All Bedlam Courses Past (part fifty-nine)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part fifty-nine) 

His cousin had done, notably, at a time his overstrained mind had suspected his relations of conspiring against him, of ciphering to Ebrach across oceans, of crossing these to box him in. This third Bertrand was, by some jest of fate, cousin to the Everards.

“…yes, to marry, Honoré, when you are of an age, is only to be practical. I will live with you for a time and see to Bertrand’s tutoring. He must be kept at his music lessons, so you will have to buy a piano. My own legacy will provide one day for both Bertrand and Marie-Claudette.”

She spoke with an archangel’s fatalism, able from on high to survey this world Honoré would miss knowing for himself—this being of an age.

When they were alone, Gilbert unbosomed his lesser burden.

“She meant money…it is the likely thing. What favor, after all? I will be gone home. I suppose she may still know people in Paris…”

“But she may know me! Let her eyes fall on Crownhaven, this house I live in…what do you think? She knew I had money in the family, my cousin Gremot, of course I’d told her. Anne will have set down the address. She only, if her work keeps her tethered…”

He inflected work, relishing Anne in the low waters of life. “How does he manage her, Allen?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I don’t either,” Honoré decided. “Never mind me.” Fists, and a stingy purse—he would like it. But Anne stirring cruelty in him was Anne with the power, still, to degrade him. “She may have doubted I could be alive.”

“Well, I hadn’t mentioned Cookesville…”

“Please.”

“I did, I think, to Lecomte. He came to see me at my hotel…and we rode in a cab together. He talked a great amount.”

“Hmm.” Here a yawn slackened the set of Honoré’s chin.

But Lecomte could have talked a filibuster. If a man said what he alone could say, he knew he had, how not? That Gilbert’s memory could not sort the face of Anne from that of Lecomte, too improbable!

He had a distant impression Gilbert had started on the mission house in Washington, a man called Montrose…

His nap, dreamless, fixed in his mind that restless jealousy.

He woke to it. Money, birthright, if birthright could be acquired (a bourgeois-enough conceit)—these were positives, that he could never begrudge his son.

He did.

65

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part sixty)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)