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Yet she couldn’t simply give him up.
She walked and walked, circuit after circuit, her thoughts running in circles as unchanging as the perfect geometry of the Place. In continuous motion, but always ending up at the same point.
He was young, he’d recover from the trauma, she argued with herself. He’d adjusted to living with the comtesse; he’d adjust again to living with her … even if he never truly remembered her. He was flesh of her flesh; he belonged with her. No one else alive had as much right to claim him as she did.
But could she live with herself if she put him through such an ordeal? Other than the closest kinship of blood, what could she offer him that might compensate for the terror of being stolen away by a stranger?
As she worked patiently in Vienna, she’d always imagined taking him away to a little village somewhere. Using the funds she’d obtain from selling the last of her jewels to buy a small farm in the countryside, where she could plant a garden, eke out a living selling herbs and doing needlework, watch her son grow to manhood. But now?
She was alone with no friends, no allies and very little money. Somewhere St Arnaud might still lurk, a dangerous enemy who might be the force behind those who’d been trailing them. She’d fallen back into the hands of Will Ransleigh, whose tender care was meant to ensure her delivery to England, where he’d press her into a testimony that might send her all the way to the gallows.
Leaving her son, if she stole him away, an orphan in an alien land.
Was it right to catapult him into poverty, peril and uncertainty? Cut him off from the love, security and comfort of a privileged life in Paris?
If he truly was loved, secure and comfortable.
A sliver of hope surfaced, and she clung to it like a shipwrecked sailor to a floating spar. Perhaps, though his physical needs were being met, he was not well treated by the comtesse. Perhaps his adoptive mother neglected him, left his upbringing to servants. Kind nursemaids and protective footmen were well enough, but wasn’t it best for him to live with the mother who doted on him, who would make his comfort and well-being the focus of her existence?
If St Arnaud’s sister, the Comtesse de la Rocherie, was not providing that, wouldn’t she be justified in stealing back the son she’d been tricked into leaving, despite the dangers and uncertainty of her present position?
Elodie would never have the funds to provide the luxuries available in the household of a comtesse. But did the comtesse love and treasure Philippe, as she would?
Elodie had to know. She would have to return to the Hôtel de la Rocherie and find out.
And then make her terrible choice.
Watching, as Elodie was, the footman and nursemaid’s rapid exit from the square, Will was startled when she suddenly set off down the gravelled path. Quickly he caught up, about to seize her arm and warn her he’d not let her escape again, when the stark, anguished face and hollow eyes staring into the far distance told him she was not trying to elude him; she was barely aware of where she was or who walked beside her.
Knowing he would likely get nothing from her in her current state, Will settled for keeping pace, while he wondered about the story behind Elodie Lefevre—and her son.
He couldn’t deny a soaring sense of relief that the mysterious Philippe had turned out to be a child of some five summers, rather than a handsome, strapping young buck. Thinking back, her soft laughter and oblique answer—’something like’—to his question about whether Philippe was her lover should have alerted him to the fact that the ‘family matter’ might not involve the rival he was imagining. He might have realised it, had a foolish jealousy not decimated his usual ability to weave into discernible patterns the information he gathered.
‘Something like’ a lover. Ah, yes; he knew just how much a small boy could love his mother.
The son in Paris was obviously what St Arnaud had used to compel her co-operation in Vienna. How had he finagled that? A man who’d beat a woman half to death probably would not have many scruples about kidnapping a child.
Had she thought, once she’d got back to Paris, she would give him the slip and then simply go off and steal the boy out from under the noses of the family with whom he’d been living?
Will smiled. Apparently she’d thought exactly that. With her talent for disguise and subterfuge, she probably had in her ingenious head a hundred different schemes to make off with the boy and settle with him somewhere obscure and safe.
Until Will Ransleigh had turned up to spoil those plans. He understood much better now why she’d run.
He wondered which of those hundred schemes she intended to try next. After he gave her time to recover from the shock of seeing her son again, he’d ask her. There was no reason now for her not to confess the whole story to him.
And then he would see how he could help her.
He startled himself with that conclusion. It was no part of his design to drag a small boy back to England. But he had already conceded, despite his anger over her duping him, that he’d moved far beyond his original intention to barter her in whatever manner necessary to win Max’s vindication.
Somehow, he’d find a way to achieve that and still keep Elodie safe. Elodie, and her son.
Because, as much as he had initially resisted it, a deep-seated, compulsive desire had grown in him to protect this friendless, desperate woman without family or resources, who with courage and tenacity had fought with every trick and scheme she could devise to reclaim a life with her son. Too late now to try to root that out.
He was beginning to tire of the pacing when, at last, she halted as abruptly as she’d begun and sank on to a bench, infinite weariness on her face. Quickly he seated himself beside her. He tipped her chin up to face him, relieved when she did not flinch or jerk away from his touch.
‘Philippe is your son.’
‘Yes.’
‘St Arnaud used him to make you involve Max in his Vienna scheme.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did he choose someone he had to coerce? Surely he knew other families with Bonapartist sympathies. Why did he not ask one of their ladies to join his plot?’
She sniffed. ‘If you were at all acquainted with St Arnaud, you wouldn’t need to ask. He thought women useful only for childbearing or pleasure, much too feeble-minded to remain focused upon a course of action for political or intellectual reasons. No, one could only be sure of controlling their behaviour if one threatened something they held dear.’
‘How did he get the child into his power?’
‘Because I was stupid,’ she spat out. ‘So dazzled by his promise of a secure life for myself and my son, I fell right into his trap.’
Having been homeless and penniless, he could well understand the appeal security and comfort must have had for a war widow with few friends and almost no family. ‘How did it happen?’
‘As I told you, my brother, Maurice, suggested to St Arnaud that I serve as his hostess at the Congress of Vienna. I dismissed the possibility, for with all his contacts, why would St Arnaud choose a shabby-genteel widow with little experience of moving in the highest circles?’
‘Why indeed,’ she continued bitterly. ‘What a fool I was! I should have been much more suspicious that he invited a woman with few resources and no other protector but a man already deeply in his debt. Instead, I was surprised and flattered when he confirmed the offer, insisting that my “natural aristocratic grace” would make up for any inexperience. St Arnaud promised if I performed well, in addition to letting me keep the gowns and jewels he would buy me for the role, he would settle an allowance on us. Later, when my son came of age, he’d use his influence to advance my son’s career.’
‘Inducements hard for any mother to refuse.’
‘Yes. At least, until he informed me that Philippe would not accompany us. Upon learning that, I did refuse his offer; there was no way I would leave my precious son behind in Paris.’
She laughed without humour. ‘That insistence, I now suspect, probably sealed St Arnaud’s conviction that I was the perfect victim for his scheme. Utterly able to be controlled through my son—an easy loss to explain away to the brother who depended on him for the advancement of his career, if something happened to me. In any event, St Arnaud urged me to reconsider. It would only be for a few months, he said. I would be so busy I would hardly have time to miss the child. His sister, the Comtesse de la Rocherie, had recently lost her young son and would be thrilled to look after Philippe.’
She rose and began pacing again, as if propelled by memories too painful to bear. ‘When I remained firm in my refusal, he told me he’d promised the comtesse I would bring Philippe to visit her—could we not at least do that? Surely I couldn’t be so cruel as to disappoint a grieving mother! And so … we went.’
‘He kidnapped the child on the way?’
She shook her head in the negative. ‘We did call on her. The comtesse was good with Philippe; he liked her at once, and when she offered to take him up to the nursery to play, he begged me to let him go.’
A sad smile touched her lips. ‘She told him she had a toy pony with blue-glass eyes and a mane and tail of real horsehair. What child could resist that? Philippe had grown restless and St Arnaud urged me to send him up to romp while we finished our tea. And the comtesse … there was no disguising the yearning in her eyes as she offered Philippe her hand. So I let him go.’
