A Desperate Fortune (37 page)

“Yes.”

“And have I ever lied to you?”

“You said it was tradition for a man to take a woman out to lunch at New Year’s.”

I could feel the movement of his mouth against my hair. Perhaps a smile. “Apart from that.”

I thought back through the time that I had known him and admitted, “No.”

“Then which of us does it make sense to believe?” he asked. “Me, or someone who was angry and out for revenge and had already lied to you?”

It wasn’t the most perfect logical argument. I couldn’t know if a person had lied to me until that lie was exposed, but I knew in my heart Luc had always been truthful. And so I said, “You.”

“Then believe what I’m telling you. This, what we’re having, is a real relationship. You’re more than capable. You’re doing fine. Every couple,” he told me, “has moments that challenge them, but when you’re with the right person, a person who loves you, a person you love, you work through them together. Those others who left you, who hurt you, they weren’t the right men for you, that’s all. And just because
they
left, that doesn’t mean I will.” He gathered me closer, as though I were something of value. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I leaned against his chest and shut my eyes and sorted through what he’d just told me, trying to decide if he’d been speaking hypothetically or if he had just said he loved me.

I thought of what Denise had told me when she had explained about their marriage and divorce: “He deserves to be properly loved,” she had said. And I wanted to give him that, wanted to be the right person for
him
. Still with my eyes closed, I told Luc, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Easily, simply, with no hesitation.

He gently smoothed the tangled hair back from my forehead and I lifted my own hand to hold his there, to press it firmly to my eyes because it felt so comforting, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat strong and soothing at my temple where my face was resting on his shirt.

Recalling something else Denise had said about Luc’s family, I asked, “Was that why your mother took your brother to America to go to school? Because he has Asperger’s?”

“Yes, it wasn’t so well understood in France. The opportunities were better in America for Fabien to get the education that was suited to his way of learning. And he met his wife there, so it’s good he went.”

“He’s married?”

“Very happily.”

“With children?”

“Yes. Three daughters. Why?”

I hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t allowed for it in my own life, having long since resigned myself to the idea of being alone like the single computer that Jacqui’s psychologist author had used to explain how my mind was wired—one little Mac in an office of PCs, unable to fully connect. Incompatible. But when I tried to explain using this same analogy now to Luc, he pointed out, “But Macs can do things a PC can’t do. And in my office, Macs and PCs share the same network.”

“You’re not ever going to let me win an argument, are you?”

“Do you want to win this one?”

“I don’t know.” I suddenly felt very drowsy. “I don’t know what I want.” Then I thought for a moment and added, regretful, “I wanted to meet your brother.”

I felt Luc’s shrug. “He’s in Paris for two more days. We can try again tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow’s Thursday,” I reminded him. “You’ll be at work.”

“I have a very understanding boss. I’ll work from home. We’ll try again, same time. I won’t be late,” he promised.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll leave it up to you.” His hand felt warm against my forehead. Safe. “It’s your choice.”

I was half asleep already, sinking fast beneath the weight of the exhaustion that so often struck me after meltdowns. “My choice…”

He bent his head to mine again, and when he spoke it stirred my hair and sang within my ears above the restful rhythm of his heartbeat. “Always.”

The king of the world sits in his hall, and hears of his people’s flight.

—Macpherson, “Carthon”

Rome

April 22, 1732

It proved to be a difficult decision, choosing what to wear to meet the king. She knew it was ridiculous, with all she had encountered and endured, that such a silly detail now should hold her all but paralyzed, yet in the days they’d been in Rome it had become a problem. Both her winter gowns from Paris were too warm for such a climate, where by afternoon the hotness of the sun even so early in the season kept most people shuttered in their rooms and houses, and the scents of sun-warmed stone and brick and plaster fought the drifting perfumes of the hanging flowers, and the carriage horses by midafternoon stood drowsy-eyed in harness in the shade cast by the ancient buildings of the many squares—called by the people here
piazzas
—that were set like little beads within a lacy web of narrow, twisting streets.

Their piazza had a fountain, and a very ancient structure called the Pantheon, or sometimes the Rotunda, built to honor all the gods that had been prayed to in the old Rome of the Caesars, with a dome that Mary marveled at, so perfectly constructed that it stood without the benefit of buttresses. It had become a church now and there was but one God honored there, but Mary felt the weight of all the old forgotten gods still pressing round her in the shadows when she entered in that building, where the daylight and the moonlight shone by turns from a great open circle at the very center of the dome. She had a good view of the massive pillars of its portico and front from the tall window of their room in the hotel, where she was wont to lean each morning and again at evening, simply listening to all the splendid sounds of Rome and drinking in the sights.

And she was at that window now when Effie called to her.

Frisque barked, and Mary shushed him, lest the other guests of their hotel complain about the noise. Frisque had been out of sorts since their arrival here, and Mary had at first blamed it upon the warmer weather, but she’d seen him pacing round the room at night as if in search of something, and she now believed it was because he had grown used to having Hugh close by, and missed him. As did she.

Since the name
Symonds
had so clearly been discovered at Marseilles, their names had changed again, with papers Hugh had drawn from a compartment in his gun case before burning all the others. She was back to being Mr. Thomson’s sister, with their surname being… Well, it hardly mattered, Mary thought, for it would surely change again.

“Come try your gown,” said Effie from the cool and airily high-ceilinged room they shared. The room that Hugh and Thomson had was over theirs, up one more pair of stairs, and while she often heard them walking round she rarely saw them but at meals. She found it hard, having grown used to sharing nearly all her hours with Hugh, to have him now so separate from her, and to see him only in the company of others where she could not draw him into conversation nor enjoy his calm companionship without another person intervening.

With a sigh she turned and went to Effie.

“Now,” the older woman said, “I’ve done my best with it, but I’m no seamstress.”

They had found the gown by sheer good fortune, having gone in search of a mantua maker and stumbled upon one not many streets distant who had been about to reuse parts of this one in making another. It was somewhat plainer than her Paris gowns—not a new
robe
volant
but a simply cut bodice set over a closed skirt, and it had been torn at the seams in three places and missing its laces, but made of light silk in a pale frosted blue Mary found very calming.

A fine trade, she thought, for the plum-colored gown. And with Effie’s repairs and a length of new ivory silk ribbon to thread through the sides of the bodice across the plain stomacher, matching the trimmings of ivory lace showing around the low neckline and under the gathered sleeves from her fine linen chemise, Mary thought the effect very pretty.

“You’re sure you won’t come?” she asked Effie.

“I’ve seen the king often enough in my time. And who else would look after this bundle of mischief?” She nodded to Frisque. “He would ruin the room if ye left him alone in it. There now, that’s done. Not too tight at the elbows? Good. Then all ye need is your cap. Here, I’ve finished that too.”

She had crafted a new cap from one of her own, adding small bows she’d fashioned from scraps of silk ribbon that matched the frost blue of the gown.

Mary, keeping her head still while Effie adjusted the pins through the lace of the cap, felt a twinge of uncertainty. “What is he like, the king?”

Effie appeared to be sorting through words to describe him and settled on: “Kind.”

It wasn’t what Mary expected, but it eased her worries a little since she hoped to ask his assistance in finding her father. She’d thought, when they’d first arrived, she might just find him—that he would be easy to locate, but Rome was a crowded place, and while they’d waited for King James to make his reply to the letter that Thomson had sent to acquaint him with their arrival, she had not been at liberty to ask around in her own name, to learn where her father might lodge.

But in front of the king, she’d be able to be her own self.

Effie told her, “Now mind what I telt ye, about how to pay him your honors, and how ye should speak. Let me see how ye curtsy.”

For Mary, the long years rolled suddenly backwards and just for a moment she felt a small girl again.
Show
me
your
curtsy
, a woman’s voice spoke in her mind from a great distance, followed by praise.
There’s a clever wee lassie
.

She curtsied.

It satisfied Effie, who turned to rummage in the bottom of their portmanteau, and drew out something wrapped within a handkerchief. “I’ve had this,” she remarked, “since I was your age, when I lived at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which makes it near as ancient as that fountain ye keep staring at outside. So have a care when ye first use it or the dust might make ye sneeze.”

She took the lace fan Effie handed to her, and the voice stirred for a second time, in gentle warning:
Have
a
care, ye’ll raise the dust and make your mother cough.

She had to look away from Effie; fight the siren pull of shared experience.
I
used
to
live
at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
, she longed to say.
My
father
served
the
king
there
as
a
wig maker. Perhaps you knew him…?
But she’d grown too good at keeping secrets. She said nothing.

Till she spread the fan to open it, releasing a familiar scent that made her briefly close her eyes.

“What ails ye?”

“Nothing.” Mary shook her head. “It’s…lavender. My mother smelled of lavender.”

The curtains lifted on a breeze that carried to her ears the lovely dancing sound of water in the fountain at the heart of the piazza, its continual cascades forever falling to be gathered and borne upwards once again in sparkling mimicry of life.

The older woman reached a gentle hand to rearrange a curl of hair so it trailed artfully along the line of Mary’s neck. “Your memory’s playing tricks with ye. Your mother, rest her soul, used naught but rosewater. The lavender was mine.”

Mary stood silently a moment, not quite certain she had heard those few words properly, and then her eyes came open and she turned to meet the Highland woman’s gaze. “You were my nurse?”

A pause, as though a final threshold waited to be crossed, and one that seemingly could not be crossed with words, because instead of saying anything in answer, Effie nodded.

Mary’s eyes began to fill. “Oh, Effie.
That
is why you came? Because you…oh—” She broke off, bringing one hand quickly to her mouth in sudden pain. “And I forgot you! Effie, how could I forget you?” And uncaring of propriety, she flung herself at Effie in the same impulsive way she knew she must have done in childhood, when she had been hurt and wanted comfort.

Effie’s own arms folded round her, sturdy and yet tender, and she stood there rocking Mary as she might have soothed a baby.

Mary, clinging to the older woman, whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“Hush, now. Hush, there’s nae harm done. Of course ye’d not remember me, ye were a wee small thing. I never thought that ye’d remember me.”

“Then why?” asked Mary. “Effie, this was such an awful journey for you. Why would you agree to it, if I could not—?”

“Because,” said Effie, “when your brother found me—and that was no easy thing for him to do—and when he telt me he was sending ye to Paris and had need of one to watch ye, I knew well enough whose hand it was that sent him there.” She laid her hand on Mary’s hair. “God always gives us people for a reason, lass. He takes them from us too, but when He puts them in our path and gives them back to us again, we would be great fools not to realize that He means us to belong to them.”

* * *

She met Hugh’s eyes again across the confines of the coach and tried to smile, but could not. Partly because she had just now realized why the frost blue color of her gown had drawn her so compellingly—because it was the same shade as his eyes.

He wore new clothes as well, and they were like no clothes she had seen a man wear. His shirt and stock and cuffs were as they’d always been, but over them in place of his usual long coat he wore a short gray one with sleeves slashed to show strips of darkly green velvet, and one sword belt slung over that, from which his fine Scottish broadsword was hanging. And in place of a gentleman’s breeches he wore the Highland garment made of checkered wool in green shot through with white and red and gold, that had been wrapped and belted so it covered him from waist to knees and wound up over his left shoulder like a folded cloak, to freely fall and swing behind. His Highland dagger in its sheath hung at the front edge of his belt, as did a hanging pocket, and his legs to just below his knees were cased in stockings of a different checkered pattern, with his feet in buckled shoes.

If she had read those clothes described on paper she’d have thought that any man who wore them must look feminine, but Hugh MacPherson sitting with his strong legs bare looked more a man than Mr. Thomson did in proper breeches.

There was nowhere else to safely turn her gaze but to the lace fan she held folded in her hands. She would have hoped to see the streets through which they rattled and she had so wished to have a view of the king’s palace, having overheard it being highly praised by an Irish priest at their hotel who’d been talking at breakfast last week to another guest, one of his countrymen.

“I do confess,” so the priest had admitted, “’tis nowhere so impressive as his French palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, being not set apart in its own grounds or park, and the building itself is not nearly as large, but it yet has a fine situation, and shares the same Square of the Holy Apostles with the palace of that noble family of Colonna who are cousins to our king.” Moreover, so the priest had said, whatever the king’s palace here in Rome lacked in its outward beauty, it was very fine within. “There’s a grand courtyard and an even grander staircase, and the Chapel Royal where His Holiness our last pope did baptize the younger of the little princes. You should see it if you’re able,” he’d advised the other Irishman. “I’m told there are yet many people daily, even Englishmen, who come to pay their honors to the king.”

But those, thought Mary, like herself, who had to come in secret, must come also unobserved, which meant the coach was closed, its curtains drawn so none could peer inside and see them, and this meant they neither could see out.

She guessed when they had entered through the palace doors by how the sound of rolling wheels and clopping hooves began to echo closely, telling her they now had come into a passage. And she heard the swing and creak as heavy wooden doors were closed and barred behind them, as the coachman brought the horses to a halt.

Suddenly nervous, she raised her head and looked again at Hugh, and in his steady gaze found reassurance.

The coach door, when it opened, swung towards the unseen coachman who was holding it, and came to rest against the wall of the dim passage, serving as a screen of sorts to shield them from the eyes of any who might seek a view of these new visitors. And in the wall, another door now opened inward, to admit them to a secret stair. The man who held that door was evidently known to Hugh, for they shook hands in silence as they met each other. Once they were inside, the secret door was closed again, and Mary heard the coach wheels rumble onward down the passage and proceed through what was probably the courtyard.

The man who had met them appeared to be in his midthirties and carried himself like an officer. He said nothing to begin with, only led them up the narrow stairs and into a long gallery with tall grand windows and a vaulted ceiling that was decorated beautifully in intricate designs that fooled the eye. At the end of the gallery four narrow steps took them up into a private receiving room, where the high and rounded ceiling had been painted very cleverly to seem to be the sky, viewed through a realistic garden trellis with bright vines of tiny blue flowers trailing all round it, and Cupid-like
putti
at play in the leaves.

Here the man turned to face them and greeted Hugh in a more good-natured manner. “I see the clothes reached you. Lord Marischal hoped they would.”

“Aye. It was kind of His Lordship.”

“And you must be Thomson.” Not waiting to be introduced, the man held out his hand. “I am Captain Hay.”

The name appeared to register with Thomson, for he smiled in pleasure. “Not the famous Captain William Hay who once sailed in the navy of the late tsar in St. Petersburg? My brother is a merchant there. George Thomson. He speaks highly of you, Captain.”