“I’m not even crying about Lucie and Émile. It’s that— I don’t know.... For some reason, I keep thinking about Dash. He always used to promise me a lifetime of laughter.”
After a beat, Jérôme said softly, “You Americans are an optimistic people; I suppose we Gauls seem melancholic in comparison. But personally, I don’t believe you can truly appreciate laughter without experiencing tears.”
She sniffed, pulled back, and looked up at him. “Live the questions, not the answers?”
He gave her a sad smile. “Rilke was no slouch.”
“Do you suppose Émile quoted Rilke to Lucie down here, in their little cave?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
She let out a long breath. “I think I’ve been grieving not just Dash’s death, but finding out he wasn’t the person I thought he was, after the fact. That he’d put us into debt, that his grand life was a sham. He even kept his illness from me, at first. Why couldn’t heconfide in me? It makes me doubt everything that we shared, everything my life—ourlife—was, before.”
Jérôme opened his mouth to speak but hesitated, as though searching for words. “I know it’s nothing like what you’ve been through, Rosalyn, but I grieve the loss of my marriage. It’s difficult letting go of dreams, of what we had—or, more precisely, what Ithoughtwe had.”
“Letting go of the people we used to be.”
“And embracing the people we are yet to become.”
The spirits of Lucie and Émile swirled around them as they sat together in that peculiar chapellike vault in the earth, their red capes enveloping them. With her bonnet and his cap, it was easy to imagine they were two lovers from another era sheltering deep beneath the surface of the earth, hiding from their chaperone... or the German bombs.
Rosalyn became acutely aware of Jérôme’s arm around her, his thigh pressing against hers. Ignoring the musty, chilly air of the caves, she focused on his masculine scent: of freshly tilled earth and woody grapevines. She leaned into the warmth of his body, matching her breathing to his, feeling the steady beat of his heart. He was so vital, so alive.
And so was she.
Rosalyn tilted her face up to his, and cupped his cheek with her hand, savoring the soft prickle of his whiskers in her palm. He gazed down at her for a long moment before slowly lowering his face to hers.
They kissed.
It was the sweetest, gentlest touch. He nibbled at her lips, landed tender butterfly kisses along her cheeks, left a trail of heat as he made his way down to her neck. Her skin tingled under his caresses; something deep down began to awaken. She hadn’t felt anything like this since...
Dash.
She pulled away. Jérôme went still.
After a moment, he put his hand over hers. In a voice so soft it made her want to cry, he said: “Stay with me, Rosalyn. Stay here with me. We don’t have to do anything; just stay with me.”
Breathing heavily, she gazed around Lucie’s hidden attic room, the walls carved with sirens and sailing ships, flowers and trees. Were these things Lucie longed to see and to experience when the war was at last over and she and Émile were reunited? Rosalyn’s heart broke at the thought of a beautiful life cut so very short.
Don’t think, Rosie. Just let yourself feel. Let yourself live.
She turned back to Jérôme. His sad eyes, his quiet way. Her attraction to Dash had felt like a lightning bolt, but this was different. This was soft, hushed. Jérôme was safe, and kind... and just looking at him made her want him with an animal fierceness she had forgotten she possessed.
Leaning toward him, seeking his heat, she sank into his embrace once more. She kissed him, this time deepening the connection, allowing herself to experience what she had denied for years now: the yearnings and desires for connection, for sensual pleasure. The aching hunger for the touch of a man’s hands, and for all the wild, untamed sensations they elicited. She let herself go, embracing aspects of herself she had hidden—and denied—for so long.
When Jérôme eased back onto the little chalk floor of the strangely poetic attic of Dakar, Rosalyn followed him, tumbling impetuously down the rabbit hole.
?Much later they ascended the main stairs of thecrayères, climbing the hundred sixteen steps, leaving the caves behind.
They had agreed to leave everything as they had found it inDakar’s cave within a cave for the time being; Jérôme would speak with Marius to determine how the winery wished to proceed. Rosalyn hoped that professional archivists might be able to salvage what was left of the letters, and that she would be able to revisit their discoveries soon. She wanted to read through Doris’s letters, especially.
“There’s one more thing I would like to ask from you,” said Jérôme as they left the Pommery cellars and headed back to the festivities.
“More?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.
In truth, her mind was a jumble of contradictory emotions and sensations: the trace of his lips on her skin still tingled, and her limbs were languid and sated, but she felt wildly guilty, even disgusted with herself. Her mind screamed at her,What have you done?More precisely, what hadtheydone?
She didn’t know how to make sense of it; she wanted to be alone.
