Chapter 17

17

Sophie sat frozen in shock. At length she gathered together her scattered wits and said in as steady a voice as she could manage, ‘How can you possibly know this?’

‘My dear child,’ said the Dowager with a sad little smile. ‘I knew your great-grandmother Adele so very well – we were contemporaries. Rivals, for the King’s affections, though it seems foolish now, when she is long dead and so is he. I remember when she married de Montfaucon, and when your grandfather was born, and your father. I knew your mother’s family intimately too. She was a distant cousin of mine, in fact. I forget what happened last week, probably because very little did, but I can remember very clearly what happened eighty years ago. I can see bright pictures in my mind, as vivid as you sitting here before me. You have a great look of Adele about you; I could not possibly mistake it. Even with that ridiculous hair you have dyed to try to make yourself look ordinary. You are not ordinary in the least.’

Sophie – Clemence, as she had not been for eight years – found herself perilously close to tears. ‘I did not know,’ she said. ‘That I resembled her so greatly, I mean. There is no one left to tell me such things. They are all dead. Every one of them.’

‘I am so sorry,’ Delphine said with a little difficulty. ‘For everything. I did try to find you – you, and Marie-Claude, and your brother. As soon as I saw the Stella Rosa around that woman’s neck, where it had no business to be, as soon as I heard what had happened to your poor father, I realised that you must be in terrible trouble. I sent people to look for you, but it was too late. They had both died, and you had disappeared. No one could find you. I did try, Clemence. Please believe me.’

She had not heard her mother’s name spoken in eight years. That, and the knowledge that someone had cared enough in that desperate time to seek her family out, to try to help them, broke down the last of her defences, and she sobbed, deep racking sobs that shook her whole body, as she had not done for so many long years. She cried until she thought she had no tears left. But even as she wept, she refused to dwell on how different her life might have been, if the Dowager had come a little sooner and saved her. That would do her no good now, and she could not afford to indulge this weakness for long. The rescue that had come had been of a very different nature, and she had become the person she was now because of it. At length she took out her handkerchief and dried her tears with resolution, then said a little unsteadily, ‘You do not think, now that you know all this, to ask me why I am here, and why I have deceived you?’

‘You have not deceived me. Not for more than a minute or so. I was very glad to see you – nothing has made me so happy for a long, long time. I had thought you must surely be dead, and perhaps that your life had been one of such suffering that death came as a release. And as for why you are here, I think I know. There can only be one reason. Revenge. I must presume you plan to take the Stella back.’

‘That and more,’ Sophie said with a mirthless little laugh. ‘I will take everything I can, and it still will not be enough to punish him as he deserves to be punished. But you will not give me up? Tell your son, or his wife, of what I mean to do?’

‘I tell that man nothing!’ Delphine said with sudden heat. ‘If a pit opened up at his feet and I saw he was about to fall into it, I would not say a word. To give him power to hurt another person when he has already hurt so many is the last thing I would do while I have breath in my body. And as for her…’ The Dowager made the explosive sound that is usually transcribed as, ‘Bah!’

‘And you do not want to ask me where I have been, how I have been living?’

‘Do you wish to tell me?’

‘I do not.’ It was the last thing she desired.

‘Then I would not dream of enquiring. However you have lived, whatever you have had to do, I do not wish to know. It is not my affair; I am merely glad that you have survived, and are here now. Understand me, child: I do not care what you intend to do for your revenge. I’d rather you didn’t burn the house down with me and the servants in it, but beyond that… What can you do to Wyverne that he has not deserved of you?’

‘You really mean that?’

‘With all my heart. There are people I care for in this world still, my oldest grandson chief among them, but he is not one of them. He is a monster. And that is why,’ she said, leaning forward, wincing with effort, and fixing her companion with an intense gaze, ‘you must be very, very careful.’

‘I am not without resources,’ Sophie replied with an attempt to recover her dignity, shaken by the old lady’s words but determined not to show it. She had come too far to be frightened now. She was not a helpless ingenue any longer; that girl was dead. She was not Clemence de Montfaucon – she was Sophie Delavallois.

‘I hope that is true. I hope you do have resources, for you will need all of them. I hope you succeed in your aims, as long as no one innocent will be hurt by them. I would cheer you on with a clear conscience, if it were not that I am terribly afraid for you. When I tell you that that man…’ Sophie noticed now that she would rarely refer to Lord Wyverne as her son; he must have a first name, which this woman and her husband had given him when he lay in his cradle, but she had never used that in Sophie’s hearing either. ‘When I say that he is a monster, it is no exaggeration, no figure of speech. I do not know if you are aware exactly what he did to your father – how precisely he gained possession of the Stella…’

‘I do know,’ she broke in. ‘I overheard everything, every horrible word. What he had threatened to say about me, and about my father and my mother. All of it, and I heard Papa crying like a little child, which I had never heard before in my life, and Maman’s terrified protests as she begged him no, and the shot that killed him, and her screams.’ She could hear it all now, as if it had been yesterday, ringing in her ears.

‘So you know then,’ Delphine said heavily. ‘You know exactly what he’s capable of. How far he will go. I suppose it is no use begging you to think again, to walk away from this and make a new life, with my help? I would hate to lose you now I have so unexpectedly found you, but for your own sake, my dear Clemence, will you not give it up? Can you not let his fate find him, as we must hope it will, can you not let a thousand devils come and drag him down to hell where he belongs, without taking a hand in it yourself and putting yourself at risk?’

‘I can’t. I almost wish I could, for your sake, madame, but I simply can’t. You must understand why.’

The old lady sighed. ‘I do. Of course I do. Well then, I can say little more. I cannot give you my blessing – my fears for you if you take this dangerous course of action will not let me put that on my conscience along with all the other sins that lie heavy there – but I hope that you succeed in your purpose, and that your success brings you peace, and safety.’

‘I don’t expect peace. I’m not sure anyone or anything can give me that. But thank you.’

The Dowager shook her head. ‘Don’t thank me. You owe me no thanks, alas, for though I wished to help you eight years ago I did not. Be safe. That’s all I ask of you. Be very careful, be safe. Survive this. Don’t let him destroy you too.’