Chapter Twenty-Five
“I escaped the Terror as a young woman,” Sidonie said, when they were all seated in her tiny front room.
Gabriel and Phoebe occupied a bench, Madame Brunet the only upholstered seat, which she’d turned away from the smoldering fire in the small grate, and Sidonie the one wooden chair at a table covered in sewing materials. Her work for Madame Brunet, presumably.
Phoebe slid her hand over to take Gabriel’s and he made no objection. In fact, his fingers clasped tightly around hers, like a those of a drowning man clutching a lifeline. They were so close together she could feel the tension in his body from head to foot.
“Most of we London French were also refugees,” Madame Brunet said, obviously impatient to discover more. “Get on with it.”
Sidonie leaned on the tabletop and clasped her hands.
“I was not an aristo, you must understand.” She gave a little shake of her head.
“Nothing like that. But my father, he was an official of the Crown, and it was not safe for us to remain in Paris. He sent me and my mother to England, but he himself stayed behind. He made the foolish mistake of thinking he could be of help.” She paused, her eyes clouding with tears.
“I heard later, from another émigré, that he lost his head on la guillotine. Like our king and queen.”
“You have never mentioned your parents to me,” Madame Brunet said.
Sidonie gave a shrug as though this were now of no matter.
“My mother died, shortly after we arrived here.” A single tear ran down her hollow cheek.
“We were alone and had no money, of course, so I could not buy her the medicines she needed. And when she was gone, I had nothing at all. J’étais toute seule.
I had to find work or I would have starved.
” Her voice trailed off. “Do not condemn me for what I have had to do in order to survive. You must understand that I was destitute.”
Phoebe shifted uncomfortably. What was Sidonie trying to say?
She had the vaguest of ideas, thanks to Mattie’s abundant and inappropriate knowledge, that sometimes men sought the companionship of women to whom they were not married and paid them for the pleasure.
Although quite what the pleasure was, she wasn’t sure. Was this what Sidonie had done?
“I was lucky. I met a gentleman who liked me very much,” Sidonie continued.
“He was very handsome and charming, and was most kind to me for over a year. Me, I was young and foolish and thought that perhaps he loved me. Then he told me he wanted me to do something for him in return for his kindness, and after that he would set me up in a house, with servants of my own and gowns and I would go into society with him, and everyone would believe I was an escaped aristo. He said ladies with French accents were accepted as having been aristos. I would be rich and safe and he would love me.”
“Foolish girl that you were,” Madame Brunet muttered, but her hard eyes had softened.
Phoebe glanced at Gabriel. He had his eyes fixed on Sidonie and she could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “Go on,” she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.
Sidonie nodded. She appeared calm, but the clasping and unclasping of her hands in her lap gave away her own tension.
“I was truly a foolish, hopeful girl, and I believed myself to be in love, and that he returned my love. I would have done anything for my milord.” She wetted her lips.
“He told me I was to apply for the position of nursemaid in a grand house, and I would be put in charge of a baby.”
Phoebe couldn’t help the gasp of shock. She looked at Gabriel, but he appeared not to have understood the significance of this information.
It had not been lost on her. A grand house.
A baby with a nursemaid in a grand house.
That had to have been him. And if so, he was not gutter born.
She wanted to jump up and down and clap her hands, but she stayed silent. They needed the rest of the story.
Sidonie coughed. “I did as my milord said. I was taken on as nursemaid by a grand milord and milady. She was a very beautiful milady, and he was even more handsome than my milord. She had hair the color of ripe corn, although she hid it under powder some of the time, as was the fashion in those days. They both very much loved their little golden-haired baby boy.”
She looked up from her hands, meeting Gabriel’s eyes. “She had beautiful blue eyes, just like yours, m’sieur.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as though he were choking back his emotions, and Phoebe tightened her grip on his hand.
“Don’t stop,” Madame Brunet said, breathless with anticipation. “What happened next? I am thinking he must have been the baby you handed over to some stranger, you wicked woman.” She had fixed Sidonie with a heavy frown.
Sidonie, impervious to her employer’s disapproval, nodded.
“He was. But you leap ahead. I must tell it from the start. That little boy, he was their only child. The milord, I did not know him well, but he was much as you are.” Again she looked at Gabriel.
“You remind me of him very much.” For a long moment she stared at him, as though transfixed.
“Go on,” Madame Brunet grumbled.
Sidonie swallowed. “The handsome milord, he was set upon one night by footpads when he was returning to their grand house. They robbed and killed him with their knives. The milady was distraught. She could not be comforted and refused to leave her chamber, even her little son unable to bestir her.” She licked her lips.
“And then my own milord told me what my true task was.” She stopped, one hand coming up to wipe another tear from her eye.
“He told me I was to take the baby and we would demand a ransom for his return, for he was an important baby and his rich mother would pay much money to get him back safely.”
Gabriel’s hand gripped Phoebe’s so tightly now she thought he might break the bones.
“And you did it?” she asked, anger rising in her heart, and unable to keep the accusation out of her voice. “You stole that poor lady’s baby while she was mourning for her murdered husband?”
Sidonie hung her head. “I did, milady. I can offer no excuses. I did it for love of my milord, for I believed what he’d told me, that we would get much money and use it to buy me a house and gowns and he would always love me.
” She paused. “He could not marry me, you see, because he already had a wife.”
“But what were you running from in Soho Square?” Phoebe asked.
Sidonie heaved a deep sigh and pressed her lips together. “He lied to me.” Her words fell heavily on the silent room.
“Men always lie,” observed Madame Brunet. “It is in their nature.”
“What was the lie?” Phoebe asked.
“He had no intention of ransoming the baby. He ordered his men to kill the child.”
Gabriel started as though in shock and spoke for the first time, his voice hoarse. “Someone wanted to kill me when I was just a baby?”
Sidonie nodded. “I overheard them talking. I’d had care of the baby for months, and he was a sweet-natured, easy child.
He was a little, defenseless baby. Naturally, I’d come to love him.
I couldn’t stand by and watch someone kill him, even if it was at the order of my lover.
” She paused and licked her chapped lips.
“And it caused me to see him for what he was. An evil man who had lured me into his trap only so he could kill a little baby. A man who could do such a deed I could never love. So I ran.” She glanced at Gabriel, whose brows had lowered into a furious scowl.
“My hope was to find my way back to the milady and return her baby to her. To leave him at the kitchen door of the big house where the servants would find him. But I was followed, and I didn’t have the chance. ”
“You were fleeing from him and his men when you met the duchess?” Phoebe asked.
Sidonie nodded. “The fine lady with the carriage was a duchess?”
It was suddenly clear in Phoebe’s mind as she nodded in reply. “You refused her offer to help both of you because you feared punishment for having taken the child from his real mother. For having taken Gabriel.”
Sidonie nodded again. “I did. But I could see God had put this kind lady and her carriage in my way on purpose. I put the baby in her arms and asked her to take care of him. I knew she would. And I ran.” The ghost of a smile showed on her face.
“I could run much faster by myself, and I could hide in the shadows where no one could see me without fear of a cry from the baby giving me away. They didn’t catch me. ”
“What about your milord?” Phoebe asked. “Did you go back to him?”
Sidonie shook her head with vehemence. “I did not. As I said, I knew him now as a man who wished to kill a little baby. I could not love him after that. He is as bad as the pigs in France who cut off the heads of our king and queen and my father and all those other people. They let the little dauphin starve to death. He is like them, a man who could kill a child. I wished never to see him again. I could not be with him, ever.”
Well, that was one thing in her favor. Phoebe had been growing increasingly worried as the disclosures mounted up, but this woman was nowhere near as sinister as she’d first thought.
She’d saved Gabriel’s life, and for that she must never be pilloried.
She wasn’t quite sure Gabriel would feel the same way, though.
She had, after all, deprived him of his real mother.
He shifted beside her, sitting up straighter and leaning forwards. But he still held onto her hand. “So, who were my real parents?”
Phoebe stiffened. The important, loaded question.
He fixed Sidonie with a gaze that could only be described as hopeful. “What is the name of the family you worked for? The family from whom you stole their only child. From whom you stole me.” His tone was accusing.
Sidonie shrank into herself. “Votre papa, he was the Earl of Mandeville, your mother his countess.”