He had significantly overreacted, which was odd for him. His was the cool head that prevailed amongst the Gents. He was the reliable evaluator of risks and dangers. Perhaps the urgency he’d felt had actually been guilt at having left Henri behind inactualdanger.
It hadn’t helped that he’d regularly caught Céleste eyeing him with frustration and accusation. Her brother was in peril, and she blamed Aldric for not doing enough to keep him safe. If only she knew how unnecessary her glares were; Aldric castigated himself more intensely than she ever could.
“I can’t feel entirely at ease with you remaining here,” Lucas said early the next morning as he and Julia were about to depart Fleur-de-la-Forêt.He watched Aldric with worry. “You will eventually have to make the journey to Calais as well. The longer you wait, the more dangerous it is likely to become.”
“I won’t leave without Henri. If that means waiting, then I’ll wait. I know perfectly well that if anything happens to him, the Gents will never forgive me.”
Julia gave him a dry look. “I think the one who will never forgive you isyou.”
He met Lucas’s eye. “Take her and her blasted insightfulness back to England, would you?”
Lucas smiled broadly, pulling the equivalent, more subdued version from Aldric. “Word of what’s happened in Paris will reach England before we do. Write to the Gents when you’re able to. They’ll want to know the state of all of us.”
Aldric would write, but he wanted to wait until he could tell them that Henri was safe.
Julia hugged him. Aldric had often imagined having a sister, though he’d never been so fortunate. He envied Henri that a little. And when Crofton had married, Aldric had hoped his new sister-in-law would feel the way family ought. But she’d proven as much a Benick as the rest of them. They were rubbish at families.
“Please be careful,” Julia said, still embracing him. “In your quest to save everyone, make certain you also save yourself.”
“I won’t do anything foolish,” he promised her.
She and Lucas climbed into thechaise de poste, having already made their farewells to Céleste and Adèle. Aldric met the driver’s eye. The man was trustworthy, brave, and quick-witted. Aldric could not have trusted his friends’ lives to anyone less capable.
“If you’ve any pull with heaven, Stanley,” he whispered as the carriage drove away from Fleur-de-la-Forêt, “see them safely back home to their boys.”
Aldric watched until he couldn’t see them any longer. Rather than alleviating the weight of worry on his mind, their disappearing coach only added to it. He wouldn’t know for weeks if they arrived safely back at Lampton Park.
He needed to get used to that. The Gents growing their families and building their lives away from him had always been an inevitability, but itstill hurt. The promise he’d made in Stanley’s memory to safeguard them until he was no longer needed was proving heavier all the time. He worked tirelessly, worried ceaselessly, and often felt very alone.
He made his way to the small library. It would be a quiet place to pass the rest of the morning. He had been shown to a guest bedchamber the night before. Céleste had suggested he could choose a room in the family wing. Thankfully, he’d managed not to scoff, not wanting to put her back up again.
The family wing.
He was a Benick. He didn’t even belong in hisownfamily wing.
Aldric dropped into a comfortable chair near the window and simply breathed for a moment. He entwined his fingers atop his stomach and closed his eyes. He was unlikely to actually drift off. Sleeping sitting up at the inn hadn’t done him any favors.
The sound of a violin being played in the next room floated in the air. Céleste had reduced the number of things she’d brought with her from Paris in order to help facilitate a single-vehicle journey. But she’d kept her violin. Indeed, it had remained in the carriage with her, and she’d been noticeably protective of it.
Though Céleste hadn’t brought the instrument with her to Norwood Manor two years earlier, Aldric knew she played, thanks to Henri. Henri likely didn’t realize how often he had spoken of his sister over the years. Anyone even vaguely listening would know how extremely important Céleste was to him.
Aldric recognized the tune she was playing. It was a soft and gentle folk song, uplifting without being jaunty or bouncy, and blessedly peaceful.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the twine-wrapped parcel he’d retrieved from Mother’s beloved gardens at Versailles. Had the mobs reached the palace? Had the tranquil gardens become a place of violence? Much of the populace’s discontent was focused on the actions and stances of the King and Queen; the growing wrath could easily turn on them.
He ran his fingers over the knotted twine. He had remained behind during the ball their final night in Paris with every intention of opening his mother’s offering. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do so. And he hadn’t found the wherewithal to do so in the days since. He didn’t know why.
For a moment, he’d believed it was mere sentimentality. But his feelings leaned more toward nervousness than nostalgia. She had said that what she’d left for him was meant to have helped him survive the circumstances hisfather and brother would have created. Mother died many years earlier yet had rightly predicted that things would be difficult.
Things were always difficult.
And Crofton was up to something. Aldric hadn’t given that overly much thought since leaving England, yet the suspicion hadn’t truly subsided. His brother was going to cause trouble; Aldric knew he was. There wasn’t going to be peace in Aldric’s life anytime soon.
What could Mother possibly have left for him that could fix that? He turned the parcel over in his hands a few times, as he’d done the past two days. It would have broken her heart if what she’d left for him didn’t actually prove helpful. If itdid—if the parcel proved to be further evidence that she had understood in her final years the full extent of how miserable life in this family was going to become for him—that would break Aldric’s heart.
Thus, he couldn’t bring himself to open it.
He put the parcel back in his pocket. He resumed his previous posture, eyes closed and ears attuned to Céleste’s music. A slow breath in. A slow breath out. Aldric felt himself relaxing, which didn’t happen often. And soon enough, his mind was in that in-between place where dreams interwove with the real world.
