Lisette

Chapter 47 ~ Statue of Apollo

While I wish I could say that March came and went without incident, alas, that was not the case. Eponine, whose presence at the Musain over the last couple of months had become as commonplace and well liked as her younger brother suddenly stopped coming in the evenings. With the warmer weather, I might have expected her visits to slowly tail off, but instead she went from being present at least two nights out of three, to entirely absent, with no word of warning. What made it all the more strange was that we had half made plans that over the summer months, she might take up some of the sewing of shirts like that which I was doing to bring herself in a small, personal income, since when the weather was good she could sit outside with Musichetta and me.

It was tempting, when I occasionally visited Marius, to try and find out which of the rooms in the Gorbeau tenement she and her family lived in, but I was hesitant about disturbing any of the other tenants, and Mme Burgon (who truly was surly enough to deserve the sobriquet of Mme Bougon, or Madame Grumpy, which Courfeyrac had bestowed upon her) was too cantankerous a prospect to ask. Gavroche, when I talked to him of the matter, was uncharacteristically unforthcoming, and when I half mentioned trying to go and visit Eponine, combined trying to make light of the matter with warning me against it.

With the first hints of warm weather towards the end of March, Grantaire began our singlestick lessons again, and managed to drag Bahorel along relatively regularly so that we could play with swords, too. Colour began to slowly return to the wasteground where we practised, with snowdrops being replaced by cowslips, dog violets, primroses, and celandine. Monsieur Mabeuf's garden was coming to life again too, though in a far more ordered way, and each time I visited, often with Marius, he would take us outside to show us the week's new blooms.

Cosette's little world was as cosy and insulated as ever, but she delighted in hearing stories of the boys at the Musain. The argument about Hernani amused her, though she had never been to a theatre, and she insisted that I should go and see it for myself so I could report back to her. I showed her the few sketches I had drawn when we had gone to see Malvina however many months before, though more of them were sketches of individuals in the audience than of the stage - it was an awful lot easier to sketch people who were sat still, and it made a nice change to draw strangers about whom I knew nothing. 

Flicking through my notebook, she commented on the way Enjolras was drawn far more frequently than any other person, and I couldn't help but redden slightly. 

"I see him more often than the others - that's all!"

She grinned. "I think there's more to it than that. How come you see him more often than the others?"

"If you must know, we live together."

"You're married?"

"No."

"But you'd like to be?"

"Perhaps. I've never thought that far ahead."

It was odd that she didn't question our living arrangement any further, but perhaps, with the way she lived, she barely knew what was normal and what wasn't. 

"I should like to be married some day. But I never meet anyone... You love him?"

"Yes. At first I didn't even let myself consider it as a possibility, and then I just tried to ignore it. But it seems he loves me, too, and so we make the best of it for now."

"For now?"

"He's from a good family. I'm - well - I have nothing. From what he's said of his parents, they'll not approve."

"Do they have to know the truth?"

"Since when were you the sort to suggest deceit?"

She smiled again.