Page 69 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

Was she lying? He wanted to believe she was. He wanted her to be his mother. And, at the same time, he didn’t. He wanted a mother who loved him, and this woman clearly didn’t.

She licked her thin lips. “But I am the woman who gave away the baby that day, and it seems to me that you are that baby.” Another sigh. “But you were never mine.”

Gabriel staggered back a step and reached out to the house wall for support. “You’re not my mother?” The sinking feeling in his stomach threatened to make him collapse to the ground.

Sidonie nodded, her face full of sorrow. “I am truly sorry, monsieur. You are not my child.”

“But then why did you have him that day?” Phoebe asked, jumping in while he was still digesting this information. Easier for her to keep her wits. “Where were you taking him? Were you being chased? That’s the story Gabriel was told by his adoptive mother.”

“Gabriel?”

He nodded, glad of the rough stone under his fingers. “My mother, the woman you gave me to and who brought me up, named me that for my angel’s kiss.” He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. All this searching. And now all it had come to was a dead end.

But he’d forgotten about Phoebe.

“Do you know whose child he is?” she asked, her tone incisive, almost accusing. “If you had him in your care, you must know who his parents were…are. Do they still live? Or was he an orphan when you had charge of him?”

Sidonie’s eyes became guarded. She appeared to consider this question for some time before she spoke. “I might know.”

Madame Brunet had forgotten her shop and was caught up in the story. “Then do not leave us all guessing. Tell us immediatement, you foolish woman. The young milord and his lady need to know whose child he is. That of another French émigrée? What? Tell us now or I will find myself another seamstress and you will be thrown out of this house tout de suite.”

Sidonie bit her bottom lip. “You had better all come inside,” she said. “For it is a long story.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I escaped the Terror as a young woman,” Sidonie said, when they were all seated in her tiny front room. Gabriel and Phoebe occupied a bench, Madame Brunet the only upholstered seat, which she’d turned away from the smoldering fire in the small grate, and Sidonie the one wooden chair at a table covered in sewing materials. Her work for Madame Brunet, presumably.

Phoebe slid her hand over to take Gabriel’s and he made no objection. In fact, his fingers clasped tightly around hers, like a those of a drowning man clutching a lifeline. They were so close together she could feel the tension in his body from head to foot.

“Most of we London French were also refugees,” Madame Brunet said, obviously impatient to discover more. “Get on with it.”

Sidonie leaned on the tabletop and clasped her hands. “I was not an aristo, you must understand.” She gave a little shake of her head. “Nothing like that. But my father, he was an official of the Crown, and it was not safe for us to remain in Paris. He sent me and my mother to England, but he himself stayed behind. He made the foolish mistake of thinking he could be of help.” She paused, her eyes clouding with tears. “I heard later, from another émigré, that he lost his head on la guillotine. Like our king and queen.”

“You have never mentioned your parents to me,” Madame Brunet said.

Sidonie gave a shrug as though this were now of no matter. “My mother died, shortly after we arrived here.” A single tear ran down her hollow cheek. “We were alone and had no money, of course, so I could not buy her the medicines she needed. And when she was gone, I had nothing at all. J’étais toute seule. I had to find work or I would have starved.” Her voice trailed off. “Do not condemn me for what I have had to do in order to survive. You must understand that I was destitute.”

Phoebe shifted uncomfortably. What was Sidonie trying to say? She had the vaguest of ideas, thanks to Mattie’s abundant and inappropriate knowledge, that sometimes men sought the companionship of women to whom they were not married and paid them for the pleasure. Although quite what the pleasure was, she wasn’t sure. Was this what Sidonie had done?

“I was lucky. I met a gentleman who liked me very much,” Sidonie continued. “He was very handsome and charming, and was most kind to me for over a year. Me, I was young and foolish and thought that perhaps he loved me. Then he told me he wanted me to do something for him in return for his kindness, and after that he would set me up in a house, with servants of my own and gowns and I would go into society with him, and everyone would believe I was an escaped aristo. He said ladies with French accents were accepted as having been aristos. I would be rich and safe and he would love me.”

“Foolish girl that you were,” Madame Brunet muttered, but her hard eyes had softened.

Phoebe glanced at Gabriel. He had his eyes fixed on Sidonie and she could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “Go on,” she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.

Sidonie nodded. She appeared calm, but the clasping and unclasping of her hands in her lap gave away her own tension. “I was truly a foolish, hopeful girl, and I believed myself to be in love, and that he returned my love. I would have done anything for my milord.” She wetted her lips. “He told me I was to apply for the position of nursemaid in a grand house, and I would be put in charge of a baby.”

Phoebe couldn’t help the gasp of shock. She looked at Gabriel, but he appeared not to have understood the significance of this information. It had not been lost on her. A grand house. A baby with a nursemaid in a grand house. That had to have been him. And if so, he was not gutter born. She wanted to jump up and down and clap her hands, but she stayed silent. They needed the rest of the story.

Sidonie coughed. “I did as my milord said. I was taken on as nursemaid by a grand milord and milady. She was a very beautiful milady, and he was even more handsome than my milord. She had hair the color of ripe corn, although she hid it under powder some of the time, as was the fashion in those days. They both very much loved their little golden-haired baby boy.”

She looked up from her hands, meeting Gabriel’s eyes. “She had beautiful blue eyes, just like yours, m’sieur.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as though he were choking back his emotions, and Phoebe tightened her grip on his hand.

“Don’t stop,” Madame Brunet said, breathless with anticipation. “What happened next? I am thinking he must have been the baby you handed over to some stranger, you wicked woman.” She had fixed Sidonie with a heavy frown.

Sidonie, impervious to her employer’s disapproval, nodded. “He was. But you leap ahead. I must tell it from the start. That little boy, he was their only child. The milord, I did not know him well, but he was much as you are.” Again she looked at Gabriel. “You remind me of him very much.” For a long moment she stared at him, as though transfixed.