Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

 

 

It was, Bastien told himself, nothing but a bad dream. He would wake up soon and find things as they should be. There’d be no diamond. He’d be cold and hungry and Sylvie would be telling him off for helping himself to a gentleman’s watch or some other knickknack. All he had to do, he knew, was open his eyes.

“Wake up,” he muttered to himself as he sat, arms around his legs, on the stable straw. “Wake up.”

The smell of smoke still lingered about him and he took a deep, wrenching breath. He refused to let the tears escape again, to think of the man Sylvie had named as his father. He would think of none of that, only of waking from this nightmare into the gray, empty gutter of Paris.

Bastien pressed his face to his knees, closing his eyes tightly. He wondered whether, if he stayed where he was, everything would just vanish. Even better, perhaps he might vanish himself, putting an end to all his problems once and for all.

At the sound of the door latch lifting, he remained unmoving, willing himself to disappear and be free of all this. He barely heard the sound of boot soles crossing the earthen floor, hardly felt the straw shift as someone sat beside him, then Adam asked, “What’re you doing all the way out here when you’ve a bed inside?”

“Not tired,” Bastien managed, keeping his head down.

“There’s a poodle looking for you.”

He shrugged in reply, certain the dog, along with anyone else, didn’t care what he was doing or where he was.

“I’m really sorry about your ma,” Adam told him. “It’s rotten.”

“She didn’t deserve that,” he whispered, “whatever she’d done.”

“Nobody deserves that,” Adam agreed in a gentle tone. “I know it’s no help to you now, that it feels as though the bottom’s dropped out of your world, but if you ever need a friend, you’ve got one right here.”

“A friend?” Bastien wiped at his nose, barely daring to look up at Adam. “I’m not used to friends.”

“Well…” Adam patted Bastien’s shoulder. “You’ve got this loveable rogue, a sensible fellow and two chaotic gents about town. Not to mention the young Miss Dee, who’s taken a shine to her new best pal.”

“What’ll happen to me now?” Bastien asked after a long moment. “Where do I go?”

“I could a use a livery lad at my yard if you fancy a change of air?”

“In England?”

“England? Not a bloody chance, lad…Ireland.”

Bastien let the thought settle for a moment, weighing it against remaining here, alone, living from one stolen mouthful to the next, exchanging the familiarity of the street for what sounded like a settled existence. “What if I make a mess of it? You’d send me back here on my own?”

“You’d get an extra shift on shit shoveling duty, maybe.” Adam shrugged. “No worse than that, though.”

“That all?” Bastien peered at Adam, searching for any hint of dishonesty.

“If it’s really bad, maybe two shifts?”

“I think,” he decided, “there might be worse places to be than an Irish stable yard.”

“And it’s my Irish stable yard…it’s never dull.”

“Lots of ladies?”

“Everywhere you turn.”

“Pretty ones?” Bastien sat up straighter.

“Try stunning,” Adam confided in the boy. “But they’re all the finest you’ll see.”

“Maybe I’ll give it a go then.” He felt a tiny flicker of something that might, perhaps, be hope.

“One thing you need to agree to.”

“What’s that?” Bastien narrowed his eyes, betraying his suspicion—there was always one thing.

“If ever you think I’m not paying you enough…you make sure to tell me?”

Bastien felt his eyes grow wide, disbelief clear in his voice when he demanded, “What, I’ll be getting paid?”

“You’ll be working, so you’ll be getting paid.”

“Well, then”—he almost managed a smile—“when do we go?”

“As soon as these storms clear. We’ll have to go via England.” Adam pulled a face. “But we’ll be in Ireland soon enough and you can get on with admiring the lassies—just don’t let Miss Dee catch you.”

“I won’t,” he vowed, “and I’ll leave you the prettiest, of course.”

“Well, I’m the foreman, so you should.”

“I might,” Bastien decided with a smile, slowly uncurling from his unhappy bed of straw, “be ready for that bed now.”

“Come on then.” Adam offered his hand. “And have a nip of brandy to see you to sleep?”

A pause, then he reached out, closing his fingers gratefully around Adam’s before he got to his feet. “If I told you something,” Bastien found himself venturing as they made for the door, “would you tell anyone? If I told you not to?”

“It’d be tough to know until you said it,” Adam mused. “But if you trust me, you can give it a try.”

Bastien battled with himself, not quite able to bring himself to name Tessier as he told Adam, “That man, the one that killed my mum—she said he was my dad.”

“If that’s true, then he’s got a finer lad for a son than he could ever deserve,” Adam said after a moment’s thought. “The best lad I know.”

He had nothing to say to that, feeling once again that everything might somehow be all right, his hold on Adam’s hand tightening as they walked out into the fresh air.