Six months later…
Jean was alone in the kitchen, making up a pot of tea. It was an awful lot of trouble to go to for just one person, but she did so like her tea service, the white porcelain with delicate painted flowers that had belonged to Mrs. Blake. Well, the old Mrs. Blake. There would, one day soon, be a new Mrs. Blake, but there was not yet, and so when Jean thought of Mrs. Blake she thought of the portrait of Genevieve that sat along the back of the piano, thought of violets painted on the side of her favorite teacup, thought of the doors to the studio so long kept closed, thrown open, now, to air out those rooms that had languished forgotten for nearly forty years, and would soon be given new life.
It was a strange and not altogether welcome experience, being alone in the house. Oh, not that she would be for long; Charlie would be home from work soon, and Alice and Matthew would pop round for supper. Lucien would be home any day, and then they would be wed, and he would never leave her side, ever again.
"Oh, Jean," Halcyon sighed dreamily, floating down to light upon the windowsill. "Do you suppose he's all right?"
"Of course he is," Jean answered matter-of-factly. Just the day before she'd received a telegram from Lucien, telling her that he was well, that his work had been done, and that he would be returning to her soon. "Lucien is always all right," she reminded Halcyon. "Even when he's not."
The man had survived more scrapes and upsets and peril than anyone else Jean had ever met, and he always found his way back to her. She was coming to trust him, as much as she could, had long ago come to realize that beneath his recklessness there was a heart that yearned, above all else, to be kind and help others, and those were traits she wanted to foster in him, even when they took him far from her side. Even now, when he'd been gone nearly two months, speaking to officials in Canberra and lobbying against the shadowy faction that had backed Derek's unthinkable scheme, even now when she fretted for him and worried that something worse than Derek might be lying in wait, seeking to lay him low before his attempts to sow seeds of reason bore fruit, even now she had let him go, and believed, in her heart, that he was doing what he must. Even now, she loved him for it.
"And summer will be here soon, and you'll be married," Halcyon said. "Oh, Jean, it will be lovely, won't it? Everyone you love will be there, and you can wear some fine dress-"
"Oh, I think a suit is more appropriate," Jean demurred. "A woman my age, a second wedding-"
"No, Jean!" Halcyon cried exasperatedly. "You must have a dress. A beautiful white satin dress. With lace and bows and little mother-of-pearl buttons all down the back, like you saw in that magazine. Oh, Jean, you'd look so beautiful. Lucien would love it, I just know he would."
For a moment Jean looked away from her teacup, looked instead at her pretty little daemon, the brilliant blue and orange of his feathers, the glint of sunlight along his sleek black beak, his proud head, his bright eyes. All her life she had been trying, very hard, to prove that everyone was wrong, when they said her little bird proved she was vain, and flighty, and unreliable. She had tried to be graceful and quiet and accommodating, had tried to draw no more attention to herself than was prudent, had stepped back uncomplaining every time Susan Tyneman was given the lead in the plays, every time some other woman with a voice less fine than hers was given a solo in the choir performances at the church. She had bit her tongue when her neighbors threw barbs about the haste of her first marriage, about her unruly sons, about her unruly employer. She had tried, to be quiet and dependable, and surely those were admirable qualities, but Halcyon reminded her, at every turn, of just how much more she could be. He was her very heart made flesh, was every thought she'd ever tried to run from, was every dream she'd ever told herself could never possibly come true. And despite decades of relentless attempts to temper him, he remained, steadfastly, himself. And she loved him, loved him truly, for all the earnest joy of him, for all the clear, bright, hopefulness of him, and if she could love those traits in him, could she not love them in herself? Halcyon longed for a beautiful white dress, and were his longings not her own? And why should she tell him no? Because it was unseemly? Because it might be vain?
"A white satin dress," Jean mused. "With buttons all down the back."
She thought of Lucien's fingers gently, reverently unfastening all those little buttons on their wedding night, thought of his kisses at the nape of her neck and his hands spanning her waist, and she smiled.
"I think I could make something up," she said. "We've enough time left, don't you think?"
Halcyon burst into flight from the windowsill, flung himself up towards the ceiling and then fluttered back to her in great looping spirals, trilling happily all the while.
"It will be perfect, Jean!" he said as he landed easily upon her shoulder. Jean rather thought he was right, and she had her mouth open to tell him so when there came the sound of a heavy knock upon the front door. It wasn't as if they were expecting company in the middle of the day, and so Jean set down her teacup and made her way towards the door, frowning, wondering to herself who on earth it could be while Halcyon rode along on her shoulder, asking aloud the same questions that were rattling through her mind.
When she reached the door she flung it wide, and stood for a moment, staring.
There on the doorstep stood a man, tall and broad shouldered, his chin covered by a neat, salt-and-pepper beard. His face was lined and weathered, but his blue eyes were kind, and a battered leather traveling case sat on the porch beside his feet. On his other side there stood a great, golden lioness, her yellow eyes bright and clever, her bearing proud and dignified despite the terrible red scar that scored her face. Together they were vast, a mighty sight to behold, unlike anything Jean had ever seen before, or ever would again. It was Lucien and Nemea, come home to her at last, but she was struck, then, by how much this moment reminded her of the moment of their first meeting. Jean and Halcyon on one side of the door, Lucien and Nemea on the other, each of them as different from the other as it was possible to be. She had not been expecting him then, either, and she had been so shaken by the sight of him, and she was shaken now, though not by fear as she had been once but by love, shaken by the strength of her heart's response to the sight of him.
"Lucien," she said, and in the next breath he had stepped forward, and she fell into his embrace, wrapped her arms around his neck and laughed when he lifted her bodily from the floor. He rucked her skirt up as he went, and she hooked her legs round his waist, held on tight and stared into his face, breathless and relieved and alive, so alive, so fully herself as she had not felt for such a long, long time. It was such a reckless, juvenile thing to do, to let him hold her this way, as if they were young and free and had not a care in the world, but Jean could not regret it, nor would she ask him to set her down, for she was precisely where she wanted to be, wrapped up in his arms. If anyone were to see her now, flighty, they would say, and vain, and foolish, and for him they would say brash, and arrogant, and selfish, and they would be wrong, all of them.
"Oh, I missed you, my darling," he said, smiling at her, and oh, the way his eyes crinkled up above his beard, the warmth of them, shot straight through her.
"Welcome home," she said, and bowed her head to kiss him. For so long, too long, Jean had been trying to quiet the longing of her heart, trying to still its voice, trying to be what others thought she ought to have been rather than what she was, but she was learning, day by day, to let her heart take flight. And Lucien, he had begun to listen to his heart, too, she thought, for Nemea always cared more for his safety than Lucien did himself, Nemea had always seen the value in him that Lucien had so often overlooked, Nemea was warm, and gentle, where the world had tried to make Lucien hard, and in Jean's arms he was warm, and gentle, too, as he always should have been.
When she kissed him she felt him smile against her lips, felt him begin to move, marching smartly into the house with his arms full of her, leaving his traveling case behind on the porch without a second thought for it. Jean's eyes were closed, and she had no thought in her head save for him, how she loved him, how grateful she was to have found him, to have him returned to her at last, and so she did not see the way that Halcyon went to Nemea, the way he landed upon her back and moved with her as she came into the house, the way Nemea kicked the front door shut behind them with one great paw. No, Jean did not see it at all, only laughed when she felt Lucien open his bedroom door, only let him carry her inside, only laughed again when he closed it smartly, and left their daemons alone in the corridor just on the other side of it, only smiled, when he laid her down upon his bed, and stretched himself out on top of her.
"I love you, my Jean," he said, looking down on her with eyes full of wonder.
"I love you, my Lucien," she answered him, and then he was kissing her again, and she quite forgot about the world beyond his bedroom door.
In the corridor Nemea laid herself down upon her belly right in front of Lucien's bedroom door, guarding the two people she loved best while Halcyon nestled himself in his usual place just beneath her chin.
"I'm glad you've come home," he said to her, and she smiled, or came as close to that as a lioness could.
"As am I, little one," she answered.
