The Baron took him off after the meal and the Princesse came to my room with me.
When the door of my room shut on us, she seemed to change. She dropped the pose of chat elaine and became the young girl I had known.
“Life is odd,” she said.
“Fancy seeing you again. I’ve thought of you every time I’ve looked at the miniatures, and of course I heard about your salon in Paris. You really became well known, didn’t you? It seems such a long time ago.”
“It is.”
“Kate,” she said.
“I called you Kate, didn’t I? I liked you … from the start I liked you. You had an air of independence about you.
“Take it or leave it. If you don’t like me, employ another artist.” You have a child now. Bertrand de Mortemer’s, I suppose. Yet you didn’t marry him . even though there was a child. “
“No,” I said, “I didn’t marry him.”
“And you had a child … and you were not married!”
“That’s right.”
“You were brave.”
“I didn’t want to marry. We … er … didn’t want to marry each other.”
“So you had the child. How did you manage?”
“I was befriended, and then I had the salon and people came, and in that world it didn’t seem to matter so much as it would in a more conventional one … If you understand.”
“I do. I wish I had been in a less conventional world. Your boy is beautiful. He needs a good deal of feeding up.”
“He has been four months in a siege. We were near starvation when we came out.”
“And the Baron brought you out. My noble husband! What was he doing in ” You must ask him. “
“He never tells me anything.” She hesitated, and I think she was on the verge of a confidence, but she seemed suddenly to realize that she might be somewhat indiscreet.
“I’ll bring some clothes for you to try,” she said.
“And the seamstress?”
“That’s for later. At first let me give you something. You are taller than I and so thin … That might help … your being thin. You won’t take up so much. I’ll send one of the maids in with some things.” She looked at me wistfully.
“When I used to hear about you in that Paris salon, I envied you. I missed Paris. I hate it here… this gloomy old castle. I feel like a prisoner sometimes. I get so tired. I have to rest a lot. It is since William’s birth.”
She turned away and went to the door.
I sat down. The food was having its effect and made me feel sleepy. I lay on the bed for a while but did not sleep. Now that my mind was freed from the preoccupation with food, I began to see the situation in which I found myself more clearly.
I could not go on here. It was only a temporary respite. Even if I stayed in the Loge I should be living on the Baron’s bounty and I could not endure that for long. I must get back to Paris. But how could I get back to Paris? It would be months perhaps a year before there would be a hope for me to work there.
I kept thinking of his words: “You have to consider the boy.”
Yes, I had to consider Kendal. He must be my first responsibility. No matter what personal humiliation I suffered, as long as Kendal profited that was all I must think of. After all, the Baron was his father. It was not like taking from a stranger.
The maid came in with three dresses, and some petticoats and undergarments.
“The Princesse asked if you would try these, Madame,” she said.
I thanked her and tried on the dresses. They were not a good fit, but they would suffice until I could get something made.
I had to admit to myself that it was a great relief to get out of the clothes which I had worn for so long.
As I changed into a green velvet dress, I thought: There is nothing I can do but accept what fate has thrust upon me. I need rest as well as food; my mind needs adjusting. One does not go through the ordeal of losing a great friend, one’s father, and four months of starvation with death threatening at every turn without needing some adjustment.
Until this was made I must shelve other problems.
Kendal and I remained for a week in the castle while the Loge was prepared for us. The Baron had decreed that after our ordeal we needed to rest there for a while.
His word was law in the castle and no one questioned anything he commanded. That he should arrive with two women and a child from the siege of Paris was treated as though it were a part of the natural course of events-because that was how he wished it to be accepted.
When I thought about it, I could see that a perfectly logical explanation could be put on what had happened. He had found himself in Paris; he had seen a child about to be crushed to death and had thrown himself on the child and borne the brunt of the collapse of bricks and mortar. He had discovered the child to be the son of an artist whom he had once employed and because of the disorder in the Paris streets and the inability to get medical attention, she had taken him in injured as he was and he had stayed in her house to be nursed by her. It was all perfectly logical except one thing. He could not hide his affection for Kendal; and when it was considered how he behaved towards William who was generally accepted as his son this was very strange. Moreover, William was small and dark with his mother’s Valois nose. He seemed to be a nervous child but I quickly deduced that this was due to the treatment he had received. The man he believed to be his father ignored him and his mother seemed indifferent towards him too. Poor child, he had been made to feel that his presence in this life was rather unnecessary.
So of course they were wondering about us. Then there was the fact that the Princesse constantly referred to me as Mademoiselle Collison -and indeed I had been so called when I visited the castle all those years ago, and many of them remembered me. Moreover, the resemblance between Kendal and the Baron was becoming more obvious every day.
Oh yes, understandably there were speculations.
They were strange days. I think that if I had been my previous self I should never have stayed at the castle. But I had been more weakened by that sojourn in Paris than I realized. I was still suffering from the shock of Nicole’s death, which had been temporarily muted by other momentous events, but now that I had left Paris behind me, I thought of Nicole a great deal.
Then again there was the death of my father. The days of my childhood were constantly in my mind when my father had been closer to me than any other person. I was only now realizing that I should never see him again. So I mourned the two of them. I longed to hear what was happening to Clare. So my thoughts were dominated by my father and Nicole. I mourned them both afresh. The knowledge that it was the Baron who had sent Nicole to care for me made no difference to my feelings for her. She would always be remembered in my heart as my good friend-in-need, and it was only now that I fully realized what a big gap her death following on that of my father had made in my life.
As for the Baron, I did not want to think of him. Not that I could stop myself. I had to accept the fact that my feelings towards him had changed. I remembered so much about him-his lying on that bed suffering pain and refusing to admit it; the tenderness I sometimes saw in his face, the relief when I came into the room; his love for Kendal for love it was, although strongly tinged with the pride of possession.
“This is my son!” That was what he thought every time he looked at Kendal; and the fact that he so resembled him made the boy doubly endearing to him.
Somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought that he would never let Kendal go. And what would that mean to me?