All That Glitters

Upon returning home at the end of that horrid night, Jean went right upstairs to her room, resisting the urge to slam the door. Lucien wasn't there to hear it anyway. He was locked up right where he belonged, punished and imprisoned for his sins.

She angrily unpinned her hat from her head, the one rather nice one she owned and wore at all functions like this on. He hadn't commented on it, though she shouldn't have expected him to. He'd told Mattie she looked pretty before they'd left. But Mattie was young and beautiful, and Lucien delighted in praising her like he would his own daughter.

Jean sat down in the chair at her vanity. Her anger simmered, and it was replaced with a feeling of heavy emptiness. She removed her jewelry slowly. Sadly.

Lucien wasn't the only one who lost someone. He wasn't the only one to feel righteous indignation for the way the British had treated the Australians during the war, sending all those young men to die for an empire that, as Lucien had rightly said, simply left them all defenseless.

It was this thought, being so brutally reminded by her own loss that still ached in her chest at ever moment if she allowed herself to think of it, that had softened her rage toward Lucien and his drunken antics. And she knew, better than anyone in Ballarat, she'd wager, how his loss haunted him still, how he'd still not given up hope in his desperate search for the wife and child he'd lost. Jean wasn't sure which of them had it easier. There was still a chance for Lucien, for him to find them and be reunited with her family. That hope was sustaining, certainly, but it tortured him, kept him stagnant, clutching desperately at any shred of news he could hear. Jean had no hope. Christopher would never return to her. All that was left of him was what the Army had delivered to her and the gravestone she'd purchased to mark empty ground for her to visit him. And even though she missed her husband and her old life each and every day, at least she had a life to call her own. Lucien was simply waiting, biding his time, unable to move forward in anything.

She sighed, standing to undress and change into her nightclothes. Jean was sure she'd be angry at Lucien again tomorrow when she had to collect him from the police station, but all those feelings had been replaced with worry for him now. She had half a mind to go down there and get him right this instant, though she knew she couldn't.

Lucien hadn't been himself lately, she could tell. He was more taciturn of late and more than a little shaky. It wasn't just to do with the British Consul's arrival. Nell Clasby had seen it, too. Nell was worried about Lucien, the man she'd known as a boy. And if Nell was worried, they all should be.

It had been wonderful to see Lucien with Nell, the gentle care he had for her and the loving manner in which she interacted with him in return. It was, in Jean's mind, the closest anyone would ever see to Lucien Blake enjoying a parental relationship with anyone. Both his parents were dead and buried, and Nell Clasby had been very good friends with the Blakes. Jean could almost imagine what Lucien was like as a boy with his mother, when she saw him with Nell.

By the time Jean was ready for bed and slipping beneath her sheets, she was consumed with her concern for Lucien. He wasn't well, and while it certainly wasn't her job to be a mother to him, to support him in that way, it was nevertheless her duty to care for him anyway. After all, she was the housekeeper. And this was his house. In the morning, she'd collect him from his cell and do a better job keeping an eye on him.