DrabbleWriMo 3: Wound

[igenlode]

Well, if I had trouble finding anywhere in the opening chapters to insert a reference to fruit, I certainly wasn't short of potential wounds to exploit -- I think there are five or so alluded to in the first section of the book!
(Looking ahead, however, I'm distinctly apprehensive as to what on earth I'm going to do with the prompt 'umbrella'. Some quick research shows that umbrellas did catch on earlier in Paris than in London, so they wouldn't be entirely anachronistic at this period. Not well suited to the plot, though.)

I really do need to establish the name of my protagonist at some point, if only to clarify that despite the last drabble this is definitely not Roland speaking :-p

Among 'les jeunes' -- de Kersaint's adoring young followers -- he had already the reputation, he knew, of being morose. But it was not their antics that gnawed at him now, though his bandaged head would have been all the excuse he needed. It was the memory of butchery in a Paris gutter, and the raw knowledge of the fate that had led her there.

Valentine the unattainable, the adored, of all women most full of grace, had been abandoned to that final horror by the wastrel husband who had never for one moment deserved her: Gaston de Saint-Chamans, Duc de Trélan.