He collapsed against her, his body sweating beneath their clothes. Wherever or whatever had happened to Ada and Isabelle seemed far from what they’d just done. But he wouldn’t speak of this now. There would be time to speak of this. Years even.
Once he’d untangled himself from her, he stroked her thick white hair—it had begun to dry from the rain in waves about her shoulders. By then the sun had risen, spilling through the stained glass, dappling the white marble chapel in vivid hues of red, green, and gold. She looked even more beautiful to him because of her cares and losses. She was a wonder. A miracle returned from sorrow, from death, just as he’d been.
“How you have suffered.” He kissed her again. “I shall love you all the more for it.”
She turned away, unable to meet his gaze. And then Robert remembered: Ada de Bonne was dead. So was Isabelle Lowell.
III.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “So sorry.”
Robert managed to sit up, rummaging for his clothing. He covered himself with the overcoat while buttoning his fly, speaking all the time to cover his disorientation. He felt light-headed.
“You’re not Ada. Nor are you Isabelle.” He asked yet again, “Who are you?”
This time she didn’t avoid answering. “I had been Isabelle Lowell, Ada’s niece. But after that death certificate . . .”
“How can this be?”
“It’s like I said. There was another Isabelle. A different Isabelle . . .” She emitted a strangled laugh that sounded akin to a hiccup. “Not that it matters. When Tamsin Douglas has her way, I’ll be turned out like the nameless woman I’ve become.”
Unwilling to press her further, Robert stared at the floor, crawling with moss and ivy, while she smoothed her chemise, hiding her thighs from view. It was as if they’d never engaged in any intimacies. Never declared love. That she was as he’d found her when he’d pounded on her door pummeled by rain. Untouched. Unknown.
“Why?” he asked. “Why did you let me . . .”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “That day in the church, I realized you believed I was Ada and you were in love with her. Though I knew I should correct you, I couldn’t bring myself to. I never intended to mislead you, Robert, but this brought me such comfort. You see, whenever I spoke of myself in Ada’s story, I felt so much sorrow. So much loss . . . As for just now—well, I’ll say no more.”
“I wish you’d told me. I feel a fool.”
For confessing I love you. Had she meant it when she’d responded in kind? Best not to ask. Best to let her speak.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I loved having Ada alive again, even if it was through your imagination. If she lived again, I could reclaim her. Then she’d leave me—”
Isabelle clasped her hand over her mouth.
Love stories are ghost stories in disguise.
This was what she’d said the first night of her story. She’d told him everything he’d needed to know, but he hadn’t understood then. Now he did. This was what had drawn them together, what had tormented them. What had brought them to lie together in love and hate on the floor of a chapel crowned in glass.
Robert asked, “Like a ghost?”
He already knew her answer.
“You’ll probably think me mad, Robert. I wasn’t lying when I told you Ada’s story. But she didn’t tell me it while she lived . . .”
Robert’s heart pounded against his ribs.
“I understand,” he said carefully. “Is she here now?”
“Not now.” A catch in her voice. “Yet always. Always.”
A rush of wind hissed inside the chapel, a sound so loud that both Isabelle and Robert clamped their hands over their ears. The wind blew against the stained glass, setting a swirl of leaves skittering across the marble floor, up and around their feet. This same wind picked at Hugh’s letter, tipping the letter over and over across the floor until it landed in Isabelle’s lap.
Foreboding fell on Robert like a blow. “Don’t open it.” For reasons he could never understand—perhaps the same reasons that had led him to her poor haunted self—he knew whatever was in that letter could damn her. He also felt protective of her, loved her even in a way he couldn’t explain.
It was too late: the letter slipped into her hands. It was comprised of only five lines.
If you must know your sister:
Mathilde Adelaide—
Care of M. Gautier, 19 rue Honore, Geneva.
If there is an Elysium beyond this vale of Sorrow,
I hope we shall meet there one day in Peace.
IV.
Isabelle folded the letter away. She settled on the bench inscribed with Ada’s name, rocking herself back and forth like a child.
“How like Hugh to leave this here for me,” she said at last.
Her voice sounded strangled and distant. Robert couldn’t think what to say. How to respond. For some reason, he recalled Grace during that absurd tour of Hugh’s study when he’d first arrived at Weald House. The memorized sentences she’d so blithely parroted without affect. “It is difficult to speak of the many ladies whose hearts he broke in London and Paris. The duchess who drowned herself in the Seine. The unfortunate who indulged in too much gin after finding herself with child . . .”
“You’re Hugh’s daughter.” Robert stated this as the irrevocable fact it was.
Isabelle stopped rocking herself. Met his eyes.
This was all the affirmation Robert needed.
His heart pounding, he took a step toward her. “Why didn’t you simply tell the truth? Tamsin and the pilgrims would have left you alone. They’d have no right to contest your inheritance. Why’d you claim to be Isabelle Lowell, whoever she was?”
“Because I had no name. None that I had proof of. No true name.”
“No true name?” Robert shook his head. “This makes no sense. What happened to the real Isabelle Lowell? The one whose death certificate was found?”
She looked away, her cheeks wet. “It’s as I told you—she was the other Isabelle. Another Isabelle. Another relation. A cousin to Ada through her father. One I’d never met before her death.”
“So you both bear the same name. Yet you have no name.” Robert couldn’t stop his words from spilling forth. “Whoever you are and whatever name you bear, you knew Mathilde was alive all the time. That’s why you returned to Weald House and remained all these years waiting for your father. Because you wanted to find your sister.”
“My sister . . .” Now Isabelle was weeping in earnest. “All these years wasted. Waiting. And now this . . .” She shook Hugh’s final letter like a flag. “He’d left it here for me. This was his coup de grâce. His revenge. He understood if I saw the chapel I’d understand how much he loved Ada. I’d no choice but to forgive him.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “He’s wrong! I won’t forgive—I can’t! He could have told me about Mathilde, or written your family of her, or included her address with that last poem I burned. But that would have been too simple. Too unsatisfying. Anyway, it’s all his fault Ada’s dead! I would have never left Ada if not for him. He forced me to abandon her. I could have protected her, convinced her to leave the Black Forest. She would have lived!”
“But why would he need your forgiveness? Why would he force you to leave Ada? Why would he abandon Mathilde? Why couldn’t he acknowledge you as his daughter?”
“Why, why, why! You and your never-ending questions! Do they ever cease?” Isabelle pointed beside her on the bench, her eyes wide and glassy. “Sit, Robert, and I’ll tell you everything—you’ll know me better than anyone else who still lives. Then perhaps at last you’ll leave me be in peace.”
Robert sat. By then morning had arrived in earnest, spilling sunlight across the stained glass windows, revealing them at last in full. The windows featured innumerable birds captured mid-flight: doves, sparrows, ravens, starlings, and owls. They swirled around a central stained glass portrait of Ada with her sparrow, its composition similar to the oil paint
ing in the library. The glass of Ada was framed by arches of ivory marble, branching up toward the sky, and swirling into curls of ivy. The combined effect was of a forest created of glass and stone. But Robert couldn’t pay mind to this wonder so many had yearned so desperately to view. Instead, his attention compressed to Isabelle’s ruddy, swollen lips—lips he had kissed only moments earlier. Lips that he now knew belonged to the eldest daughter of Hugh de Bonne—a daughter who bore no name save that of a deceased relative.
Syllables spilled from her mouth. These syllables became words, the words sentences. Sentences flowed into images. And then Robert no longer heard her voice. Nor did he see the stained glass surrounding them, or the soaring marble vaults, or the verdant greens twining about the chapel floor and walls. Instead, he was present with Ada and Hugh back in the Marais soon after they’d wed.
V.
The Last Day’s Story
She’d been waiting outside their door when they’d returned from the opera that rainy May night. A girl they’d never seen before. A girl so thin she had no need for stays. A girl who looked younger than her fifteen years. A girl with wild auburn hair and grey eyes.
“Are you Hugh de Bonne?” the girl asked, speaking English with an East London accent.
“Who wants to know?” Hugh snapped; he’d nearly tripped over her on the stairs. He’d drunk too much cognac during intermission—Gluck wasn’t his favorite. “Who the hell are you?”
“Shush, you’re frightening her,” Ada whispered.
“Well, she frightened me. Who are you then?”
“I-I’m uncertain, sir,” the girl said. “I’ve had several names in my life: Jane, Mary, Nan. The last lady called me Margaret. Meg, if you will. Though that don’t seem my true name either.”
“Meg then.” Ada offered her hands. “Come inside—”
“No,” Hugh said. “We’re not inviting a girl who doesn’t know her own name into our home.”
“It’s raining. She’s probably lost. Ill.”
“I’m not lost. Nor am I ill,” Meg answered. “I’ve been sent. If you’re Hugh de Bonne, I’ve traveled all the way from London for good cause. Look, I’ve this from my mother.”
Meg pulled from inside her cloak a tattered sheet of paper covered in sepia writing. The paper bore a poem dedicated to a certain Diana of the White Breasts, though this had been only one of her noms d’amour. (No self-respecting whore with ambition used her Christian name; in addition to Diana of the White Breasts, she was known as the Venus of Chiswick and Hecate Blacknight.) When Hugh had last encountered Diana a dozen years prior, she’d thrown a gin bottle at his head after he’d told her to sell the poem to provide for an accident of birth. “You should be grateful. I don’t owe you anything, not even a poem. You’ve no proof she’s mine,” he’d protested. “She’s grey eyes. Mine are hazel.” Diana had retorted, “But my eyes are grey, you idiot! Look at her hair! Her chin! She’s your very image! If you shan’t take her, I’ll dump your daughter in the Thames.”
“Oh,” Hugh said. His walking stick slid from his hand as he slumped to the steps. “I think I need another cognac.”
At this, Ada stole another look at Meg’s bright auburn hair and understood. A shock of raw joy rose in her.
* * *
Meg spent an uncomfortable night on the parlor chairs in Hugh’s study after relating her secret history: the doss-house where Diana had abandoned her when she’d turned two, the lone poem she’d been left as proof of Hugh’s paternity; how she’d been passed from proprietor to proprietor to earn her keep as a maid-of-all-work once Diana had been found dead of a disease respectable people didn’t acknowledge. Meg’s last missus, who’d been very fond of poetry, had uncovered Hugh’s location from his publisher. She decided it cost less to send Meg to Paris than to keep her—especially after she caught her husband peeping on Meg unclad in the bath. (After that, Meg’s name became “the poet’s bastard.”)
That night as she twisted on the bony wood chairs, Meg’s sharp ears made out hushed words from the other side of the door.
“She has to leave.” Hugh’s tone was firm. “In the morning.”
Ada’s voice cracked. “She needs a mother.”
“She had a mother. A whore. I won’t shame you with my indiscretions, Ada. I’ll send her to school.”
“My cousin died at school. A girl named Isabelle. She was a Lowell, like my father. How I loved her! Had she lived, she’d now be this girl’s age . . .”
A long pause.
“Is that why you’re weeping?”
“No . . . Yes.” A rustle of pillows. “Isabelle was only nine when she passed of smallpox. One of my guardians had insisted on sending her away. The missionary. I’ll never forgive him.”
“So we’ll send the girl somewhere else.”
Meg clenched her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes tight. Wherever “somewhere else” was, she didn’t want to find out.
* * *
In the morning, Ada’s eyes were red. Hugh’s brow was furrowed.
Meg sank to her knees before Ada. “Don’t send me away. Please. I promise not to cause you shame.”
Ada caressed her shoulder. “The parents’ shame is not the child’s fault.”
“But I want to forget my past. To have a new life. You can call me Isabelle after your cousin. Like I’d returned from school.”
Ada and Hugh exchanged glances. And then, before Hugh could intervene, Ada embraced Meg.
“I cannot have children,” she’d whispered, “but I can have her.”
Later that day Hugh anointed the girl’s forehead with flat champagne. “I dub thee Isabelle Lowell, henceforth niece of Ada and Hugh de Bonne.” Then, in a low voice, “Pray never address me as father.”
Afterward, Hugh destroyed the poem that had served as Isabelle’s proof of paternity.
* * *
At first they’d been happy.
Ada immediately began Isabelle’s education, for the girl could barely read and write. Turned out life in a doss-house wasn’t conducive for book learning; Isabelle struggled with what most children would have been taught years earlier. Regardless, Ada introduced her to the classics—Ovid, Homer, and Virgil—as well as to Wilhelm’s beloved fairy tales. However, music was another story: Isabelle took to the keyboard as though she’d been born to it. Within months she and Ada were working their way through four-handed arrangements of Bach and Mozart. As for Hugh, his appreciation of Isabelle eventually outweighed his resentment. Isabelle was quick-witted, slow to complain, and grateful for whatever scraps of affection were thrown her way. If she was indeed his blood as she appeared to be, she was more credit than curse.
But even the happiest of times cannot last. When Ada’s consumption flared anew after that day in Sévres, Isabelle insisted she accompany Ada to the sanitarium in Fiesole. She’d already lost one mother; she couldn’t bear to lose Ada too, whom she’d adored at first sight. Though Ada initially demurred Isabelle’s offer, she was secretly relieved.
“So you both are to leave me?” Hugh asked; he hadn’t thought ahead to what would become of Isabelle in Ada’s absence.
“I’ll watch over her,” Isabelle promised. And she had. She’d been with Ada in the sanitarium as winter snow turned to spring rain, and spring rain to summer blossoms. She’d witnessed Ada’s tears when she’d found Hugh’s new book of poetry, and helped her nurse the raven chick into adulthood.
But even Isabelle had not anticipated the raven’s return after they’d freed it that August day. It seemed an omen. But of what?
* * *
Two days after the raven’s return, Hugh arrived at the sanitarium bearing a pair of doves in a gilded cage.
A month later, the three of them were living in the Black Forest in a cottage filled with birds.
By the time the first snow arrived, Ada was sicker than she’d ever been.
VI.
The snow fell anew. By then it was late December, an hour after Doctor Engelsohn had info
rmed Ada of her unexpected pregnancy. “There is something else sickening her,” he’d warned Hugh before he’d departed. “You must leave here as soon as the snow allows.” The birds had all fled their cages; Hugh had freed them, convinced the end was near for his wife. Only the raven remained, perched high on a rafter hidden in shadows.
Isabelle did not notice the birds were gone when she’d burst inside after accompanying the doctor through the snow. She’d never seen Ada so poorly, not even in the sanitarium. It terrified her.
“I took the doctor to the village,” Isabelle said. “All the way to the churchyard. He seemed to think I was your maid. Feeling better, Aunt?”
Ada and Hugh exchanged looks.
Isabelle’s heart began to race, thinking of the doctor’s warning she’d overheard—Ada must be even sicker than she’d feared. When the opportunity arose, Isabelle hadn’t been able to stop herself from speaking of Bertram Highstead and his sons. He’d send them funds to return home. Hadn’t Hugh bragged the Highsteads were his only living relatives? That he’d helped them elope? Isabelle was no fool. She’d seen how things had grown tight of late. Ada wasn’t meant to be living in the midst of a dark wood with her delicate health. It would be better to settle at Weald House with its rose garden, dove cote, and mysterious histories she’d learned from Ada. She’d be Weald House’s new Isabelle. The Isabelle returned from death. Not the abandoned daughter of a whore.
Wind rattled the shutters. The raven cawed.
“The medicine helped. I even drank some broth,” Ada answered. Her smile appeared strained. “I’m going to have a baby in the spring, my beauty.”
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