A/N- Despite much digging and (attempted) research, Google/my library has failed me and I know no more about the fine details of French marriage customs in 1830 today than I did a week ago. As you can tell, I'm just winging it. Sorry. This chapter is pretty weird as a result, but I think you'll appreciate it anyway.
Chapter 9
December 12th, 1830
Enjolras was not a vain man. He paid only the least possible required attention to his appearance and dress, enough to be presentable at all times. Beyond that, he had no time or inclination for staring at his own reflection. Today, though, he found himself examining himself in the mirror. His hands were shaking ever so slightly, and he was convinced he looked paler than usual.
Suddenly disgusted with himself, he ran a hand over his face and sighed. "Joly is clearly rubbing off on me," he muttered.
At that moment, from somewhere behind the door Combeferre's voice called out, "Are you coming, Antoine? We'll be late!"
"Yes, give me just a moment!"
He gave himself one more glance, then turned away with a resigned shake of his head. It seemed that all of his determined Not Fretting over the past few weeks was catching up to him today, and heaping a little extra on in unfair retaliation.
Once out in the hall, he found Combeferre leaning against his doorpost with a complex look on his face. "We had best hurry, mon ami," he said, and a hint of amusement entered his expression. "It would not do to be late for your own wedding!"
Enjolras said nothing, simply put on his hat and made for the stairs.
The two best friends arrived at the courthouse at five minutes to three. "Perfect timing!" Combeferre exclaimed. Enjolras was silent.
He entered the little room where the ceremony was to take place and found there were several people already there. Marius and Courfeyrac were to be witnesses in addition to Combeferre. Feuilly was waiting quietly in the corner. He had informed Enjolras that the sooner he had the paperwork, the easier it would be to alter the dates, as the ink would still be fresh. They had arranged for him to be at the wedding in order to take the documents immediately. Jehan was there as well. He had no particular reason to be there, but Enjolras doubted he'd have been able to keep the young man away. Jehan loved weddings.
"Where is Éponine?" Combeferre asked.
Marius shrugged. "I saw Joly on my way here. He said that lady friend of his was fussing over her. They ought to arrive soon enough."
Courfeyrac, meanwhile, looked to Enjolras. "Now what have we here? The unshakeable Enjolras, growing faint at last! I never thought I'd see the day." He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Never fear, my friend. It is normal- or so I am told- to be terrified on your wedding day."
"I am not terrified."
"Yes you are!" Courfeyrac insisted. "Look at him, mes amis! Does he not look pale?"
The others took note of the taller man's glower and wisely shook their heads in the negative.
"Oh, you're all dull anyway," Courfeyrac said, put out. "Antoine, that is why I do not tie myself down to a single woman! It is unwise to limit oneself, when there are so many sweet ladies in the world. Not one woman- many!"
"I do not want many women," Enjolras said.
"How short-sighted," Courfeyrac said with a chuckle.
At that moment, the door of the room opened and a blonde whirlwind entered. "Oh I'm so tremendously sorry we're late!" Musichetta exclaimed. "It is my fault, I do apologize. I just couldn't stand to see dear 'Ponine get married looking anything less than her best. Please say the magistrate is not here yet!"
As Feuilly spoke up, confirming that the magistrate had not yet arrived, a taller, much quieter figure slipped in behind Musichetta.
Enjolras stared. Behind him, he heard Courfeyrac remark, "Well what do you know, Pontmercy? You were right, she's actually rather pretty," but he paid little attention. Courfeyrac had spoken true, however, because Éponine was transformed.
She looked better than he could ever recall seeing her. Her red hair was bound up fashionably, tucked beneath a broad-brimmed white hat. Two weeks of Musichetta's cooking had taken away a little bit of that starved look, and her cheeks had a bit of healthy color to them. It was plain that Musichetta had put the money Enjolras had given her to good use, for Éponine was well-dressed. Her gown was a pale, creamy yellow, trimmed simply but fashionably with white lace, and her cracked, scarred hands were tidily concealed beneath matching lace gloves. Her lips were painted, her eyes were more bright and aware than usual, and Musichetta had clearly been coaching her on her posture. Enjolras was used to seeing her scuttle around with her shoulders hunched in, as if afraid of receiving a blow about the head at any moment, and now that he had met her father he thought he understood why. Now however she walked, not quite with the serene and delicate grace of a well-bred woman (she took far too long and purposeful strides for that), but certainly with her head held high and her shoulders straight.
Yes, Enjolras thought, she actually was rather pretty. Éponine made fine was quite something. It wasn't a complete transformation, of course. Nothing could be done for her unfortunate height or her nonexistent figure, and despite the powder Musichetta had pressed on her cheeks, her skin still plainly showed that she had been out in the sun and wind too often and for too long. Still, she looked significantly more like a lady and significantly less like the dirty gamine she had been only three weeks earlier. She wasn't an exceptional beauty, not like Musichetta, but when contrasted with how she had looked three weeks previously, the difference was startling.
Her eyes landed on Marius, and a pained expression crossed her face, quickly gone. She wrenched her gaze away from the young man and it fell instead on her fiancé. At the sight of him, a rare but characteristic little cheeky grin crossed her lips.
"Antoine, you look positively ill," she said, and from her tone he gathered that he had better resign himself to another round of teasing.
"Yes, come mes amis!" Courfeyrac cried. "Let us stand aside to give our dear Enjolras a few moments alone with his intended!" So saying, he all but dragged Marius and Feuilly to the door. Musichetta and Combeferre, who was laughing despite himself, followed.
Enjolras vowed to strangle Courfeyrac next time he got his hands on him.
Éponine had stopped smiling, but she still looked slightly amused, a little spark in her eye that faded out as she crossed the last few feet to stand by his side. She did not look at him directly. Instead, she stood to his side and gazed at the portrait of Louis-Phillipe that graced the opposite wall, which he himself was attempting to find fascinating.
"You don't want to do this," she said abruptly.
"And neither do you," he replied.
"Yes and no. I want to be better than I have been. I did nothing to earn the life I have led except to suffer the misfortune of being my father's daughter- and make no mistake, I am that no matter how much I hate him. Still, that doesn't mean I have to follow in his footsteps, if I'm lucky. Yes, I want to find a way to escape. What we're doing today is the first chance I've really had to do that. But do I actually want to marry you? No."
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Because you care for Marius?"
Her dark eyes widened in shock and she clapped one gloved hand over her mouth. "Is it that obvious?" she whispered between her fingers.
"To everyone but him."
Éponine let out a soft groan. "Oh God. I thought I hid it so well."
"I do not know you all that well, Éponine, but from what I have observed, you are not very adept at concealing things."
She snorted. "Some things, but not things like this." She sighed then. "So you know that I love Marius, then?"
"It's as serious as love, is it?"
"Yes, I think it must be. What else is it if not love?" After a little pause, she asked, "Does it not bother you that you are about to marry a woman who is in love with another man?"
"In this particular union, love is hardly a factor," he replied. "It makes no difference to me where your heart lies."
"Most men want to own their woman, one way or another. If they can't cage up their heart, they cage up their body," Éponine observed, and he could tell immediately that he was being tested. Éponine was used to being at her liberty, such as it was. He could tell from the slight hint of fear in her eyes that she wondered if he would restrict her because she could not give him an emotional tether. Dear God, she really was damaged goods, wasn't she? Then again, in this state of society it was hardly surprising that life had rendered her thus.
"I oppose the subjugation of any human being, be they man or woman," Enjolras countered.
She looked at him very intently, and he felt compelled to meet her eyes. "You are a strange man, Antoine," she said.
"Why does everyone keep saying that?"
"Probably because it's true. You look at the world so differently... I can hardly understand the way you see things! It must be dazzling to be you."
"Not particularly."
"You only say that because you're used to looking out through your own eyes," she said.
Once again, her words and manner of speaking hinted at untapped intelligence, and her perspective was a strange one. If she was wondering what the world looked like to him, he was certainly wondering what it looked like to her. She had an odd way of examining things and it made their conversations, few though they had been, quite interesting to say the least. It was as though she saw her world with ancient and youthful eyes at the same time, he thought, both through the jaded experience of her pathetic life and through the rosy lenses of youth and naïvete. How such a thing was possible, he was not sure, but Éponine managed it.
"I guess it's true what they say of you," she mused, looking at him with that direct stare he found so disturbing.
"Who is 'they'?" he asked, perplexed.
Éponine smirked. "Just people. You're known around here, you know. People remember you from the barricades during that ruckus in July. You might not be aware, but people on the street see you and sometimes you're kind to them. People aren't like that, so when you come along talking treasonous things in the street and helping the poor, well, people can't help but talk about it. I heard of you ages before I met you. Never learned your name, but the first time I saw you in the cafe... it had to be you, didn't it? A girl I used to know said you looked like an angel, and acted like one, too."
Enjolras wasn't quite sure how to take that. "I'm hardly an angel."
"I wouldn't be so sure," she said, and she laughed to herself. "We do make a funny pair, don't we? The angel and the devil. Ironic."
Was this, then, how she viewed herself? Éponine had not been on the honest side of the law or the healthy side of a family for some time; who knew what it had done to the way she felt about herself?
"You're not-" he began, but she shook her head, smiling bitterly.
"Don't try to deny it, Antoine. I'm from bad seed. You're probably making an awful mistake, you know."
"So you think we're in the wrong to be doing this?"
She shrugged. "Unbelievably wrong. If I were a good person, I'd back out now and save you from it, but I'm not a good person. I'm selfish. I want to be pretty and off the street, so I'll go through with this. Even if you are wrong to let me."
Before he could respond to her last statement, the door opened and the magistrate entered, followed quickly by the little cluster of Enjolras's friends plus Musichetta.
Unwilling to let the conversation drop there, Enjolras leaned in close and whispered in her ear, "Prove me right. I dare you."
She looked at him with her brown eyes going huge, then narrowing suspiciously. He did not know her that well, but he did not think she would be able to back down from a challenge. With a triumphant little smirk, he straightened up and turned to face the fast-approaching government official.
"Good day, Magistrate Blanchard," he said amiably.
The magistrate nodded his head in greeting, smiling beatifically. He was a large man of average height, with thick little fingers, bloodshot eyes, and a perpetual air of austere benevolence. "And a lovely afternoon to you as well. A perfectly charming day for a wedding, don't you agree, Monsieur Enjolras?" A thoughtful look crossed his face. "Enjolras... Enjolras... I'm sure I know that name." Comprehension struck him suddenly, causing his eyes to widen triumphantly. "Ah, yes! Any relation to General Olivier Enjolras?"
"His son," Enjolras replied tersely.
Magistrate Blanchard nodded. "I have heard of your father," he said with the air of contented wisdom common to men who have reached and are satisfied with having achieved a mediocre standing within the strata of power. "He was reported to be a brilliant strategist, and a hero of the Restoration, was he not?"
"He was," Enjolras said. He noted Éponine looking at him closely.
"And you're sure to follow in your father's footsteps, aren't you?" the older man said with a wink.
"We shall see," Enjolras replied, taking a deep breath to stop himself from grinding his teeth in irritation. He was not remotely like his father!
"But are your parents not here today?" Blanchard said. "Surely the want to witness their son's marriage!"
Enjolras suddenly found himself stuck for words. It was not something he had even considered. What could he say to avoid raising suspicion? This was not really a situation that called for strict honesty; the last thing he needed was for this officious man to go saying the wrong things to the wrong people and then this whole ruse would collapse and he'd be right back where he started.
Before he could say a word, however, Éponine spoke up. "His parents could not travel so far in this weather," she said.
Enjolras smiled at her inventiveness and completed the lie for her. "We will be returning to Lyon once the roads clear to have a ceremony performed by the Church."
The magistrate grinned knowingly. "But you simply couldn't wait so long," he said, winking at Enjolras. "I understand completely, my boy. And what of the lady's parents? Unless I misread the papers, she is but sixteen..."
Combeferre interrupted, "You will note that both of her parents are deceased. Eloise and Gilbert Thenardier, both dead of illness some years ago."
Blanchard grimaced. "Oh, my condolences. Yes of course, I do recall reading- Yes. Nasty business. Terribly sorry to have brought it up at a time like this!" He glanced at the papers he was carrying, which did indeed claim the deaths of a former innkeeper from Montfermeil. Enjolras thanked Providence that the record-keeping, particularly in little outlying towns like Montfermeil, had been so poor under Louis XVIII, as the confused paperwork had provided just enough apparent corroboration that no one had so much as raised an eyebrow at Éponine's falsified documents.
"In that case, I suppose now that we have that all cleared up, we had better start, yes?"
Enjolras nodded. He felt Éponine's little hand slip into his and pulled away on reflex, but she was quicker and held on. He decided to let her cling to his hand. Getting married was a nerve-wracking thing, and she probably needed the reassurance of human contact. He didn't need any such thing, of course, but surely she would.
Civil ceremonies were by nature short and simple. No one really wanted to celebrate their marriage in the mairie, after all. While the civil observances were the legally-binding element, the religious ceremony that ordinarily followed was the source of most of the pomp and circumstance. This contract consisted of a few short vows and the presence of witnesses.
Despite this brevity, however, by the time Marius was signing as their last witness Enjolras found himself feeling anxious, because while traditions varied, he had a feeling he knew what the presiding official would say next. Éponine did not seem to share his anxiety, as she was too busy staring sadly at Marius, which annoyed him more than it should have and only served to heighten his nerves.
"Well then," Magistrate Blanchard said robustly, smiling at a job well done.
Here it comes...
"Under laws of France and her king, I declare you to be married. Now go on, young man. Kiss your bride." The magistrate gave him an indulgent wink, as if to say Go on, my boy, I know you want to.
Enjolras glanced at Éponine. She smiled and gave an almost imperceptible shrug. Well, what was to be done? Taking a preparatory breath, Enjolras leaned down and pressed his lips hesitantly to hers. She responded to his kiss immediately, but with what he thought was matching reluctance.
He wouldn't know, though. He had never kissed a woman before.
A/N- Because even the marble lover of liberty gets nervous on his wedding day. ;P
Please review? Nobody did last time, and it made me sad. I always love and appreciate your feedback...