Chapter 21
That morning, when it was still far too early for a gentlewoman to make a formal call on a young woman she barely knew, Hero took the embroidered reticule out to the rue du Champs du Repos to ask the chatelaine if she recognized it and to seek her assistance in selecting the clothes for Sophie’s funeral.
Hero had visited the maison with Sebastian not long after they’d arrived in Paris. That day had been dark and brooding, with heavy clouds that hovered like an oppressive presence over the landscape. But today Sophie’s elegant little hôtel particulier was bathed in glorious sunshine. The sky was a clear cornflower blue, the limestone walls glowed a tawny gold in the rich light, and the elms that framed the gray slate roof were bursting with fresh green leaves. As the carriage drew up in the graveled forecourt and the iron gates clanged shut behind them, the beauty of the place took Hero’s breath.
And then she felt a heavy weight of sadness settle over her, knowing on this morning so overflowing with new life that the woman who had made this place her home would never see it again.
She found Madame Dion clad all in black and looking older than she remembered her, her face drawn and tight with grief, her flesh a worrisome gray. Seeing her, Hero felt reluctant to bring up the reticule for fear of adding to the woman’s distress. But the chatelaine forestalled her by noticing it in Hero’s hands and saying, “Ah, you have madame’s reticule.”
“You recognize it?” said Hero, holding it out to her.
“Mais oui,” said the chatelaine, taking it in her own hands. Her lips trembled as she ran her fingertips over the exquisite peacock embroidery. “It’s Dama Cappello’s work. She was carrying it that night.”
“The mirror is hers, as well?”
“Yes, yes. Where did you find them?”
“Near the Pont Neuf. Is there anything missing?”
The Frenchwoman inspected the contents, her eyes narrowing as she felt the weight of the purse. “Not to my knowledge, no. I take it she was not set upon by thieves?”
“No.”
“Then why?” The aged face contorted with a spasm of anguish and grief. “Why was she killed?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Hero gently. “You haven’t been able to think of anything—anything at all—that might explain what happened?”
“No. It makes no sense. No sense whatsoever.”
After that, with the chatelaine’s help, Hero chose a high-waisted cranberry silk gown with long, close sleeves and a simple pleated bodice, which Madame Dion said had been one of Sophia’s favorites, along with a pair of silk slippers embroidered with little freshwater pearls and a delicate lace cap.
“And I think she would want to be buried with these,” said the Frenchwoman, laying an amethyst-and-silver rosary atop the selected gown.
Hero looked up in surprise. “She’d become a Catholic?”
A faint smile touched the older woman’s lips. “Of a sort. I think she took from the religion what she could believe and what she found comforting, and simply ignored the rest. Father Paul is very accommodating in that way.”
“Father Paul?”
“The priest at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.”
Hero remembered seeing the ruins in a nearby lane. “I thought the church was destroyed during the Revolution.”
“Much of it was. But Father Paul still uses one of the chapels for mass.” Madame Dion hesitated, then said, “There will be a funeral mass, yes? I think she would have wanted that.”
Hero reached for the rosary, the faceted semiprecious stones catching the sunlight like a cascade of prisms as she turned it in her hand. “If that’s what she would have wanted, then yes. Of course.”
The Frenchwoman nodded, then held out a silver-framed ivory miniature. “And unless his lordship would prefer to keep it, I think she would have liked to be buried with this, as well.”
Hero found herself looking at a miniature portrait of four children: Sebastian, aged perhaps six or seven; a haughty, angry-looking young woman of eighteen or nineteen who could have only been Amanda; and two unfamiliar half-grown lads, Cecil and Richard.
“Her children,” said Hero softly, startled to feel the sting of threatening tears.
“Yes. She kept it always beside her bed.”
Something about the way she said it made Hero look up. “You have children?”
“I had three.” The woman paused, then added, “Once.”
Once.
“I’m sorry,” said Hero.
Madame Dion shook her head. “Don’t be. They brought me much joy while they lived, and now that I am old, the memories of them bring me a certain kind of comfort. My firstborn daughter died in childbirth, taking her infant son with her. Her little sister died of the flux when she was quite small, and my son . . .”
She paused, her throat working dryly, and it was a moment before she could go on. “My son died in Russia. At least, that’s what they told me. And he was not amongst the prisoners who’ve found their way back to France since the peace, so I suppose it must be true.”
“What was his name?” asked Hero.
“Leo. Colonel Leo Dion.”
The serene expression on the Frenchwoman’s face mystified Hero. If Simon had disappeared into the frozen wasteland of Russia, Hero knew she would never stop raging against God, fate, and the arrogant, ambitious Emperor who’d led him to his death.
“I’m sorry,” Hero said again, because what else, really, was there to say? She wondered what had happened to this woman’s husband, or if there’d been other grandchildren who, perhaps, still lived. She hoped there were other grandchildren.
But she doubted it.
Afterward, Hero found herself restlessly wandering the quiet rooms of the maison, her thoughts on the beautiful, enigmatic, intrepid woman who had been Sebastian’s mother.
It wasn’t easy to move beyond the resentment Hero had long harbored against Sophia Hendon for the deep and lasting pain she had caused the man Hero loved. And yet a part of her could understand the suffocating misery that had driven Sophie all those years ago, the desperation with which she had reached for a better life. Could Hero forgive her for abandoning her own child? No. But it was impossible not to admire the woman for shrugging her shoulders at the rules and restrictions of her world, for braving the unknown, for flouting the social conventions and moralistic censure of zealots such as Marie-Thérèse to live with the man she loved. And as she paused at the entrance to the library, Hero had to admit that a part of her also envied Sophie. Hero might defy conventions by pursuing the kind of education normally considered suitable only for a man, by writing her articles and speaking her mind. But she had always been very careful not to cross the boundaries that Sophie had simply laughed at.
Hero hadn’t seen this room on her previous visit to the house, and she was struck now by how lovely it was, with its stately Empire-style mahogany desk and built-in dark oak bookcases trimmed with fluted columns and arched moldings and filled with books. So many books. And she felt her heart swell again with sadness for the meeting between mother and son that would never be, for all that Sophie and Sebastian, too, had lost.
She was turning away when she noticed the portrait over the mantel.
She stood perfectly still, staring at it. She was painfully aware of the tick of the ormolu clock on a nearby console table, of the rasp of her own breath sawing in and out. She didn’t know how long she stood there before she realized that Madame Dion had come up beside her and was watching her.
“You see the resemblance, too, eh?” said the Frenchwoman, her expression giving nothing away.
“Who is he?”
“Why, Marshal Alexandre McClellan, of course.”
Oh, Sebastian, thought Hero, staring at that familiar pair of uncanny yellow eyes. So that’s what you haven’t been able to bring yourself to talk about.