Page 79 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“No. It knows you won’t hurt it.”
Léon cradled the animal close to his chest, stroking its feathers. “And what else?”
“Dogs, sometimes.” He began a slow walk towards the cottage. “Not cats. Never cats. Irritable little shits.” Léon chuckled, but Henry stopped. His expression shifted to earnest, heart-cleavingly sweet, and he said, “Not humans. I can’t do that. If I could, I certainly wouldn’t have been chained up in the Witches’ Tower. And I wouldn’t have gotten into any of these scrapes that punctuate my life. And I would never have had to come to you.”
Henry wrapped tender fingers around Léon’s. More tender than he’d ever been, and Léon adored him more deeply with every fleeting second. Henry’s cheeks kept their soft blush, and when he looked anxiously down at the ground, Léon’s heart smashed to life in a way it never had before.
Henry said, “I don’t want to be presumptuous, or…” He pressed his lips, then raised shy eyes to Léon’s. “If you’re feeling half of what I’m feeling, whenever we’re together, thenyou should know it’s real.” He brought Léon’s hand to his lips, placing the briefest of kisses, then rushing on, “I haven’t ever felt like this. I like you so much. And that feels childish, and inadequate to say. I have strong…” He laughed over his awkwardness as Léon melted into the paddock. “I have strong feelings, and… I want you to come to Paris.”
Léon’s smile faded. He passed the bird back to Henry, who whistled it away, golden bird in the golden sun, back to the wilderness where it belonged. “I can’t go to Paris with you.”
“Of course you can. Why can’t you?”
“And what? Henri, you can’t really believe all that the revolution promises.” A flash of irritation darkened Henry’s face—irritation, disappointment, embarrassment—mingling with something he now recognised as hurt. “I wish I could.”
“Then do it,” Henry said, far too deeply, far too resentfully.
Léon hated the way they’d fallen so quickly back to arguing. Maybe the relationship really was a chimera and nothing more. He tried to say it gently. “I have to think of Émile. I’m not taking him into a war zone. And then there’s Souveraine?—”
In a flash of jealous anger, “What’s the bar wench got to do with it?”
“She’s my best friend,” Léon said. And Christ, how to talk to him about all the rest of it? That she thought they were engaged. That he’d let her think it. That he’d used her.
As if he could read his mind, Henry said, “I felt like throwing up when you said you were engaged to her.”
Then Léon felt like throwing up. “I told you from the start it was my intention to marry her one day.”
“That was before we happened,” Henry snapped.
The words being spoken aloud caught them both off-guard, squeezed their hearts and twisted their stomachs up in knots. They two had their paths and their lives andtheir responsibilities set, and they both knew they were not converging in any foreseeable future.
“So, what will you do?” Henry prodded. “Go back to Reims and take up your axe like none of this ever happened? Aren’t you tired of being compliant and dependable? Aren’t you tired of putting on your show?” Léon turned his cheek away, recoiling from the accusation and anger in Henry’s voice. But Henry was thinking of Léon even more than he was thinking of his aching heart. “I’ve seen you up there, I know what it’s doing to you. You can’t keep beheading people and imagine anything’s going to get easier.”
Léon huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “After yesterday, I have no idea what I’ll do ever again. My whole life is fucked now. And all for this.”
Léon walked away, but Henry soon fell in at his side. It was a few moments until the tension settled enough for Henry to ask, “Who was it you killed?”
“The warden,” Léon replied, stooping to pick a long piece of grass to toy with.
“The vile one?”
It was oddly touching that a throwaway comment like that had stuck in Henry’s brain. That he’d been listening hard all along, to all the things Léon had said. It softened him. “The very one.”
Taking up his own blade of grass to pick at, “Do you think they’ll be able to figure out it was you?”
“I don’t know.” He ripped at the tip of the grass. “I told my employer that I was leaving town right before I did it. With any luck, he might believe I was clear when it happened. But…” A sickening revelation slunk low in Léon’s chest.
“What is it?”
Wary eyes flicked up to Henry’s. “I told him I was leaving because of you.”
“Léon…” Appalled but enamoured, Henry pulled Léon close and pressed his hand to his cheek, that same irresistible softness catching his heart when Léon leaned into him.
“I said I couldn't burn you. That I couldn't stand the barbarity of it. So I was leaving.”
“Not a person who saw that trial would ever imagine you’d try to save me. You really…” He breathed out a small laugh. “You really made me into a villain. A terrifying one.”
There was a sad glow about Léon’s eyes when they met Henry’s, hoping the puzzle had clicked for him. “You must have heard, they attributed all your sister’s…” He stopped short of saying ‘her crimes’, defensive of her as Henry was. “All of what happened, to you. She’s no longer wanted.”
