Page 31 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

Phoebe’s eyes widened. “And she produced a son that looks like you?”

He felt himself blushing.

She went on. “Tall and, I must say it I’m afraid, handsome.”

“Well…” For some unaccountable reason, this line of questioning was making him feel very awkward at the same time as glad that Phoebe saw him as handsome.

“So perhaps she was your grandmother,” Phoebe said, with a note of triumph. “Rather than your mother.”

“It’s possible, I suppose.”

She nodded. “We should treat it as an option.”

This had also never occurred to Gabriel. He began to think that it was a good idea to get fresh eyes on the problem. Phoebe was clearly a very intelligent young lady with an eye for clues. Very much his sort of young lady. A warm glow started somewhere in his chest and spread through his body.

But he had no chance to enjoy it. Phoebe had moved on. “Does it make you angry that she never came back for you?”

He stared across the grass towards where the Serpentine lay, as yet invisible and only marked by the crowds along its banks. “I don’t know. I suppose I must be at least a little bit angry. I loved my adoptive mother dearly. She was a wonderful woman, but she died when I was only a little boy. So, in a way, I’ve lost two mothers.”

“Quite remiss of you.”

He frowned, a little annoyed by her lightness of tone. “I don’t find it a laughing matter.”

“Neither do I. But neither losses were your fault. You talk as though their loss lies at your door. Tell me. What exactly did your adoptive mother say to you before she died? I know it was a long time ago, but word for word if you can do it. That in itself might be a clue.”

She seemed to want to solve the mystery of his existence very much. He couldn’t deny that the thought of someone else sharing his search pleased him. Especially her. He quite overlooked the fact that she was the only one who even knew about his search. Unless you counted his father, who probably suspected.

He shrugged. “I was only a child, remember, and she was dying. It’s hard for me to recall exactly.” He paused. “I didn’t even know what it was that that was killing her, not then, but she was ill for at least a year, growing steadily weaker. I found out much later that it was a tumor that was eating away at her insides.” He paused, an image materializing before his eyes. “My clearest memory is of her lying on the pink chaise longue in her bedroom reading me stories, with the sun streaming in through the window onto us.”

Phoebe, seemingly unmoved by the touching vision he’d conjured, nodded. “Go on. Think. What did she say to you?”

Gabriel frowned as he thought back. Ambrose, being so much older, had already been away at school, and only he, Gabriel, had been at home. Of course his father, no, his adoptive father, had also been at Sherborne. He’d not left to go anywhere at all throughout Mama’s illness, but he’d often had estate business to attend to, so the long hours after luncheon had been Gabriel’s alone. His special time with Mama.

He could see her now, her hair a cloud about her beautiful, drawn face. He saw the pain in her eyes, and the sharp grimace on her lips whenever she tried to move, the blood on her handkerchief when she coughed. He was sitting beside her on the chaise longue, the book she’d been reading to him finished, when she’d asked him if he’d like her to tell him a story herself.

Of course he’d agreed. What small boy wouldn’t? He loved stories and she could tell such good ones about giants and dragons and magic.

It was raining outside and in his head he could still see the raindrops racing down the windowpanes, as though the sky itself were crying for Mama.

She hugged him close, her body warm and strongly scented with roses, but the smell of sickness was still there, behind the sweetness. He snuggled against her, used to the smell as an integral part of the mama he loved.

“Once upon a time,” she began, “a long time ago, a fine lady was outside her dressmaker’s house when a poor woman in rags came running up to her with a little baby clutched in her arms, wrapped in a shawl. When the poor woman saw the fine lady’s kind face, she knew her baby would be safe with her, so she gave the fine lady the baby and asked her to look after it.”

She smiled down at him, stroking his hair and cheek. “The fine lady looked at the baby and saw he was the most beautiful child she’d ever seen and she loved him with her whole heart straightaway. So she took the baby home and showed him to her handsome, kind husband and asked if she could keep him and look after him forever for the poor woman in rags who couldn’t look after him anymore.” She turned her head away and coughed discreetly into her handkerchief.

“Go on, Mama,” Gabriel pleaded.

Mama wiped her mouth. “The fine lady’s kind husband said they must try to find the poor woman first, and she could only keep the little baby if they couldn’t find his real mother. The kind husband looked and looked, and he paid people to look and look, but no one could find sight nor sound of the poor raggedy woman. So the kind husband said the fine lady could keep the little baby as her own to bring up as a brother to their own little boy.”

“Was the ragged woman a witch and the baby a prince?” Gabriel asked, eyes wide with awe. Lately Mama had read him a frightening witch story which had stuck in his mind.

Mama shook her head. “No, my love. The poor ragged woman was running from some great fear that was menacing her. She wasn’t a witch but she might have been running from one. She was a Frenchwoman, for she spoke only in French to the fine lady, which is a foreign tongue that you don’t understand as yet. So the fine lady knew she was from France.”

“Where’s France?” Gabriel asked. “Is it where the dragons live?”

Mama smiled. “No dragons in France, my love. But a horrible ogre who might well have been chasing the ragged woman.”

“Did it want to eat her baby?”