry looked away before he could answer. He stared up at the ceiling, seeming to Léon as though he wished the rocking of the carriage were an ocean current come to wash him out to sea to drown him once and for all. But had it been, he would have fought it and swum his way back in to his sister. That was something Léon felt in his soul. And he found, right at the base of his anger, something hard and solid that felt almost like respect for Henry.
Until Henry said, “What would you know, anyway? You’ve got your barmaid and your blood money. It’s all mapped out for you.”
“It was,” Léon mumbled bitterly, snatching the flask back and taking a sip. “Until you came along and ruined everything.”
Henry snatched it right back from him. “I’m sure you can find some other town where your ‘skills’ will be in high demand.”
Léon watched him down some more brandy, then wrenched the flask away again. “Oh yeah? How about Paris?”
“How about Paris?” said Henry, waiting for Léon to take another drink before he grabbed the flask. “Maybe you could do something meaningful with your life instead of wasting away, keeping your-your-your-your chesty concubine barefoot and pregnant.”
“My chesty concubine?” Léon cried, undecided whether to laugh at the ridiculous description or slap Henry across the face.
Henry shoved the flask back into Léon’s hand. “Did it ever strike you that there’s maybe more to the world than marrying the girl next door and living your whole life in the same stupid town?”
Léon drank again and shoved the flask back to Henry. “Yes! Why do you think I’m doing all this? I’m going to get Émile out if it’s the last thing I do.”
“And what about you?”
Léon looked around the carriage, as though there was another version of him that Henry might have been referring to. “What about me?”
“What do you want?”
“What? I…” He took a sip. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you want? To do with your life.”
“Me? I…” He shrugged. “I-I don’t.”
Henry squinted at him. “You don’t what?”
“I don’t…want. Anything. I guess.” Another sip, and he passed it back to Henry.
“You don’t want anything? Nothing at all? No dreams, no places you want to go?” Meeting only another vague shrug, Henry asked, a little more gently but noticeably resentfully, “You’re happy with her then?”
“What? Who?” Léon blinked. “Souveraine?”
Taking another drink, “How many other barmaids are you planning to marry?”
Léon tilted his head, thrown by the change in conversation and tone. “What makes you think I’m planning to marry her?”
“Émile said you are. I’ve seen her, so Ipresumeyou are.”
“Émile says a lot of things. He’s a kid. He doesn’t understand…”
Henry challenged him with a piercing glare. “What doesn’t he understand?”
He chugged another sip, then Léon took the flask with a furrowing of his brow. “Why do you care? Why are you asking me all this?”
“I don’t care,” Henry said. “I’m just passing the time, and we’re having a drink?—”
“I’m only drinking because it’s fucking cold in here.”
Henry regarded him for a moment, a soft smile spreading across his handsome face. Then he did just about the last thing Léon would ever have expected him to do.
He picked his cloak up from the seat, crossed the carriage, and settled down by Léon, shoulder to shoulder. He said nothing, made no eye contact, only threw his cloak over Léon’s knees, then pulled up to his shoulders.
The move made Léon freeze up. It was a small and simple gesture, but it felt… foreign, somehow. Intimate, but a sort of intimacy Léon was almost wholly unfamiliar with. He hadn’t had a father around since he was seventeen, no mother since she died a few months later. Léon had only the physical touch of a boisterous brother, and, when he rarely let her, Souveraine.
