Remembered (2 page)

My little one
.

Christophe’s use of his childhood name for her encouraged Véronique to draw herself to her full height. But barely brushing five-foot-three, she hardly made for an intimidating figure and knew full well she looked far more like a girl of eighteen than a woman of thirty. Her mother had often told her she would one day be thankful for such youthfulness. That day had yet to dawn.

Christophe motioned in the direction of the street. “I’ve come to escort you home. Lord Marchand has requested a meeting with all members of the household staff.” He took a breath as if to continue, then hesitated. The lines around his eyes grew deeper.

Véronique studied him, sensing there was more. “Is something amiss, Christophe?”

This time the quirk in his brow didn’t appear fully genuine. “Be thankful I came to retrieve you,
ma petite
. Dr. Claude volunteered to come in my place—that
racaille—
but I would not abide it.”

She grimaced at the mention of Dr. Claude’s intent.

“You must watch yourself around him, Véronique. Though I have overheard nothing absolute, I believe he deems himself worthy of your hand and has spoken with Lord Marchand about pursuing it.”

Véronique pictured Dr. Claude, the personal physician to the Marchand
famille
. “Of his worth there is no doubt, and his rank and situation are far above my own. But—” she made a face—“he is so old and his breath is always stale.”

Christophe laughed. “Fifty may be older, yes, but it hardly portends impending death,
ma chérie
.” He shook his head. “Always such honesty, Véronique. An admirable quality, but one that will get you into much trouble if not balanced with good sense.”

She let her mouth fall open. “I have perfectly good sense, and while you’ve always warned me against being too honest, my dear
maman
—may she rest in peace—always said that giving a right, or honest, answer resembles giving a kiss on the lips.”

He smiled. “When the answer is one you’re seeking, no doubt it is just that.” He held up a hand when she started to reply. “But let me say this—if your dear
maman
held any belief that contrasts one of my own, I will instantly resign mine and adopt hers without exception.” His gaze shifted to her mother’s grave. “For she was a saint among women.”

He stepped past Véronique and knelt. Laying a hand on the tomb, near the white rose, he bowed his head.

Véronique watched, knowing the depths of his affection for her mother. She knelt beside him and ran her hand across the cool, smooth stone. Her mother had died slowly. Too slowly in one sense, too quickly in another.

Arianne Elisabeth Girard had suffered much, and there were many nights when, in a fitful laudanum-induced sleep, she had begged God to take her and be done with it. For a time, Véronique had begged God
not
to grant her mother’s wish. How selfish a request that had been.

But no more selfish than what her
maman
had asked of her in that final hour.

It had been unfair and carried much too great a cost. Her mother would have realized that under ordinary circumstances, but the fever and medications had confused her thinking. Véronique had heard it said that one could never recover from the loss of one’s mother, and if past weeks were testament, she feared this to be true.

Picturing her mother’s face, she struggled to find comfort in a sonnet long ago tucked away in memory. Beloved by her
maman
, the sonnet’s words, penned over two hundred years earlier, were only now being made to withstand the Refiner’s fire in Véronique’s own life.

Wanting to feel the words on her tongue as the author himself would have, she chose the language of the English-born poet instead of her native French. “‘Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” ’

Christophe spoke fluent English, as did she. Yet he remained silent, his head bowed.

Her brow furrowed in concentration. Her voice came out a choked whisper. “‘For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, die not, poor death. Nor yet canst thou kill me.” ’ Her memory never faltered, but more than once the next passages of the sonnet threatened to lodge in her throat.

John Donne’s thoughts had often lent a measure of consolation as she’d been forced to watch her mother waste away in recent months. But instead of affording comfort that morning, Donne’s Holy Sonnet seemed to mock her. Its claim of victory rang hollow, empty in light of death’s thievery, however temporary the theft might prove to be in the afterlife.

She pulled from her pocket the diminutive book of Holy Sonnets, its cover worn thin, and turned to the place her mother had last marked.

The note at the bottom of the page drew her eye.

Still remembering her mother’s flowing script, the artistic loops and curls that so closely resembled her own, Véronique experienced a pang in her chest each time she looked at the barely legible scrawl trailing downward on the page at an awkward angle. But dwelling on her mother’s last written thoughts offered her a sliver of hope.

“‘Death is but a pause, not an ending, my dearest Véronique.” ’ Véronique softened her voice, knowing that doing so made her sound more like her mother—people had told her that countless times in recent years. If only she could hear the resemblance, especially now. “‘When the lungs finally empty of air and begin to fill with the sweetness of heaven’s breath, one will realize in that instant that though they have existed before, only in that moment will they truly have begun to live.” ’

Ink from the pen left a gaunt, stuttered line that disappeared into the binding, as though lifting the tip from the page had been too great an effort for the author.

Christophe’s hand briefly came to cover hers.

Véronique closed her eyes, forcing a single tear to slip free. She still cried, but not as often. It was getting easier—and harder.

Her gaze wandered to the name chiseled into the marble facing— ARIANNE ELISABETH GIRARD—then to the diminutive oval portrait embedded in stone and encased in glass beneath it. She had painted the likeness at her mother’s request one afternoon in early February, shortly before her passing, by a special bridge along the river Seine. Some of Véronique’s most cherished memories could be traced back to that bridge.

Memories of a man she’d never truly known . . . and yet had always struggled to live without.

Her memories of him were clouded and murky, much like the Seine. Yet she remembered the feel of her father’s hand enfolding hers. The tone of his voice as he used words to paint mental portraits describing how the early morning light played against the ripples of the water, rewarding the observant onlooker with multifaceted prisms of color.

Though only five when he left, she recalled how he’d made her feel as they’d walked the canals together—cherished, chosen,
loved
.

Véronique studied the small portrait of her
maman
. She had sketched the curves of her mother’s face from memory, just as she did everything. Another gift from the Giver, her mother had called it. The ability to see something once and commit the tiniest details to memory. To store it deep inside, kept safe as if locked away in a trunk, to be taken out and painted or sketched at a later time.

At least that’s how it used to be. She hadn’t lifted a brush in months, not since her mother had grown ill.

But she couldn’t blame that solely on her mother’s illness—unflattering critiques about her work from a respected instructor had contributed. She’d been at the Musée du Louvre, copying portraits of the masters along with other students, and the instructor’s criticism had been especially pointed.
“You’re merely trying to impress us, Mademoiselle Girard, when you would be better served staying within the bounds of conventional artistry. You are here to learn from the masters, and their techniques. Not give us your interpretation of their paintings.”

His assessment stung. Though the criticisms were not new, and were partly founded in truth, his public declaration that her work was not worthy of distinction and that her talent was lacking did nothing to bolster her confidence.

Wind rustled the trees overhead.

Véronique’s gaze trailed the luminous shafts of sunlight as they slanted across the grave, turning the marble a brilliant white against the drab brown of an over-dry summer. As far back as she could remember, a place existed deep inside that remained incomplete, wanting. Surely God had granted her this
gift
of painting with the purpose of meeting that need.

Yet since her mother’s death all attempts at filling the void with it had fallen grossly short of the mark.

The emptiness within spawned the jolting reminder of her mother’s last request. “I want you to do what I never could, Véronique. Go to him. . . .” Véronique had wanted to turn and run, but her mother’s urgency had rooted her to the bedside. “Find him. . . . I know your father is still alive.” Her mother’s eyes pooled with tears. “Do this for him, for yourself. . . . Your
papa
is a good man.”

Her mother’s gaze had trailed to the table by the bed and settled upon a stack of letters. Once white rectangles, now yellowed with time and bearing marks of oft-repeated readings, the bundle was tied tight—too tight it seemed—and with a ribbon Véronique didn’t remember seeing before. “They are no longer my letters, Véronique. They are yours.” A tear had slipped down her mother’s left temple and disappeared into her hairline. “In truth, they have always been yours. Take them. Read them,
ma chérie
.”

She couldn’t refuse her mother at the time, but Véronique didn’t want the letters. She didn’t need to read them again. She already knew of her father’s promises to send for his young wife and their five-yearold daughter once he was settled in the Americas—once he’d made his fortune in fur trading.

But Pierre Gustave Girard had never sent for them.

Christophe chose that moment to rise from his quiet vigil and offered his arm. Véronique stood and slipped her hand through, willing the voiceless question hovering at the fringe of her thoughts to be silenced once and for all.

Paris was her home. How could her mother have asked her to leave it to go in search of someone who had abandoned them both?

Christophe walked slowly down the cobbled path, shortening his long stride in deference to hers.

The shaded bower they walked beneath, courtesy of canopied trees, encouraged the chirrup of crickets long after the creatures should have fallen silent in the summer’s warmth. Lichen clung to the graves, frocking the rock surfaces in blankets of grayish green. Iron gates of mausoleums barred entrance to keyless visitors, even as the chains hanging from their doors drooped beneath the weight of their mission.

“How can time move so slowly in one sense, Christophe, when there seems to be such a scarcity of it in another?” Her question coerced a smile from him, as she knew it would.

“Always the poet and artist’s perspective on life.” He looked down at her. “Something I have aspired to understand but have failed miserably to do.”

“And give up your realism? Your ability to” —she tucked her chin in an attempt to mimic his deep voice—“‘see the world as it truly is, not as others see it’?”

Christophe shook his head, smiling. “Oh, for the memory you have,
ma petite
. To so fully capture both phrases and images with such distinguishing clarity. You never forget anything.”

“That is not true, and you know it. My thoughts are easily scattered these days, and I often forget things.”

“Ah yes, you forget to eat when you’re painting late at night.” His look turned reprimanding. “Or when you used to paint. You forget to quench the flame as you fall asleep reading” —he snapped his fingers—“whatever foreign poet it is that you’re so fond of.”

She slapped his arm, chuckling. “You remember very well what his name is.”

“
Oui
, I know the master John Donne. But why must he be . . .
English
?”

She giggled at the way he said the word. As though it were distasteful.

Pausing, he looked down at her. “It’s good to hear you laugh,
ma petite
.” He started down the path again. “Let’s see, where was I?”

“I believe you were listing my faults. And none too delicately.”

“
Oui
, mademoiselle. But it is an extensive list,
non
?” His tone mirrored his smile. “Just the other day, when you forgot to put sugar in
Madame
Marchand’s tea, I thought we might have to convene the parliament to decide your fate.”

She smiled while cringing inwardly, thinking of Madame Marchand, the family’s matriarch. Six years ago Lord Marchand had transferred Véronique’s services to his elderly mother after his only daughter, to whom Véronique had served as companion since childhood, had married.

Madame Marchand had reminded her of the sugar oversight no less than four times the day of her grievous error. And without uttering another word, the woman had prolonged the reprimand in proceeding days through short, punctuated glares—starting first with the sugar bowl then slinking to Véronique.

She sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid my mind has been elsewhere of late.”

“But I have saved the worst of your faults for last.” Christophe stopped and she did likewise. “You continually forget others’ shortcomings even when they’ve purposefully set you at naught. You extend grace where none is due. . . .” He grew more serious. “And you, along with your dear
maman
, have always given the Marchand household the best of service, regardless of Madame Marchand’s ill temper and demanding disposition. The ungrateful, aging . . .”

Her eyes widened at the name he assigned to Madame Marchand, but she would’ve been lying if she denied having thought the same thing on occasion.

They rounded the corner and she spotted one of Lord Marchand’s carriages waiting near the entrance. She had walked the two-mile distance that morning, enjoying the time to think—and to be out from under Madame Marchand’s scrutiny. “Is Lord Marchand’s requested meeting so urgent, Christophe?”