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In the aftermath of the Canvas’s destruction, there’s nothing left to do but heal. Physically, and otherwise.
Time passed.
Less than one might have expected. Clea said he’d been catastrophizing; to some extent, their eldest was correct. They had spent longer stretches in Canvases in the past—an objectively accurate statement, if lacking in nuance. They’d been younger in those halcyon days. They’d been collaborators, not enemies, choking chroma from their lover’s lungs.
Creation born of passion. Not desiccation, birthed in sweltering fear.
Granted the mercy of hindsight, Renoir could admit it had been fear; projection, too, he supposed—hypersensitivity born of his own experiences.
We are not the same, she’d snapped at him, catching his wrist as he fled her repainted manor. Their children’s—no, her creations' shocked faces stared back at him when he closed his eyes. It is not a question of losing myself—it’s only a question of time and control.
You have lost objectivity. Aline, what you have done—
A crime violating every rule of their order; the laws she knew as intrinsically as the color of her hair or eyes. The Head of the Painter’s Council could afford no less. Renoir rounded on her, clutching her upper arms. He remembered the sickly thrill in feeling her skin beneath his hands again; the last time he’d held her had been—
—by Verso’s bedside, turning her face into his chest, her gasping sobs breathing into the last of their son’s agonized cries as the morphine failed to cut the pain.
We can still set this right, he’d murmured.
She’d staggered away from him, horrified. Bury three more of our children beside Verso in the garden? No.
The look on her face still haunted him as he’d stated the objective truth: Aline, they are not our children.
But she’d dug in her heels, every bit as mulish and unyielding as Renoir. And, in the end, she’d buried them anyway—four children, instead of just the one.
He wondered if the situation might have ended differently if there’d been time to discuss these things, a way to gentle Aline out of her fantasies—pretty what-ifs, ultimately pointless. They’d already carved the wounds into each other’s flesh. All that was left was the scarring. Or festering, Renoir supposed.
The Dessendre patriarch wandered the manor’s hall, listening to the gentle conversation drifting between members of the staff. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Clea on her harp; a promising development, and a step towards normalcy. Alicia had settled in the library, a pile of books spread around her on the floor, the dogs pinning her in on either side. She raised her hand from Noco’s coat to wave. Renoir offered her a weary smile.
Aline was missing from her regular haunts. Her glasshouse remained mangled and dead in the fire’s aftermath. The atelier…well, she’d been absent since the Canvas. Their bedroom remained empty. That left the gardens.
He fetched his coat from the closet. Aline’s jacket still hung beside the now-empty hook. The worst of winter’s chill had passed, but it was still too damnably cold to go wandering in nothing but her spring dresses. All they needed was to add pneumonia to their list of concerns. He plucked the material up, draping it over his arm, before heading out in search of his wife.
He did not find her at Verso’s grave, or in the rose gardens, or in the maze. They were pretty locales, all lovingly tended and manicured to her exacting specifications, but they were not hers and certainly not their children's.
No, they preferred the wilder reaches of the manor grounds. Renoir lingered, staring out over the mist-covered pond, nostalgia tugging at his heart. They’d canoed out on the water. Verso and Clea had caught fish and turtles. He’d spent hours curled with Aline under the bows of one of the willowtrees, basking in the warmth, listening to their little ones play.
He’d asked Aline once why she’d never bothered to tame the expanse. His wife had laughed, sunlight caught in her auburn hair, cheeks sweetly pink after too long in the sun or a touch of too much champagne.
I am perfectly capable of improving upon your mother’s gardens or your grandmother’s topiaries, Renoir. But even I hesitate to suggest I could improve upon…well, god or nature’s handiwork.
The bench had been her lone concession, a touch of the man-made amidst the riot of flowering life. All the air left his lungs in a rush. Aline looked smaller than ever, out of place in her dark gown. Black had never suited her. In the pale morning, she resembled a stain.
It felt like deja vu, a scene they’d played out in the weeks following Verso’s death.
He lingered near the far side of the bench, clearing his throat. “May I?”
Aline glanced up, still pinching a rose’s petal between her thumb and forefinger. She plucked it, tossing it to float on the pond’s surface alongside a dozen other petals. “We’ve established I can’t stop you once you’ve set your mind to something.”
“Aline—”
“Sit, Renoir. There—consider yourself invited.” She tossed another petal. He could almost hear the familiar chant in his head, sung in their youngest’s lilting voice. He loves me. He loves me not.
Clea had always considered herself too mature for such romanticisms, but Alicia had been particularly fond of the game. Renoir set her coat between them on the bench. He tipped his head towards the mangled rose in her lap. “Alicia always used daisies.”
“Our daughter is correct—it should be daisies.” Aline plucked and tossed another piece of the rose. She sighed, staring out over the water. “I suppose I needed more petals.”
Renoir chuckled. “Who’s the lucky gentleman?”
“No gentleman,” she responded, speaking with no small amount of finality. Aline tapped the mangled rose against her knee—white, not red. Another two white roses rested beside her knee. She hesitated, clearly expecting him to fumble for an apology or interrupt. In the face of his continued silence, she finally offered. “Clea.” His wife ghosted the tips of her fingers over the second rose, smaller than the first, but almost unspeakably perfect. “Alicia.”
The third went without saying: Verso.
“It makes sense—starting with our eldest.”
Aline scoffed. “Call it self-preservation. It was the largest rose; I’m staving off disappointment.”
“You could speak to our daughter—”
“Renoir, your inability to listen boggles the mind—staving off disappointment.”
The notes of exhaustion and resignation robbed her words of some of their sharpness. The Painter sighed. A breeze blew in from the east, disturbing the pond’s surface, sending the petals drifting away. Gooselfesh erupted over his skin. Aline shivered. She did not, he noticed, reach for her coat.
Renoir fought the urge to stand and drape it around her shoulders.
Aline returned to her game. After what felt like ages, she finished the first of the roses. Sighing, lips pressed to a thin line, she tossed the stem to float alongside the detritus. He didn’t ask for the results. She plucked the next rose from beside her, the white tips blackened, already in the process of wilting. Aline worked more quickly, hands shaking. From the cold, she’d argue. The unshed tears glinting in her eyes painted a different story.
Verso would have taken the rose from her and tossed it in the pond.
“Why are you still here?” She asked, finally turning to look at him. Some color had come back into her cheeks in the intervening weeks, but she remained too pale—too thin—for his liking.
Renoir dragged a hand through his hair, chuckling. “Dear one, you would not like my response.”
He was here because she was; he would remain as long as she did. He had waited the better part of a century for her—what was one morning in the face of that? A hint of pink, entirely divorced from the cold, flared in her cheeks. Her lashes fanned across her cheek, pretty and dark. “We’re liable to freeze.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed, shrugging. “You can’t deny something is compelling in the idea.” Aline snorted, arching one brow. Some of the tension bled from her shoulders in the face of her genuine amusement. “The Writers would certainly revel in it: the Dessendre heirs, undone by fire.”
“The Patriarch and Matriarch, found frozen in each other’s arms,” she finished, turning her attention to the final rose. “I expect it’s how the majority of Parisian nobility would anticipate us going.”
“It strikes me as a perfectly agreeable way to die.”
Aline rolled her eyes. “Hush.” The Paintress sighed, scanning his face. She dropped her eyes. “Would you—”
He plucked her jacket from the bench without comment, draping it over her shoulders. Renoir half-turned her towards him, scrubbing his hands up her arms. The woman flashed him a gentle smile.
They sat in silence as she finished her final rose. Aline sat back with a distant, dreamy little expression. Renoir touched her cheek. She did not shy away. Something clenched in his heart at that—not love, but hope. Somehow, it was sweeter.
Her hand slipped to her opposite side, plucking something from beneath the fabric of her gown—a final rose, a deep, rich crimson. “I lied. I brought—” she tossed her head, grumbling, “One rose for a gentleman.”
“May I?” He asked. Aline hesitated, then nodded. Renoir took the flower from her, careful of the thorns. “How does it begin again?”
Aline chuckled, brushing her hair behind her ear. “He loves me—” Renoir tossed the entirety of the rose alongside the sea of petals. His wife stared at him, wide-eyed. “Renoir!”
“Ah, have I played it incorrectly?” His eyes glittered with naked mischief. “My apologies, mon amour.”
Aline shook her head, chewing the inside of her cheek. She leaned against his side. “Cheat.”
“Honest,” he corrected, pressing a kiss to her temple. And for as cloying as it might have been, for however frequently she might have teased him for his penchant for theatrics and romanticism, Aline said nothing. She curled against his side instead, slipping one cold hand inside his jacket pocket, curling it over his hip.
They sat a while longer, watching the petals drift on the surface of the pond, before returning to the manor.