She giggled and returned to her game.
“I think the stockings are enough to warm up my feet.” Céleste slipped back off the bed and returned to her chair. She tucked her feet up next to her with the blanket she wore as a cloak wrapped around her. She sat a little turned away from him, but he could still see how very expressionless she was.
He felt he’d come to recognize fairly well what she was feeling by studying her face. He’d not realized until that moment that this unreadable mask was what she had worn so often at Norwood and in Paris.
Why was she donning it again?
Perhaps she was embarrassed by the kiss they’d shared. Perhaps she was simply tired or still worried. Perhaps she, too, had started imagining something different than what they actually had.
Whatever the reason, she felt terribly, painfully far away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
A gentleman accompanying his friend’ssister.
Céleste had repeated that in her mind countless times during the crossing from Le Tréport, and it continued to fill her thoughts as she sat in a private room in a comparatively luxurious inn in Portsmouth away from the docks.
That was who Aldric considered himself where she was concerned. The connection that had been building between them had been relegated to something that felt impersonal and random.
She didn’t truly believe he had never felt anything more than that during their journey. She had simply needed to come to terms with the fact that “a gentleman accompanying his friend’s sister” was the entirety of what he was choosing now.
“When is tonton Aldric coming back?” Adèle asked.
“Soon,ma poupette. He is making arrangements for us to continue our journey.”
Adèle slouched in the armchair she was occupying near the low-burning fire. “I am very weary of being on a journey.”
“So am I, and I am certain your tonton Aldric is as well.”
Pulling her doll more tightly into her arms, Adèle said, “He will come back though. He won’t leave us here.”
“He would never leave you, Adèle. Not ever.” Aldric had, in fact, added to the summary of his role as accompanier of a friend’s sister that he was also safeguarding Adèle. He had referred to her by name and described his connection to her as something important, something he had chosen. Céleste, on the other hand, had only been Henri’s sister.
“I think tonton Aldric loves me,” Adèle said.
“I know he does. And I love you too, sweet Adèle. I hope you know that.”
She smiled at Céleste. “Of course I do.”
Of course I do.It was the utterly perfect response: confirmation but in a tone that indicated the truth of it should have been obvious. Adèle clearly didn’t doubt that Céleste loved her. She assumed it, believed it, and trusted it.
Céleste knew she would cling to this moment for years. It wasn’t the same as Adèle saying that she loved her, but Céleste didn’t expect that. Only Henri had ever said he loved her; she’d long ago stopped expecting anyone else to.
Except that wasn’t entirely true any longer. She had let herself believe she would hear those words from Aldric. She had fully and utterly believed it.
“Will that man find us again?” Adèle asked, fussing with her doll’s dress.
“What man?”
“The one who tried to take me away.”
Céleste had clung to some hope that Adèle wasn’t still burdened by that experience. One didn’t easily forget so harrowing an experience, but she’d hoped.
She rose from her chair and crossed to Adèle. She knelt in front of her chair. “That man was left behind in France. We are in England now, and we are safe. We are going to tonton Aldric’s house. His friends will come see us there. Tonton Henri and tante Nicolette will be there soon as well. You will have so many people who love you and are looking after you that no one will have a chance to snatch you away.”
“Even if it is his job?” she asked in earnest and worried tones.
“His job?”
