Chapter 21 - The Death of Common Sense

Javert had tried. He'd tried so hard to do as Grace had bade him and stay awake.

But he so wanted to rest his eyes.

Just for a few moments. Regain some of his strength before Grace returned to him…

No. He couldn't. He'd seen weak and injured men fall asleep in the recesses of the hospital tents and never wake up again.

He pried his lids open, trying to distract himself by counting the patches of damp on the roof above him.

He tried to list aloud all of the parts of the 1791 Constitution from memory.

He tried to move each one of his toes independently for at least ten seconds.

He even put together a mental list of all the things he felt he should do when he recovered:

Send his sabre to the blacksmith for sharpening.

Recommend Malloirave for promotion to the Prèfet.

Perhaps he might even tell Grace that he was in love with her, if he ever felt brave enough to do so...

But he knew he had failed when he found himself on the retreat from Acre…

It was a strange sensation, to know at the same time that he was dreaming and to feel that he was that young, heartbroken nineteen-year-old boy again.

He was angry with himself for a short time, but he let the past rush up to him once more, hoping that Grace wouldn't be too disappointed in him when she found him cold and still in his bed…


Their siege of Acre was abandoned once General Napoleon realised it to be a futile endeavour.

The Ottomans were getting their supplies by sea, and helped along very nicely by the British, floating on the horizon, a blip on the water. So, any hopes the French had of starving them out was a fool's errand.

Napoleon had stomped and raged that night, shouting about how Sidney Smith, the British Admiral floating on the horizon, had robbed him of his destiny. But Javert cared little for Napoleon's dreams of being a Crusader, a conqueror, a liberator of the 'barbaric Orient'. He'd had enough. And he wanted to go home.

So many of them were either dead or dying of plague too. If they stayed camped at the foothills of Mount Tabor any longer, the Armeè d'Orient would end its days sputtering out in a pitiful yelp of disease.

Burgelesse had been in the ground for three weeks when Javert received the orders to retreat back to Haifa.

They crept away under the cover of darkness, blowing up all of the gunpowder they had left and all of the empty crates lying about their camp. The great booming explosions made the stones of Mount Tabor tremble. The colour of fire lit the night sky again and he couldn't see the stars through the thick smoke that curled up into the heavens. In that time, not even the stars could look down upon him and offer Javert their comfort.

But there was hardship to come. Always hardship. Napoleon ordered that no man was to be left behind, not even the men who were still sick with plague or wounded.

By that point, there were nearly two and a half thousand of the poor blighters who weren't well enough to see themselves home. There were three kinds of sick: the first category, who could walk or could be assisted to do so, the second, who could maybe ride a donkey or a horse, and the third, who needed to be carried on stretchers for the whole five-hundred mile slog back to Cairo.

Javert was given the task of hauling a man called Peyrusse over the sands. The man had lost his left leg up to the knee, caught at just the wrong time by one of the Ottoman's returning canon shots. A ball had carried the limb clean away, and he was still recovering from his cauterization and surgeries. Javert had a harness strapped to his shoulders, with poor Peyrusse lying on his stretcher, trailing behind him.

Every man, from the lowliest drummer boy to the Generals had been ordered to walk, their horses going to the wounded who needed them. But Javert felt that he himself had been transformed into a horse. Peyrusse would groan and curse him every time he would drag him over a sharp stone, and Javert would accept the abuse silently, head bent like a maltreated wagon mule.

Peyrusse complained and whined from sun up till sun down. He called him a bastard, a festering boil, the son of a whore. For all Javert knew of his mother, he might have been, so he did not argue back.

Long columns of trudging soldiers stretched back across the rolling countryside. They made achingly slow progress. The leather straps cut deep welts into Javert's shoulders and his calves burned with strain, shaking uncontrollably when he lay himself and Peyrusse down each night.

They burnt the villages on their retreat, just to ensure that the Ottomans didn't attempt to come after them. All they would have found was scorched earth and the sick whose companions had grown weary of carrying them. Each night Peyrusse would completely change his tone, and when the moon was in the sky, he'd beg and plead and ply his mule with promises of wealth if Javert didn't abandon him in the sands for the Turks. There were rumours amongst the men that the Ottomans tortured and burned any French soldiers that they still found alive…

But as soon as the next day came, and the first sharp stone prodded into Peyrusse's back, Javert was the son of a whore again.

They were given four days' rest when they entered Jaffa. Javert was glad for it; it gave him time for his calves to rest and his shoulders to heal a little. Javert saw Napoleon walking amongst the sick, handkerchief clamped tight around his mouth. Historians would say later that Napoleon embraced the sick and dying, like a Madonna cradling her dying son. But Javert saw nothing like that. Instead Napoleon was green with disgust. He touched no one. Whispering furiously to his surgeon-in-chiefs.

And sometimes, in the middle of the night, he'd be woken up with a stifled cry. A smothered scream. A plea for mercy, suddenly snuffed. Sometimes he could smell the laudanum in the air when he shut his eyes tight and pretended to be asleep when the doctors stepped past him. Sometimes they didn't use laudanum at all, simply stuffing bandages down their throats until they lay still. But on the third day of his rest, Javert got up that day to discover Peyrusse dead. Empty, terrified eyes staring up at nothing.

At least now he was free of his burden. He had no more room inside him for sorrow. Where once he might have felt horror or disgust, because the French were killing their own instead of leaving it to the Turks, instead he felt a void of nothing. His charge was dead and now he had no one to drag through the desert but himself.

When they arrived in Gaza, Napoleon had the audacity to give the survivors fresh uniforms and palm leaves. They were paraded through the streets like returning conquerors. Nothing of what Javert had experienced felt victorious…

But the British had followed them back to Egypt, blockading their ports and snuffing out any supply lines that they'd hoped to maintain. So the ugly head of mutiny began to rear itself amongst those who had survived the retreat. The punishment for insubordination changed from whipping to public execution. Well known troublemakers and barrack-room lawyers found themselves rounded up and court-martialed. But Napoleon was also in the habit of dishing out promotions, dispatches and rewards to those who showed the behaviour he wanted. This was how Javert found himself being made a Sous-Lieutenant.

He accepted his engraved sabre and new stripes with a stoic expression. He nodded his head once to the commanding officer who presented him with his 'prizes' and was yet again praised for his discipline and humility. Although Javert couldn't care less what rank they made him; there was no room left in him for joy or happiness either.

And then, one day, Javert was summoned to the Institut d'Égypt's headquarters.

The savants had returned from their glorious gander down the Nile. With their new wealth of charts and drawings and documents, they had established an epicentre for all of their accumulated knowledge in Cairo. When Javert entered, he saw a few of the savants he recognised, burnt skin and unkempt beards from their months in the desert. They were all gathered around a curious-looking black slab with a variety of scratchy white inscriptions in it. Some of the savants poked and pointed at the symbols on the stone, whilst others made notes in their little paper books. Javert eyed them up contemptuously, wondering what all the fuss over this stone was about.

"Curious thing, isn't it." a voice said beside him.

Javert glanced around to find Laplace, the astronomer who had been with his company for a while, stood beside him.

"What is it?"

"We…don't really know." Laplace said with a strange half-smile on his face. "Bouchard found it half buried in the walls of Fort Julien. Apparently the bottom section is Greek, the middle Demotic, but the top…"

"It's the same strange symbols we've seen all over the place here." Javert said, almost bored. "Every ruined temple or crumbled bit of statue had those…things all over them."

"Quite. Bouchard is convinced it's some sort of Ancient Egyptian script."

"You mean…they are words? Those pictures and squiggles?"

Laplace nodded.

"Well, what do they say?"

"I don't know. Not my speciality." Laplace responded, winking at Javert as he walked away from the strange stone.

Javert followed on his heels as he led him further into the Institute.

"I heard of your recent promotion in the weekly bulletin, Sub-Lieutenant. Congratulations." Laplace said, glancing back at him.

"Thank you, Sir."

"I must say, when I read your name, I was glad to see that you'd survived the desert and the nasty business at Acre."

"Hmm." Javert replied, his face unmoving.

"And I do wish the British would jolly well bugger off and leave us to it. This damnable blockade..! Do you know we're running out of lead for our pencils now?!"

"I did, Sir. A few savants have been trying to steal our lead shots to melt down into writing equipment…"

"Yes, well…Apologies, my good man." Laplace said sheepishly.

"If it's more lead you're after, Sir, I can't give you any. The last man that was caught wasting good ammunition was hung outside Napoleon's palace."

"No, no. That's not why I invited you here."

Laplace placed a hand on Javert's back and led him into a quiet corner. He looked behind both of his shoulders and bent his head to whisper:

"I don't suppose you've heard the rumour, then."

"Rumour?" Javert asked.

"At first I thought it was just gossip too, but yesterday, a message arrived from the General's desk to us here at the Institute… Napoleon's leaving."

Javert was caught by surprise. He stood up straighter and blinked a few times. "You mean…he's abandoning us here? His Armeè d'Orient?"

"All we were told is that we must keep this information strictly to ourselves and not to go putting it about the ranks, but yes. Yes it appears so."

Javert scoffed and shook his head.

"Wh-why?"

"Trouble at home, I'm told. The Directory are getting nervous about Monsieur Bonaparte's popularity, and they're making moves to try and get rid of him. If he wants a career after Egypt, he needs to get home. Fast."

Javert wasn't surprised, merely disgusted. After the landing at Alexandria, after the desert, after the Battle of the Pyramids, after Jaffa, Haifa and Acre… Napoleon was now going to leave behind the men that had made his dreams a reality. All that blood and loyalty, and Napoleon was going to leave it all to rot away into the sands.

"Some of us have elected to stay here at the Institute." Laplace continued. "There's still much work to be done. A lot of data to catalogue and study from our trip down the Nile, you see. That stone that you saw, it's just a drop in the ocean when compared to the other wonders the historians and archaeologists saw…."

"But you?" Javert asked, eyebrow raised. "You aren't a historian."

"No. No I am not." Laplace responded dryly. "And thus my mathematical work can continue on back home in France. I've made my observations and mappings. There's no reason for me to remain here in Egypt."

"Well, Sir, I wish you a speedy journey home with General Napoleon." Javert said stoically, bowing stiffly to Laplace and moving to leave.

"No, wait!" Laplace cried, seizing his sleeve. "I asked you here because I remembered your fondness for my discipline, Sub-Lieutenant."

"Fondness?"

"You see… My valet had rather an unfortunate time of things when we returned from our jaunt down the Nile. He caught dysentery when we were still fifty miles from Cairo, and the poor man died. He was the absolute picture of health too! Until he drank from that festered well just north of Rosetta…"

"I'm sorry to hear that, Sir." Javert said, unsure of how this connected to him.

Laplace looked at him long and hard. When it was clear that the young Sub-Lieutenant wasn't getting the point he was driving at, he sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Lieutenant, I'm asking if you would accompany me back to France as my assistant."

Javert widened his eyes. "Oh. Well… I mean…"

"The other savants going home, they have their notepads and their sketchbooks… Small things that can be tucked under an arm or shoved into their valises. But my telescope! My equipment!" He paused, as if trying to add dramatic effect to his affectations. "I need your help, young man. Will you help me bring the instruments of my art home with me?"

Javert was quiet for a moment. "Why me?" He asked with a frown.

"I remembered your face when you peered up at the heavens. You might have made a promising astrologist, if you'd received the right education" Laplace said with a warm smile. "I remembered how you would volunteer yourself to aid me and my team after a long day's march. Even when the other soldiers told you that you were a fool to do so."

Javert looked consciously down at his boots, feeling a little awkward.

"And if you decide to stay here, who knows what will happen to the Armeè d'Orient once Napoleon is gone?"

Javert shrugged and nodded his head. Laplace was right in that regard, at least. Clearly Napoleon had to qualms in abandoning his men here, so he didn't see why he should.

"How are we going to get past the British blockade?" Javert asked quietly.

Laplace's smile lit up his eyes. "Does that mean you'll accompany me?!"

"I will." Javert stated, stoically nodding his consent.

Laplace almost clapped for joy. "Oh marvellous! I will make sure that you're properly compensated for your efforts when we return home, Sub-Lieutenant!"

"But the blockade, Sir!" Javert said again, growing a little frustrated. "Compensation will not matter a jot if we're blown to bits by the British canon fire!"

"I imagine Napoleon has a trick up his sleeve for that…" Laplace answered enigmatically. He gave Javert a half-crooked grin and began walking away. "I'll write to your commanding officer, explaining that you're in my services now. Present yourself back here at midnight."

"Midnight tonight?!" Javert called after him. "We're leaving so soon?"

"Oh, I didn't realise you were so keen to stay, Sub-Lieutenant!"

He scoffed at Laplace as he walked away. Never had he been so keen to leave a place in his life.


"Javert! I have it!" Grace announced breathlessly, bursting into the Inspector's quarters.

The pot of mould clattered against her chest as she stumbled about in the dark room.

"Javert?" She called out into the gloom.

Grace squinted her eyes, just about able to see the outline of the bed, the ruffle of blankets, and an unmoving figure beneath them.

As her sight adjusted, she saw the deathly-pale skin of the Inspector, almost marble-like in its pallidness, stark and milky against his dark woollen blankets. She held her breath. She listened for the sound of him breathing. Watched for the slightest hint of movement.

"Javert?" She called out to him again.

Oh God, no. No, no, no, no… she thought as she advanced to his side. Am I too late? Please God, don't let me be too late.

She placed the pot down with a clatter on his bedside table. Fumbled for a match to light a candle. Looked over his sunken and hollow face as the light touched it, still beaded with sweat, still atrociously pale. He looked the same as when she'd left him except his dark-lashed eyelids were closed.

"Javert?" She said again, her voice beginning to crack.

She didn't want to touch him, just in case her fingers met with cold, dead skin.

"Javert, please…"

She reached out a tentative hand and shook at his shoulder.

"Javert!"

The Inspector gasped and opened his heavy eyelids.

"Oh, thank God…" she breathed, on the verge of sobs.

"Grace…" Javert mumbled. "I thought I heard you calling to me."

"You need to stay awake, just for a little while." She instructed, already folding back his blankets and bandages.

"I was far away… So very far away…" he muttered, staring absently at the roof.

"Well, you're here now. I told you not to fall asleep!"

"I tried…I tried as hard as I could…"

"Well, you're not to go slipping off anywhere else without my permission! Is that clear, Inspector?"

"Yes, Mademoiselle…" he responded weakly, just about able to muster a wry smile for her.

When she had peeled back the last of the salt and honey bandages, she reached for the pot on the bedside table. His wound still looked angry and weeping. She wanted to get that stuff on it as soon as possible.

"You… you found what you were looking for?" Javert asked, a tint of amazement in his voice.

"I told you Athalia would give it to me." Grace replied with a smile of triumph.

"Yes… but did you tell her it was for me?"

"I did."

The Inspector was lost for words for a second. "You lie."

"I do not!"

"How did you convince her to do it?" He asked; effective persuasion tactics like that would be invaluable to him in his line of work.

"This might sting a little." Grace said, her fingers dipped in a coating of the cheese mould.

"Sting?"

She smeared a good blob of the mould directly on top of his wound.

Javert let out a stifled grunt, gripping the blankets at his side in a tight fist.

"Good Lord, what is that stuff?!" He grunted. "It wreaks of… gruyere."

Grace let out a grunt of amusement. Here this man was, on the brink of death only a few moments ago, and now he was cracking jokes.

"This stuff is…miraculous. It might not be a neat little packet of amoxicillin, but, fingers crossed, it will save your life "

"Amoxi-what now?" He grumbled.

"Never mind" she chuckled. "Athalia told me that l'll need to keep cleaning the wound and applying this every few hours or so."

"Oh, I'm to be assaulted with the clair de lune again? Wonderful."

She reached a hand out to his head, feeling his temperature. She was still cold from the winter weather outside and Javert relished in the coolness of her skin on his brow.

"You're roasting hot." She mumbled. "Hang on."

Grace pried open one lapel of her jacket. Her bag was still sewn to the inner lining of the coat, and she swiftly delved inside it, looking for a red cardboard box that had rather fallen apart in the eight or so months she'd been stuck in the past…She'd only remembered on the way back from the outskirts of town that she still had them and she was rather glad that she had ended up saving them for a rainy day.

Grace pulled out a row of blister foils and popped two paracetamols into her hand.

Thank God for Boots Pharmacy and hangovers! She thought.

"Here." Grace said, reaching for the jug of water on the Inspector's dresser and pouring out a glass. "Swallow these. They'll help bring down your temperature."

She placed the pills in Javert's hand and he looked at them with deep suspicion.

"Mould first, then… whatever these are. Are you trying to poison me?!"

"If I wanted to kill you, Javert, I would have smothered you in your sleep." she replied curtly.

"Touché, Mademoiselle."

Grace poured out a glass of water for him and left it on his bedside table. Javert looked about himself with a few groans of weariness. Every single movement of his body was agonising and draining. He realised, with a deep sigh, that he couldn't even lift his hand to his mouth to take whatever Grace had given him.

Grace stopped her tidying and looked at him with a frown.

"What's wrong?"

Javert didn't need to say anything. She looked to the pills in his hand, to his strained and pale face, to his completely prostrate stance. And she knew he was too proud and too stubborn to ask for help.

"Come on…" she said gently, moving towards his back.

"What are you-"

"Brace yourself."

She placed her hands in his armpits and began hauling him upright. Javert groaned as pain shot through his body, but he could not fight her, nor did he have the energy to do it himself.

Grace looked around the room for any spare pillows to prop him up, knowing there would be none. With a sigh, she hooked her leg over the bed and leant against the wooden backboard.

"Come on, lean back against me."

He grumbled something like a protest, but again, he was too weak to hold himself upright. Normally, his proprieties would be repelling him from being in such close contact with a woman like this. Alone like this. But he cared little for the scandal of it all at that moment. His back rested against her chest and he felt like he was melting into her arms.

Grace reached for the cup of water she'd put down and plucked the paracetamols from his weak grip.

"Open wide." She instructed, unable to keep the hint of a laugh out of her voice.

"I detest you."

"Of course you do."

She placed the paracetamols on his tongue and pressed the rim of the cup to his dry lips. He took a long swig and swallowed them down, gasping with relief.

"Do you want more? Are you thirsty?"

"Parched."

She dipped the cup to his mouth again and he drank deeply. In truth, he'd never been so thirsty, not since his time in Egypt with the army.

"Slow down, it's not going to run out!" Grace chuckled when he spilt water down himself.

Javert groaned something inaudible and rested his head back against her chest.

"You never told me…" he muttered. "… how you managed to convince the Gypsies to give you what you wanted."

"I asked them really, really nicely." She replied sarcastically.

Grace picked up a spare rag and began dabbing the cool water onto his hot forehead. He did not let himself moan with pleasure when it soothed his brow, although he wanted to.

"No, truly. We both know that Gypsy woman despised me." He pressed.

She didn't feel like going into the ins and outs of her and Athalia's conversation. The burning fires, the tears, the watching eyes. Nor did she feel like confessing to him that it had ultimately cost her their friendship. So instead, she decided to concentrate on the positives rather than the negatives.

"You, Inspector, underestimate the power of human kindness."

"Because I have yet to see it."

"Well, you reap what you sow in that department."

"Are you calling me unkind, Mademoiselle?" He asked stoically.

"Do you really want me to answer that question, Monsieur?" She answered with a drawl, her cold rag paused above his head.

Javert gave a huff of defeat, annoyed that she'd somehow won another verbal sparring match between them.

"You are naïve if you think anything other than the God's honest truth."

Grace let out a sigh. "Which is?"

"That every man is born in sin. And every man must choose his way. And very few choose the way of the righteous."

"And yet, here you are." Grace said simply. "With the kindness of a Gypsy woman - one whose home you burnt down, remember?- smeared over your stomach. Now tell me which of the two of you is the 'righteous' one in this scenario?"

He could not have mustered a retort if he'd tried. She was right. And he felt something at his very foundations shift and crack again. She was right.

Javert was quiet for a long while, so long that Grace began to wonder if he'd fallen into unconsciousness again. But the Inspector took another hearty drink of water when she pressed the cup to his lips and he let out a curse when he spilt water down himself again.

"It's okay, it's okay. Where do you keep your spare clothes?" Grace asked, gently moving Javert off her chest and laying him back down flat.

The Inspector blushed a deep red, already having figured out what she was planning on doing.

"Please don't… don't trouble yourself. I will ask my Segreant to help me change when he returns from his patrols."

"Javert, in the nicest way possible, you are drenched in sweat."

He turned an even deeper shade of crimson. True enough, all of his clothes and his blankets felt damp, clinging to his skin. He could even see his own perspiration on Grace's clothes from when he'd leaned back against her chest. His embarrassment spiked deep within him.

"And when is Monsieur…" She paused, allowing Javert to fill the quiet with a name.

"Malloirave."

"And when is Monsieur Malloirave due back at the barracks?" She asked. "Not until long after dawn, I'd wager."

She was right again. Still, it didn't stop him grinding his jaw together.

"You need to be out of those filthy clothes as soon as possible. It can't be good for your healing to be lying in all that."

"But… it is not…"

"Not what?" She asked, already having found a change of clothes and a new set of blankets in his thin wardrobe.

"It is not proper for a lady to… to see…"

"Seriously?" She asked with a scoff. "Life and death situation, and you're worried about proprieties?"

"But if anyone were to find out-"

"I won't tell if you won't."

He closed his mouth abruptly. Camille had, once upon a time, said something very similar to him…

He let out a sigh of defeat and gave her a single nod.

Grace smiled and moved towards him, holding a fresh, white shirt and a pair of trousers in her hands.

His jaw was closed tight as she began manoeuvring herself around him. As she stripped back each blanket and bedsheet, his lockjaw only seemed to get tighter and tighter. Grace had to stop herself from giggling aloud every time he let out a grunt of discontent. She threw them into a pile in the corner of the room, wiping her hands on them one last time to dry them of Javert's sweat.

When she turned back to him, he lay still and flat on his simple mattress. His hands were balled tight by his sides and his stare was resolutely fixed up at the ceiling. The clothes that clung to his body were almost sodden.

"Right…" she said with a sigh. "Would you prefer to do the top or bottom first?"

Javert gulped deeply, mortified that he was having to make this decision.

"Shirt." He grumbled.

"Alrighty then." Grace replied with a chipper tone.

She proceeded with the unbuttoning, all whilst Javert refused to make eye contact with her. Peeling the shirt off his body revealed more marble-pale skin on his chest, and as gently as she could, she removed it from around his shoulders and arms. The wound on his stomach lay exposed to the open air, still coated in the mould Athalia had given her. She hoped it was working its magic beneath.

The frigid night air made Javert shiver and he slumped back into his pillows as goosebumps erupted along his skin.

"Merciful God, I'm so cold…." He muttered.

Grace touched a hand to his forehead.

"Hmm, you still feel hot to me." She said. "It'll be the sweat on your body. The moisture will be making you feel chilled."

"Just hurry up and change me." He grumbled impatiently.

"Where are your manners, Inspector!?" Grace tutted, shaking out the fresh new shirt.

The Inspector rolled his eyes and grumbled an insult to the ceiling above.

Grace snorted and resumed her care, but she found herself pausing. Her eyes fell upon Javert's naked chest. And they did not stop roaming…

Where she had expected an old man's flab and sag, there was tense muscle and leanness. She found that she was holding her breath in surprise as she took in each exposed inch of him. For a man of his age, he was remarkably well-formed, and she found herself wondering if she had somehow misjudged Javert's age altogether. Each muscle and sinew was wound tight, strong and dense under his skin. Every part of him was forged in strength, like a weapon. Not a fanciful weapon, like a rapier or a dagger, but simple and brutal, like a club. It wasn't the body of a lifter or a dandy. It was a practical body; A body of self-discipline and hard training. A life on the streets. A life in rigorous, physical duty.

"Are you sweet on him?" Grace heard Athalia's accusatory voice clammer through her memory…

But she almost jumped out of her skin when she heard Javert clear his throat.

It was she who turned as hot as coals then. Heat crept up her neck and she worked in a flustered mess until she'd got the new shirt around him.

When it came time to change his trousers, she did so with almost closed eyes. Thankfully, Javert had gathered enough strength to place his hands around his groin to protect his modesty. The silence was heavy around them until Grace had slipped the wet clothes off his legs and dragged the fresh ones up around his waist.

She searched for something to say as she started replacing the bedsheets, but each time she thought of something, it slipped out of her mind. Javert too religiously kept his eyes on the ceiling plaster, fighting the urge deep inside him to look at her. He broke just the once, his eyes flicking to her face, and saw her flustered embarrassment. That soothed something in him a little; to know that she was vulnerable and exposed, in a way, too.

The silence continued as she carefully rolled Javert on to his side and did her best to lay the fresh sheets out underneath him.

Mercifully, when she was finished, it was the Inspector who spoke first.

"Thank you." He said, a little awkwardly.

Grace was slightly taken aback as she lay the last of the fresh sheets on top of him. Tucking it under his arms, she stood up straight and smiled.

"You're welcome."

"Now you cannot say I am without manners." He added with a jovial raise of one of his dark eyebrows.

She scoffed, appreciating his small attempt to diffuse some of the tension in the room.

"How are you feeling now?" She asked, taking a seat beside him.

"Weary." He answered honestly. "And thirsty."

She picked up the cup of water again and allowed him to drink deeply. Whilst he sipped, she touched a hand to his forehead again.

"I think your temperature's coming down." She said, relief blooming in her eyes. "You don't feel roasting hot anymore."

"So, may I have your permission to sleep now, Mademoiselle?" He asked audaciously.

"You may, Sir." She smirked at him.

"And your… mould?" He asked, eyes flicking towards the pot on the bedside table.

"I'll reapply it a few times while you rest. I'll try not to wake you."

His eyes were already fluttering closed as a deep tiredness pulled at him.

"You are…quite sure, Mademoiselle?" He asked, on the brink of sleep.

"If your temperature's still low and you seem to be on the mend by early morning, I'll leave you to your Sergeant's care. As long as you promise to tell him the same instructions I told you."

"Clean the wound with the alcohol and salt and honey at least thrice a day, and then reapply your mould concoction."

Grace nodded at him, pleased that he'd at least listened to her.

The fresh sheets seemed to be caressing him. His simple mattress beckoned him into rest. He murmured softly.

"It's alright, Javert. Go to sleep." Grace whispered softly.

"And when I awaken…and you're not here?"

The question took her a little by surprise. There was a softness, a tenderness in his voice that made her stomach feel a flutter of pleasure. She stared at him for a minute in silence, not quite sure what to say.

"You know where to find me now." he said. "If I am to recover, it might be a while before I can meet… I'd like to know where I can find you. To send you word of when I am recovered."

She scrunched up her face uncomfortably. If she told him where she lodged, he'd know where Enjolras lodged too. And with the way things were progressing, telling the police where Enjolras was might be a bad move.

"Javert, I told you-"

"You have my word. It will stay strictly between us." he said quickly.

She held her breath for a moment. Her common sense told her to refuse him, but after tonight, common sense had died and left Paris altogether…

"On the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe…there's a cafe called The ABC. You'll find me there."

That was the last bit of comfort he needed to slip into a peaceful slumber. He lay his head back on the pillow and let the haze of sleep take him.

It only took a few moments for Javert to begin quietly snoring. Grace sighed deeply, thinking on how easily those snores might have become death-rattles if she'd not come back here with her prize.

She too felt weary, but a different kind of tiredness. The tiredness of relief and de-compression. No, Javert was not out of the woods just yet, but she fancied his chances of survival much more now. That was enough to release some of the pent-up adrenaline in her body.

Not wishing to wake him by rummaging around for a blanket of her own, Grace tiptoed towards the armchair in the corner of the room and pulled the Inspector's heavy leather coat off the back. She draped it over her legs and found it to be a warm and fragrant blanket. Javert's gunpowder and sage scent enveloped her in a comforting embrace and she leant into it. She realised the smell, his smell, made her feel safe.

And she had almost lost him.

Grace pushed away that morbid thought. She too pushed away her thoughts of Javert's bare chest, his muscles, of the man underneath the stoic exterior.

It was too much to think about just then. But each time memories of his naked body crept back into her mind, it made her stomach flutter.

Still, she wrapped Javert's coat tight around her, listening for the sound of his snoring. When she heard him still breathing gently and peacefully, she allowed herself to slip into a light doze.