‘I think, if you don’t mind, I would welcome some of that cognac now,’ Celeste said faintly.
Jack jumped to his feet to pour her some, holding the glass while she drank, for her hands were shaking. ‘You might have employed a little more tact in imparting such shocking news,’ he said angrily.
Madame Rosser eyed him disdainfully. ‘I am not aware that it is any of your business, Mr Trestain. What exactly is your role in all this?’
Celeste raised her brows haughtily. ‘I am not aware that it is any of your business, Madame Rosser.’
Jack laughed. Madame pursed her lips. ‘You are the image of your mother, save for the eyes, which you have from our side of the family, and where also, I think, you get that...’ She shrugged. ‘Insouciance. All very well in a Rosser of Beynac, Mademoiselle, but not so acceptable in one conceived in a prison and born on the wrong side of the blanket.’
‘How dare...?’
Celeste grabbed Jack’s wrist, shaking her head. ‘I would be obliged if you would finish your story, Madame, in plain speaking, and I will remove my tainted blood from your presence. For good, before you ask.’
Madame Rosser nodded. ‘In plain speaking, then, Mademoiselle, your mother was trapped in Paris, for by then the borders were closed. I could not have her here in her condition, but I made sure she was safe, and I paid for the doctor to attend her lying-in. Of this, her parents knew nothing. Then out of the blue, an Englishman turned up looking for her.’
‘Arthur Derwent.’
‘Yes. That is him. How did you know?’
‘Maman had his signet ring.’
‘He was sent here covertly to take your mother and three other prominent Englishmen home. She stubbornly refused to go. She wept and wailed and batted those big eyes of hers at the poor man, and said she would be compromised if she returned with a child and no husband. He was young, and an honourable man too. But he was also one of those rash young men rather too fond of glory. He agreed to attempt to rescue my nephew from imprisonment. It had been done. It was not the impossible he attempted, but it was ill-fated. He was shot dead by one of the guards. A few days later, my unfortunate nephew was sent to the guillotine. Whether that was a result of the botched escape attempt we do not know. I expect Derwent gave your mother that ring for safekeeping. I would imagine it would have been awkward for the English if his identity were to be discovered. He never returned to reclaim it.’
Madame Rosser sighed wearily. ‘With Georges dead, your mother was something of an embarrassment, but I too have a sense of honour. Henri Marmion’s family have served the Rossers for centuries. It was fortunate that he was in Paris at the time. Your mother was like you, a very beautiful woman, and one who had that...’ She snapped her fingers, then looked pointedly at Jack. ‘As I suspect Mr Trestain can vouch. Bien, it took only the lure of being able to call such a beauty his wife and the promise of an annuity small enough to be insignificant to me, large enough to be very significant to Henri. Blythe took a little more persuading, but she had no other option in the end, save to do as I bid. She was not married to Georges, but she was English, and she had borne his child. There was a great chance she would be arrested. And so—that was it.’
Madame Rosser got to her feet and pulled the gold cord which hung from the ceiling by the fireplace. ‘I trust I have answered all the questions you wished to ask? You will accept my condolences for the loss of your mother,’ she added coldly without giving them a chance to answer. ‘When my last bank draft was returned, I made enquiries and discovered she had died. Drowning, I think.’
‘Suicide,’ Celeste said calmly, getting to her feet. ‘Unlike you, Madame Rosser, it seems my mother had a conscience.’
‘I may not have a conscience, but I do have a sense of duty, Mademoiselle.’
‘You may rest assured that your duty is now done. I require nothing further from you. I thank you for your time, Madame, and I bid you good day.’ Celeste dropped a shallow curtsy.
‘The allowance, Mademoiselle, my nephew would have wished me to—’
‘You cannot buy my silence. I have adequate means of my own. Good day, Madame.’
Celeste walked from the room without looking back. As the door to the salon closed, Jack caught her arm. ‘You were magnificent,’ he said.
* * *
Jack, torn between fury at the callous treatment Madame Rosser had meted out and admiration at the way Celeste had dealt with it, bid the driver take them back to her studio post-haste. She shook her head when he tried to talk to her, and when he made to escort her through the courtyard door, she told him that she needed time to think, and asked him to call on her later in the evening.
* * *
When he arrived back at the apartment a few hours later, she looked relatively calm. ‘Go in,’ she said, ‘I will be only a moment.’
The door to her studio stood wide open. A huge room with tall windows opening out on to the roof, and even at this time of year and at this time in the evening, the impression of light. Canvases were stacked against the walls. There were three easels, a huge cupboard, a long trestle table and a number of crates which he supposed must contain her mother’s work.
The windows of her main living room also opened out on to the roof. Two large comfortable sofas faced each other across the hearth, draped in a multitude of coloured shawls and cushions. A small table contained a bottle of wine and two glasses. A larger table and chairs sat in front of one of the windows. A dresser stood against one wall, but the rest of the room was painted in the palest of green, the only decoration being the canvases on the walls.
Faces. Lots and lots of faces. Not a single landscape in sight. There were children playing on the banks of the Seine. There were studies of old women and washerwomen. There were men playing boules. Old men smoking pipes. An organ grinder. A soldier in a ragged uniform with only one leg. A woman in a café with a glass of what he presumed was absinthe.
‘They are not very good, but they are mine. Not that anyone would commission this kind of thing, even if I wanted them to.’
Celeste was wearing a long, flowing garment of scarlet silk embroidered with flowers, tied with a sash around her waist. ‘How are you?’ Jack asked. ‘After this afternoon, I’m surprised you’re still in one piece.’
‘I was not when I arrived back here, which is why I wanted you to come back later,’ she said ruefully. ‘I didn’t think I had any tears left to cry but I surprised myself once again.’
He smiled, because she wanted him too, but he was not convinced. ‘You handled it perfectly. I wanted to grab her by the throat, but you looked down your nose at her in exactly the way she looked down that nose of hers, and it was a much more effective put-down.’
‘For two whole minutes. That woman is impermeable. Like stone. Would you like a glass of wine?’
Without waiting for an answer, she poured them both a glass, setting them down on a small table by the fire. She sat down on the sofa, tucking her legs under her. Jack sat at the other end. She took a sip of wine. It reminded him of Madame Rosser, the way she sipped. Steadying herself. Bracing herself. For what? She seemed on edge. And no wonder, considering what she had just been through, Jack told himself. But she was watching him—oddly.
‘When I went for my walk on the calanques that morning in Cassis, I realised that you and Maman had a great deal in common,’ Celeste said.
‘I don’t see how—’
‘For example, there is your sense of duty,’ she interrupted. ‘My mother promised that horrible woman never to tell anyone the story of my origins. After the Revolution was over, there was no possible threat to her life or to mine, yet she said nothing. She was by then, as far as the world was concerned, a respectably married woman. She could have gone back to England, but she allowed that woman—presumably it was she, that scheming, Machiavellian salope who will not clai
m me for her grand-niece, I presume it was she who informed my mother’s parents that she was dead,’ Celeste said bitterly.
Jack, who had in fact come to pretty much the same conclusions himself, wished now that he had given vent to some of the many pithy things he’d wished to say to Madame Rosser. ‘I’m so sorry this has turned out so badly,’ he said.
Celeste looked surprised. ‘But no. I cannot doubt now that Maman loved me, for she went to such pains to keep me. I am sure if she’d wished it, Madame Rosser could have arranged for me to be given away. Maman must have loved my father a great deal to risk so much for him. And he—as she said in her letter, he would most likely have loved me too, because he obviously loved Maman. You are wondering that I am not more upset? I told you...’
‘I’m wondering what it is you’re really thinking, because I get the distinct feeling you’re not saying it,’ Jack said frankly.
Celeste smiled. ‘You are right, but I will. Only I— It is difficult.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘It is complicated. I am sad, of course, but I understand Maman so much more now. I will never know for certain if I could have made a difference that day, when she came to me here, but I do know now the source of the guilt which made her life unbearable, and I know I could never have changed that. It was her decision, her life. I think— I hope that I will learn to accept that in the future.’
‘So you have your answers finally?’ Jack asked.
‘I have my answers—or all the answers I’m ever going to get,’ Celeste agreed. ‘You have done what you promised, and I am very grateful because without you—I don’t know.’ Her voice quivered. She closed her eyes, her fingers clenched tight on the cushion she was holding against her. ‘Jack, I have things I need to say before you go.’ She tilted her head and met his gaze determinedly. ‘I know you will go, I know that. But I need to— You need to— I need you to listen before you do, because I love you.’
* * *
And so after all her careful rehearsing, she had blurted it out! Celeste held her breath. Jack simply gazed at her as if she had shot him. Had she expected him to throw his arms around her and tell her he loved her too? Angrily, Celeste was forced to admit that she might indeed have hoped this. ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she snapped, ‘you must have guessed.’
‘I did not dare.’
‘Well, I do,’ Celeste said, crossing her arms over the cushion. ‘I love you, and I’m telling you because I decided in Cassis that I won’t let you do what my mother did to me.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Yes, you know I too am a little tired of talking about her, but she is— You and she have so much in common, Jack. She wouldn’t let me love her either.’
He flinched. ‘Celeste, don’t say that.’
‘I love you, Jack, and you can’t stop me.’
‘Celeste, I...’
‘No.’ She shook her head stubbornly. ‘You have to listen first. I have thought it all through, so you have to listen. Only now I forget what I was saying.’
‘Duty,’ Jack said.
‘Yes, yes. There is Maman doing her duty by Henri and Madame Rosser, even though she has to hurt me. And I can understand that now a little, but why, I ask myself, was she so determined to continue with the situation when it was making her miserable? Now I know the answer to that too. She felt guilty. She had been the architect of the death of one man, and she no doubt blamed herself for having failed to rescue the man she loved, and every day she could look at me, and see the evidence of what she had lost, and—so you see, guilt. She didn’t feel she deserved to love me. She certainly didn’t feel entitled to be happy, and so she chose to be miserable.’
‘Chose?’
Celeste nodded firmly. ‘Chose. I think it was her penance.’
‘And you think that is what I am doing?’
She flinched at the cold note of anger in his voice. ‘I don’t think you choose to be miserable, but you don’t try to be happy either. And I do think that you see your life as a penance, as Maman did.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘But I do. I know perfectly, because no matter how many times you say it is not, our cases are the same.’ Celeste tried desperately not to panic. Jack looked as if he was on the verge of leaving. What had seemed so clear was now becoming jumbled in her mind. ‘I love you,’ she said, resorting to the one thing that had not changed. ‘Jack, I love you so much. You’ve done so much to help me, why won’t you let me help you?’
‘Because you can’t. Because nobody can.’
‘Because you won’t let them!’ Frustrated with herself for making such a hash of things, and with Jack for refusing to listen, Celeste spoke without thinking. ‘You told me right from the start that it was a mistake, digging up Maman’s past. You told me that it would hurt me. I didn’t believe you. I was wrong. It has hurt me so much, but you must have seen, Jack, did I not tell you in Cassis, how much it has helped me too? I am not the person I was, and I’m glad. I’m not the Celeste who built this great big wall around herself and pretended that she was happy there was no one inside her castle with her. Now I laugh and I cry and I love, Jack. I am in love with you and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.’
‘Celeste, I can’t—’
‘Jack, you can. Listen to me,’ she said urgently. ‘Listen. The thing my mother felt most guilty about was being alive, when my father and Arthur Derwent were dead. She didn’t kill them, but she felt responsible. And she paid with her misery. You did not kill that girl, but you act as if you did. You are giving up your own life in payment, Jack, can’t you see that, just as Maman did. You did not kill that girl. She took her own life, Jack, when she could have taken yours. She spared you.’
‘Spared me?’ He stared at her, incredulous.
‘Yes, spared you. You thought it was your last moment. You thought she was going to kill you. You accepted it. You did nothing. If you had, perhaps she would have pulled the trigger on you. Perhaps she was testing you. Perhaps your lack of resistance proved to her that you regretted what had happened, that you accepted her right to kill you. I don’t know.’
‘I will never know.’
‘No, you won’t. Like me, you will never know exactly why. Like me, you will never know if you could have stopped her. But if I can learn to live with that, why cannot you? She spared you, Jack, and you are acting as if you wish she had not.’
He jumped to his feet. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Celeste grabbed his arm. ‘If our cases were reversed, if I told you I couldn’t let myself love you, that I had to spend the rest of my life atoning by being unhappy, even though you were desperately in love with me, what would you do?’
‘I do love you.’ Jack turned blindly for the door. ‘I do love you. It’s the only thing I’m sure of.’
‘Jack!’ He was out of the apartment before she could catch him. She heard the pounding of his feet on the stairs and ran after him as fast as she could. The door to the courtyard was swinging open. Celeste stepped out into the Paris street in her bare feet, darting uselessly in one direction and then the other, but he had vanished into the night.
* * *
He ran blindly at first, as fast as he could, careless of where his feet took him. Curses followed him as he collided with another man, but he ran on, oblivious, with Celeste’s words pounding in his head.
I love you.
You can’t stop me.
I love you.
I won’t let you do what my mother did to me.
I love you.
If I can learn to live with that, why cannot you?
I love you.
Jack turned a corner too tightly and staggered into a wall. The pain that shot through his injured shoulder brought him to his senses. He was in a dark alleyway strewn with rotting vegetables
. A market, he surmised. Looking around at the dark holes of he gaping doorways, he felt that he was being watched. His senses on full alert, he walked casually towards the pinprick of light which he hoped would prove to be a main thoroughfare.
It was a barge passing on the river. The alleyway led directly down to the Seine. Across on the other bank, he could hear singing, but here, all was quiet. He walked, keeping one eye out for trouble, until he reached a well-lit street. And then he walked until he reached an area he recognised. And then he walked on and found himself back at the apartment he had fled from several hours before.
He was sick of running. Celeste loved him. And he loved her. Jack leaned against the courtyard wall, staring up at the starless sky. Celeste loved him, and she was determined to keep loving him, no matter what. She deserved to be happy.
While he deserved only misery? Was he actually wallowing in his guilt, as she had suggested? Was he choosing unhappiness as atonement, as Blythe Marmion had done? No, there was no comparison between them. None.
And even if there were—which there was not—the cases were still different. Celeste’s mother had been unhappy, but she had been perfectly normal. Her guilt did not manifest itself in nightmares and temper flashes and forgetting where she was and—all the things he was learning to control. All the things Celeste had helped him to understand. He had passed the tests he had set for himself. It was not a canker, as he’d imagined it for so long, a parasite which fed on his guilt—it was part of him, his condition. Another battle scar, and like the hole in his shoulder, he was learning to live with it.
Which brought him back to guilt. If our cases were reversed, if I told you I couldn’t let myself love you even though you were desperately in love with me, what would you do?
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