sun off the water made it hard to see—but one of the young men on board, clearly the captain, wore a naval uniform. With a practiced motion, he grabbed a line as it sailed through the air and, hand over hand, pulled them closer. One of the others was tall, and lean, and something about his easy movements reminded her of Lazare. The memory of him hurt, like a hand crushing her heart.
“Camille, do you see?”
She held her hand up against the glare as another line was thrown to the yellow-hulled sloop. The tall one caught it effortlessly, as if ropes were everyday things to him.
“Sophie? That boy—he is so familiar to me.” She felt faint, and the cries of seagulls and the plash of waves seemed very far away. “Do not tease me anymore. Tell me true—is it him?”
Sophie’s eyes shone with happy tears. “That’s why I fetched you from the cabin! The captain had just got the signal from a navy officer—a Baron de Guilleux?—that they were coming.”
It was Lazare, and she thought she would splinter to pieces as he pulled in the line, drawing the sloop closer. In that unguarded moment, she saw how his ragged clothes, the same ones he’d been wearing the night they’d gone to Les Mots Volants, hung from his shoulders. How dirty and raw-boned his face was. The yellowing bruise on his temple. “Lazare!”
He spun toward the deck of the Estelle. The fatigue vanished from his face as joy overtook it. As if they’d only just parted, he shouted, “Did you see how fast we were?”
When she nodded, hardly able to speak, he gazed at her with such intensity she felt she might burn to ash in the heat of it. Taking the line in his hands, he leaped.
She held out her arms. He slipped as he scrabbled for a foothold, but then he caught himself and slid across the deck into her embrace. The fisherman whooped. She ran her hands down his damp cheeks, his neck, his shoulders. Solid and warm and real.
“Where have you been?” Relief made her voice shake. “I wanted to believe you were safe, but it was so hard—”
“Mon âme.” He held her close, his arm cradling her. “Shall I tell it all to you now?”
She nodded gravely.
“We came as soon as we could. That night, at Les Mots Volants, when you were taken by the Comité, I fought with the guards to free you. But it was impossible. Foudriard and I were nearly caught ourselves. I didn’t dare return to my parents’ house. My tutor once had taken me into the sewers the Romans built under Paris, and there we hid. Under Paris, in the filth, cut off from the world above. I didn’t know what had happened to you until I crept out at night to speak to your gatekeeper, who gave me a message Rosier had left with him. But by then we had already missed the performance of Les Merveilleux, and your escape.” He didn’t look away from her, not for a moment. “My parents were willing to loan us horses, and on them we fled to Wissant, only to arrive at the empty inn this morning.” He shook his head, though if it was in despair or wonder at their luck, she didn’t know. “I vowed I would not rest until I had found you.”
“I vowed the same, you know. Walking above the shore of Wissant.”
“You didn’t doubt?”
“I didn’t doubt you. I doubted the world, Lazare. I thought it would tangle you in its web and keep you away.” She didn’t care if he saw her tears as they spilled hot over her wind-cold cheeks. She’d been brave long enough.
Slowly, lovingly, he kissed away her tears. “The old world is flawed. But the one we make will be different. Better.”
“Do you promise?”
He pressed her to him, close to his heart. “I promise.”
Then Foudriard climbed aboard to be warmly embraced and kissed by everyone, while Chandon laughed through his tears. Then the fishermen were pulling up anchor and trimming the sails as the Estelle sailed onward to England.
They were approaching the far shore when Lazare took her hand. “Régardes! Do you see them?” he pointed excitedly off the stern of the boat, where the waves curled and frothed.
There was something in the water. Something alive, something moving. A gleam of silver, tiny bubbles—and then a silver-gray creature leaped clear of the foam. It cast itself into the air, its short narrow snout playfully