Spectacle(94)

“Oh, Nathalie,” he said, taking her hand. “I—I wish you didn’t feel that way.”

She couldn’t look him in the eye yet and it was all she could do to avoid running away like a child. But she wasn’t a child. “It matters not, Monsieur Gagnon.” She stood up to her full height, gaze still cast to the side. “I wish you the best in your nuptials.”

“Thank you,” he said. He kissed her hand and let it go, gently. “I think at another time, in other circumstances, I should have liked to know you better. And differently.”

Nathalie looked him in the eye for the first time since this conversation took its turn. “You … you should? I mean, you would have?”

He nodded, the serious expression on his face melting into a smile. His crooked tooth, seldom seen unless he smiled broadly, winked at her.

“Thank you, Christophe.” She, too, smiled. “I appreciate that. I—I’d still prefer to see my own way home, however. I have too much blood on my hands to want protection anymore, and if it were anything more than that between us … I think it would only break my heart to see you walk away afterward.”

He understood, or so he said, but a shade of disappointment clouded his face. “May I at least pay for your carriage?”

She was about to decline, but his slightly wounded expression touched her. With a polite smile she accepted, sad that he wasn’t hers to have, but utterly elated that the affection was mutual.

He called a carriage for her, paid the driver, and kissed her on the hand before helping her ascend. All the way home she pressed the back of her hand, still tingling from his kiss, against her cheek.





44


The staccato knock at the door the next morning was swift and deliberate; it was a knock that meant serious business. Nathalie, still in her nightgown, peeked out from her bedroom.

“Who’s calling on us so early?” asked Maman, putting down the teapot.

Papa rose up slowly from his chair. His fever had subsided the previous night and his hands were better; he said the fatigue would last for a few more days. “Charity request, maybe,” he said on his way to the door.

“Wait!” Nathalie cried. “What if it’s—” She swallowed. She felt silly putting it into words. Madame la Tuerie. She’d told her parents everything; it had been a late night of conversation and grateful embraces as well as admonishment and promises (not to undertake dangerous feats that were “for the Prefect of Police to handle”). Papa’s reassuring look told her he understood. She cleared her throat and called out, “Who is it?”

“A courier on behalf of Saint-Mathurin Asylum.”

Papa opened the door a crack, then swung it open. “Please come in.”

A slender young man with glasses stepped over the threshold. “My apologies for disturbing you at this early hour. I’m afraid I have some unpleasant news about an accident involving Brigitte Baudin.”

“Oh goodness.” Maman covered her mouth with her balled-up handkerchief.

“Brigitte tried to take her own life this morning.” The courier stood with his hands at his sides. “She’s alive but badly wounded. I’m afraid the asylum did not ask me to relay any more than that.”

Maman’s face turned as white as her bonnet. “Mon Dieu!”

Papa thanked the courier and showed him out. His hand lingered on the doorknob. After a pause, he shook his head. “She—she seemed well enough during my visit the other day.”

“I thought she was long past that,” Maman said in a heavy voice as she settled onto the sofa.

“Past that? This isn’t the first time?” Nathalie took a step into the parlor. “You never told me.”

Maman shot her a look of disappointment. “Do you think talk of suicide is appropriate for a child?”

Nathalie blushed. “Non.”

“It happened shortly after they took her in at Saint-Mathurin,” Papa said, joining Maman on the sofa. He put his arms around her. “She made thirteen sets of rosary beads into a rope of sorts, and … fortunately someone heard her kick the chair away. They found her in time.”

Maman buried her face in her hands. “Poor troubled, sensitive, unpredictable Brigitte.”

Nathalie hesitated, wanting to choose her words carefully, then spoke. “I understand. Why you kept some things from me. About our family, about being Insightfuls and what all of that meant.”

She studied them, her hardworking parents who’d given her a home of love and happy memories, when she knew all too well many girls had no such thing. The Henard experiments had changed their lives and hers forever, and yet they didn’t crumble under the weight of their memories. They were fatigued and genuine, burdened and good. She was proud, so very proud, to have them as parents.



* * *



As soon as they stepped through the doorway to Aunt Brigitte’s floor, rosemary and juniper pervaded their nostrils. “To purify the air,” Maman had once explained. Sometimes the asylum staff used it to cover up accidents, like the time a patient threw up in the hall, or the day one of Aunt Brigitte’s roommates dumped every chamber pot she could find until the nurses restrained her. So it was rarely just rosemary and juniper. It was usually rosemary, juniper, and some horrid, not-quite-masked stench.