Marie-Josèphe looked from Yves to Lucien.
“Does His Majesty know what he’s done?”
“His Majesty always knows,” Lucien said.
“We’re cruel in our happiness, sister,” Yves said. “Lucien has lost everything —”
“The King has lost Lucien!” Marie-Josèphe said. “And Lucien has gained me.”
Epilogue
In Paris, on Midwinter Night, Yves de la Croix strode through sleet and darkness to his tiny house. He dropped his heavy cloak, lit a candle, opened the secret door, and stepped into the library.
He opened his satchel, drew out his most recent discovery, and unwrapped it from its covering of oiled silk.
In the illuminated manuscript, sea people leaped and played in waves of cerulean blue and sunlight of pure gold. He admired the illustrations, closed the book carefully, and placed it on the shelf next to Marie-Josèphe’s exquisite opera score, now bound in calfskin, M. Boursin’s dreadful cookbook, and the sheaf of Madame’s letters.
Candlelight gleamed on the sea monster medal, and on the frames of two of Marie-Josèphe’s drawings: One of Sherzad, the other of the male sea monster, haloed with scraps of gilt and broken glass.
The skeleton of the male sea monster lay in a reliquary of ebony, inlaid all over with mother-of-pearl.
For now, I must protect the sea people with secrecy, Yves thought. For now. But not forever.
oOo
Lucien’s Breton ship sailed through moonlight. Lucien stood at its stern. The wake glowed, a widening arrow of luminescence.
Lucien feared the return of his seasickness. He had endured the Atlantic crossing better than he ever dared hope. The choppy waters of France’s north coast brought misery to him, but the soft calm sea of the Tropic of Cancer caused him little distress.
I shall worry about hurricanes, Lucien thought, when I have a hurricane to face.
Marie-Josèphe joined him, sat on the deck beside him, and laid her hand along the side of his face. He kissed her palm.
I cannot regret my decisions, he thought. I’m too proud — too arrogant — to rue leaving court, if His Majesty believes he can find a better adviser, which he cannot. I cannot live in Brittany with my fortunes so reduced.
He missed his position, and his wealth. He maintained his dignity; he could not have behaved in any other way and kept it.
Returning home to Brittany had been difficult. Lucien could not, by the terms of His Majesty’s order, make any claim on the resources of his former title. His own pride prevented him from asking his father for help. All Marie-Josèphe’s dowry, and most of Haleed’s gift of pearls, had gone to fitting out the ship and buying a small stud farm, where Jacques now had charge of Zachi and Zelis and the other Arabians, and Hercules the cat had charge of the mice in the stable.
Returning to Brittany had been difficult, leaving it again even harder. He worried about his home, placed under the control of M. du Maine.
Lucien still battled fits of despair, and yet they came less and less frequently.
With all I have lost, he thought, I wonder at my joy.
He smiled.
“Tell me,” Marie-Josèphe said.
“I believed I had finished with adventures,” he said. “I planned my life at court, and a quiet retirement in Barenton after my nephew came of age. Yet here I am, on a mad quest. Why not seek new fortunes, with men from my homeland, still loyal to me? Why not sail away to fight pirates, with the woman I love?”
She smiled, and twined her finger in a lock of his fair hair. He had put aside his perrukes. He let his hair grow and tied it back with a white ribbon. His clothing was of plainer stuff than satin or velvet, worn with only a little Spanish lace. He never wore blue.
Marie-Josèphe giggled.
“Tell me,” Lucien said.
“I wish I could see Versailles — just for a moment — to see your sweet brother paying court to His Majesty.”
Lucien laughed. Marie-Josèphe’s description was true, and fair. She was as fond of Lucien’s preposterous brother as Lucien was himself. But Guy was no courtier.
“If Guy makes himself sufficiently impossible,” Lucien said, “and sufficiently annoys the King, His Majesty might persuade my nephew to become count de Chrétien, even as I planned.”
“The King might persuade himself he’s been a fool —” Marie-Josèphe exclaimed.
“Shh, shh, he is the King.”
“— and beg you to return. Then I’ll have to share your attention with him. I’m selfish. I want you to myself as long as I may have you.”
Lucien smiled. He gazed back across the wake, which rippled like milk in the moonlight.
He gripped the rail and peered more closely.
A ship appeared in the moonlit dark.
“You may have to share me with pirates,” Lucien said, his voice grim.
The pursuing ship drew closer.