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And then, neatly, and quietly, Hugo crumpled to the floor, disappearing into merciful oblivion.
Chapter 15
Sunshine sparkling on a carpet of snow was one of the most beautiful sights Charity had ever seen as she looked through the window of her attic room for the last time while Emily laced her into her dress.
She heard Madame’s heavy tread on the stairs and turned, but for once her body did not go rigid with fear.
“Ma cherie, you are a picture of purity!” Madame swept forward and, for the first time in Charity’s adult life, she was embraced in a motherly hug. “I knew this day would come! That you would be my first real success!”
“You did?”
Madame nodded as she occupied herself with tweaking the folds and ruffles of Charity’s exquisite wedding gown.
“From the moment I saw the love between you and Mr Hugo, I knew you’d be my first girl to step directly from my establishment and into the arms of society.”
Charity didn’t want to suggest that Madame was reviewing the past year through rose-coloured glasses. There had been many times Charity had feared Madame was about to sell her to the highest bidder.
“Even when Mr Hugo didn’t write for more than six months and Charity had not a bean to live on?” Emily asked as she arranged Charity’s curls, emboldened, clearly, by Madame’s unusually expansive mood.
“I’ll admit I harboured doubts about Mr Hugo. Not his fidelity, for my dears, I have never seen a young man more desperately in love. Why, I believe he’d even give up his art for you, Charity.”
“But his art is what saved Charity,” said Emily between a mouthful of hair pins.
“No.” Charity shook her head. “Hugo’s love did that.”
She remembered, with emotion, that extraordinary night when Cyril had escorted
her to the launch of Hugo’s book.
When her father had stood on stage, surrounded by paintings and drawings Hugo had created — not just of Charity, but scenes of daily life in India, sweet vignettes of the children, and exquisite pictures of sunsets — she’d never felt prouder.
That is, until the man she’d never called anything other than Mr Riverdale, the man whose zeal and enthusiasm she admired, whose kindness — not apparent, initially — she’d come to appreciate, had publicly acknowledged her.
She’d never forget the sense of unreality she’d felt as he paused, indicated Hugo’s paintings, then said to a hushed audience, “It is to this young artist, who cannot be here tonight, that I owe the greatest debt. Not just because early indications suggest that this book will be Riverdale & Son’s greatest commercial success. But because Mr Hugo Adams’ talent has reunited me with someone I had thought lost to me forever. Someone I have grown to love, very dearly. Someone I might never have seen again had his drawings not revealed the identity of…”
Charity’s pulse had quickened when she heard this. She’d bitten her lip until she tasted blood, releasing her pent-up breath in a cry of disbelief when he’d finished, “my beautiful, kind, ever-forgiving long-lost daughter, Charity.”
Her body still thrummed with the extraordinary joy of being accepted by her father and being reunited with her lover. Within minutes. Certainly, those few moments had had their problems but, if nothing else, her father had proved himself a magician when it came to turning a potentially disastrous moment of confrontation and sensation into a moment that seemed to have cemented the adoration of a hitherto merely curious and admiring public.
He’d also artfully whitewashed Charity’s past.
“Ah, Charity, mon petit chou! You are a sight for sore eyes. Are you ready?”
Charity nodded at Madame, her hand on the older woman’s arm as she was led towards the establishment’s secret entrance, via a staircase and tunnel that went beneath the cobbled street and exited from an innocuous row of dwellings where Charity knew her carriage would be waiting.
Indeed, there was Cyril beside the handsome equipage, his reception full of admiration.
“You look like an angel. Or a princess.” He swept his arm wide. “Can you hear them singing about you and Hugo?”
Charity put her head on one side to listen to the pure notes of a group of carollers, children mostly, standing just across the road, singing Joy to the World. They’d reached the third verse and the words spoke to her heart:
“No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessing flow
Far as the curse is found,
