by Karen Ranney
She smiled. “I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “I thought him dead, and seeing him alive was a shock. But I don’t know how I feel about his death. Isn’t that odd?”
He studied her, a look that was particularly intense.
“You’ve not realized it completely, I think,” he said, handing her one of the glasses. She stared at it for a long moment before she finally began to drink.
“I don’t mourn him. I hated him for too long for that. I thought he had Margaret,” she said. “If I regret anything, it’s that he didn’t tell us where she was.”
He nodded. “I’m sending some men into Mary King’s Close. I can’t overlook the possibility that Margaret is there.”
“She could be anywhere,” Jeanne said, beginning to tremble.
Douglas set down his own glass before taking hers and placing it on the table. Slowly, he pulled her into his arms. She leaned against him, wishing that she could absorb some of his strength. As she gave a shuddering sigh, he tightened his embrace.
Douglas. Even his name seemed to give her comfort.
Wrapping her arms around him, she flattened her hands against his back and placed her cheek against his chest.
“We’ll find her, Jeanne. We’ll find her.”
She nodded, and prayed that his words weren’t simply meant to be reassuring. Let them be a portent, an omen. Or even a prayer.
A little while later he led her to the chair and then bent and laid a fire.
“You’ve done this often,” she said, watching his easy movements.
“Often enough,” he said, smiling back at her.
“I wondered what you’d done for ten years,” she admitted. “Now I know. You were making fires, tea, and a fortune.”
“I sailed for the first three,” he said, returning to sit beside her. “Until I decided that a life aboard ship wasn’t the best for Margaret.”
She leaned back against the wing chair, staring into the fire. Although it was the middle of summer, the room felt chilled.
“Tell me about her,” she said, turning and forcing a smile to her face. “I want to know everything.”
For the rest of the evening, they kept a vigil as they waited for word to come from the hundreds of people still looking for Margaret.
She already knew that her daughter had a quick mind, but as the hours passed, Jeanne learned of Margaret’s love of sailing, apples, and Chinese puzzle boxes. Besides Gilmuir, she liked James’s home of Ayleshire, and visiting the dolphins outside Inverness.
Together they sat in the wing chairs facing the fire, Douglas talking while Jeanne listened. Toward midnight, he replenished the fire. He was solicitous of her, providing a footstool, plying her with endless glasses of wine. She took a few sips from each, thinking that it might be pleasant to maintain a fogginess from drink. But nothing would mitigate the sense of loss she felt, so deep and pervasive that it mimicked the day they took baby Margaret from her.
Occasionally, Douglas would stand and begin to pace, stopping by her chair to pat her shoulder or brush the back of his hand against her cheek. It was the first time that they had felt a freedom to reveal their deepest thoughts to one another, and yet they did so without words.
She would grab his fingers and place a kiss against his knuckles, wondering if he knew how very much she loved him. The words were too difficult to say. The last time she’d done so, her life had altered in terrible ways. She was twice shy about revealing herself so completely yet again.
“What do we do next?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and cupping her elbows in suddenly cold palms. The evening was cool, but that wasn’t the reason she felt chilled.
Standing, she moved to the fire, stood watching the blaze as it suddenly wavered, a blur of gold, orange, and blue flames.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, and she knew suddenly what he wanted to know. Not her abduction, but an older story, one of a spoiled yet innocent young girl.
The tale wasn’t long, and he remained silent while she spoke.
“I never believed that he would take her from me,” she said, speaking of the day Margaret was born. “I thought he would let me go somewhere with her, someplace where they didn’t know the du Marchand name.” She laughed a mirthless laugh. “I had suggested America or England, and he seemed to agree.
“But once the baby was born, everything changed. He had Justine take the baby away and had me sent to the convent and I was a prisoner there, too.”
She glanced at him. “The first thing I did when I left the convent was return to Vallans. I thought that there was a chance that I could find her.” She smiled at her own foolishness and hope. “I found the place where she had been taken. The old man had died a few years earlier, but his wife was still alive. She was terrified of me, and my questions, but she finally told me what had happened.”
The small misshapen cottage on the outskirts of the woods had been a place of horror, not charm. Jeanne could remember everything about that foggy day, the feeling of every breath she’d taken, and every scent she’d inhaled of that foul place rife with decaying wood and slimy leaves.
“She led me to a grave,” she said, her voice trembling. “I stood there and knew that I had failed my child. My actions had led to her death.”
The ground had felt spongy beneath her knees as she’d knelt there, weeping until her eyes were dry.
“I should have been stronger,” she said now at his silence. “I should have found a way to protect her.”
“You were only seventeen,” he said.
She smoothed her damp palms over her skirt. “Yes,” she said, “I was only seventeen.” She looked at him, startled to discover that his eyes hadn’t left her. His quick appraisal was less one of masculine appreciation than it was of concern.
“Jeanne, you were no match for him.”
She smiled, again grateful to him for attempting to ease her self-reproach, to absolve her of any culpability. “I didn’t want to see, Douglas. I didn’t want to know.” There, the greatest sin of all. She hadn’t wanted to believe the worst could happen. But it had.
“But she’s alive,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, turning to him and holding out her hands. He pulled her into his embrace. “You saved her. And me.” He’d restored her soul by saving their child when she could not. Please, God, let Margaret be found. Let her be safe.
She continued with her tale. “That morning when I saw her grave, I decided that I would die. There was nothing to live for anymore.”
Closing her eyes, she felt his arms tighten around her. She spoke against his throat, grateful that he was so close.
“I didn’t want to live. But I did. I gradually made my way to Scotland.” She smiled at the thought of the ruby safely tucked away in her locket. The sale of it might have made her journey easier. “I didn’t have any money, but it didn’t seem to matter because I truly didn’t care what happened to me. I existed simply because I didn’t die.
“Until I saw you. Then everything changed. I was terrified you would find out what had happened and despise me as much as I despised myself.” She stretched out her hand, touched his face, smoothing her palm along his jaw.
“I thought you didn’t care all this time,” he said. “That you didn’t want Margaret. Or even me.”
She shook her head. “And I thought you never tried to find me because you discovered I was going to have your child.” She smiled faintly. “We’ve been hiding from each other all this time.”
He wrapped his arms around her, speaking the words next to her cheek. “Forgive me,” he said, the words sounding as if they’d originated from deep inside him. “Forgive me.”
“I do,” she said, finally.
Together they would heal, but only if Margaret was found. Safe, she added in a silent, fervent prayer.
Toward dawn, Jeanne fell into a fitful doze, sitting upright in the wing chair. She was awakened when Douglas placed a coverlet around her, tucking it over her knees
. Sleepily, she thanked him as he bent and placed a kiss on her forehead.
She opened her eyes and their gazes locked. In that moment she felt as if she had opened the door of her soul and allowed him inside, wandering where no one else had ever ventured. She almost wanted to whisper for him to take care so that he didn’t disarrange anything, or shatter something lovely like an illusion.
But he said nothing at all and only reached out his hand to trail his fingers across her face with the most gentle of touches. He brushed her hair back behind her ear before bending down to place a kiss against her lips.
She felt her heart slowly break at the tender look on his face.
“We’ll find her,” he said. “I promise.”
There was nothing at all certain about the future. Everything was tenuous and they each stepped across a narrow bridge to each other, one built of glass. A tremble, a brush of a hand, or a flick of a finger, and it may come tumbling down. But it was as if they each knew it, and took greater care of one another.
She began to count the hours, one after the other until a dozen had passed and then a dozen more. A day was gone, and then two, the dawns and sunsets ponderously similar.
Douglas traveled routes through Edinburgh every day, making contacts with people he knew, going to his warehouse. There, a selection of employees came to him with reports, none of them positive so far.
Each night he shared her bed, but only to hold her. She lay with his arms around her and still felt cold, as if this loss of their child were again her fault. Once, she tried to tell him how sorry she was, but tears tightened her throat and made her incapable of speech.
He’d tightened his arms around her, and breathed the words against her cheek. “We’ll find her, Jeanne. Believe me.”
She could only nod.
On the third morning, when one of the maids called out that she had her breakfast tray, Jeanne dismissed her. When she knocked on the door of her room again a few moments later, Jeanne didn’t bother answering. A minute later she heard the door open and close softly.
“I don’t want any breakfast,” she said. She stood at the window staring out at the gray and overcast day.
“Do you intend to stay up here until she’s found?” Douglas asked.
“No,” she said, turning and looking at him. “I am going with you today. And tomorrow, and the day after that. I can’t simply remain here and wait for news.”
For ten years she’d been strong, and it was time she was strong again. They would find their daughter, but together.
“I would welcome the company,” he said, coming to stand beside her.
She leaned against him, closing her eyes, grateful when he extended his arms around her.
“I have to do something,” she explained. “Otherwise, I think I’ll go mad. I’m angry at the entire world. How am I to live through this, Douglas? The first time I lost her nearly killed me.”
He kissed her softly, a gesture meant to be more comforting than passionate. “Together, we’ll live through it.”
He wasn’t looking at her, but at the far horizon, as if he were remembering something particularly grim.
A knock on the door preceded one of Lassiter’s footmen. The majordomo insisted upon searching with the other employees every day. Therefore, his normal duties went to an assortment of young men, each of whom was terrified of doing something wrong. This one looked particularly harried, bending in an awkward bow that looked even more stilted since he was so tall.
“You’ve a visitor, sir. A Mr. Hamish MacRae. He says he has important news about Miss Margaret.”
Douglas preceded the footmen out of the room. Jeanne grabbed her skirts in both hands and raced down the stairs behind him, only to halt at the landing.
“Where is she?” Douglas asked a tall, broad-shouldered man standing in the foyer.
Hamish was the same height as Douglas, but was older and carried more weight. A few scars marred his face, but didn’t detract from his appearance of strength. His brown eyes appraised Douglas quickly, and then his gaze traveled up the stairs to rest on Jeanne.
“Where is she?” Douglas asked again and Hamish must have heard the underlying worry in Douglas’s voice because he held up his hand.
“She’s well,” Hamish said, smiling. “She convinced Henry to bring her to Gilmuir.”
“Gilmuir?” Douglas threaded his fingers through his hair and stared at his brother.
Jeanne held on to the banister and slowly descended the stairs, feeling as if her legs wouldn’t support her.
Hamish nodded. “She needed to see Mary, she said.”
Jeanne and Douglas exchanged a look, both slightly bemused. They had never considered that Margaret might have left Edinburgh of her own free will.
“She’s only nine,” Jeanne said, reaching Douglas’s side. He put his arm around her.
“But determined.” Hamish’s glance encompassed her.
“You must be Jeanne,” he said, his smile broadening. “Remember, she’s your daughter. You both strike me as being more than a little stubborn.”
“But she’s all right?” Douglas asked.
“She is, even though she isn’t sure she wants to talk to you,” he said to Douglas. “And she doesn’t know what to say to you,” he added, directing his attention to Jeanne.
She frowned at him, perplexed. “Why not?”
“It seems that Margaret has been able to piece together that Jeanne is her mother.” He nodded at Douglas. “She believes that you betrayed her. While you,” he said, glancing at Jeanne, “lied to her. I don’t think she’s altogether displeased that you’re her mother,” he added. “She’s just a little confused.”
“But she’s safe?”
“Safe with Mary at the moment.”
The relief that Jeanne felt was suddenly so strong that she thought she might faint from it. She reached out and Douglas enfolded his hand over hers and together they stood, strangely enough almost in the pose of a bride and groom.
For the third time they exchanged a glance and this time they didn’t bother to look away. And then, in front of his brother and the gangly footman, Douglas bent and kissed her, so sweetly that Jeanne felt tears slip from her eyes.
The nuns of Sacré-Coeur were wrong. There was no further need to make reparations to save her immortal soul. The tears she’d already shed were payment enough.
Chapter 34
T he only time Jeanne had been aboard a ship was on the miserable voyage crossing the English Channel. The waves had been choppy and the winds high. Each time the bow of the ship pointed skyward and then tilted down on the next trench of wave, she was sure they were going to be pitched to the bottom of the sea.
She had been exhausted, hungry, and cold. Going from nine years of imprisonment to being responsible for herself in a world not disposed to care much for solitary women had also left her feeling vulnerable and frightened.
The voyage from Leith to Gilmuir, however, was different. Douglas had commandeered one of the MacRae ships waiting at his dock when Hamish announced he was returning to Gilmuir later.
“I make it to Edinburgh so seldom, Mary’s given me a list of supplies she wants,” he’d said, shaking his head.
This vessel, designed for crossing the oceans of the world, felt as though it were flying across the glassy water. The sea was calm, the winds brisk but gentle, but Jeanne was just as afraid as the time when she’d left France.
“Are you certain she’s all right?” she asked Douglas again for the hundreth time.
He stood beside her and, at her query, extended his arm around her, pulling her tight. “If Hamish says she’s fine, she is. I’ve never known him to lie.” He smiled slightly, one corner of his lip upturned. “Not even to spare my feelings.”
She wouldn’t feel reassured, however, until she actually saw Margaret, until she could ascertain herself that her daughter was safe and unharmed.
“What ever made her do such a thing?”
“I’m afraid
we’ll have to ask Margaret that,” Douglas said, staring off at the far horizon.
“What am I going to say to her?”
He glanced down at her, his smile disappearing. “Tell her the truth.”
She shook her head. “Maybe one day,” she said, “but not now. She’s only nine.”
“Eight,” he corrected with a smile. “Her birthday’s not for ten days.”
She shook her head. “Do you remember the night at Robert Hartley’s home?”
He nodded.
“That was Margaret’s real birthday.” Nine years ago on that day she’d given birth to her child.
He looked bemused by the knowledge. She curved her arm around his, leaned her head on his shoulder. “Margaret is such an English name,” she said.
“What did you choose?”
“Genevieve,” she said. She’d never told anyone that. Nor had she spoken that name for nine years. “But Margaret suits her better.”
For long moments they stood there, feeling the current of the ocean beneath the ship. The wind stirred her hair loose from its bun, and caressed her face. She felt her heart swell as Douglas pulled her closer, a sense of joy sweeping through her so powerfully that it felt as if lightning traveled from her head to her toes.
Despite her trepidation, she was happy. Purely and deliciously happy in a way that she couldn’t remember being for so very long. For the first time in what felt like a hundred years, there was no discordance between the girl she had been and the woman she was. True, she was a little more experienced, but she felt completely like herself. Jeanne du Marchand. Lover, friend, mother.
She reached out and took his hand, holding it between hers, studying the shape of it. His hands were so large compared to hers. They were callused and rough in spots, evidence that he worked hard for a living. He had created an empire and she knew it would continue to grow and expand under his leadership. He was a man other men admired and emulated.
He was capable of so many things that she felt as if she had wasted her life in comparison. As if it had been taken from her. But, in that moment, instead of feeling deprived, she knew that she was the most fortunate woman on earth.
