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The stew barely contained any meat, but they had managed to gather enough money to make it through the month, and that was enough to justify the bottle of cheap wine resting between them on the table. The kitchen was small even for two people, with walls that had seen better days and a window that let in a fragment of Paris and the life they had chosen to build there.
She had spent months learning that happiness needed very little space. Even so, as she looked at her plate with a critical expression, she was fairly certain she had overdone the salt.
When she looked up, she found Laurie watching her. He was smiling.
There was nothing unusual about it. Laurie had always smiled easily. She had seen other kinds of smiles beneath crystal chandeliers, amid waltzes and rehearsed greetings, in rooms where gold seemed to spring from the walls. She had never seen that expression in any of those places. There was something different about it now, so new and yet so familiar at the same time that it still managed to surprise her now and then. She thought she recognized in it something that had accompanied the best days of their childhood together.
"Every time you cook, you get better, my love," he said, taking another bite without so much as a grimace.
Jo laughed, pushing a lonely piece of potato toward the edge of the plate with the tip of her spoon.
"Teddy, this has more salt than meat."
He rested his elbows on the worn wood and stretched an arm across the table, pretending he might reach her.
"If you don't like it, I'll eat your portion."
She dragged the plate away from his fingers by pure instinct, shielding their humble dinner with her forearm.
"That only proves you've lost your mind."
Laurie leaned back in his chair and took a sip of wine, shrugging with complete ease.
"I lost it years ago, and you're to blame."
And as if to prove it, he leaned across the table to kiss the tip of her nose before returning to his dinner. The gesture came so quickly that she could not even pretend to be offended.
Several months had passed since they left England and crossed the Channel for France. Nearly half a year since that letter that never should have existed and yet had somehow ended up in Laurie's hands. Six months after running away together, Jo had arrived at an undeniable conclusion: her boy would never leave behind the most ridiculous stage of being in love. Apparently, he intended to spend the rest of his life declaring himself.
Sometimes she still could not understand how a single sheet of paper had managed to alter the entire course of a life. During that freezing moment in front of the empty mailbox, she had imagined reasonable explanations, honorable endings, and sacrifices worthy of a moral novel. None of them had come to pass.
Laurie had read the letter and come to see her. And although he was still Amy's husband at the time, he had decided he was tired of living to satisfy everyone else's expectations except his own.
The fortune remained in Amy's hands. The respectability as well.
They kept the only thing that mattered to them.
She had expected to feel guilty every day for the rest of her life. She had tried, in fact. The flaw in that plan lay in waking each morning and finding Laurie resting beside her, his hair tousled across the pillow and his expression so peaceful that it rendered all her guilt useless. It was difficult to mourn the storm when that absurd pirate ship seemed to have deposited them together on a shore like this. That distant youthful fantasy of running away together had taken a shape neither of them could have foreseen.
That night, another thought occupied her mind. As she absentmindedly toyed with the worn pillowcase, she remembered the date and felt a pang in her chest.
It was Marmee's birthday. Or perhaps it would be tomorrow, according to Concord time. Perhaps there were still a few hours left. Jo was not sure. She had stopped keeping track of the days carefully once they crossed the ocean and chose to disappear. She would have given anything to sink into an embrace full of motherly love, to feel those warm hands stroking her hair. The thought threatened to keep her awake all night, turning over the abandonment, the selfish decision to run away together and leave her sister all the fortune and no explanation.
That night there was no sleeplessness filled with melancholy. Laurie, noticing the shadow on her face, crossed the small space between them and enveloped her in gentle caresses.
"I love you so much, Jo."
His words were a murmur against her skin. Little by little, her thoughts loosened their grip. He stole sighs from her until dawn.
She did not sleep, true enough, but for very different reasons.
The last weeks of winter passed slowly, marked by an austere routine.
The early hours of the morning often found her writing by the wavering light of a candle, leaving ink stains on her fingers as she invented stories destined to bear other names. Some nights, when sleep claimed her before it claimed him, Laurie left absurd notes among her papers.
The following morning, Jo would find declarations of love written in the margins of her drafts, along with useless comments about the plot that he had never actually finished reading.
"You write about that hero with far too much admiration. I'm beginning to get jealous." Beneath it, the protagonist's name had been crossed out and replaced with Lord Teddy.
Money arrived irregularly from the newspapers in London, thanks to the contacts Jo had made before settling in Paris. Laurie, for his part, returned at dusk rubbing his stiff hands together after giving music lessons to the children of wealthy families and earning a little extra income by playing at minor events.
It was not a fortune, but they were beginning to build some savings. Jo liked to imagine that, little by little, they would manage to buy a second-hand piano and move into a room slightly less cramped.
"Everything I could ever have dreamed of is already within these four walls," Laurie insisted one afternoon, caressing her cheek. "I need nothing more."
"I refuse to let you go without your music, Teddy," she replied firmly, arranging the pages of stories that would never again bear her name.
Laurie let out a soft laugh.
"My love, I spend half my day surrounded by pianos."
There had been a time when Mr. Laurence would have sent three brand-new instruments to the house before allowing his grandson to go without one. Jo suspected that dear old man would never forgive her for taking him so far from home. The least she could do was make sure he did not lose his music as well.
"It's not the same as having one of your own."
"Perhaps not. But I like teaching. Some of those boys have more talent than I did at their age. And whenever one of them becomes stubborn, I tell myself I'm paying for everything I put Brooke through."
Before she could answer, he leaned forward and stole a kiss from her lips.
"Besides, I know that when I come home I'll take you into my arms. That improves any job considerably."
"A piano would never fit in here, Teddy. Focus."
She tried to steer the conversation back to its original subject before the heat rose to her cheeks again.
"The room can grow if you like, but the bed is already the ideal size," he said with a smile far too innocent for someone so mischievous.
Jo was convinced that the scoundrel had made a pastime of making her blush.
Who needed castles in the air?
Stretching their meager income until the end of the month required leaving the small room and facing the bustle of the city with carefully counted coins. Mornings at the market were an exercise in endurance. Beneath faded awnings stood baskets of vegetables, sacks of flour, and piles of seasonal fruit. French voices overlapped from every direction, as familiar now as the English of her childhood. Jo gripped the handle of her basket while studying the stall in front of her.
"Eight centimes is too much," Jo said, examining one of the potatoes. "I'll give you six. Several of them are bruised."
"Seven," the merchant replied.
"Then I'll buy from the stall across the way."
The man snorted and finally raised his hands in surrender.
"Very well, six."
Laurie watched as the vendor began filling a sack. He was still surprised by the ease with which Jo bargained in French. Aunt March would probably have fainted if she had seen her haggling over the price of potatoes. Upon waking, she would have had a great deal to say about a language Jo had only decided to learn once it stopped being Aunt March's idea.
"Here you are, mademoiselle," the man said as he handed over the purchase. "You are a formidable negotiator."
The word lingered between them for a moment.
"Madame," Laurie corrected calmly. "Madame Laurence, monsieur."
The vendor hurriedly inclined his head.
"My apologies, madame."
Jo accepted the sack without replying. Laurie paid the remaining coins, took the purchase before she could protest, and as they set off, found her hand with easy familiarity.
The bells of Notre-Dame rang out as they crossed one of the bridges over the Seine.
He did not let go of her hand the entire way home.
The jacket in her hands had cost almost nothing because several of its seams had come undone. Meg would surely have done a better job with it. She had been mending it for more than an hour when Laurie snatched it from her hands to try it on.
"Well?"
He spun once in place and struck a pose with a grace that poverty would never be able to take from him.
"What do you think?" he asked. "Do I look handsome?"
The writer rested her chin on one hand and watched him for several seconds.
Tailored suits came back to her mind. She smoothed a loose thread on the cuff with her thumb. The parties, the travels, and the fortune that had once seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon passed before her eyes. He adjusted the collar of the garment, waiting beneath her scrutiny. That absurd idea she had once written in her letters also returned to her: there is a kind of beauty that only poverty can give.
When she looked at him again, she saw the patches and the mismatched buttons. No one in all of Paris would have seen the heir to a great fortune there. And yet he had never seemed so handsome to her. Every prick of the needle had been worth it.
"I think you've never looked more handsome."
Laurie smiled with such obvious satisfaction that Jo had to look away to hide her blush. When would he stop making her feel like a foolish girl?
That afternoon Laurie had gone out to play at a small gathering. Jo tried to write for nearly an hour before admitting defeat.
She rose from her desk, wandered absentmindedly through the tiny apartment, and ended up taking the Bible—one her father had given her years before, one of the few things she had allowed herself to bring with her—from the shelf where it rested.
She opened it at random. Her gaze fell upon Proverbs 9:17.
She remained motionless for several seconds. Then she closed the book.
When Laurie returned that evening, he still found her sitting by the window. He had come home without a single coin in his pockets. Instead, he set a small ring upon the table. He was still wearing the poorly mended jacket.
Jo set her pen aside and stared at the piece of jewelry, frowning.
"Teddy, please tell me you didn't accept that as payment," she scolded, rising from her chair. "We barely manage to cover the rent. We can't afford these extravagances!"
He did not seem the least bit troubled. He approached her and held out a hand. On one of his fingers rested the old ring she had given him when they had been nothing more than a pair of children.
"It's unfair that only I should have one," he murmured. "A woman as beautiful as Mrs. Laurence cannot go around Paris looking as though she is still available."
Jo let out an exasperated breath, fully prepared to remain angry and lecture him about the family finances. But all her resolve vanished when Laurie knelt beside her, took her left hand, and slid the ring onto her finger. She opened her mouth to resume the lecture she had been preparing for several minutes. She did not manage a single word. Seeing him kneeling before her, so pleased with himself, rendered every argument useless.
In the end she laughed softly, squeezing his fingers between her own.
That sudden romantic gesture consumed a considerable portion of the family budget. During the following week they discovered that potatoes allowed for more culinary variations than anyone would consider reasonable. Laurie maintained that the ring was still an excellent purchase. Jo insisted she would never again trust him with the management of their money. Neither of them seemed to regret it.
The ice that had frosted the edges of the windows for months finally melted away, gradually abandoning the walls of the small room. When the afternoons began to grow warmer and the first signs of spring appeared in the streets of the city, their apparent tranquility was overturned.
It was Laurie's turn to make dinner. The moment the smell of the stew reached the table, Jo had to rush to the washbasin and empty her stomach. The newly acquired ring glimmered faintly beneath the lamp as she gripped the edges of the porcelain.
Her husband appeared at her side at once, holding her hair back with a trembling hand.
"I'm sorry, my love," he murmured, mortified. "I didn't think I had done such a terrible job."
She wiped her mouth, breathing unevenly. A new flutter seized her. Suddenly she remembered something important... something that had not happened in more than a month.
The visit to the doctor the following morning put an end to all doubt. She was expecting.
She remained silent the entire way home. The Seine gleamed beneath the afternoon light, and carriages continued crossing the bridges as though it were any other day. Jo scarcely looked up. Back in their room, she sat on the edge of the mattress, clutching the worn bedsheet so tightly that it began to hurt. That unease was the closest thing to a penance she was ever going to receive.
"Because of me, we won't be able to move into that larger room now," she murmured, a knot tightening in her throat. "Or keep saving for the piano. Everything will go toward the baby."
The coins stored away in the drawer paraded through her mind one by one. She thought of the clothes they would need to buy, of doctors, medicines, and expenses she could not yet begin to imagine. She wished Marmee were there to tell her what to do. To take refuge in one of those embraces capable of mending any disaster.
Someday she would be the one giving those embraces.
The old remorse found its way back. She wondered whether she had had the right to accept so much sacrifice. Whether love would be enough when the real hardships arrived.
Her boy eventually settled beside her and watched her in silence. When she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze, she found her favorite sight.
Paris had the audacity to call itself the City of Light, yet all that glory seemed diminished when Laurie smiled. For an instant, Jo believed that happiness alone could illuminate the entire city.
He dropped to his knees before her so quickly that she nearly laughed.
"Jo, my Jo. You didn't make that baby by yourself. The piano may have to wait, but I would never consider this a burden," he said, pressing kisses to her perpetually ink-stained knuckles.
That very night they gave themselves to one another again. Judging by the feverish pace they had maintained since setting foot on French soil, the true miracle was that she had not become pregnant much sooner.
Now, wrapped in the darkness of that humble little room, without a piano, without their honor intact in the eyes of society, and without family nearby... for the moment, Jo closed her eyes and curled herself against her Teddy's bare chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath his skin. She let out a long sigh, held within the warmth of her husband's embrace.
Indeed, this was the life they had dreamed of.