The Pâtissier

PART TWO: A LEGEND TO BETRAY

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He had been first enraptured by the jade-eyed French heiress at a high society gala employed as a cleaning boy — her gardenia kissed tresses tumbling as silken ribbons down the side of her back. It became a silhouette almost angelic as she had floated between the bars of the windows, her teasing glimpses behind the frames sewing tragic seeds in his heart that in their collusive meetings, would splinter the surface of his heart and ache so hungrily to grow.

     Her father was a wealthy aristocrat of the gentry, their fine home in the West Spire Estate the fruit of a family fortune that had sustained the name for generations. This wealth had extended even to the youngest and, some said, most wonderfully, undeniably, and tragically... bewitching of the five daughters: Angelika Cadieux.

    Even then, in that echo chamber strange and unwelcoming, the alien air over his conscious as his fingers drew hardened clay between their nails in pulling weeds from the soil outside, she had felt as if there was a familiar and warm spirit amongst the cold, pale faces dizzied with champagne. Something that chased her covertly yet passionately at that fateful party.

    Eiichi knew too well of her father, the esteemed Alistair Cadieux, and how he had sought only the best and wealthiest of suiters for his daughters — men with money, men with influence beyond London's borders...

    Men with whom he would graze the ranks of England's patriciate and have servants at their knee and beckoning.

    Just not then... no, then, he was only a poor, foreign boy looking for a place in society, pursuing a dream still not yet materialized as reality.

    But for the time being, Angelika had been his dream.

    She had been the only thing worth putting his mind to sleep for.

    So, he pursued her.

    He pursued her with a certain granite that could not be paralleled by the lords and bureaucrats who kissed her hands and used sugary words, gentlemanly temptations of impure thirsts to pluck this daisy out of her father's arms. To whisk her away to a place where she would forget all she was and who she came from — where she would not, in the torture of it all, find any warmth in remembering the place of her birth.

    But Eiichi was undeterred by the insults, the admonishment — he let them float over his head like flies and willingly let her truly witness him suffer hate and disgrace for the sake of his pursuit.

    He had let her see him sacrifice his pride to this cruel and cutthroat class and then, oh and then, rise above them. The bitter days before his wealth had soon come and gone because of the spirit of this unrelenting, ambitious heart.

    Indeed, it had worked.

    But today, pressed against his chest, her hair had strewn grayer than limestone dust.

    Her cheeks were transparent, eyes a slated shade of green as he felt the sharp of her shoulder pinch against his neck. They were on the streets London, their steps hurried against the gale that sharped against time on their way to The Pâtissier's chalet.

    Under the breeze, he had heard her weak, fracturing voice — a fragile sound so light, so imbued with phlegm coating her throat and lining her nostrils that it was almost a hollow echo split by the wind.

    "Where are you taking me? The doctors said that I mustn't walk like this — said that I must rest—"

    "Shhh..." he whispered, his breath a warm fan behind her ear. "The doctors will not heal you, not from this. There is a man expecting us here — a man I trust. I made the reservation a fortnight ago."