So In Love Page 23

  “In God?”

  “In yourself,” Jeanne said firmly.

  She thought about this for a moment. “Do you ever think of your mother, Miss du Marchand?”

  The question was so unexpected that Jeanne hesitated. “Very often,” she said. “Especially when I need advice. I wonder what she would tell me. Sometimes I think I can hear her in my mind.”

  Margaret nodded. She leaned back her head and stared up at the branches of the tree. “I think of my mother so often that I just know she’s near me.” She glanced at Jeanne. “Is that a bad thing, do you think, to believe in angels?”

  Jeanne shook her head. “I cannot think so. But then, I’m not an expert on theology. Have you asked your father?”

  Margaret shook her head. “Papa says he doesn’t mind talking about her, but I can tell it makes him sad.”

  She shouldn’t ask, but then she shouldn’t have done a great many things concerning Douglas MacRae. “Do you remember her?”

  Again Margaret shook her head. “No. She died at my birth. It’s a very strange feeling, causing your mother’s death.”

  “You did not cause it, Margaret,” Jeanne said, reaching out and cupping her palm gently against the child’s cheek. “It simply happened, that’s all,” she said softly. “One had nothing to do with the other.” Sometimes a lie was more palatable than the truth.

  “That’s just what Papa says, Miss du Marchand. Whenever he tells me the story of how they met I think he must still love her. His voice gets very low and soft.”

  Jeanne busied herself in putting back the luncheon items into the basket, trying not to feel the pain Margaret’s words evoked. An inner voice—wisdom or conscience—warned her not to continue, but she disregarded it.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Like a princess, Papa said. She was French, like you, Miss du Marchand.”

  There, payment for her curiosity.

  Margaret was younger than her own child would have been, which meant that Douglas had not lost any time finding another woman to love. A woman who probably still lived in his heart. Why else did he only mention her cryptically and in passing?

  How long had he waited? A few months? A year? Was that why he’d never come for her? He’d been in love with someone else by then, and she was only an afterthought. A faint memory. Oh, yes, Jeanne du Marchand. What a silly girl to think herself in love.

  There, that was the reason to hate him, a way to diffuse the love that was growing stronger every day. How horrible that it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Sometimes,” Margaret said, sitting back against the base of the tree, “I want to talk to her so very much.” She looked at Jeanne. “I want to ask her if she ever misses me as much as I miss her. Do you think an angel ever remembers what it’s like to be a person?”

  Jeanne glanced at the young girl, seeing the pain in Margaret’s eyes and remembering her own. Reaching over, she placed her hand on the girl’s knee. “I think they must remember very clearly,” she said, recalling only too well her feelings of abandonment when her own mother died. “I know that she must miss you very much.”

  “Do you truly think so?”

  Jeanne nodded.

  “Papa has this material at his warehouse. It comes from India and is white and gauzy with sparkles in it. It looks as if it might be made from angel wings.” She smiled, her expression somewhat brighter, Jeanne was pleased to see. “Perhaps you’ll see it tomorrow.”

  “The warehouse seems like a very profitable venture,” Jeanne said, grateful that Margaret had changed the subject. She didn’t truly wish to hear any more of angels and women who made Douglas sad even now.

  How horrible to be jealous of a dead woman.

  “Oh, it is. I overheard my Aunt Iseabal say that Papa was the most marriageable man in Edinburgh. Do you think that’s true?”

  They had gone from one unpalatable subject to another, it seemed.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said, standing.

  Jeanne smoothed out the material she had clenched between her fists, decided that she truly could not bear any more talk of Margaret’s mother or other women. Nevertheless, she found herself asking yet another question about her. “Are you named for her? For your mother, I mean?”

  Margaret shook her head. “No, I’m named for my Aunt Mary. Her middle name is Margaret, too. My first name is too difficult for most people. It’s Mireille.”

  “That’s French for miracle,” Jeanne said, surprised.

  Margaret nodded. “Isn’t that the prettiest name? Papa said it’s because I was a miracle.” She stood and brushed down her skirt. “I nearly died when I was a baby, you see. I wasn’t supposed to live. But I did, and that’s why they named me Miracle.”

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Jeanne said. And Margaret was a charming child. There was no doubt that she was loved, and that Douglas was a fond and affectionate father.

  She shouldn’t feel the bite of envy, or the peppering of tears. Such emotions were foolish, as was the wish that her own child might have lived. Regret would only poison the day.

  Chapter 25

  D ouglas had never thought himself a man needing to bolster his confidence by boasting, but he found himself ordering his best barouche to be readied. Ever since Jeanne had sent him a carefully worded note, he’d been preparing for this outing. The journey to his warehouse was neither a difficult nor a long one, and could easily have been accomplished in a lesser carriage. But he wanted to impress her, only one symptom of losing his mind.

  He had found reasons to go to the schoolroom often. A precaution, he told himself—as a girl, she’d turned her back on Margaret. But the governess seemed to genuinely care for her young charge.

  The two sides of her character were not easily fit together, and he had some bad moments attempting to do so.

  It was as if she knew, somehow, that every word she said and every act she performed was measured against a memory. The Jeanne of his youth in many ways matched with the woman she had become now. But there was still something wrong, and that disparity was keeping him awake at night.

  Who was Jeanne du Marchand?

  The girl he remembered had wanted to know everything. She was genuinely curious about his studies, and they argued vociferously about certain points of Immanuel Kant and other philosophers, finding themselves equally matched in education and intelligence. This Jeanne was more circumspect but just as curious. He’d discovered that she’d borrowed several books from his library, subjects that he found himself wanting to debate with her.

  The younger Jeanne had loved with abandon, and so did this woman, shrouded as she was in mystery and an almost palpable aura of sorrow.

  At times, though not often enough, this woman had the same tilted sense of humor, seeing the ridiculous and glorying in the absurd, not unlike the girl she’d been.

  The discordance came when he attempted to understand her actions. Once, he’d thought her heartless and uncaring, but now he could see the warmth and gentleness she evinced when she taught Margaret. She’d been as nurturing with Hartley’s child, he remembered.

  Then what had happened ten years ago? Had he been wrong all this time? The longer he spent in her presence, the more questions were unearthed, until Douglas wasn’t entirely certain what the truth was.

  He gave them a quarter hour, consulting his pocket watch from time to time and pacing in front of his house. The day was a fine one, the air warm out of the north, the breeze such that he could almost imagine himself far from Edinburgh and its thickly populated streets.

  Hearing a sound, he turned to find Margaret racing down the steps, a bright and expectant smile on her face. A surge of love overwhelmed him and he opened up his arms. She jumped into them, just as she had since the time she learned to walk.

  “One day you’ll get too big for this, Meggie,” he said, knowing that he should expect much more decorous behavior from her. But there was time enough for growing up, a hundred years from now when he could bear
the thought of losing her to adulthood.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “Sometimes,” she said, sighing, “I think I’ll never grow up.”

  “Do not hasten the years, I beg you, Meggie,” he teased. “I do not wish to be acquainted with the prospect of old age quite yet.”

  She tilted her head much like an inquisitive bird. “You shall always be the most handsome man in the world, Papa, even with white hair and a beard trailing down to the floor.”

  He laughed, wondering when she’d become so adept at flattery. “You are hinting at something, I think,” he said, settling her on the step. “Could it be because it’s your birthday soon?”

  Mary had chosen her birth date, both of them uncertain exactly when she was born. With a touch of irony, he realized that the woman standing there so silent and demure was the one person who knew the correct date.

  “How old will you be, Margaret?” Jeanne asked. “Ten?”

  Margaret only giggled. He studied Jeanne as she smiled down at his daughter, and wondered why she couldn’t see what was so obvious. Reaching out her hand, she brushed her fingers over Margaret’s shoulder. A telling movement, an almost protective gesture.

  Surprisingly, it infuriated him.

  He speared a hand through his hair and told himself that he was being an idiot. He should be pleased at Jeanne’s show of affection, and her solicitousness toward Margaret. Instead, he wanted to go to ask her why it had taken her so long to feel protective about her daughter. Why had she never done so before? Why had she nearly killed her?

  She was the only person in the world who could push him past the boundaries of his restraint. She had that power when she was a girl, and she still retained it. Perhaps that’s why he was suddenly enraged.

  He was not some poor dumb beast to be led to the slaughter. But he was acting the besotted fool, vacillating between lust and irritation. Entering the carriage, he sat with his back to the horses, surveying the two of them.

  Anyone would know, seeing them, that they were related. Although Margaret looked more like his side of the family, she had gestures that reminded him of Jeanne, a quick upturn of her chin, a bright white infectious grin, and a laugh that was strangely echoing of her mother’s.

  Sometimes he thought Jeanne was willfully blind to her own child.

  He frowned at her but she didn’t look in his direction. She had never, until a few nights ago, discussed the past. Nor had she once mentioned the child she had carried. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, if she was ever awakened with nightmares like Margaret. Did she ever feel the pinch of her conscience? Did she never once wish that she had acted differently, with more regard, with more compassion? With more charity?

  “What are we going to see, Papa?”

  “You’ll have to be patient,” he said, forcing a smile to his face.

  She turned to Jeanne. “The last time I went, there were these beautiful carved masks, Miss du Marchand. And balls that sounded like the wind when you shook them.”

  “I believe they had sand in them,” Douglas contributed.

  “There are skins from lions and tigers, and great tusks from elephants. But you must take care, Miss du Marchand, never to get lost,” she said, repeating the very instructions he had given her on her first visit to the warehouse. She had been five, he recalled, and overwhelmed with the sheer size of the buildings. Now, however, she knew every single nook and cranny of them.

  The sound of the horses’ hooves on the cobbles was oddly loud. There wasn’t that much traffic in this part of the city. They traveled west on Princess Street, the thoroughfare seeming unbalanced because there were buildings only on the south side, giving the residents an unfettered view of Edinburgh castle.

  New Town was comprised of straight streets, crescents, and squares, carefully planned in order to provide spacious surroundings for the more affluent of Edinburgh’s inhabitants. Those who could not afford the Palladian structures lived in the narrow streets and closes of Old Town to the southeast.

  As he watched, Jeanne smiled at something Margaret said and pointed to Edinburgh Castle nestled on the hill above the city. He didn’t hear her words, but it was no doubt some bit of lore or legend she imparted. Her eyes were lively now, and her smile quick. No mystery surrounded her, no sadness. The role of governess fit her well enough, while that of mother had, no doubt, proven too difficult.

  The more he knew about her, the more confused he became.

  Chapter 26

  L eith was Edinburgh’s seaport, a bustling scene of both oceangoing and coastal vessels. The MacRae docks took up a sizable portion of the harbor, and today a series of ships sat ready to be offloaded. Nearby, the warehouses had MACRAE BROTHERS painted on the roofs in black letters large enough that they could be seen for miles.

  There was no doubt that the MacRaes were a presence in Leith and the whole of Scotland.

  The newest goods were stored in the far warehouse to the right. Fifty-seven clerks employed by MacRae Brothers worked in the building to the left. The middle structure was set aside for sorting the offloaded cargo. Some items would be stored and other merchandise would be delivered to shopkeepers and individuals who had pre-ordered it. The most precious freight, including gold bars and silver ingots, was kept locked in the vault in Douglas’s second-floor office.

  Douglas had always believed that the success of MacRae Brothers was based, in large part, on the seventy-odd men who worked for him. Each individual, Douglas believed, wanted two things in his life—some measure of contentment and his freedom. He provided a portion of the former by providing a decent wage for a decent day’s work.

  Once, he’d thought that sailing with Hamish had taught him the lessons he’d needed to know about men and life. But the last six years had become a schoolroom for him, and his establishment of MacRae Brothers a daily lesson. The Edinburgh community had looked on some of his ideas with surprise and occasionally some criticism.

  When a man was experiencing financial hardship, Douglas felt he should offer a helping hand. After learning of a man’s loss of his home, Douglas had established an emergency fund available to any man in his employ who needed it. Surprisingly, it was rarely touched except in cases of extreme hardship.

  Additionally, Douglas began a rotating schedule, making it possible for a man to earn a day’s pay without working from dawn to dusk. An employee could choose his own hours within a certain framework of time. Sundays were always holidays, and if a ship arrived, it waited to be offloaded until the next working day.

  He gave a man time off when a child was born or a loved one ill, innovations that were not replicated elsewhere in Edinburgh or Leith. He attended every wedding, funeral, and christening for family members, and had been named the godparent of nine children in the last six years.

  The changes he’d instituted had not only led to a stable work force but a feeling that MacRae Brothers was a large and friendly family. Men did not leave his company, and when there were positions posted, it was normal for a hundred men or more to apply.

  The barouche halted in front of the middle building. Douglas exited the carriage first, followed by an impatient Margaret and, lastly, Jeanne. He held out his hand to help her from the carriage, and she laid her gloved fingers upon it. He could feel the heat of her hand through the linen and wondered if the rest of her was as fevered to the touch. Paradoxically, he was glad she’d dressed with such restraint today, and yet wished she had not. Not one button was undone, not one tress of hair loose. Even the ribbon of her bonnet was tied with a tight little knot beneath her chin.

  A proper woman, past the first blush of youth, perhaps. But a woman with knowledge in her eyes, wisdom, and other emotions that he couldn’t decipher. She was a mystery, a riddle, and an irritant.

  They shared a look and then she withdrew her fingers. Not quickly as if she were offended, but one by one, drawing them across his palm in an almost taunting gesture.

  He squeezed t
he tips of her fingers, noting her quick look of surprise. Her gaze dropped, shielding her eyes from him. Only the sudden bloom of color on her pale cheeks revealed her reaction.

  Releasing her hand, he stepped back, turning and leading the way.

  Margaret, however, had another idea. She tucked her hand into his, and then grabbed Jeanne’s until they walked three abreast. The fact that Margaret linked the two of them disturbed him on an elemental level. His daughter, unknowing, was replicating the truth.

  Of the three of them, Margaret was the only innocent. She held nothing back, revealing to the world a lexicon of emotions. When she was excited, enthusiastic, or joyful everyone knew it. Nor was she shy about letting anyone know she was in pain or hurt, whether it be a physical ailment or an ache of the heart. He never wanted to dampen that great joy she felt about life, nor did he want to force her into hiding her emotions like her mother so ably did.

  The convent had done that to Jeanne, or perhaps life itself. He’d never asked her about those days and now he wondered if she would have told him. There was a reticence to Jeanne that his curiosity couldn’t shatter.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” a man called out from a booth in front of the center warehouse. Douglas approached him, smiling.

  “Good morning, Jim.”

  The man who greeted him had a tanned face filled with wrinkles and neatly queued white hair. His bearing was that of a much younger man, with level shoulders and a ramrod-straight back. Jim was proud of his military past, having served for many years in one of the Highland regiments.

  “Good morning, Miss Margaret,” the older man said. “Have you come to see the new goods?”

  “I have, Mr. McManus,” she said, slipping her hand from Douglas’s grip and waving to him. “This is my governess, Miss du Marchand.” She pointed toward the dock. “Is that The Sherbourne Lass?”

  Jim tipped his hat to Jeanne, and then turned to answer Margaret. “It is, miss. Came in a few hours ago.”