Chapter 3
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"My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,
or else my heart concealing it will break."
- William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
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The question in Sylvie's big dark eyes and the intensity of her gaze made him look away. Suddenly he didn't feel strong enough to look at her; however, she sensed his pained anxiety.
"Over ten years ago, when I was twenty-five, I was married," he started, not seeing the astonishment on Sylvie's face.
He was standing by the window now, with his hands resting on his hips, looking out into the night that revealed images from his past in his mind's eye.
"For a long time, she was the most beautiful woman I have ever met… I didn't know much about her and in my naïve enchantment, I didn't seem to care. I loved her as only the young and inexperienced can love – with all my heart and passion. I put all my trust and faith in her… I believed her to be a woman of honour and great passion for life. When I was with her I felt… intoxicated… I gave her my all, and believed nothing could destroy our happiness." He paused, taking a deep breath.
"Not long after our wedding, I found out it was all a lie…"
Words suddenly poured out of him as he briefly related to Sylvie the story of his background and the tragic circumstances of his brother's death. Her quiet gasp was the only other sound in the room apart from his voice. Realising she was waiting for him to continue, he went on.
"I was blinded by pain and feeling of betrayal. I guess my pride took a blow as well, for I claimed myself to be a good judge of character… She claimed my brother had forced herself upon her and she just defended herself... I was torn between anger and love. There was no evidence testifying about anything else but her guilt. As a landowner, my duty by law was to condemn her…"
He let out a shaky breath, still unable to look away from the window, staring out into the night, his expression stony and lifeless.
"I had never felt such anguish and fear before. She begged me to believe her it was self-defence, but the evidence against her was overwhelming, fortified by her betrayal of hiding her past from me." He paused.
"What past?" Sylvie asked quietly, using his break.
Without looking at her, Athos replied. "She was a convicted thief."
No reply came from her as he kept his eyes firmly ahead.
"And so I had to do what the law asked from me. I condemned her to death by hanging…"
Athos's voice faded away; he squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing his tears of shame and guilt. There was still no response from Sylvie, although he could feel the increased tension in the air, growing with each word. He opened his eyes, gazing into the darkness again.
"For five years, I believed she had found her last day at the end of a rope – until she reappeared in my life again… and haunted me even more than before. The man who was supposed to hang her revived her after I had left… only for her to kill him just before I found out she was alive. I became obsessed with both getting her out of my life, as she kept finding ways how to push herself back into it, and craving for her in an unhealthy way… For the memory of the love we had once shared… All I know is that until I was called to fight against Spain almost two years later, she made life a living hell for me… And yet I could not rid my heart and mind of her. I saw her betray, destroy, even kill. After all, I made her what she had become…"
He paused, his eyes glowing in the warm candlelight. Still, he dared not look at Sylvie.
"After coming to Paris, she was working as Cardinal's agent. That, along with her initial desire for revenge on me had made us enemies for a long time. But not long before I was called to war, she helped us to bring down Rochefort, the King's main advisor and Captain of the Red Guard, who was incidentally also a Spanish spy. She also saved Aramis from prison when he was sentenced to death. Something in me hoped she had changed, that there was still something good within her, although I had my doubts since she had never done anything unconditionally… She told me she was tired of being who she was and wished to be who she was with me once…"
Athos released the building tension within him with a heavy sigh and leaned against the window frame with one hand, subconsciously looking for physical support.
"She was about to leave for England for good and asked me to go with her. I almost went to meet her where she had suggested, although I wasn't sure if to leave with her or to say goodbye… But then Treville asked me to gather our men to go to war. I could not abandon my duty, so I was late for the meeting with Anne… She left without me."
It was the first time Athos mentioned his former wife's name, and for the first time since he had known her, saying her name out loud didn't make him feel anything even resembling the emotion that had tortured his heart for so many years before.
A heavy silence befell the room as Sylvie still hadn't uttered a word. Athos finally moved from his spot at the window and walked over to his desk. Still without looking at her, he sat on the edge of it, his hands grasping at it for support. This time, he pinned his look to the floorboards.
"In the war, I was learning to forget, and after four years, upon my return to Paris, I felt I was almost there. And then…"
For the first time during his narration, a gentle smile reached his eyes, chasing the dark shadow away from his features.
"Then I was sent to investigate in the refugee camp… and I met a woman… fierce, intelligent, brave, compassionate and caring, pure and giving… The like I had never met before." The smile on his face turned into an incredulous one. "Everything I thought I knew about love until then suddenly appeared… flawed."
The memories of the precious time he had shared with Sylvie flooded his mind like a rolling tide, lighting up his eyes. He chuckled and shook his head, making a few strands of his hair fall over and partially obscure his face.
"I was such a fool… I kept pulling you to me and pushing you away at the same time, stubbornly refusing to admit to myself that you have already found a way to the place deep inside me that I thought no one would ever reach again."
Athos knitted his eyebrows as his smile faded. "And there was the constant fear for your safety, especially after Grimaud's attack on us in the camp. And yet, I couldn't fight my heart, I didn't want to… I dreaded the moments when my mind wasn't occupied with any task because the emptiness inside me caused by your absence was draining the life out of me. I wasn't prepared for feeling like that, for feeling so… much… I just wasn't myself anymore, driven only by the pursuit of Grimaud." Pain clouded his eyes again. "And then we have returned to Paris a few days ago…"
There were still no words or movement coming as a reply, and he was still afraid to look up, worried he might lose the courage to reveal the rest. Although the night outside was cool, the air in the Captain's quarters suddenly seemed hot and thick, the painful memories mingled with deep anxiety weighing in heavily on the Captain's heart.
While he was still focusing on the uneven floorboards ahead of him, Athos's throat suddenly went dry when he realised he had arrived at the most difficult part of his narration. His heart started hammering in his chest – after he had spoken the following words, the fate of his relationship with Sylvie would lie solely in her hands. However, he was sure that if he didn't tell her the whole truth, he wouldn't honour the honesty they both so valued. His hands started sweating.
"I came here and found Anne waiting for me…"
He sighed heavily, trying to shake off the anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him again.
"I cannot explain what happened next… Perhaps it was the shock of seeing her again, perhaps the memory of who we were at the very beginning washed over me, blinding my senses and reason, but before I knew it, we were kissing…"
Silence; nothing but deafening silence, hurting Athos's ears like a blow from a canon by now. However, he forced himself to continue, betting everything on the last imaginary card remaining in his hand. Sylvie needed to know the whole truth to understand what she truly meant to him.
"Only a mere moment into it, I had to pull back… It felt utterly wrong and… cold. I couldn't even look into her eyes for all I could see in my head was you… At that moment, I understood that whatever had bound us in the past was burned to ashes and gone forever. After all these years, I was finally free of her…"
More silence, tempting him to fight his fear of rejection and look at Sylvie, but he couldn't, not yet.
"I told her it was not what I wanted and the truth finally dawned on her. Out of the blue, she mentioned your name…It was Anne who you saw in the printing room."
The suspense was killing him now. His eyes were burning as he finally gathered the courage to look up to see Sylvie's reaction, but it was not to be – her head was bowed deep down, her long, loose curls creating a veil covering most of her face. All Athos could see clearly was her chest heaving. Suddenly determined to bring the point of his whole story across, he kept his eyes on her as he proceeded.
"The realisation she knew about you made something in me snap. I am being honest by saying that I had never felt such a terror that gripped me at that moment… I know what she's capable of; she kills people who stand in her way… The thought of her hurting you in any way almost drove me mad."
Athos's voice was strained but coloured with anger.
"I have never laid my hands on a woman in an aggressive way unless in defence, but when she suggested she might have harmed you, mocking me if I cared whether you were alive or not, my hands went around her neck without thinking… I am not proud of it, but I swear to God that for a moment, I was ready to kill her… I didn't, but I knew then as I know now, I never wanted to see her face ever again."
He paused before delivering the final words that had been sitting on his chest for what seemed like an eternity.
"The face I want to see for the rest of my life is yours."
As his voice faded into the space between them, Athos exhaled loudly, ignoring the wetness on his stubbly cheeks. It was the longest stream of thoughts he had ever said out loud, the most he had ever revealed from his past life and his thoughts and feelings to anyone. It had been difficult but also liberating as he could feel the negative, dark memories filled with pain, guilt and sorrow wash away, making way for something better and more beautiful hopefully to come. All he could do was wait and beg Heavens that she would understand. He wasn't asking for compassion or absolution. All he wished for was to be honest with her, just as she had always been honest with him, and hope that perhaps her grace and love would be strong enough not to close her door to him forever.
At last, Sylvie's head slowly went up, understanding that he had finished speaking. Her dark eyes glistened with tears as she locked them with his haunted blue pools. A myriad of emotions played across her features, and Athos found it difficult to decipher which one prevailed. And yet he was grasping at straws, anything that would give him hope, something he had thought he'd lost but found again when their paths crossed.
"Sylvie…," he heard himself beg in a whisper before another tear escaped his eye, asking the unspoken question.
And then she finally stood up from the bed and slowly but assuredly closed the distance between them. Her hands found their way to his face, gently cupping it, her thumbs wiping away the dampness on his cheeks, ignoring her own. She searched his eyes for a moment and saw the same longing, despair and love in them as when Athos had returned to her for the first time after their brief separation. Moreover, there was the honesty she so valued as well. He was an open book for real this time, completely and voluntarily at her mercy, surrendering his everything to her.
"I'm here," she whispered. "I'll always be here…"
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