Read Chapter 36: The Wedding in Montmartre

The morning light fell in pale ribbons across the white stone of Sacré-Cœur, softening the edges of the city below. Paris spread out beneath them like a promise — rooftops glowing amber, chimney smoke threading upward into a sky the color of pearl. Evie stood at the top of the steps, her hand resting on Lily's arm, and tried to remember how to breathe.

She had not wanted a cathedral. She had wanted this — open air, the city at their feet, and the sound of a jazz band warming up somewhere behind her, the familiar squeak of a clarinet reed finding its voice. Gaston had argued for a proper venue, something with a roof and chairs, but Evie had held her ground. "If we're going to do this," she had said, "I want to see the sky."

Julien stood at the altar — a simple draped table bearing a single vase of white lilies — wearing a charcoal suit with a deep blue tie, his dark hair swept back. He was watching her with that particular stillness he had, the one that made her feel like the only person in the world worth seeing. Beside him stood Scott, who had insisted on being best man despite having known Julien for barely a year. "Someone's got to keep him honest," Scott had said, grinning his wide American grin.

The jazz band — a quintet Gaston had assembled from the best players in Montmartre — eased into a soft, swinging version of "La Vie en Rose," the melody curling up the steps like smoke. The guests had arranged themselves in a loose semicircle on the wide stone landing: Marguerite in elegant dove-gray, her face composed but her eyes soft as she watched her son; Étienne standing slightly apart, tall and silver-haired, his presence still something of a question mark. He had arrived in Paris two days ago, after missing the Salle Pleyel concert, and had offered only a quiet apology and a firm handshake to Julien. Evie still did not know what to make of him.

Near the front stood Lily, her arm linked through Evie's, her dark hair pinned with small white flowers. She had stopped crying an hour ago, but her eyes were still pink at the edges. "I never thought I'd see you do this," she had whispered in the hotel room that morning, helping Evie into the ivory silk dress that fell just past her knees — modern, sleek, nothing like the heavy gowns their mother might have worn. "I never thought either of us would get to choose."

The ceremony was short. The officiant, a friend of Julien's from the Conservatoire who had taken holy orders and then left them, spoke simply about two kinds of harmony — the one written on a page, and the one two people make between themselves when they decide to listen to each other. Evie barely heard the words. She was watching Julien's hands, the way they trembled slightly at his sides, and thinking about how those hands had played her song back to her in London, how they had held her when she thought she had lost her voice forever.

"You may exchange rings," the officiant said.

Julien took her left hand, and his fingers were warm and sure. He slid the gold band onto her finger — a simple circle, engraved inside with a single musical staff. She had given him the same, and when she looked at it on his hand, something in her chest loosened, a knot she hadn't known she was carrying since New York, since the scandal, since the night she had stepped onto a ship with nothing but a suitcase and a shattered reputation.

"I, Julien," he said, his voice steady, "take you, Evelyn, to be my wife. To play with you, and to listen. To follow your melody and to hold the harmony. For all the choruses of my life."

Her own vows came out in a rush, the words she had practiced in hotel rooms and rehearsal halls and the quiet hours of the night. "I, Evelyn, take you, Julien, to be my husband. I promise to sing the truth, and to let you hear it. I promise to make a home with you, wherever the music leads." She paused, and a laugh escaped her, bright and uncontained. "And I promise to always let you have the last chord."

The guests laughed. The band swung into something brighter, and Julien kissed her with the sun rising behind them over the rooftops of Montmartre, and for a moment, Evie thought: *This. This is what I came for.*

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The reception was held in a small courtyard behind a bistro on the Rue des Abbesses, where long tables had been draped in white linen and strung with paper lanterns. Someone had pushed the tables together in a single row, so that the whole party ate as one — musicians and Valcourts and the tight circle of friends who had carried Evie through the last year. Gaston presided over the wine, his voice booming with satisfaction as he filled glass after glass. Scott had produced a bottle of Kentucky bourbon from somewhere and was pouring shots into teacups, insisting it was a French tradition he had invented.

Étienne approached Evie near the dessert table, a glass of champagne in his hand. He was careful with his movements, deliberate, as if he were still learning how to stand in a world where his schemes had collapsed. "I owe you an apology," he said quietly. "For the concert. For everything. I should have been there."

Evie studied him. The resemblance to her father was strongest around the eyes — that same gray-blue, the same deep-set intensity. "Why weren't you?"

He looked down at his glass. "Cowardice, I think. I told myself it was strategy — that my presence would only inflame the conservatives further. But the truth is, I was afraid to watch you succeed in a way I hadn't been able to." He met her eyes. "You and Julien stood on that stage and made something new. And I have spent my life trying to preserve something old."

The anger Evie had carried toward him — complicated, tangled with the grief of a father she had never known — loosened its grip slightly. "You're here now," she said. "That counts for something."

Étienne nodded, and something in his face shifted, a door opening a crack. "Your father would have been proud of you. I never told you that. I was too busy being jealous of a dead man's ghost." He raised his glass. "But I see it now. You have his stubbornness, and his heart." He paused. "You have his name, too. Legally, at least."

Evie touched the locket at her throat, the one containing the photograph of the Comte. "It took me a long time to be proud of that name," she said. "But I think I'm getting there."

Later, after the cake had been cut and the band had switched to something slow and sweet, Julien pulled her aside. They stood in a narrow stairwell that smelled of wine and old stone, the noise of the party muffled behind them. He took both her hands.

"I've been thinking," he said. "About where we go next. The Conservatoire has offered me a position — permanent chair of the composition department."

Evie's heart gave a small, frightened lurch. "That's wonderful, Jules. That's —" She stopped. "But you don't sound like it's wonderful."

"It's a beautiful offer," he said. "And I would be lying if I said I wasn't tempted." He looked at her, his dark eyes searching. "But I spent ten years playing the music they wanted me to play. Then I played with you, and I remembered what music was for." He squeezed her hands. "There's a space on the Rue de la Huchette. An old cabaret — the building's been empty for a year. It has a stage, a proper one. And a piano that needs tuning, but I've heard it, and it has a good voice."

Evie stared at him. "A club?"

"Our club. A place where jazz and classical can sit at the same table. Where Scott can play his trumpet at midnight and a string quartet can play Debussy at noon, and nobody has to choose." He smiled, tentative and hopeful. "I want to call it La Rêverie. Because that's what this year has felt like. A dream I didn't dare to wake from."

Evie thought of the Salle Pleyel, the thousands of faces rising in defiance. She thought of the little cabaret in Montmartre where she had first sung with Julien, the crowd of artists and workers and dreamers who had clapped and stomped and called for more. She thought of all the venues that had rejected her music because it didn't fit their narrow definitions.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, a thousand times yes."

She kissed him, and when she pulled back, she was laughing. "La Rêverie. The daydream. God, Jules, you could have called it anything — 'The Crossroads,' 'The Blended Note' — and you chose a daydream."

"What else would we call it?" He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "We built this on a dream. We might as well name the house after its foundation."

From the courtyard, the band struck up a fast, swinging number, and someone — probably Scott — let out a whoop that echoed off the stone walls. Evie took Julien's hand and pulled him back toward the light and the noise and the people who loved them.

---

The sun was setting by the time the last guests departed. Marguerite kissed Evie on both cheeks, her grip firm. "You have made my son braver than I ever could," she said, her accent softening the edges of the words. "Take care of him. And let him take care of you."

Lily lingered longer, holding Evie's hands tightly. "I'm going back to the house tomorrow," she said. "The lawyer wants to go through some of Father's papers. Personal things." She paused. "I think I'm ready to read his letters now. The ones he wrote to us."

Evie felt the sting behind her eyes. "Do you want me to come?"

"No," Lily said, and there was no bitterness in her voice, only a quiet resolve. "I think I need to meet him alone first." She squeezed Evie's hands. "But I'll tell you everything he said. I promise."

They hugged, and when Lily pulled away, her eyes were wet but her smile was bright and true. "Go," she said. "Enjoy your night. You've earned it."

As the carriage carried them away from Montmartre, Evie leaned her head against Julien's shoulder, watching the lights of Paris flicker to life below them. The night was cool and clean, and somewhere behind them, Sacré-Cœur glowed white in the fading light, a beacon above the city of dreamers.

"We should have a piano in the apartment," she murmured. "Wherever we live. A small one, just for the morning."

"That's a terrible idea," Julien said, his voice warm with amusement. "We'll never get any work done. We'll just sit and play duets until noon."

Evie smiled against the wool of his jacket. "I think that sounds like heaven."

He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Then we'll have a piano."

The carriage swayed on, and Evie listened to the rhythm of the wheels on the cobblestones, the distant strains of music drifting up from a dozen clubs and cabarets. She thought of the empty space on the Rue de la Huchette, waiting for them. She thought of her mother, the portrait in the Valcourt mansion, the locket against her skin. She thought of the Baron's ledger, still missing, a shadow she had learned to live beside.

But the shadow was behind her now, and ahead of her was the future she had built with her own voice, her own choices, her own love.

She closed her eyes and let the motion of the carriage carry her, dreaming of a name above a door, and a stage where anything could be played, and the last chord of the night hanging in the air.