Page 60 of The Accidental Wedding
She went on, “This was at the beginning of the Terror—the revolution—and everything was in chaos. Mama’s father and brother went out one morning and were torn apart by an angry mob. Grand-mère expected the mob to come for her any moment. Terrified for Mama, she summoned my father and said if he could get her safely out of France, he could marry her. Which he did.” She should have finished the story there, with “and they lived happily ever after,” but she couldn’t bring herself to say it because they hadn’t, they surely hadn’t.
He frowned. “What about your grandmother? She didn’t go with them?”
“No, she had a higher loyalty.”
“Higher than to her own child?”
Maddy nodded. “Grand-mère served the queen, Marie Antoinette. Until she knew the fate of the queen, Grand-mère would not leave Paris.”
“She did not share the fate of poor Marie Antoinette.” His finger ran down the seam of the sketchbook. Her grandmother’s face looked out at her.
“No, she lived. She felt guilty about it for the rest of her life, poor Grand-mère. They were the same age, born in the same month, Grand-mère and the queen, and so she’d always believed they would share the same fate, that it was written in the stars. Besides, she served the queen, it was her duty. Instead, her fate was to go on living when those she’d loved had died.”
“You loved her,” he said softly, his voice very deep and quiet.
“I did. I still miss her.” Her voice cracked.
“She sounds like a remarkable woman.”
“She was. She taught me how to keep bees.” And so much more. She’d always been proud of Grand-mère, even though she recognized her eccentricities. Grand-mère living like a peasant woman in a cottage, unembarrassed and with all her airs and graces intact . . .
Cracked in the head,Papa used to say, though not within Grand-mère’s hearing.
If only Papa could see his own children now, dwelling in a run-down cottage, living off vegetables, chickens, honey, and their wits, just like Grand-mère. Would he perceive the irony? Probably not.
She opened it to another page at random. It was the portrait of baby Jean, the last of her poor little short-lived brothers . . . Her throat closed.
She took the sketchbook and closed it gently.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
With an effort she forced her mind back to the present. “What question?”
“How a gently born young English girl came to live like that”—he touched the sketchbook—“in France for ten years, while a war was raging.”
Ah, that. “There was no war when we left England.”
“No, but the wake of revolution is still a strange time for travel.”
She bit her lip, trying to think of how to explain it. “Mama . . . Mama had had difficulty giving Papa the heir he so wanted.” It was one way to describe endless miscarriages and stillbirths and misery.
“When I was nine, Mama decided to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes and pray for a boy. Papa agreed—he was desperate for a son—so we all went. They left me with Grand-mère while he and Mama went on to Lourdes, and when they returned, Mama wasenceinteagain.” It was too soon, she’d known. The midwife had told Mama she should wait, heal, and get stronger before trying again, but Papa was too eager for a son.
“Travel would be dangerous for the child, so Papa left Mama and me with Grand-mère to await the birth.”
“The baby in the picture.”
She nodded. “He came too soon, and was small and sickly. He only lived a few weeks. And Mama . . .” Her voice cracked. “She just . . . faded away.”
His arm slipped around her and he held her quietly against him. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded unable to speak. Those endless months when Mama would barely speak or eat. Weep endlessly over the drawing of little Jean. He should have been named John, after Papa, but Mama always called him Jean.
She’d never told the children that. John would hate knowing there were others before him who’d died, all named John.
He held her, stroking the skin of her arm gently. “I presume the war prevented you from returning to England.”
“No, it hadn’t started then.”
