The Cinderella Moment (29 page)

“Could you not have two homes?” asked the Comtesse. “After this fortnight, I hoped you might have come to think of this house as your home.”

“I do
…
I love it here with you in Paris and
…
everything! It’s just that
… ”
Angel looked at her helplessly. If ever there was a time to tell the Comtesse the truth, this was it.

She opened her mouth just as the Comtesse stepped towards her with outstretched hands. “I want you in my life again, Lily. I want my granddaughter here in this house. I know you cannot be here all the time, but I thought you might spend part of your holidays here and then—in a year or two—I thought you might like to study in Paris for a while.” She caught hold of Angel’s hands. “You might like to pursue a career in fashion design. You have real talent, Lily.” She touched the scarf around her neck. “It is a rare gift to be able to see as you see and I thought, if you wished, that I might help you to find a place at one of the top fashion houses, if you wanted.”

If she wanted! Angel was speechless. What could she say? The Comtesse was offering her a dream and she had no choice but to refuse.

She looked miserably at the Comtesse. “I’d like it more than anything in the world, but, you see, I can’t.” Angel squeezed the older woman’s hand. “I can’t stay in Paris and I can’t come back. It’s not that I don’t want to
…
I just can’t.”

“I suppose I should have expected this—you are Philip’s daughter after all.” The Comtesse sighed. “However, while I am prepared to endure his resentment of me for past wrongs, I am
not
prepared to accept his turning you against me.”

“Oh, but he didn’t—”

The Comtesse interrupted. “I’m not asking you to transfer your allegiance from your father to me, but could you not find room in your heart for us both? I want you here, Lily. Surely Philip will not object? He let you come once, so he must be willing—”

“Philip doesn’t know I’m here!” Angel gasped, trying to deflect the situation and realizing she’d only made things worse as the color drained from the Comtesse’s face.

The Comtesse sank slowly into a chair. “Where does he think you are?” she asked at last.

“Summer camp,” Angel whispered.

“And he is?”

“In South America. On business and out of contact.”

The Comtesse looked up. “And so you seized the chance to come to Paris because my invitation arrived while Philip was away and you decided to come and meet your long-lost grandmother.” She smiled faintly. “I’m glad you had the courage to come of your own accord.” She waved Angel into the chair opposite her. “Which is why you should be able to return to Paris if you wish.”

“You don’t understand,” said Angel, wringing her hands and wondering if she could fall any deeper into this deception. “It’s
much
more complicated than that.”

“At present perhaps, but it will not always be so,” replied the Comtesse. “In a few years you will be of age and then you can make up your own mind.” She leaned forward, her blue eyes earnest. “Whatever lies between me and Philip need not affect
us
, Lily. You must believe that.”

“I do, I do,” cried Angel, trying to think of how best to begin telling the Comtesse the truth.

“Is there anything I can say to persuade you?”

Angel shook her head.

There was a short silence, broken only by the steady ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. Angel swallowed. This was it—she
had
to confess. “There’s something you need to—”

“—do,” finished the Comtesse. “You are right.” She straightened her shoulders. “I need to tell you the truth!”

Angel stared; those were meant to be her words, not the Comtesse’s. “No, I—”

“Hear me out, Lily,
please
!” begged the Comtesse. “I think it will help us both if I tell you what happened between me and your father all those years ago.” Taking a small key from the gold chain around her neck, she unlocked a drawer in her desk, removed a silver frame and handed it to Angel.

It was a picture of Philip, only a much younger Philip than the man Angel knew. He looked about twenty-one and was incredibly handsome.

“I miss him every day,” said the Comtesse in a constricted voice, “and it has taken me many years to understand that what I did—that the actions I took that day—were those of a proud and unjust woman.” She wiped away a tear with a lace handkerchief. “It is too late for me and Philip, but I hope it is not too late for me and you, Lily.”

“I’m sure it’s not.”

“We shall see. Once you hear my story you may not feel so kind.”

Angel hesitated. Part of her wanted to know what it was that had kept Philip de Tourney from his home and family for so many years, but another part of her whispered that it was none of her business—that she had no right to know—that if the Comtesse knew the truth of her identity she’d throw her out of the house rather than tell her what had happened with her son.

But she could see the yearning in Elena de Tourney’s face—a longing to share her burden. Angel handed the photo back to her and said softly, “Tell me.”

The Comtesse resumed her seat and said, “There was a girl. It sounds a hopeless cliché, does it not? But it is true. There
was
a girl. She was the daughter of our cook.”

Angel smiled wryly. A cook’s daughter—that was what Clarissa had called her back in New York.

The Comtesse, noticing her look, nodded. “You find it amusing that my son should have been so well-acquainted with such a person, but you see, she’d come to us as a girl and grown up in the servant’s wing so Philip had known her since boyhood.” She sighed. “I suppose I should have recognized the potential for danger much earlier, but I’d been brought up not to think of the staff in that way. Philip was away at school a good deal of the time, so it never occurred to me—”

“That they’d fall in love.”

“No.” The Comtesse plucked at her handkerchief. “When Philip told me what had happened, I was not convinced.”

“Why?”

“Many reasons: he was young—practically a boy still—and inexperienced, and what does a twenty-two-year-old boy know about love?”

Angel thought of Nick—he was just nineteen but he seemed to know quite a lot about love. It didn’t seem the moment to point it out to the Comtesse, however, so she said, “What about the girl? How did she feel?”

“Naturally, she, too, said she was in love—though not in so many words, for although she was only a cook’s daughter, she had a remarkable pride. When I challenged her she told me that Philip had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes.”

“He wanted to marry her?” asked Angel.

“That is what he said, but I was convinced she had tricked him into it. From adolescence she’d seen her chance, encouraged him through the years and refused to have him in her bed until they were married.” The Comtesse’s face reflected her distaste of such a ploy.

“You
know
that?” asked Angel. “It sounds so melodramatic.”

The Comtesse said bitterly, “Of course she wanted marriage! She had everything to gain: wealth, power, position. But it was impossible and I told Philip so.”

“What did he say?”

“He refused to listen, insisting that their love was real. That she was the only woman he would ever truly care for, there could never be anyone else and that she was his one true love—all the things a romantic boy tells his mother when she wishes him to end a relationship.”

“So what happened?”

“I could not allow it to continue. You must understand, in those days it was impossible to imagine a de Tourney married to a cook’s daughter.” The Comtesse pressed her handkerchief to her lips.

“What did you do?”

“I took the necessary steps.”

“What were they?”

The Comtesse was silent for several moments and when she spoke again Angel could see it was an effort. “I made a mistake. I can say that now. I was proud and stubborn and I could not see—no—I
would
not see that your father truly was in love.”

“So
…?”

“So I sent him to America on business. I made sure it was an emergency so he would have no time to tell her he was leaving, and while he was gone I arranged a meeting with the girl.”

“What happened?”

“I told her Philip did not love her. I told her he had gone to America to propose to Catherine—your mother—a girl of good family, old money and the right connections. A somebody. I told her that Catherine had been promised to Philip from the cradle.”

“She can’t have believed you! It sounds medieval.”

“For most people in this modern age that is true, but she knew enough of Philip’s world to know that such arrangements are still common among families such as ours. I also told her that Philip would not return to Paris until after his wedding.”

“And she believed you?”

“Why not? It was a lie, but a convincing one, and I held all the cards—money, power and connections. She was poor and dependent—a student at the university. Besides, Philip had gone to America without saying goodbye. Once I had sown the seed of doubt I knew I would win.” The Comtesse looked past Angel as if seeing some long-forgotten memory. “Though it was a near thing.” She smiled grimly. “She was as proud and as stubborn as I was and she fought me! She told me she loved Philip and that he loved her. She stood in this room and said those exact words with such passion that she almost persuaded me.”

“But not quite.”

“No. Because I’d convinced myself that it was not passion but ambition that made her speak so and that the prospect of losing her chance of wealth and position
would
make her say that she loved him more than life itself.”

“She said that?” Angel’s eyes glowed with the romance of it all.

“She did, and in such a way. I can see her now, her head up, eyes blazing, defying me.”

“What happened then?”

“I told her that Philip had always known he’d marry Catherine; that it was a perfect match and they were meant for each other.”

“Did she believe you?”

The Comtesse considered the question, then said, “I don’t know, she didn’t say. Instead she asked me a question—she asked me if Catherine believed it.”

“And you said yes.”

“Yes.”

“And what did she say to that?”

The Comtesse seemed to grow tired. She leaned back in her chair and put her hand over her eyes. Angel didn’t move. When Elena de Tourney spoke again, her voice was so low that Angel had to lean forward to hear her.

“She said nothing. Nothing at all. She simply got up and left. But I shall never forget the look on her face. If she was defeated, it did not show—she lifted her chin, threw back her hair and walked out of this house as if she, and not I, were its owner. And she never once looked back.”

No one spoke for a moment, and then Angel asked, “What about Philip?”

“Ah, yes, that is the question, isn’t it?” A faint tinge of color rose in the Comtesse’s cheeks and she had the grace to look ashamed. “When Philip came home from America, I told him she had gone; that she’d left him for another man.”

“He didn’t believe you, did he?” cried Angel. She couldn’t bear to think of Philip giving up on his true love so easily.

“Not at first. He accused me of lying, of sending her away and
…
of so many things. I begged him to listen to me, but he would not. He left the house and set about finding her. He searched for weeks, but she had left the university and no one knew where she had gone. There was no known family, apart from her mother who’d died two years earlier and a wastrel father she hadn’t seen for years.”

All the emotion faded from the Comtesse’s voice, leaving it tired and empty. “Eventually, Philip hired a detective agency to find her. I tried to dissuade him but nothing I could say would make him believe that Simone did not love him. He—”

Angel’s heart missed a beat. “What?” she cried. “
What
did you say?”

But the Comtesse wasn’t listening. The years of pent-up emotion had finally found an outlet and she would not stop until she’d told it all. “He refused to believe me. He confronted me and told me that he loved Simone and was going to marry her. It was then that I realized I’d been wrong.”

She raised her head and Angel saw the tears staining her cheeks. “What she’d told me that day was true—Philip truly loved her and I had destroyed his one chance at happiness.” She looked at Angel with anguished eyes. “But I couldn’t tell him the truth. How could I? He’d have hated me.”

Angel stared at her, a hundred questions burning in her brain. Finally she found her voice. “Simone—she was the cook’s daughter?”

The Comtesse nodded. “After her mother’s death, she stayed on here working evenings and weekends until she finished her schooling. Then she won a scholarship to the university. Philip was already there and in that environment I think they both decided that the restrictions of their class could be thrown aside. If I had only seen the danger sooner.”

“But where did she go?” interrupted Angel. She had to know, she had to be sure. “Did Philip find her?”

“The detectives found her two months later. Only it was too late.”

“Too late?” cried Angel, confused. “Do you mean
…?”

“No, no, not that! She was alive and well, but she was married.”

“Married?” repeated Angel.

“Yes. Apparently she had gone to her father. He had a small farm in Brittany and Simone went there the day after our meeting. Two months later she married the owner of a neighboring vineyard and began a new life.”

There it was: the final piece of the puzzle. Angel’s father had owned the vineyard adjoining her grandfather’s farm. She couldn’t take it in: her mother had been Philip de Tourney’s first great love.

Angel slumped back in her chair and asked flatly, “And Philip?”

“The day after he received the detective’s report he told me I'd been right and he was leaving for America. When he arrived he went straight to Catherine and proposed. They were married two weeks later.”

It was hard to focus on this part of the story for Angel’s brain was seething with thoughts of her mother and Philip. It was too much. She needed to go somewhere quiet and try to make sense of it all.