Page 31

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AN INDECENT PROPOSAL

W hen Léon and Catherine emerged from the coffeehouse, the townspeople were in a panic.

The grounds outside had lifted, huge gashes in the dirt running in some places as long as a road did.

Plaster and tiles had fallen from buildings, and the occupants, too scared to stay inside lest their homes collapse, were soaked scarlet.

Souveraine, too, was awash with red rain, standing protectively over émile, watching the door, waiting for Léon.

She saw his hand in Catherine’s as he led her out—saw the way she clung to him—perfectly ignorant that he was now the closest thing she had to a brother, father, protector of any sort.

That he was now Catherine’s best and only hope of ever seeing Henry alive again.

Souveraine’s fingers tightened on émile’s shoulders as she steadied herself, and for the second time in the space of a day, Léon came face to face with her hurt and betrayal.

“I need to talk to you, Souveraine,” he said softly.

The pearl of one shining tear fell onto her hand, but she gave a small tilt of her head.

“Wait here,” Léon said to émile.

Catherine squeezed Léon’s hand as he pulled away, and he tried a kind smile back at her, perfectly fake.

He was lost. He was a mess.

And he felt now what Henry had been carrying on his shoulders for years.

Only that mixed with his own lot—all the responsibilities he already had, not least of all to Souveraine and émile.

He drew Souveraine away, where she raised her eyes to his, and awaited his explanation.

“I’m sorry,” he began.

Her tears overflowed at once, but he didn’t understand the full meaning behind them.

“I’m sorry I’ve put you through all this.” He made to bring his arms around her, but she pushed a weak hand into his chest to hold him back.

“All this way,” she said.

“All this way, all this time. And…” She glanced over at Catherine.

“When were you going to tell me?”

Léon’s mind ran a million miles an hour.

Tell her which thing?

Had she put two and two together?

Did she understand that Catherine was a witch?

That Henry was one? Or was it something else she alluded to?

Those feelings Léon had developed for Henry.

This late madness that seemed to have taken over his life.

That made him save Catherine’s head, that made him run after Henry, that even now, had him here, in front of this wonderful friend, about to ask even more of her.

Lost for any other words, he said, “Things have happened these last few days?—”

“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 to announce 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 ruby ring, 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 about this yet,” 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.”

That émile thought Léon had the power to stop them…

But Léon promised him, “I won’t let them touch a hair. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Léon took all the day and well into the night to make it back to Reims, and that he did with unprecedented haste, not only due to his own urgency, but due to the strange determination of the beast he rode upon.

Destroyer had refused to let himself be led or encumbered by anyone but Léon.

It quickly became apparent the creature was possessed of a desire and purpose all of its own.

It showed no signs of understanding a word Léon tentatively spoke into its ear, but when Léon mounted him, the stallion turned directly for Reims of its own volition, and did not relent until they were home.

It scared him, certainly, to see an animal like that driven not by thirst or hunger, but seemingly by love or duty to a man it barely knew.

But the fear didn’t change Léon’s belief that Henry was, at heart, good.

By the time he reached the prison, it was eleven, and everything was shut up tight.

He wanted to scream out for him, to hit the walls and cry into the cells that he was there, that he had come, and that he would free Henry.

He knew they would never have let him keep his cloak.

He knew he would be bitterly cold.

He knew he would weep for his sister, and that he would curse Léon.

But with no other option, he went back to his shack—the small and decrepit room that felt shabbier than ever.

It was stifling after his venture out into the wide world with Henry.

He’d always kept it just as clean as humanly possible, but there’s a dirt that comes with poverty.

The dirt that crept under the door and through the cracks in the walls—the unfixable and undefinable cracks where mice would always find their way in.

The stains that couldn't be removed on items that couldn't be replaced.

The holes in the things that he’d darned with his own fingers, clumsily, not half as nicely as Henry had darned his shirt.

Léon looked at émile’s little bed, almost too small for him now.

He looked over the bare and barren benches, the tiny fireplace empty and ashen.

He felt utterly alone, and like more of a failure than he ever had before in his entire life.

He dropped his head onto his pillow, and he cried, and he cried, and he cried, all the night through.