“You mustn’t talk like that,” she told him quickly. “All will be well. You must simply believe and trust, and it will be well. All will happen as it is meant.”
“I do not know that I believe that,” he said. “I suppose it is my lacking faith.”
“Perhaps this is a good time for you to find your faith,” she said. “Surely you must believe in something. That your prayers go somewhere, even if they are not answered directly.”
“None of my prayers have ever been answered,” he said. He had not enjoyed the earlier conversation, though it had been rather more philosophical than he had expected. But the truth was, he lacked faith. He wet his lips. “As a child, I believed. I would pray to God every night to keep me safe in my sleep and keep my mother safe and my grandfather, but my mother died, and so did my grandfather.”
“He looked after you, didn’t he? You survived. You lived. It was tragic that your mother died, but it happens all the time. Illness, disease, and accidents do not stop because we wish for them not to happen. And your grandfather was an old man when he passed.”
“He was,” Lucien agreed.
“I am not trying to convince you to pray,” she said. “Just to believe.”
“Believe. I would not know how to pray even if you did tell me to,” Lucien replied.
There was silence between them for a moment as Marianne turned the cloth around again.
“How would one pray if one didn’t know how?”
“Well, the nuns taught me how, but I do not know that their way is any more right or wrong than anyone else’s. I think it is perhaps best to speak a prayer quietly to yourself, sort of as a whisper, or even not aloud at all. Just in your own thoughts and heart.”
Lucien nodded, and as he looked down at his son, he knew that he had nothing to lose. He closed his eyes, and for the first time since he was a boy, prayed to whatever entity it might be that his son might recover quickly from this illness, that he would not be robbed of the only family he had.
His prayer was interrupted by a cough as Henry’s little body was shaken heavily with it. Marianne quickly placed one hand underneath Henry and helped him sit up. Lucien did the same, their arms crossed behind Henry’s back as they helped him sit and cough.
“My throat hurts. And I’m cold,” the little boy said.
“I’ll get another blanket,” Marianne said quickly as Lucien settled back down in the bed with Henry. She returned amoment later from the dressing room with two blankets and spread them over the bed. Henry still shivered.
“Come lie with me,” Henry said, looking at Marianne. He lifted his hand, but it was constricted by the newly replaced blankets. Marianne looked at Lucien, and he nodded at her. If this is what Henry wanted, this is what Henry would get.
Marianne lay down on top of the blankets on the right-hand side and turned to face Henry.
“How is that?” she asked. Henry nodded, though his eyes were closed. She placed a hand on the child’s stomach and allowed it to rest there. Lucien was struck by just how maternal she looked. For a girl who had arrived a few weeks ago claiming she knew nothing of children, she surely had learned quickly. And she had become so much more than he had thought she would. Henry truly seemed to care for her. Indeed, in his hour of illness, he was relying on her to help provide comfort.
“Story,” he murmured.
“What kind of story would you like?” Lucien asked. “Goody Two-Shoes or The Frog Prince?”
“No, a new story,” he said.
Lucien looked at Marianne helplessly. “I have never been good at making up stories,” he said quietly.
“I have never tried,” she said, “but I have read a great many. So we shall try.”
“If it helps him.”
“I can hear you,” Henry said.
“We know,” Lucien replied and kissed his temple.
“Well,” Marianne said, “all right. Let me tell you a brand new story. Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in a house with her father, the king. And with her lived her two sisters, who were as beautiful as the stars in the night sky. They sparkled and shone, and everybody paid attention to them, but our little princess didn’t like any of that shine. She wanted to be something else. A great explorer. And people thought that rather odd.”
Lucien looked up. She was telling her own story in the version of a fairytale that the little boy could understand. He smiled.
“And across town, living in another castle, was a young prince,” he added. “And this young prince had a beautiful mother who always encouraged him to seek adventure, to let his heart guide him. Even though his father wanted him to stay at home and learn how to be a proper king, our young hero decided to ride off one day to seek adventure as his heart commanded him.”
Henry’s right eye fluttered open. “Do they meet?” he asked.
