Chapter 9 - "Finally facing my Waterloo."
The crowds seemed to part across the room all at once. Suddenly, he was Moses at the Red Sea and he saw, across the water, a vision of paradise.
She looked towards him with almost the same air of utter boredom that he had. Her face was cast in a cool, ethereal sort of splendour, like she was hewn of morning clouds.
Her expression carried an air of patrician beauty about it, and she skimmed her eyes over the tops of the heads around her as if she was looking for some form of escape from her tedium.
Her eyes, when they fully settled on him, knocked the wind from his guts.
She took a long, still moment to stare back at him. And he felt rooted to the spot. Utterly blindsided by that single look from halfway across a crowded room.
The Inspector realised, a little too late for her not to notice, that he was gaping at her like a slack-jawed yokel. He closed his mouth brusquely.
Her face broke from that auroran coldness when she smirked. The first rays of morning breaking through the clouds. A beautiful, human expression that had him blushing like a schoolboy.
His thoughts flew apart. Every ounce of discipline and self-control and guardedness deserted him in that moment.
Dear God, pull yourself together man! He chided himself.
But what was happening to him in that moment felt utterly new to him. However, he could not have described it if he'd tried. It was as dangerous as falling. Tumbling off a precipice. Yet he was not afraid. At least, not yet…
Grace arched her brow at the tall, dark man staring at her from across the parlour. He was firm and rigid. Standing with his back ramrod straight and his face cast in shadow. She may have been afraid of him had they met in a dim alleyway, but instead of fear she felt intrigue. He was different to all the other dandys and men of high-regard that Jocelyn had been throwing her way. They were butterflies flitting about her head, and this man was a bear, spied through the line of the trees.
She downed the rest of her champagne and handed her glass to the nearest hovering gentleman without so much as breaking her gaze with the dark man.
She gathered her purple skirts in her hands and pushed through the crowds. As she drew closer, the shadows over his face seemed to lighten and from under the frown of his brow stared the most brilliant pair of ocean-blue eyes she'd ever seen. For a man of such darkness and shadows, that lightness, that beautiful cerulean… they were arresting.
When she finally stood before him, he seemed even taller, making himself stand even straighter than he had been before.
He regarded her coldly from down his crooked nose. It would have been sharp, and blade-like, had it not clearly been broken a few times, pointing a little off-centre to his right. Already, Grace was intrigued by this. There was character in this face. Hidden secrets in his immaculately combed dark hair, in his scowl lines between his brows, in the heavy whiskers lining his cheeks.
"Have we met, Monsieur?" She asked, finally.
"I make it my business never to forget a face, Mademoiselle. And I do not know yours."
His voice was deep. A rich baritone that vibrated at a frequency that made Grace's arm-hairs stand to attention.
"And what exactly is your business?" She asked with a sigh. This felt dangerously like small-talk again. "An artist, perhaps. Judging by the way you were…staring across the room just then. Were you seeking out your next subject, maybe?"
Javert gulped. So, she definitely had caught him staring…
"I care little for the frivolities of art." He grumbled back at her through his firmly-set, square jaw. Nevertheless, his traitorous eyes flicked up and down her, drinking in that beautiful purple dress, the drape of it over her shoulders…
Javert cleared his throat and ground his jaw tighter. He was embarrassed with himself. One beautiful woman in a purple dress had somehow got right under his skin- and he let nobody get under his skin. He let nobody even near his skin.
"So, who are you then, Monsieur not-artist?"
"My name is Inspector Javert of the Préfecture de Police."
He clipped his heels militaristically and gave her a stiff little bow.
Music thundered in Grace's mind.
Her face grew slack as a huge and bombastic melody tore through her.
It wasn't like Cosette's song, so sweet and innocent. It wasn't like Eponine's song, tragic and beautiful.
It was more violent, more devastating than the tunes that had come to her thoughts before. This one was desperate. Demanding. Ruinous.
It sent chills all the way down her spine. It lifted each hair off of her body.
Two pounding footsteps of B and E.
Followed by an explosive, pulsing E flat minor chord.
"Mademoiselle, are you quite alright?" The Inspector asked.
But that soaring, epic melody carried on thundering through Grace's mind. She was quite paralyzed by it.
Quite paralyzed by him.
He was important, that much she knew for certain. Whoever this man was, that music, that melody demanded her attention.
She looked upon the Inspector with fresh eyes. Searching eyes. Scrutinising every detail of his interesting face.
That mind-wall rose up once more. Driving a wedge right in between that music and her memory of what it was, or where it had come from. She knew better than to be frustrated by it; it had happened so many times before with Cosette's melody, but still, she couldn't help but groan in exasperation.
But perhaps if she tried to relax around it, rather than push through it…
Like earlier, when she'd remembered something without trying to when that other name, Eponine, was brought up…
"Sorry… what did you say your name was?" She asked over the roar of the music in her head.
"Javert."
And then another melody took over. A dancing to-and-fro between F and C. With a jaunty little B flat thrown in occasionally.
Without meaning it to, out of her mouth slipped that melody.
"Do not forget my name. Do not forget me…"
Javert frowned at her as Grace slapped a hand over her mouth.
"I'm sorry!" Grace blurted out, her cheeks burning red. "Sometimes that just…happens. I meet someone and I can't get a melody out of my head. I feel like perhaps I know their name from somewhere or…or the music is connected to them in some way, and…"
Grace paused, biting back whatever she was going to say next. The look on Javert's face was of utter perplexment.
"I'm sorry." She said again with a sigh. "You…you didn't need to know all of that."
She looked fraught and troubled. She fiddled agitatedly with her hands, eyes now cast to the floor. Javert internally scrambled for something to say that might alleviate the odd mood that had now settled between them.
"Well, I always find, Madame," he began slowly. "that one is always advised to be honest and upfront with the Law."
She let out a small sputter of a giggle. Her eyes travelled back up to his face and she saw those fantastically blue eyes again. Cold but clear, like a perfect October morning.
"Oh, that's right, you did say. You're a man of the Law!" She said, finding her voice again. "Finally! Somebody who works for a living. I was growing rather bored to tears by all these 'professional gentlemen'. There's only so much chatter about fox-hunting and estate management that one can bear."
He huffed out through his nose and cast a judgemental eye over the dandys and minor nobility dotted about the room.
Robespierre should have finished the job with this lot years ago… he thought sourly.
"Robespierre saw them for what they all are." Grumbled Froid inside his head, suddenly manifesting from the darkness of the past. "Pointless. Baubles of the past. Desperate."
Javert had to shake his head to dispel him from his thoughts. But his memory had left a sour taste in his mouth; he was becoming more and more like his old master every day, it seemed…
"Grace Beaumont." She said, extending a hand out to him.
Her thrust palm suddenly shook Javert out of his private ruminations. He looked at it suspiciously. The way she held it was odd, almost like she wanted him to shake it. Normally ladies of the ton offered their hands to be kissed.
Still, he took it, the whisper of his leather gloves gliding over her skin. He was gentle in his shake, fearing that he'd somehow break her wrist or her fingers if he was too boisterous. It ended up being a rather weak, limp handshake and Javert quickly cleared his throat and returned his hand to his side.
"For someone who shows such contempt for the upper class," he began slowly. "you do seem to be rather enjoying its lap of luxury."
His eyes travelled to the necklace of amethysts around her neck and then on to the fine purple dress she wore.
"These…aren't mine." She said hurriedly. "I'm a guest of Julius and Jocelyn, the Master and Mistress of this Chateau. I suppose you'd call me their 'ward'."
"And how long have you been enjoying their generosity here, Mademoiselle?"
"Six long months…" Grace groaned. "I've been here six long months."
"And before that?"
"Goodness, Inspector. Am I being 'interviewed'?!" She asked playfully.
His look soured and his cerulean eyes squinted a little at her. Silence passed between them for a few beats.
"Oxford." She finally said with a roll of her eyes. "That's where I came from."
"An Englishwoman." He stated, doing very little to hide the contempt in his voice. "I fought against the English at Waterloo."
"You were at Waterloo?" Grace asked, eyes growing wide.
He nodded.
Javert checked himself. He never volunteered information about himself to anyone. It was his business to know about others, not for others to know about him. Yet it was like this girl had cast a yarn around his guts and was able to pull words from out of him.
Grace thought for a moment. She wasn't a historian, and knew very little about the Napoleonic Wars, but even she had heard of Waterloo. And she'd seen enough Sharpe episodes to get the general gist of it…
But it wasn't Sean Bean who was currently flitting about her mind, it was ABBA.
"My, my… at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender." She said with a broad, knowing smile.
Javert looked at her with a heavy frown.
"Yes…I suppose he did." He said, quite unsure of how to respond to her odd turn of phrase. "Well, I believe it was about six weeks after the battle that he presented himself to Captain Maitland…"
"Oh yeah." she replied, nodding at the confused man. "And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way."
"Um… I'm not sure I understand your meaning, Mademoiselle."
Her odd outburst of song before, and now this strange, poetic turn of phrase… Perhaps she wasn't well. Heatstroke, a touch of "the vapors", female hysteria, or maybe overexertion from the soiree… Maybe that's why she was acting so strange.
"You know! The history book on the shelf…" she said, pointing at Julius's books on the walls around them.
"Uh…"
"...is always repeating itself."
"Mademoiselle, are you feeling quite alright?"
She walked away from him, giggling like a schoolgirl. Grace picked up another glass of champagne from the tray of a server, whistling the tune to 'Waterloo' as she made a beeline for the coolness of the open window.
Javert was left in her wake, utterly bemused at the odd turn their conversation had taken. Yet somehow, he felt compelled to follow her. Perhaps she was ill. Perhaps her strange garble of words hinted at a fainting spell to come.
She was still humming to herself when he caught up to her. Grace's gaze was softly focussed outside of the open window, eyes spilling over the swaying irises in the garden.
"Does Mademoiselle need a glass of water?" Javert asked her unsurely.
She closed her eyes and let the cooling breeze of nightfall wash over her face.
"No. I'm quite alright. Thank you though, Inspector Javert."
She offered him a smile, and despite her strangeness, the look made the Inspector's stomach squirm a little.
"Mademoiselle Beaumont!" A voice called out through the crowd.
"Oh no…" Grace groaned.
"Mademoiselle Beaumont!" Said the voice again. A blonde-haired and rather short gentleman dressed in a forest green velvet suit. He was one of the many dandys and gentlemen of the ton that Javert had clocked when he'd entered. "Mademoiselle, do you forget? You promised this next dance to me!"
"Monsieur Caraquet…" Grace sighed. "Can't you see that I'm engaged in conversation with Inspector Javert?!"
Grace pointed a finger at Javert and he felt the colour rise in his cheeks. The Monsieur looked at him with a mix of surprise and hurt.
"Oh… I am… I am sorry to have disturbed your conversations."
"Perhaps we can dance later." Grace said, trying to hide the tiredness in her voice.
"You said that at the last soirée!"
"Monsieur, clearly the lady does not wish to be disturbed." Javert said to the gentleman shortly. "If she wished to dance with you, clearly she would be doing so now."
Monsieur Caraquet blanched and spluttered out something unintelligible. He walked away with a huff of defeat and Grace was left smiling at the Inspector.
"Can I keep you around to shoo off all of my suitors, Inspector Javert?"
Javert swallowed down a lump in his throat and clasped his hands behind his back. He found that his palms were sweaty and slick.
"I'm only teasing you, Monsieur." Grace said with a soothing smile, although Javert didn't feel particularly calmed. However, in the next moment, her face brightened as a thought entered her mind. "Actually, you can be of use to me…!"
"And how may I do that, Mademoiselle?" he asked, a touch sardonically.
"My friends, in the Romani camp."
"If you experienced a robbery or were conned by one of them, please forward your complaints to the local authorities."
"No, no, it wasn't anything like that. The other day, there were these horsemen who-"
"Saw them off on their way? Yes. Those were my men, Mademoiselle."
Grace blinked at him for a moment. "That…that was you?"
"There is no need to thank me, Mademoiselle. I perform all of my duties in service to the Law and to our Monarch, Louis-Phillipe. They will not trouble this fair community any longer."
"Trouble?" Grace asked, suddenly breathless and winded. "You burnt Athalia's home to the ground!"
Javert looked into her fraught face and realised, all too late, that she was not thanking him for his services at all.
"Mademoiselle, I have never received any complaints for removing garbage from off of the streets." he grumbled bitterly.
"They are not garbage. They're human beings!" Grace exclaimed. Anger bubbled up inside her and she pulled herself upright to try and match the Inspector in stature. "Athalia has two children, her husband died last winter…They're vulnerable. They should be protected by the Law, not persecuted by it!"
"They all have their excuses, Mademoiselle." Javert replied. "Poverty, bad-luck, hunger, desperation. It means little in the eyes of the Law. All the gypsies I have had the displeasure of knowing willingly, gleefully engage in their cons and swindles. Fortune-tellers, tarot readers, snake-oil salesmen."
"That's.., that's not true." Grace uttered.
"Isn't it? I once arrested a whole camp of them because they were all conspiring together to fleece a whole town of their pocket-change. They had one of them dance, you see, and whilst the men were busy ogling her, and the women keeping a hawk's eye on their husbands, the gypsies had all the children run about the crowd and pickpocket the lot!"
"And what did the Romani down by the river do?" Grace asked indignantly. "What was their crime? Athalia traded honestly with us. She was an honest woman!"
"And were they all like her?" Javert asked, his hackles raised. "This extraordinary band of good gypsies?"
"I thought the Law was 'innocent until proven guilty', Inspector." Grace said sharply.
"I've always found the presumption of innocence to be a very naive idea, Mademoiselle."
Grace blanched. That comment stung. Artemida had called her naive too. Everybody in this time seemed to think she was naive.
She gathered her skirts, the will to fight suddenly leaving her. This Inspector, who had so intrigued her before, now filled her with anger. She'd hoped, being a working man of the world, that his news might not be so archaic and backwards. But it turned out, he was just as '1830s' as the rest of them…
She had taken one huffy step away from him when she felt an arm enclose around her wrist.
"Grace!"
She wheeled around, seeing Jocelyn standing with her fist enclosed around her forearm.
"Grace, the Comte du Veroide is just dying to hear…"
Jocelyn paused, looking from Grace to the Inspector. Her eyebrow raised and the corner of her mouth tweaked up a fraction. Grace knew exactly what she was thinking:
Grace, voluntarily engaged in conversation with a man, not looking bored out of her mind….
Jocelyn might as well have had 'wedding bells' written across her eyes.
"Oh, excuse me, Monsieur. I did not mean to interrupt." Jocelyn said coyly.
"You weren't interrupting." Grace grumbled. "I was just-"
"The Mademoiselle and I were engaged in a debate." He interrupted quickly.
"Debate?!" Grace exclaimed.
"Are you not going to introduce me to your new acquaintance, Grace?" Jocelyn asked, a playful tint to her voice.
As Grace seethed at his down-playing of their argument, Javert clipped his heels and bowed to Jocelyn.
"Inspector Javert of the Préfecture de Police." He said again.
Grace rolled her eyes when he bowed his head low. He certainly liked repeating that title to anyone who would listen.
Inspector Javert!" Jocelyn said with a beaming smile. "I was so intrigued to hear of your arrival in our humble little town."
"I shall not be in Provins for much longer, Madame. My duty awaits me in Paris."
"Shame." Grace said sardonically.
Javert cast her a look of equal disdain. "Yes, regrettable indeed that I should have to quit your…charming presence so soon, Mademoiselle."
Jocelyn was completely oblivious to the simmering resentment between them, hearing only playful flirtation. She squeezed Grace's arm tighter with excitement.
"Oh, well, Grace you simply must play for the Inspector whilst he is here."
"No, Jocelyn, I'd rather not-"
"Grace, now is not the time for false modesty! Has she told you of how beautifully she plays the pianoforte, Monsieur?"
Javert simply shook his head.
The next thing Grace knew, she was being frog-marched to the piano. Jocelyn pushed down hard on her shoulders and she landed with a plop down on the stool. The keys were spread out before her in an intimidating yawn. Shushes hissed throughout the crowd.
Grace felt a fierce blush creep up her neck as Jocelyn encouraged the shushing and directed everyone's attention on to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Inspector too. Smugly grinning to himself as he witnessed her embarrassment. His expression infuriated Grace.
She turned away from him, staring resolutely down at the keys as she tried to control her anger.
What was she even going to play? Did it matter? Most of the people here saw her as some sort of performing monkey. Playing for attention, for the marriage market, for a possible mate, like some sort of feather-fanning peacock.
And then there was that man. Watching her parade herself to all of these people like the good little pet of the aristocracy that he'd said she was.
She wanted to break him. She wanted to break this world. Perhaps what she should have done all along; punch a hole in it so big that it had no choice but to spit her out.
Grace didn't wait for Jocelyn to introduce her. Without warning, she slammed her hands down upon the keys and began thumping out a tune.
"My, my! At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender!" She sang at the top of her lungs.
"Oh yeah! And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way."
There were gasps and exclamations. But all eyes were on her.
There was none of this delicate, straight-backed tinkling, like the other ladies of the ton played. Grace slammed and thumped and beat those keys, and out poured a riot of music.
"The history book on the shelf."
Jocelyn laughed nervously.
"Is always repeating itself!"
The hostess leaned over and whispered to one of the other onlookers.
"She's not normally this…empassioned."
"Waterloo! I was defeated, you won the war."
ABBA's squealing trumpets accompanied her in her mind.
"Waterloo! Promise you'll love me forever more."
The Inspector found it all very amusing. He watched the girl with growing fascination. How quickly all those false proprieties and simpering manners had left her.
"Waterloo! Couldn't escape if I wanted to."
Now here she was, hollering like some sort of screaming banshee or common tavern entertainer. She was fascinating to watch. In much the same way that a carriage crash was fascinating to watch…
"Waterloo! Knowing my fate is to be with you."
A smile touched Javert's face. The first genuine smile to reach his lips in an uncountable amount of years.
"Wa-Wa-Wa-Wa Waterloo! Finally facing my Waterloo!"
"Goodness me, Mama, who hired tonight's entertainment?!"
Jocelyn gasped. Her face turned ashen white and she wheeled towards the voice. Grace abruptly stopped playing as a name rasped out of her throat.
"Marcelin!" She cried out into the sudden silence.
All heads in the room, as one, snapped off of Grace and shot towards the young man standing in the doorway to the drawing room.
He stood tall, with his hands poised primly behind his back. Golden, curled hair crowned his head, almost like an angelic halo, and the face that it adorned was fierce and beautiful. He was so like those statues of Saint Michael that Grace had seen in the convent; so fair and noble, but frighteningly intense too.
"Marcelin!" Jocelyn said again, a tremble in her voice.
She rushed over to her son and threw her arm around him, as if he had just returned from the dead.
It took Grace's mind a moment to catch up with what she was seeing.
It's Marcelin… That's Marcelin…
All of the hushed conversations and whispered things Julius and Jocelyn had said about him slowly came trickling back: the disgraced son, the revolutionary, the Sorbonne drop-out, the anti-establishmentarian. And now here he was.
Scandalised, excited chatter rumbled throughout the party. As Grace rose to her feet, she picked up on a few whispered comments and words.
"Well, that's a surprise, I must say…" said one hushed Ecuyer to his wife.
"Did you not say you saw him in Montmartre last month, dear?" She whispered back to him.
"Indeed. At the head of some atrocious rally. Screaming about the moral corruptness of wealth and monarchy."
"No!"
"Yes, my dear! And now here he is, presenting himself back at the doorstep of his ennobled mother and father."
The wife giggled. "And now the prodigal son has returned, it seems."
"Quite." The Ecuyer laughed back. "It seems that even the staunchest revolutionary eventually has their 'morals' starved out of them. Even Marcelin Enjolras."
For the second time that night, music assaulted Grace's mind.
It wasn't like Javert's music: violent and devastating. This music was marching and inspirational.
It made Grace want to sit up, pay attention, do something.
Grace fixed her eyes on the Ecuyer that she'd been listening to.
"Enjolras." She repeated. "That's his name?" Grace asked in an almost heady stupor.
It was a steady, trooping climb of notes. A long march of five strong D notes. Then up to E. Six notes. Marching steadily on before leaping up to G ever so briefly, before sliding back into step with E and D.
"Well, you should know Mademoiselle!" The Ecuyer replied sardonically. "You've been the ward of Madame and Monsieur Enjolras for quite some time now!"
"I…I didn't…" she stuttered. "They don't…They like to be called…"
Her head spiralled further into turmoil. Had she really been so self-obsessed that she hadn't even thought to ask what the surname of her carers was?!
"Madame Jocelyn and Monsieur Julius insist that we refer to them by their Christian names." - That's what Artemida had told her.
It had become so ingrained in her that Grace had thought that there was no more to their names than that. But of course there was. Of course there was…
"Enjolras…. Enjolras…" she muttered to herself, watching as the mother and son shared a tearful welcoming home.
It was yet another name that she knew. Another series of syllables that she could taste on the tip of her tongue. And still that damnable wall in her mind slammed down whenever she edged close to remembering it.
Just like it did with her dear Cosette. Just like it did with the terrible Inspector.
Jocelyn suddenly wheeled around, happy tears in her eyes. When she fixed Grace in her sights, her wild but ecstatic look caught her a little off guard.
"Grace, my dear!" She cried. "Come and meet your cousin!"
For the first time, Grace and the mysterious Marcelin locked eyes. That fierceness and determination crashed into her like a wave of righteous fire. They were dark too. Dark like molten chocolate. And Grace was reminded of that peace-offering present that Marcelin had sent his mother and father a few days ago. That huge, bittersweet bag of chocolat powder.
She curtseyed low and he bowed to her. All the while she felt those scrutinising eyes on her.
"Marcelin, I've heard a lot about you." she began.
"I wish I could say the same for you, Cousin…"
"Grace."
"Cousin Grace."
"A pity you haven't been in contact with your mother and father." Grace said, a slight twinge of reproach in her voice. "We could have been acquainted a lot sooner."
Marcelin narrowed his eyes at her. She was telling him off. Publicly. Giving him a bit of a scalding for going missing-in-action for all those months. Grace had seen the worry and the pain in Jocelyn and Julius's eyes the past six months, worrying about their distant son. This distant son. And she wanted to make sure he knew it.
Marcelin laughed, a low snort of a noise, and smiled coyly at her. It wasn't the reaction that she had expected him to have. It should have infuriated her, but it didn't. It intrigued her.
Grace cast her eyes about the room. The penetrating eyes and hushed whispers were still very much directed her and Marcelin's way. There, in the corner of the drawing room, still stood that terrible Inspector, Javert. Where all others were engaged in excited gossip, barely able to keep their jaws closed, he remained lock-jawed and stoic. Staring at her with a cold sense of aloofness that sent a shiver up her spine.
This night had been full of 'intriguing' men. First Javert, and now Marcelin Enjolras.
Grace just hoped that the latter would hold more promise than the former…