Stepsister(70)

“Also to Paris,” Felix said, running his hand over Nero’s neck and down to his shoulder. “I’m delivering a face,” he continued. “Well, half a one.”

“Another war injury?” Isabelle asked, her pique forgotten for the moment.

Felix nodded. “Shrapnel took the left cheek of a captain. His eye, too. He can’t go out. People stare. They turn away from him. I made a half-mask to cover the injury. I hope it helps.”

Isabelle was about to say that she was certain it would, but he spoke before she could.

“Nero’s sweaty,” he said, frowning. “You should get down and walk for a bit. Give him a rest. You’ve got miles to go before you reach Paris.”

“Are you telling me how to take care of my own horse?” Isabelle asked. But she leaned forward and felt Nero’s shoulder, too.

“Yes.”

Isabelle, simmering, didn’t budge.

“Afraid?” Felix asked her, a taunt in his voice.

“Of what?”

“That I’ll kiss you again.”

Isabelle glared at him, but she jumped down because he was right, damn him; Nero was a little sweaty.

“You’re the one who’s afraid,” she said testily as she pulled the horse’s reins over his head and led him.

“Oh, am I?”

“You must be. Every time you kiss me, you run away.”

Felix scoffed at that. Which was a mistake.

The rude noise, the dismissive look on his face—they brought Isabelle’s simmering anger to a boil. She stopped dead in the middle of the road, hooked an arm around his neck, and pulled him close. The kiss she gave him was not sweet or soft; it was a hot, hard smash, full of fury and wanting.

She kissed him with everything in her, until she couldn’t breathe, and then she let go. Felix stumbled backward. His hat fell off.

“Run. Go,” she said, gesturing to the road. “That’s what you do.”

Pain twisted in his blue eyes. It hurt Isabelle to know that she’d put it there, but she couldn’t rein in the anger she felt towards him. It had been pent up for so long.

“Why, Felix? Just tell me why,” she demanded. “You owe me that. Did you change your mind? Did you find yourself a better girl? A pretty girl?”

Felix looked as if she’d run a sword through his heart. “No, Isabelle, I didn’t,” he said. “I waited. Alone in the woods. Night after night. For someone who swore she would come but never did. I waited until it turned cold and I had to leave the Wildwood, and Saint-Michel, to find work. I thought you’d changed your mind. Found a rich boy. Some nobleman’s son.”

Uncertainty skittered over Isabelle’s heart like mice in a wall.

“That’s not true,” she said slowly, shaking her head. “After Maman found out about us, and made you and your family leave, you said you’d come back for me. You promised to leave a message in the linden tree, but you didn’t.”

Felix raked a hand through his hair. He looked up at the sky. “My God,” he said. “All this time … all this time you thought that I …”

“Yes, Felix, I did. I thought you loved me,” Isabelle said bitterly.

“But, Isabelle,” Felix said. “I did leave a note.”





Seventy-Six


Isabelle shook her head.

She felt as if she’d ventured out onto a pond that wasn’t frozen solid, and now the ice was cracking under her.

“You didn’t,” she insisted. “I checked. Every night.”

“And I waited every night. Right where I’d told you I’d be. Where we saw the deer and her fawns.”

“No, it’s not true,” Isabelle said, but with less conviction.

“It is. I swear it.”

“What happened to it, then?”

“I—I don’t know,” Felix said, throwing his hands up. “I don’t see how anything could have happened to it. I was worried about it blowing away, so I put a stone on top of it to weigh it down.”

It can’t be true. He must be lying, Isabelle thought. None of this made any sense.

And then it did. The ice broke and a freezing shock of truth pulled Isabelle under.

“Maman,” she said. “She was so watchful. I bet she saw you hide it. I bet she took it and burned it.”

Isabelle felt like she was drowning. The hurt, the sorrow, the bitterness—all the emotions she’d carried for years, emotions that had been so real to her, she now saw were false. But a new one threatened to overwhelm her, to catch her and tangle her, suffocating her in its cold depths—regret.

She saw herself running to the linden tree night after night, hoping in vain for a note. She saw Felix, waiting for her in the Wildwood. And then both of them giving up. Believing the worst of each other. And of themselves.

“Oh, Felix,” she said, her anguished voice barely a whisper. “If only I’d found the note. What would our lives have been like if I had? We’d be in Rome now, and happy.”

“Maybe we’d be living by a turquoise sea in Zanzibar. Or high up in a mountain fortress in Tibet.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Or maybe we’d be dead. Of starvation. Exposure. Or sheer stupidity. We didn’t exactly plan the trip out. I had a few coins saved up. You were going to bring some hard-boiled eggs and ginger cake.”