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“It strikes me as pointless.”
Renoir painted on a wry smile, eyes flicking to the side to watch the other man navigate the florist’s shop. Older than himself by a few years, worn after too many days spent under the summer sun and too many nights deep in his cups, his friend stuffed his hands in his pockets. He took a step towards one of the displays, lips curling, and then turned away, glancing pointedly aside.
Renoir pulled the leaf of a rose between his thumb and forefinger. “What makes it pointless, Andre?”
“You’re already set to marry the woman, no? You’re past the point of sending flowers.” An instinctual offense must have shown on his face. Andre took a step back, holding his hands up for peace, his expression suddenly bashful. “It’s a fair question.”
“If she is to be my wife, I should think that makes her more deserving of these niceties. Not less.” Renoir motioned to the young lady behind the counter. “These three, if you please, mademoiselle.”
An arrangement of red roses and white lilies, an extravagant bouquet of exotic species he cannot claim to recognize, and a simpler vase full of wild flowers. The latter would offend more than a few of the ladies he’d courted in the past. Despite her wealth and noble pedigree, he found himself thinking Aline would prefer the wildflowers. They were honest. They were uncomplicated and free, and purely lovely.
The young lady offered him a smile. “It’s not my place to offer an opinion, monsieur, but I think the lady is very lucky.”
He shrugged, passing the necessary francs. “Not at all—it will be of mutual benefit. I wish only for Aline to know her life will be comfortable.”
The young woman went a startling shade of pink, ducking her head and brushing her hair away from her face. “That’s very kind of you, monsieur.”
Behind him, Andre muttered some exasperated curse, clasping a hand over his shoulder. The older man swiped up the exotic flowers. “Take the francs, girl. You’re not liable to get anything else from him.”
The blush deepened to a less flattering red/purple as she muttered an apology, turning away. Renoir stared after her for a moment, gauging whether or not he should follow and try to make amends. The young man gathered up the flowers instead.
“You could have them sent to the mademoiselle,” Andre pointed out. “It’s very chic.”
Maman had also advised cultivating some air of mystique. Renoir shook his head. “I will see to it personally, thank you.”
If they were to be married, he saw no reason not to behave civilly. He gathered the bundles of flowers in his arms and set off towards Aline's home.
~~~~~~
Aline loved flowers.
Flowers and music—and painting. He knew enough to hold a pleasant, if shallow, conversation. Still, her expression brightened somewhat as she descended the manor steps, her initial irritation at being summoned fading; Renoir flattered himself to believe she took some small pleasure in his company. At the very least, his presence did not actively sour her mood.
“Have I forgotten something? What’s the occasion?” She asked. Aline descended the final few steps, forfeiting the artificial height the stairs afforded her. The delicate heels she sometimes wore did little to diminish the disparity in their heights.
“None at all,” Renoir assured. “I passed a florist’s shop and was reminded of you.”
“All of these reminded you of me? You are either insincere or easily inspired, monsieur.” She arched her brow. The glittering light in her dove-gray eyes suggested she was teasing him. Renoir cleared his throat, scrubbing at the back of his neck.
“They are all beautiful—”
“Even the weeds, Renoir?”
She wound one of the vines around her finger, watching him. This close, he could see a faint smear of paint across the rise of her cheek, sweeping across the bridge of her nose. He fought the wild urge to brush it away. Renoir shifted nearer, rotating his wrist until their hands brushed.
“You have something similar trailing from your balcony.”
“Jasmine, Monsieur Dessendre, not bindweed.”
“Do you disapprove of my selections?”
He didn’t remember stepping closer. Somehow, he was staring down at Aline. Renoir had the pleasure of watching some of her bravado fade. Aline swallowed, finding her spirit again, standing up to the full extent of her meager height. “I did not say that. I only meant that all of these could not remind you of me.”
Renoir smiled. “You have a very narrow and colorless perception of yourself, Paintress.”
She scowled, taking the bouquet and turning on her heel. Renoir waited on the landing, staring after her. Aline spoke without turning, calling over her shoulder. “They’ll die without water, monsieur. Help me arrange them.”
~~~~~~
She kept a garden at her familial home. Nothing large—the grounds belonged to her mother, after all. The woman preferred a tidy space, largely devoid of color and plantlife. Sterile was the word Renoir might have used, were he feeling less generous and more honest. Aline grew plants on her balcony and in scattered pots around her bedroom. It left the air in her chambers smelling strange at the best of times, some mixture of damp earth, a medley of floral scents, and paint.
Renoir settled in the armchair, having to fold in on himself somewhat. It'd been designed with a delicate young woman in mind, not a too-tall nobleman. He stretched his bad leg out in front of him, wincing. The cold made the injury worse. The physicians promised the pain would improve as time passed. He held out less hope. Old hurts never went away in their entirety.
Better to watch her moving about the room, wearing a modest white dress, snipping dead blossoms from her plants, watering others. She’d spoken less than a dozen words since Renoir's arrival. If there was one thing to say about his fiancée, it was this: Aline was a force. The air around her shifted in response to her moods, warming when she was high, cooling with her fury. Uncustomary anxiety radiated off her, charging the air like an electric current.
“You’ll be away?” Aline finally asked. He watched her chew her lip in profile, shoulders squaring. “How long?”
“Only a month.”
She nodded, cutting a particularly vibrant blossom. Flora had never been of any great interest to him; Renoir found himself wishing he knew somewhat more. Enough to identify her collection, at least. In a prim voice, she asked, “Will you write?”
He blinked, startled, before schooling his expression. “Aline?”
“Don’t look so shocked; we’re betrothed. Your lessons will already suffer after a month away. It—” Aline pressed her lips together. “—will you write, Renoir?”
It occurred to him, all at once, that he liked the Paintress. Liked her vibrant highs and her cold determination. Liked her stubbornness and the way she chewed the inside of her cheek when she focused. Liked the way her eyes softened, rarely beautiful in the winter light, and the way she said his name.
Renoir held out his hand. Aline glanced towards the door. That familiar irritation stole across her face, directed half towards him and half at herself, weighing the risk of being caught alone with the man she was due to marry, the danger of being near him.
He liked her bravery. Aline crossed the room to set her hand in his. Renoir brought her knuckles to his lips.
“That isn’t an answer,” she grumbled. The truculent tone warred against the gentle way she extended her fingers, curling them to stroke along his chin.
“I’ll write to you—and practice my lessons when I’m able. You have my word.”
“Good.” Then, more softly: “Thank you.”
Aline offered him the flower. He took it from her, kissing her palm.
Renoir wore it tucked in the lapel of his jacket. When it wilted, he kept it pressed between the pages of a book. Years later, it would find its home tucked on one of the shelves in his bureau.
~~~~~~
There were flowers at their wedding, of course. The trees and gardens were in bloom. He imagined there were roses or some other nonsense scattered across the tables. Her bouquet was beautiful, Renoir remembered, but the specifics were vague. Those things were a blur.
He remembered the orange blossoms. They wove them into Aline’s hair. The little white flowers stood out in the sea of auburn, their scent sweet and delicate. It colored the air around them as they danced, hung on her skin as he undressed her later. Orange blossoms scattered across her body as he led her to their marriage bed. His mind fixated on one petal, plastered to her sweat-slick flesh, rising and falling with her increasingly erratic breathing, digging her palm against her mouth and biting to keep from crying out. She failed, whimpering, free hand fisting in her hair, sending more flowers fluttering down to coat her skin and the sheets.
Renoir exhaled a ragged breath against her thigh, drunk off the taste of her and the sight. The Dessendre scion pressed up on his knees, folding her back as he reached over her. Aline whimpered. He led her touch away, enraptured by the sight of her—her lips kiss swollen, eyes hooded, hair wild.
“Let me hear you,” he murmured. He lowered his head to her breast, licking the petal from her skin, gently pulling her nipple between his teeth. “Beautiful Aline—”
She made some soft noise, rolling her hips. Inviting him to take, offering everything she had to give—
Aline, clutching at him when he finally, finally, seated himself inside her, his name a plea or a prayer. He spoke hers as a promise, kissing the corner of her mouth until the tension finally eased and she slackened. Renoir turned his face into her hair, the sweet scent heady, threatening to overwhelm him as they moved together.
He remembered orange blossoms.
~~~~~~
She filled their home with flowers.
When they moved into the manor, she filled that too, replanting its gardens. They’d never used the upper levels for anything. Renoir made it a gift to her instead. The glasshouse was fantastical. When he presented it to her, the room still warm even in the heart of winter, his wife stared at him as if he’d hung the stars.
She shaped the space into something full of light and life, a striking contrast to the manor’s forbidding blacks and golds.
~~~~~~
For Clea, he filled their room with sunflowers and daffodils. He’d learned enough about flowers over the intervening years to avoid making a complete fool of himself: new beginnings, adoration, loyalty. Besides these clumsier messages, they were bright and pretty things. Ill-suited to the woman Clea would eventually become, but c'est la vie.
For Verso—
—for Verso, there’d been no flowers. He’d been too weak to send for them. Aline was on death’s door. Months later, he’d straggled out to the gardens, wilder without her oversight. Morning glory had all but consumed one of the trellises, looking so much like the bindweed he’d presented her years prior.
He’d cut a smattering of vines and brought them to her, blooms of red and white.
The flowers wilted by the evening, but she’d offered him a gentle smile, curling against his side for warmth.
~~~~~~
For Alicia?
After spending more than a decade at each other’s sides, ivy seemed fitting. The bouquet itself was a touch too—well, he supposed leggy was one word for it, all ivy and pink primrose, no large blooms. The florist had pulled a face at his request, but it pleased Aline well enough. She stroked the tips of her fingers over the leaves, offering a tired smile before shifting to make room for him on the mattress.
Their youngest was such a little thing, beautiful, a thin fuzz of pale hair on her head.
Newborns were not precisely the loveliest of god’s creations, but the girl already had a charm to her, pale eyes darting from Aline’s face to his. Alicia did not howl like her elder sister. Renoir stroked the baby’s cheek, chuckling as her little face furrowed in concentration, attempting to parse the new sensation.
She was their gift, a not unwelcome surprise sent to turn the course of their lives.
So he wove daisies into his offering: a new beginning.
~~~~~~
So many disparate moments, flowers at all of them.
Offered after fights, pretty things to contrast the acidity of their words.
Anniversaries, celebrations—
—funerals.
But there were no flowers for Verso when he died.
The gardens were dead, the glasshouse consumed by fire, and their family too ravaged to buy them.
~~~~~~
Aline dozed against the trunk of one tree, still whole, still hale. Its trunk was blistered with fire, but there were fresh buds on its surviving branches. It would bloom before long. Life continued, even now. Difficult as that was to remember some mornings, Renoir took comfort in the image. The old man lingered near the top of their stairs, watching Aline's face.
She was such a delicate thing, skin straining over the sharp juts of her bones. Alicia dozed beside her. In the aftermath of the Canvas, they’d taken some semblance of comfort in one another. Neither could look at their other—Aline, still swallowing her guilt, her grief, her rage; Alicia, still choking on her fury and the trauma associated with the Paintress, that other woman who’d hunted and hurt—but it did not preclude sharing space. The Canvas lingered on them like an afterimage. They had both lived and loved within its confines. Both had lost so much. It was a shared understanding, he supposed. Perhaps that meant more than loving or hating each other.
They hated him.
That was alright. Renoir found he could bear their hate. Alicia grumbled in her sleep, turning and slumping to rest her head on her mother’s shoulder. Were he feeling in a more artistic mood, he might have sat to paint them.
He rarely felt like painting these days.
Renoir set his offering— a simple bouquet of wildflowers, not so dissimilar from that first gift—at the top of the stairs and took his leave.
When he returned to their bedroom later, he found them set in a simple vase by her bedside.
~~~~~~
“It was a gift to you, once.”
Aline chuckled. She could spare him more than a passing glance these days, apathetic rather than angry, and he supposed that was an improvement. She tossed her head. Time had stolen the majority of color from her hair, leaving it bleached to a greyish-brown rather than the auburn it’d once been. They were both old, worth thin by time, life, and circumstance. Some things remained constant; she was still his favorite sight, still left him breathless and a little sick, heart aching in his chest. Her touch diminished that hurt, but never for long.
Her tired smile helped, if only a little. Aline nodded, using the hand trowel to dig another hole and plant the bulb. “The glasshouse was one of your finest, yes.” Her lips thinned. She swiped a hand through her hair. “Alicia made an effort to save it in my absence, but—” bitterness seeped into her voice. “ —the fire took almost everything.”
“A recurring theme in our life.”
Something flinty glittered in her eyes. “What do you want, Renoir? You’ve come to make some grand gesture, no doubt—offer to buy new flowers, replant the gardens. To what end?”
He might have had an answer for her once. Now, he was too tired. They’d spent sixty-seven years at war within the Canvas, only for the battle to spill into reality. Renoir shrugged. “Would you believe me if I said I do not know?”
Her eyes widened. The anger bled out of her expression, replaced with mirrored exhaustion. “No.”
“Then I apologize for disappointing you.” The Painter sighed, crossing to sit on one of the low benches. His knee protested the angle. “I’ve no grand design, Aline. After thirty years, it's a habit to come to you. That’s all.”
“How romantic.”
“Foolish.” He chuckled, folding his hands over the top of his cane. “All you have left to offer is spite.”
“Should I pine for you, arrogant man? You refused to trust, dragged me by my hair like a child—”
He thumped his cane against the tile. “I could not lose you.”
The gentleness of her tone stung. Renoir would have preferred she scream. “Haven’t you lost me?”
He wondered sometimes if she understood how badly her words hurt. It was a penchant their eldest had inherited. There was love in them, so much love, but an equal capacity to cut, to turn the sharpness of their tongue on those they professed to cherish. He inhaled sharply. The words tasted like ash on his tongue. “Only you can answer that. I had hoped—” Renoir licked his lower lip, shaking his head. His eyes burned. He blinked back against it. “—shall I leave you be?”
Aline frowned. The Paintress bowed her head, the curtain of her hair obscuring her face. “Yes.”
He nodded. Renoir went to stand.
Aline made a miserable noise, climbing to her feet faster than he might have anticipated. His wife staggered across the space between them to pull him into her arms. She said nothing, shaking, tears wetting the fabric of his shirt. Renoir exhaled a shivering breath, turning his face into her hair.
She smelled like orange blossoms.
~~~~~~
The first night she came to him, he nearly pushed her away.
It felt sickly, wrong. Aline still tasted of hurt and the bitterness of her fury. His Aline was petty and vindictive, not unlike some Grecian goddess; he supposed it was an apt comparison. If she were to share in their beauty and power, she should also have their flaws. When she kissed, it was with teeth, clawing at him, dragging his hands over her body, pressing his fingers into her flesh with enough force to bruise. He indulged it for a time, pinning her against the shelves in their room. The wood dug into her spine; she arched back against it, sneering, clawing at his shoulders for purchase. Her nails broke skin in places, leaving him hissing into the hollow of her throat. Renoir watched his hand moving between her legs instead of her face.
He couldn’t stand to see her hating him in such a moment—
Something shattered. One of the many vases Aline left strewn about their bedroom. Clay and ruined flowers spilled around their feet.
Renoir frowned. He lifted his head. Aline’s eyes remained glassy, pupils blown wide, teeth set on her lower lip. Regret bled from her like a wound.
The vase had been a gift. One of Clea’s earlier works, less fine than her later creations but more precious for its earnestness. The brushstrokes had been unsteady, but there’d been hints of the artist she’d become. She’d offered it to them with such pride.
It was ruined now. They’d ruined it.
For a moment, there was nothing to do but stare. At the ruin. At each other. Aline learned against his chest, arms coming around him. He tucked her beneath his chin. After everything, she still fit against him so naturally.
They gathered the pieces of the vase together.
Perhaps it could be mended.
~~~~~~
It took the better part of a year to return the glasshouse to its prior glory.
Alicia helped. Mother and daughter, at least, seemed to have buried the proverbial hatchet. That brought some comfort.
Alicia smiled at him, reached out to touch his hand as she headed downstairs. Her good eye flicked to the bouquet held in his right hand. Their youngest nudged his shoulder. Good luck, it seemed to say.
His wife glanced up from the paper she’d been reading, stirring her coffee. Aline offered him a tentative smile. Not much, but still there. At the very least, she did not appear opposed to seeing him. “Renoir?” Her gaze settled on the bouquet. “What’s the occasion?”
It felt like deja vu, the world turning back so many decades. They were old now. Renoir still felt the sudden urge to flush, clearing his throat as he offered the small gift. “I was reminded of you.”
He saw a flash of the young woman she’d been, pink coloring her cheeks. Aline reached out, fingers feathering across the blossom, winding one of the tendrils about her finger. She shook her head, chuckling. “This is the second time you’ve referred to me as a weed, mon cher.”
It was a relatively common arrangement. The florist had grumbled at his request, insisting they’d have to send some poor assistant out into the fields to procure the cuttings. It remained lovely. Renoir took her hand. “I was reminded of us.”
Aline cocked her head to the side. The corner of her mouth ticked up. She twined her fingers with his, her thumb stroking over the curve in his wrist. “So we are invasive. And liable to strangle the life out of all else.”
He scoffed, barking out a surprised laugh. “We are resilient, obstinate woman.”
She searched his face. After what felt like an eternity, she learned in, brushing her lips against his. She tasted sweet. Aline pulled away with a small smile, tracing the line of his cheek with her nose. “They’ll die without water, mon amour. Help me arrange them.”