Matthieu’s head whipped around at the reminder. They never spoke of Clare.
“You were engaged, a week from being married. I know you wanted children. A family.”
His grandfather was wrong. Not about him having wanted those things. He’d loved Clare, he'd wanted to marry her. But that was then, and this was now. He stood up, striding towards the window and staring out. The chateaux in the south of France was degrees warmer than his estate in Champagne. He felt the early afternoon sun beaming in at him as he stared down at the formal kitchen garden, a relic from before the revolution. “That was a lifetime ago.”
“You haven’t forgiven yourself for what you did.”
Matthieu’s scowl deepened, lines etched into his face. “It was two years ago. I’ve moved on and so has she.”
“Horse shit.”
The unexpected expletive drew Matthieu’s gaze.
“You haven’t moved on. You’ve buried yourself alive, working around the clock. It’s not okay.” His voice was almost gone completely. Matthieu turned to face the older man. His eyes were suspiciously moist, and he looked so weak and pathetic that Matthieu’s heart lurched at the sight of him. He wanted to grab time and freeze it, to rail against the passage of it, to make aging impossible. He wanted something other than this to be his grandfather’s fate. “Promise me—,” Lucien held out his hand; his fingers quivered. “Think about it.”
“I think about it often,” Matthieu muttered, but his tone was gentle.
Lucien’s urgency increased. “No, no, but that you’ll do something, Matthieu. I mean it, I need –,”
He was growing agitated, his voice louder and the words less coherent.
The door cracked open and Anais bustled in, shooting Matthieu a look of warning. She spoke to her husband softly, pressing a hand to his brow, sitting on the edge of the bed and kissing his forehead. When she stopped speaking a moment later, he was peaceful, his head pressed back, his eyes closed.
A lump formed in Matthieu’s throat, one he refused to give in to.
“He must rest now,” Anais commanded.
Matthieu agreed. He walked to his grandfather’s side and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I will see you again soon, grand-père.”
In the hallway, his grandmother linked her hand through his arm, and they walked in silence away from Lucien’s room. In the wide, marbled entranceway of the chateaux, she turned to face him.
“This cannot go on.”
His grandmother was, in many ways, even more formidable than Lucien. She did not often speak firmly, but when she did, it was quite terrifying. Her lips were pursed now, her eyes focused with a laser like intensity.
“I cannot help how he feels,” Matthieu pointed out with cool logic, his tone hiding the disturbed feelings running through him.
“Do you really think this?”
“Of course.” Frustration zipped through him. “Or would you have me marry just to appease him?”
“I can think of worse reasons,” Anais muttered.
Matthieu’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“That you should marry. And soon.”
It had been a long time since Matthieu had been told what to do. He was not a boy any longer, but a feted, respected, and even feared, entrepreneur. “I have no interest in marriage.”
Neither of them mentioned Clare, but both knew the role the breakup had played in his decision.
“Your grandfather needs to know this is your future.”
“But it’s not.”
“You don’t know that. You cannot say what you will do in a year’s time, or five. I believe you will marry, and so I ask you to do so now.”
“You’re acting as though you’re asking me to buy a new home or change my hairstyle. I can’t just get married.”