A Lady Under Siege(53)

“‘What?’

“‘That photo.’

“His mother looked upon the photograph, and said, ‘You must have given it to me. You married a beautiful girl, my boy, and little Ginny looks so lovely there. How are they keeping, anyway?’

“And Derek said, ‘They’re dead, mother. You know that.’

“His mother for a moment seemed genuinely shocked, staggered by the news. ‘They died in a car crash, seven years ago,’ Derek told her.

“‘I’m sorry,’ she said to him softly, in the very frailest of voices. ‘I’m forgetting things, Thomas. Remembering others. So much death, and so unfair.’”

Sylvanne had done her best to feign an interest, but had some time earlier stopped listening to him, and had allowed her mind to wander. She came back to herself now, and found Thomas staring at her expectantly. “Is that the end?” she enquired, in a voice she meant to sound meek and tender.

“Don’t you see, Sylvanne? Once again, his mother called him Thomas! And once again, I had the sense she was looking through him, directly at me.”

“Yes, I do see,” replied Sylvanne, straining to sound concerned, and helpful.

“I hope so,” Thomas answered. “In any case, Derek stayed on for quite a long time, until the daylight faded, and the view of the city from their high window turned into a speckled pattern of lights. In that time they talked of many things, large and small. He bade her sit on a soft chair, while he sat on a stool and massaged her feet. She was very pleased by that. But from time to time he glanced at the photo on her shelf, and memories filled his mind, of happy times with a wife and daughter, and of the grief he suffered at their loss.”

“Poor man,” she said.

“Yes. In his own home there are no pictures of them at all. But again, Sylvanne, if I may address Meghan directly once more: I’ve produced here the secret you asked for, gleaned from his now-so-dissolute life: the man once knew the happiness a wife and child can bring. Not so different from me, after all.”

From the other room Sylvanne could hear Daphne and Mabel happily experimenting with oranges. “That’s all I have to say,” Thomas said finally. “Likely to you just a jumble of disjointed words, all of them meant for Meghan—if you found them overly strange or in any way frightening, I apologize, for it was not my intent.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Sylvanne replied. “I’m not the sort of flower that wilts under a summer’s sun.”

Thomas studied her. “No, I suppose not. You’ve been through so much lately, and yet you stand as proudly in your posture as any woman I’ve ever met.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she answered.

“It is. I’ve noticed the same trait in your twin, the woman Meghan. She carries herself erectly, and her gait is as lovely as that of a young doe. The women of her age do not dress with our sense of modesty, in kirtles that skim the floor, no indeed, they bedeck their bodies in minuscule scraps of fabric, and call it fully clothed. At first it’s shocking, but—”

“Daddy! I’m walking.”

Through the door they could see Daphne in a long white nightdress, taking tentative steps across the room, her face glowing with achievement. Thomas eagerly hurried to her, and took her hand.

“This is wonderful, my darling, wonderful,” he cried. From the doorway between the two rooms Sylvanne watched as he led his daughter around the room, as if escorting her toward some imaginary, celebratory dance floor.

Mabel sidled over to her Mistress, and in a low voice, enquired, “What did he wish to speak of, Madame?”

“It doesn’t matter. Gibberish of some sort,” Sylvanne muttered. “I took your advice to heart, and behaved most genially toward him. I pretended a great interest, which encouraged him to jabber about his dreams of the future until I nearly lost all track of meaning in his words.”

“See there?” Mabel said brightly. “It didn’t kill you to make nice.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sylvanne said. But she felt troubled. In pretending to like him, she had felt her feelings move to a precarious place, a place at odds with her purpose. She watched Thomas chatting playfully with his daughter a moment. “Look at him, so contented. He possesses an abundance of love, or so it appears—it would be child’s play, I now see, to make him fall in love with me. But I sense a risk in this newfound strategy—if I’m to show him kindness, and more, then kind acts might lead to kind feelings within me, the same way charity warms the heart of one who gives.”