When Strangers Marry (Vallerands #1)(62)

“I’m going to bed,” Alex mumbled, his face pasty and eyes bloodshot.

Lysette came to stand behind her husband, her hands drifting soothingly over his taut shoulders. “Max, you need to rest also.”

He motioned for Noeline to pour more coffee. “I am leaving again in a few minutes. Bernard will go with me. I’m going to ask Jacques Clement and one or two others to help in the search.”

Lysette wished that she knew how to comfort him. “I don’t think Justin has run away,” she said, sitting beside him. “I think this is another bid for attention. He is staying away deliberately, waiting until he is certain of an uproar before he returns.”

Max held the coffee cup in fingers that trembled slightly. “When I get hold of him, he’ll have more attention than he ever bargained for.”

She took his free hand in both of hers, clasping it tightly. “I know that you’re angry with him, but I think that you are mostly afraid for him. Perhaps you should let Justin know that, when you find him.”

Max rested his elbows on the table and massaged his temples. “Justin is too hardheaded to listen to anything I say.”

“I believe,” she said wryly, “that he has made the same remark about you on occasion.”

Max smiled faintly. “Sometimes I see myself in him,” he admitted. “But at his age I was not half so stubborn.”

“I’ll ask Irénée about that,” Lysette said, gently teasing. “I suspect she might not agree.”

Max brought her hand to his bristled face and pressed his lips against the back of it. “If I don’t find him, Lysette…”

“You will.”

———

The search continued for another day and night. Max enjoined most of the workers on his own trade vessels to find out what they could. A few boatmen admitted that Justin, or a boy remarkably like him, had been in their company. After a few hours of drinking and gaming, they said, he had left with a waterfront prostitute and had not been seen again. “How splendid,” Bernard had commented upon hearing this bit of information. “Now it seems we must worry about him developing a case of the clap.”

“If only that were the worst to fear,” Max had replied grimly.

After questioning dozens of men and combing through every keelboat, kentucky flat, barge, and raft in sight, the searchers were forced to temporarily disband with the agreement that they would resume the next morning. For two days and nights Max had barely paused to rest his feet, and the strain was telling. Looking very much like the unkempt, unshaven boatmen he had associated with for the past forty-eight hours, he made his way into the house with overcautious movements, blinking hard to stay awake.

It was past three in the morning, but Lysette was waiting for him. It tore at her heart to see him so careworn and defeated. She tried to guide him upstairs, but Max refused to go to his bedroom, afraid that he might sleep too soundly. He had time for only a few hours of rest. Together Lysette and Philippe helped him to the parlor and removed his boots. He unfolded his long frame onto a settee, dropped his head in Lysette’s lap, and closed his eyes. Philippe left them, anxiously glancing back over his shoulder.

“He’s gone,” Max mumbled, turning his face against the soft line of Lysette’s thigh. “As if he’s vanished from the face of the earth.”

Lysette stroked his forehead gently. “Sleep now. It’s not long until daybreak.”

“I keep remembering when Justin was a baby. Sometimes I held him when he slept. I wanted to keep him safe and happy for the rest of his life. But I can’t keep him safe from anything.”

“Rest now. You’ll find him tomorrow, bien-aimé.”

As Max fell asleep, Lysette watched him for a long time. She was surprised to realize how much she had come to care for Justin and Philippe in such a short time. She shared Max’s concern for the twins, and she wanted desperately to help them find peace. How unfair life could be, laying such burdens on the shoulders of the innocent, and letting them suffer the consequences of others’ mistakes.

Curling up beside Max, Lysette dozed lightly. The sky outside changed, darkness lightening to lavender-gray. Watching the dawn arrive, Lysette rubbed her eyes, careful not to disturb her sleeping husband.

Alertness came in a flash as she heard a scraping sound in the entrance hall. It was the front door opening. Stealthily the intruder crept into the house and paused at the parlor doorway.

It was Justin, dirty and disheveled, but looking a good deal better than Max. Silently he looked at Lysette and his father’s long, sprawling form on the settee. Lysette thought of motioning him upstairs and allowing Max to sleep, but Max would want to know about his son’s return right away. He would be furious if he did not have the opportunity to confront Justin the moment he entered the house.

“Come in,” Lysette said quietly.

At the sound of her voice, Max stirred, and she bent over his dark head. “Wake up,” she whispered. “It is over now, bien-aimé. He is home.”

Blindly Max twisted and sat up, shaking his head to clear away the mist of sleep. “Justin? Where have you been?”

“With friends.”

“Are you all right?” Lysette asked. “You have not been hurt?”

“Or course I am all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”