A Stolen Heart

by Candace Camp

  Finally he gave in to the latter emotion, grasping her shoulders and jerking her to him for a quick, hard kiss. He was gratified to see that, when he released her, her eyes were darker and faintly dazed.

  “If one more suspicious thing happens, I am going to put Murdock here to guard your house, even if he has to loiter about in the street to do it. Is that clear?”

  “Abundantly.” Alexandra’s tongue stole out to touch her upper lip. “Is that always the way you make your point?”

  His eyes went to her mouth, and heat rippled through him. “Only if I have to.”

  He leaned down and kissed her again, this time more slowly and thoroughly. Memories of the night before flooded his brain, and his skin flamed. He wanted to go on kissing her until neither of them could stop, but finally, reluctantly, he pulled away. “I must leave now.”

  Much as he wanted to stay, there were things Thorpe had to do. His valet, Murdock, had quite a few connections with certain criminal elements here in London—Thorpe had always found it wiser not to enquire too closely into the hows and whys of those connections—and Thorpe was going to set him to nosing out whatever he could about anyone attacking a beautiful American woman. Alexandra might refuse to let him provide a guard for her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to protect her some other way. Alexandra would find out that he could be every bit as stubborn as she was.

  AFTER THORPE LEFT, ALEXANDRA MADE her way upstairs to her mother’s room. She had not wanted Thorpe to leave—However much she might insist on handling things herself, she could not deny that the events of the past two days had left her shaken, and that Thorpe’s presence had made it all seem not quite so bad. However, she certainly could not ask him to stay when she had just been telling him how capable she was of taking care of things.

  Besides, whenever she was around the man, she felt confused and uncertain, emotions she was not accustomed to experiencing. She had made up her mind that the passion she had felt for him last night had been a fluke, something caused by her state of nerves. But when he had kissed her this afternoon, she had felt the same welling of desire, the same rush of fire through her veins and pulsing heat in her loins. Alexandra was not used to such feelings, and they unsettled her. Even more confusing was the fact that she had such conflicting emotions about the man, irritated one moment and pulsing with desire the next. It was better that she have some time alone to collect herself and decide how she felt and what she wanted.

  Right now, she knew, she had to talk to her mother. Her visit with the Countess had left her troubled and uncertain, and her mother was the only person who could help her. She sighed, thinking that her mother was rather a weak reed upon which to rely, but she pushed such thoughts away and, summoning a cheerful smile, she knocked on Rhea’s door and went in.

  “Ah, Miss Alexandra.” Nancy looked up from the sewing in her lap and smiled. “I was just about to go down and fetch your mother a cup of cocoa.”

  There had been an unspoken conspiracy among the three of them, Aunt Hortense, Alexandra and Nancy, not to leave Rhea alone since the incident with the teapot. Nancy got up, put her sewing aside, and left the room.

  Rhea leaned toward her daughter and whispered, “Thank heavens, she’s gone. I can’t think what is the matter with Nancy. She has scarcely left this room all day. I practically had to kick her out of the room when I wanted to take a nap. I think the servants frighten her.”

  “They do?”

  Rhea nodded. “They are different, you know. Sometimes I find myself quite exasperated with them. I can hardly blame Nan for disliking them. Well, it was only a few years ago that we were at war with them, wasn’t it?”

  Alexandra would not have considered the almost thirty years that had elapsed since the Revolutionary War only a few years, but she wasn’t going to quibble about a thing like that.

  “That’s true,” she agreed. “Still, I suppose they are more like us than any other country. I mean, the same language and all. The same stock.” She paused, then added, “Not like the French, say.”

  Her mother looked up sharply. “The French? What are you talking about?”

  “I was just saying that the French are more foreign. Don’t you think? Different language, different customs.”

  “Yes.” Rhea regarded her a trifle warily, Alexandra thought.

  “You have never talked much about the time you and Father spent in France. When he was working with the Ambassador.”

  Rhea blinked. “I…well, there was little to talk about.”

  “What was it like? Paris, I mean. Everyone says it is beautiful.”

  “I—I suppose so.” Rhea looked away, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “That time. Paris.”

  “But it interests me. After all, I was born there.” Her mother glanced at her, then away. She said nothing, and Alexandra prodded. “Wasn’t I?”

  “What? Yes, of course. Why are you asking such silly questions?” Rhea reached into the capacious pocket of her skirt, and Alexandra could see her hand through the material, rubbing something in a circular motion.

  That silly box, Alexandra thought in irritation. What was in there that her mother was so attached to?

  “Mother…” Alexandra leaned forward, looking into her mother’s face earnestly. “Would you tell me about when I was born?”

  “What?” Rhea’s agitation increased. She glanced all around the room, everywhere but at Alexandra’s face. “What an odd question.”

  “It was in Paris, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Where?”

  “Where? Well, at our house.”

  “Did you have a midwife?”

  “Yes. This is a very peculiar conversation.”

  “Not so odd. I would think most people would want to know something about their origins. What was the midwife’s name?”

  “Name? I don’t know. How can I remember something that long ago?”

  “What was she like?”

  “Why are you questioning me like this!” Rhea bounded to her feet and walked away from Alexandra, going to the window and looking out. Despite the warmth of the summer day, she huddled into her arms as if she were cold.

  “I just want to know. Mother, it’s important.” She paused, then asked in a quiet voice, “How old was I when the rioting started?”

  Rhea whirled and looked at her sharply. “How old were you! What does that matter?”

  “It just does. Surely you must know.”

  “Of course I do. You were a toddler. You were always running everywhere—I had the worst time keeping up with you. I was so afraid when that gang of hoodlums stopped our carriage on the road to Calais. I was afraid you would slip out and go exploring, like you had that morning at the inn. That big, rough man that opened the door and peered inside—” Rhea shuddered, her face scrunching with remembered fear. “And Hiram was already ill. And the—”

  She stopped suddenly and turned her face toward the window.

  “And the what, Mother?”

  “Nothing,” Rhea said brusquely. “It was terrible. Your poor father was so sick, I was afraid you would catch it, too, and then I would lose everything.” Tears welled in her mother’s eyes. “But you were so good in the inn in Southhampton, when I was half out of my mind with worry over Hiram. You would sit beside me, good as gold. You didn’t run about a bit. And you would pat my hand—just as though you knew how sad and scared I was.”

  Tears flowed from her mother’s eyes, and she put up a shaky hand to her face. “Please, Alexandra, don’t ask me any more. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.” Alexandra rose and went to her, her chest contracting in sympathy at her mother’s pain. She felt like a selfish monster for having disturbed her. “I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She put her arms around the older woman, and Rhea leaned against her for a moment, murmuring, �
�My baby. It’ll be all right.”

  “Of course. It will be all right.”

  Rhea pulled away and went to her bed. “I believe I’ll lie down now. Tell Nan I don’t want the cocoa. I’ll just lie here until supper.”

  “All right. Mother, I’m sorry….”

  Rhea nodded, curling up on the bed and wrapping her shawl around her. She closed her eyes. With a sigh, Alexandra sat and waited for Nancy to return. Her mother had not soothed away any of her uneasiness. Indeed, her evasive answers only troubled Alexandra more. It wasn’t surprising, she supposed, that memories of the revolution bothered Rhea; she had been afraid for their lives, and her beloved husband had succumbed to a fever on the frantic trip from Paris. But that did not explain why she was so reluctant to talk about Alexandra’s birth a year and a half before that. Surely that would have been a joyous occasion, one she would have remembered with love. After all, she had been a doting mother when Alexandra was little. Alexandra could remember Rhea telling her how much she loved her, how perfect she was, how long she and her father had waited before they had a child, hoping for a beautiful daughter like Alexandra. How could Rhea have forgotten the name of the midwife or what she had looked like? Why would she dismiss the event as if it had been unimportant?

  Alexandra wandered into her room and went to her dresser, where a small double frame stood. In it were two pen-and-ink sketches of her parents, done during the time when they were in Paris. The small folding frame had been one of the few things her mother had grabbed and stuffed into their suitcases when they fled the riots. Her father looked sternly from one side, his head covered by a formal white wig. He had a long, thin, ascetic face, nothing like hers. She could not tell his eye color nor his hair color from the drawing, but Aunt Hortense had told her that Hiram’s coloring was much like Aunt Hortense’s—light brown hair and hazel eyes. His stature, too, had been much like Aunt Hortense’s, short and square. Her mother was short, as well, though softly rounded rather than square. Her hair in the picture was powdered, and it was now quite gray. What color had it been when she was young? Had it been dark like Alexandra’s?

  It was odd, surely, that she resembled neither of her parents. Alexandra searched the portraits, looking for some similarity in chin or mouth or nose. Of course, she reminded herself, some people did not look like their parents. There was Elizabeth Harmon, for example, whose plain face was an anomaly among her attractive parents and siblings. But it was said Elizabeth was the spitting image of her father’s sister Abigail. Perhaps, Alexandra reasoned, she looked like some other member of her family, though she could think of no one on either side who was tall and dark-haired. But she had no idea what her grandparents had looked like when they were young. And her mother had had a brother who had died when he was a child and a sister who had died in childbirth before Alexandra was born. Perhaps they had been cut from the same cloth as she.

  She whirled and hurried out of her room, going first to her aunt’s bedroom, then to the informal sitting room on the second floor. There she found Aunt Hortense sitting, working on the needlepoint she was sewing for seat cushions back home. Aunt Hortense looked up and smiled.

  “Hello, dear, did you have a nice outing?”

  “I met a nice woman, but she is troubled.”

  “That’s too bad. What—”

  “Aunt Hortense,” Alexandra interrupted, not even aware that she was rude, so wrapped up was she in her worry. “What was my mother’s hair color when she was young?”

  Aunt Hortense stared at her. “Your mother’s hair? What an odd question. It was brown.”

  “What sort of brown? Very dark like mine?”

  “Oh, no, dear. Much lighter.”

  “So was Father’s, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Aunt Hortense stuck her needle into the piece of cloth stretched across her frame and set it aside. “Something’s troubling you. What is it?”

  “Is there anyone in my family who looks like me?” Alexandra asked almost desperately.

  Her aunt’s brows rose, but she considered the question thoughtfully. “My aunt Rosemary was a very pretty woman, too,” she said at last. “She was blond, though, and had blue eyes. But your features are like hers.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, uh, she was—she had large eyes and a slender, straight nose like you.”

  “That seems very little.”

  “What is the matter with you, child? Why are you asking me such odd questions?”

  “Because it seems odd to me that there is no one among all my relatives who looks the slightest thing like me. Yet I saw the portrait today of a complete stranger who could have been my twin!”

  Aunt Hortense stared. “What are you talking about?”

  She explained about the Countess and how she had fainted when she met Alexandra the evening before, and how Thorpe had taken her to see the Countess. “She showed me a portrait of her daughter-in-law painted years and years ago, and she looked almost exactly like me!”

  Aunt Hortense’s eye widened. “But who—how…”

  “Everyone says it’s just coincidence. At least, that is what Thorpe and the Countess’s daughter and I said. Only the Countess stubbornly held out the hope that I—”

  “That you what? I don’t understand.”

  “She thought I might be her granddaughter, whom she has thought dead for twenty-two years.”

  Her aunt blinked. “But that’s absurd! How could you be related to some Countess in England?”

  “I don’t know! Neither does anyone else. The Countess theorized that her granddaughter could have escaped the mob, being so little at the time, or that some kind soul took pity on her and helped her escape.”

  “Escaped what mob?”

  “In Paris, during the revolution. The same mob that Mother was so frightened of.”

  “Paris!” Aunt Hortense looked astounded.

  “Yes. The Countess’s son and his family were killed by the revolutionaries in Paris. Their baby was named Alexandra.”

  “Alexandra! What are you suggesting?” Aunt Hortense’s words were indignant, but there was an odd quality to her voice.

  “I’m not sure. I only know that I look like a Frenchwoman who died twenty-two years ago.” Alexandra began to pace the room, too agitated to sit down. “Did Mother ever tell you any of the details of my birth? How much I weighed or how long I was or the name of the midwife who attended her? I asked her tonight, and she claimed she couldn’t remember.”

  “It has been a long time.”

  “But it hadn’t been a long time when she returned home from Paris. Did she tell you about any of it then?”

  “Some things. She talked about how frightened she was and about how much you had helped her get through the ordeal. She talked about Hiram’s passing, and how sad and lonely she had been.”

  “But nothing about the birth itself.”

  “You must remember, Alexandra.” Her aunt blushed, amazing Alexandra. “I never married. Your mother probably thought she needed to spare my sensibilities. There are some things married women simply do not discuss with spinsters.”

  Alexandra knew that that was true. She had had enough experiences where, just when someone was about to get to the most interesting part of their story, one woman or the other would glance at her and say, “No, you mustn’t say that in front of Alexandra. She’s not married, you know.”

  Her aunt hesitated. “There was one thing, though….”

  “What?” Alexandra turned on her eagerly.

  Aunt Hortense sighed, holding back for a moment, then went on. “Well, it always seemed odd that Rhea never sent home word about you. One day we got a letter from her, from England, saying she was sailing home, that Hiram had died of a fever, and she was returning with their baby. That was the first she ever wrote us about you.”

  Alexandra looked at her, dumbstruck. Finally she recovered her voice enough to ask, “Ever? She did not write you the news when I was born?”

  Aunt Hort
ense shrugged. “I never received it. She said she sent me a letter at the time and that the mails must have lost it. Obviously, that can happen. But the odd thing is that even if that one letter had been lost, why wouldn’t she have mentioned you in other letters? Baby’s got two new teeth this week. That sort of thing. It seemed decidedly peculiar, considering the fact that she and Hiram had wanted a baby for so long and had never been able to have one. I would have thought that when she finally did conceive—ten years after they were married—she would have been so proud she was about to burst. She would have written us all your virtues.” The words seemed to rush out of her aunt’s mouth, as if she held them back all these years, and now, once the dam was broken, she could not stem the flood.

  “Perhaps I had too few to mention,” Alexandra teased.

  “Not likely. Rhea had wanted that baby for so long, so hard. When she came home, that was all she talked about, Alexandra this and Alexandra that, until, if you hadn’t been such a beautiful angel, I would have wanted to scream at her to shut up.” She smiled, belying her words, then looked away. She bit her lip, then added, “Sometimes I wondered—I thought that there must have been something wrong.”

  “Like what? What did you think?”

  Aunt Hortense glanced at her, embarrassed. At first Alexandra thought she would not answer, but at last she said, “I wondered if perhaps you were not Hiram’s child, if you were a—a love child that she had conceived with another man. She loved Hiram—I know she did. But she wanted a child so badly I could imagine, if it was Hiram’s fault they couldn’t, that Rhea would have had an affair with someone else so that she could get with child. Or even that Hiram had perhaps had an affair. Men do, you know. And Rhea, wanting a child so badly, might have been willing to raise it as her own if he asked her to. But then I would reject the idea as soon as I thought of it. My brother would not have participated in a deception. He was always honest and straightforward.”