dressed in velvets and silks and dripping the diamonds and pearls that her mother, Marie Antoinette, had managed to smuggle out of France with friends in the early days of the Revolution. Today she wore a somewhat shabby gown of dark green wool, made high at the neck with only a modest touch of lace at the collar and cuffs; an unfashionable, heavy wool shawl draped her shoulders. But her carriage was eminently regal, her head held high as she moved to greet him.
“Lord Devlin,” she said, her voice oddly high-pitched and scratchy and still noticeably inflected by her native Parisian accent. “How kind of you to call.”
He bowed low over the hand she offered. “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”
She inclined her head but did not smile. He had heard that she never smiled.
Although she was still known in the popular imagination as “the Orphan in the Temple,” those days were long in the past. She was thirty-four years old. As a child, she had been blond and blue-eyed, but her hair had long since darkened to a dull brown. She had a tall, sloping forehead, a long nose, protuberant, red-rimmed eyes, and a somewhat receding chin. There was little of her mother’s famous beauty or vivacity about her, although Marie Antoinette’s disastrous haughtiness was very much in evidence.
Turning, she indicated the woman who had until then remained quietly in the background. “This is my dear companion, Lady Giselle Edmondson.”
Lady Giselle was of much the same age as the Princess, but both taller and more delicately built, with hair of the palest blond and an almost elfin face. The daughter of an English earl and his French wife, she had been born in Paris to an idyllic childhood of soft eiderdowns, lavender-scented gardens, and rose-tinged sunrises over the Seine. A devotee of the Enlightenment, the Earl had greeted the first stirrings of revolution with an enthusiasm bordering on delirium. The storming of the Bastille troubled him, but he’d scornfully refused to join the panicked stampede of his fellow aristocrats for the Channel. By the time the gutters flowed with blood and matted blond hair streamed from the heads of noblewomen carried on pikes through the streets, it was too late.
Gathering his young family, he tried to flee on a dark, windswept night. But they made it less than thirty miles before a howling mob surrounded their carriage. As thirteen-year-old Giselle watched with the faces of her younger brother and sister pressed tight against her skirts, the Earl and his wife were dragged from their carriage and torn limb from limb. Then the jeering, red-capped men and snarling women wrenched the children from her arms.
“We’ll raise them as good sansculottes,” they told her.
Sebastian had heard she spent the next three years searching for her little brother and sister. But she never found them. By the time she finally left France in the train of the newly freed Marie-Thérèse, she was just sixteen.
She had never married. But somehow she’d managed to come to terms with the horrors of her past and achieve an enviable measure of serenity. Unlike Marie-Thérèse, she did not clutch her sorrows to her or wear her sufferings as a badge of honor.
“We have met,” she told Sebastian now with a warmth that was utterly lacking in the Princess, “but only once and very briefly, so I doubt you would remember it.”
“The Duchess of Claiborne’s ball, last June,” he said, returning her smile.
She gave a startled peal of laughter. “Good heavens. How can you possibly recall it?”
He remembered because he’d found her life story so hauntingly tragic, and the degree to which she’d managed to overcome its worst effects inspiring. But all he said was, “Reports of my lamentable memory are greatly exaggerated.”
She started to laugh again, then cast an almost apologetic glance toward the Princess and raised a hand to her lips, as if hiding her smile.
“Let us walk,” said the
“Lord Devlin,” she said, her voice oddly high-pitched and scratchy and still noticeably inflected by her native Parisian accent. “How kind of you to call.”
He bowed low over the hand she offered. “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”
She inclined her head but did not smile. He had heard that she never smiled.
Although she was still known in the popular imagination as “the Orphan in the Temple,” those days were long in the past. She was thirty-four years old. As a child, she had been blond and blue-eyed, but her hair had long since darkened to a dull brown. She had a tall, sloping forehead, a long nose, protuberant, red-rimmed eyes, and a somewhat receding chin. There was little of her mother’s famous beauty or vivacity about her, although Marie Antoinette’s disastrous haughtiness was very much in evidence.
Turning, she indicated the woman who had until then remained quietly in the background. “This is my dear companion, Lady Giselle Edmondson.”
Lady Giselle was of much the same age as the Princess, but both taller and more delicately built, with hair of the palest blond and an almost elfin face. The daughter of an English earl and his French wife, she had been born in Paris to an idyllic childhood of soft eiderdowns, lavender-scented gardens, and rose-tinged sunrises over the Seine. A devotee of the Enlightenment, the Earl had greeted the first stirrings of revolution with an enthusiasm bordering on delirium. The storming of the Bastille troubled him, but he’d scornfully refused to join the panicked stampede of his fellow aristocrats for the Channel. By the time the gutters flowed with blood and matted blond hair streamed from the heads of noblewomen carried on pikes through the streets, it was too late.
Gathering his young family, he tried to flee on a dark, windswept night. But they made it less than thirty miles before a howling mob surrounded their carriage. As thirteen-year-old Giselle watched with the faces of her younger brother and sister pressed tight against her skirts, the Earl and his wife were dragged from their carriage and torn limb from limb. Then the jeering, red-capped men and snarling women wrenched the children from her arms.
“We’ll raise them as good sansculottes,” they told her.
Sebastian had heard she spent the next three years searching for her little brother and sister. But she never found them. By the time she finally left France in the train of the newly freed Marie-Thérèse, she was just sixteen.
She had never married. But somehow she’d managed to come to terms with the horrors of her past and achieve an enviable measure of serenity. Unlike Marie-Thérèse, she did not clutch her sorrows to her or wear her sufferings as a badge of honor.
“We have met,” she told Sebastian now with a warmth that was utterly lacking in the Princess, “but only once and very briefly, so I doubt you would remember it.”
“The Duchess of Claiborne’s ball, last June,” he said, returning her smile.
She gave a startled peal of laughter. “Good heavens. How can you possibly recall it?”
He remembered because he’d found her life story so hauntingly tragic, and the degree to which she’d managed to overcome its worst effects inspiring. But all he said was, “Reports of my lamentable memory are greatly exaggerated.”
She started to laugh again, then cast an almost apologetic glance toward the Princess and raised a hand to her lips, as if hiding her smile.
“Let us walk,” said the
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