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RETURN OF THE RED RAIN

L éon 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, until the 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 on two 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.”

A shallow inhale of breath, a rumble so deep from the sky it seemed to shake the very floor of the building.

A murmur went around the restaurant, a protest from émile at the inclement change, a surprised exclamation from Souveraine, but Léon concentrated on Catherine.

“They’ve taken him back to Reims.”

“No. No.” It was a hopeless utterance, as though it could change a thing.

“No.” Tears started fast to her eyes, and drop, drop, red spatters of rain hit the window hard.

Léon’s mind snapped closed like a mousetrap on the understanding that had been dogging him for days.

“I’m going back for him,” he rushed to say, but Catherine was up.

Her chair hit the floor as she stumbled back, reeling away.

And as the tears rushed to her eyes, ran down her cheeks, so the sky darkened and the windows gushed red.

Léon rushed to her, arms on her shoulders, but she spoke distantly, as if in a trance.

“There’s no getting him out of there. Not now. Not after what we did. They’ll find out he’s a highwayman, that he saved me…” A high-pitched whine broke from her chest, the cries of a young woman who’d just lost her last family member, and with it, every piece of china on every table began to rattle.

Tables dropped to their sides, the ceiling above them began to buckle and crack.

Léon turned panicked eyes on Souveraine.

“Get émile out of here now. Run!”

Souveraine, frightened by the scene, was fast to act, stopping only to grab at Léon’s hand on the way past, but he pulled it away, instead resting both hands on Catherine’s arms. “Be calm. Calm. I’m going back for him.”

Catherine gripped his wrists with a strength Léon would never have imagined her capable of, her touch burning into his skin, searing ten long and red marks into his flesh.

He tried to pull back, but she held him tight.

“He is everything.” She shook her head, then gave into a full wail, dropping to the floor as lamps and bottles fractured and broke all about them, as the windows cracked apart, smashing to the floor in long, wet, bloody shards.

Léon stumbled to his knees as the building swayed.

He fought to bring a hand to her cheek.

“I will get him. I promise you. I will bring him to you. Look at me.”

She did, but her eyes were wild, and he saw the madness there.

The clinging, broken girl, and he remembered Henry’s subservience to her, Henry’s desperation to get to her, the gun in Henry’s hand and his intention to walk into that prison and kill his sister himself.

And that’s when Léon understood.

That whole time, that whole desperate game.

Henry hadn’t been trying to free her for his own happiness, or even Catherine’s.

He’d been trying to protect the entire city from Catherine.

If Léon had developed feelings for Henry, that crystallised them into full-blown adoration, a deep and abiding loyalty and faith, and a violent longing that could only be healed with one balm.

He tightened his grip on her, looked deep into her eyes, and promised, “I won’t let them touch him. I have a plan, and I’m going to break him out. Trust me, Catherine. You have to trust me. I won’t let anything hurt your brother.”

Her breath came shakily into her lungs, her fingers, her hands, her entire body trembling, but she let Léon pull her head to his chest, let him wrap two arms around her.

She cried, the rain fell, but gradually, slowly, the room stopped shaking, along with her body.

The longer she stayed there on the floor with Léon, the calmer all the world around them became, all while he whispered to her, over and over, “Henry’s coming. I promise you. I’m bringing him back.”