No Sweeter Heaven: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 2 (39 page)

There seemed to be no answer to his dilemma. No matter how many prayers he said, no answer was forthcoming.

He was about to set the Cross on the altar when he heard someone come in through the front, and he looked up to see who it was. He nearly dropped the Cross in his surprise.

He had known Frances Dambier, later the Duchesse de Saint-Simon, years before, when she’d been deeply unhappy, married to a man who was both cruel and ruthless, and he had often counseled her. Her undisguised relief when her husband had accidentally been shot and killed had been evident. It was one funeral service he had actually enjoyed conducting and he felt no remorse over his enjoyment.

She had left the day after the funeral, and he hadn’t seen her since. Her beauty had not faded with age. Instead, it had matured, the bones of her face stronger, more sculpted now. She still moved with the same regal grace, had the same noble presence. But he also noted the added lines of suffering. He could see that Frances had not had an easy life since her departure from Saint-Simon.

“Frances,” he said, carefully putting his treasure down and quickly wiping his hands. He hurried down the nave toward her, his hand held out in greeting. “Goodness gracious, is it really you? I was under the impression that you had retired to a convent.”

“I am pleased to see you are still the priest for Saint-Simon,” she said softly. “You haven’t changed much, have you?”

“Oh, I’m older, fatter, a little wiser, one hopes. What a very pleasant surprise.”

“I am not sure you will think so after we speak, Michel. I have passed a disturbing night.”

His face instantly sobered. “Have you come to make confession?”

“I’m not certain. I need to speak with you in absolute confidence, but I don’t know that I need to confess—yet.”

The duchess appeared sorely troubled, and he knew that any number of things might be the cause. But he had a strong suspicion of what was on her mind, given Pascal’s earlier visit. It occurred to him that maybe God had heard his prayers, after all.

“Please, come up to the front. We will pray together, and then we will speak, yes?”

When they had dispensed with the prayers, he settled the duchess on one of the benches and sat down next to her in the deep silence of the church. “You have come to visit your children?” he asked, trying to ease her into conversation.

“Yes,” she said, her hands clutched in her lap. “I haven’t seen them for a very long time…”

She quickly explained, and Father Chabot began to understand the pain etched onto her face.

“How tragic,” he said sympathetically. “I hadn’t realized. But now you are reunited. Your children must be overjoyed.”‘

“I don’t know if ‘overjoyed’ is the word I would use,” she said. “We are slowly learning to know each other again, although Lily is the most difficult. She carries such anger toward me, toward her father. But never mind that now.” Her expression grew even more troubled. “Oh, Michel—I am in a terrible dilemma.” The words came out in a rush. “If I help one child, I will hurt the other terribly.”

Father Chabot took her hand. “Tell me what has happened,” he said quietly.

She shook her head, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. “Last night I met Lily’s husband, Pascal LaMartine.”

Father Chabot went very still.
Finally, here it is. The reckoning.

“I met him the night before,” she said, “but only briefly, and the light was poor, and in any case I was expecting something quite different.” Her words tumbled over each other. “Yesterday afternoon I started thinking about the name, and that’s when I realized.”

“Realized what, exactly?” Father Chabot said carefully.

“About Henri and Anne LaMartine. I thought about the rumor that Jean-Jacques had spoken of, about Lily’s husband being Serge’s bastard, which of course I dismissed. You must remember how they were together, Serge and Christine?”

“Of course,” Father Chabot replied.

“We all knew that Anne LaMartine was barren, so it seemed ridiculous that she might have had a child with Serge. Then this Pascal LaMartine came to dinner last night and told me about his family living somewhere else entirely, so I thought I was being silly, seeing a resemblance. But it was there—oh, it was there, Michel, far more than I ever expected, once I started looking for it. When he told me his mother’s name was Anne and the description matched perfectly, I finally understood.”

“What was it that you understood?” he asked gently.

“I don’t know what I could have been thinking, not to have realized from the first moment I saw him, standing up there on the bench, addressing the people with such confidence, so like his father.” She trembled from head to foot, and he took her other hand and held them both steady.

“He has not just his father’s height and coloring and his distinctive nose,” she said, “but he has her mouth—it is more masculine, of course, but that full lower lip, the smile? And the way the eyes look at one, so directly, solemn one moment and then the laugh that suddenly lights them up the next. Surely you’ve seen it, Michel?”

“Yes. I’ve seen it,” he said.

“I am not imagining things, then?”

“No, Frances. You are not. I saw it the first moment I met him. But I suppose that I had the benefit of knowing that one day I might.”

She jerked in a sharp breath and pulled her hands from his. “So…” she whispered. “I am right.”

He nodded. “You are right.”

“Anne was barren after all,” she said, looking away.

“Yes,” he said. “Anne was barren. But she raised a child, who otherwise would not have survived under the care of your husband.”

Frances was silent for a long moment, her head bowed. And then she looked up, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. “I thought that must be it,” she said shakily, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. “Christine certainly knew what Hubert was capable of, how badly he coveted the dukedom. He would not have let an infant get in his way.”

“That’s right. As long as Serge was alive, their child was safe. The moment Serge died, Christine knew her infant’s life was in danger—and not just from typhoid. She did what she had to. She was dying herself.”

“It seems such a drastic measure to take, pretending a child’s death.” Frances twisted her handkerchief around and around in her hands.

“Perhaps,” Father Chabot said quietly, “but she knew that sending Alexandre away with Anne and Henri would not be enough. Don’t you think Hubert would have done everything he could to track them down?”

Frances wiped her eyes again. “Yes. I suppose he would have.”

“So you see, she did the right thing. I have never before breathed a word of this, having been sworn to secrecy. But since you guessed the truth, I feel I have not broken my oath. Tell me, what do you intend to do, now that you know?”

“I—I don’t know,” she cried. “Perhaps it would be best if I did nothing.”

“You must realize that Jean-Jacques is not the rightful heir?”

“Yes, but how can I go upsetting so many lives at this late date? Christine sent her son away, after all. The world believes he is dead.”

Father Chabot’s gaze traveled up to the altar. “Christine intended for Anne and Henri to tell the boy the truth when he reached his majority.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I witnessed her instructions shortly before she died. I wrote them in a letter that she signed and gave to Anne along with her husband’s signet ring—sadly, both must have been lost when the LaMartines died. Christine wanted her son to know, Frances. The LaMartines never had a chance to tell him. You have.”

“But he is content, not knowing the truth—and Lily will be a duchess in her own right, or their son a duke. Why should I rob Jean-Jacques of the only thing he has by dredging up the past now? Jean-Jacques would be left with nothing. Surely you can understand my dilemma, Michel?”

“Do you think it is right to leave the man we know as Pascal LaMartine wondering if he might be a bastard?” Father Chabot asked her. “He has no proof of anything anymore—not of his true parents, nor the people who raised him for the first part of his life. Don’t you think he deserves to know of his birthright, to know where he belongs?”

Frances shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. He likes to live like a peasant. He doesn’t care about the finer things. What good is a dukedom to a man like that? And Lily is happy, whereas this news might well destroy my son. Why should I overturn Jean-Jacques’s life? Or Lily’s? Or even Pascal’s? No one would be happy for it.”

Father Chabot stood. “I think you need to make a careful examination of your conscience, Frances. I understand your concerns. But you are the only one who can correct this situation. You know I can say nothing.”

“Thank you for listening,” she said, also rising. “I will let you know when I have reached a decision.”

“Do not let it be too long,” he cautioned. “Damage could be done that you might forever regret.”

“Damage will be done either way,” she said. “I must decide which will be at the least cost.”

Pascal found the note Lily had left for him when he returned to the cottage at midday, saying that she’d gone up to visit her mother and see what more she could discover.

“You needn’t have bothered,” he murmured. “There’s nothing more she can tell you, sweetheart.”

He crumpled the note and tossed it in the fireplace, deciding to go up to the chateau to find her. He needed to be with her, needed to hold her, his constant in a world that had turned inside out.

He let Bean out and walked with her for a few minutes, then started back to the cottage. Lily’s fishing pole leaned at the ready against the outside wall, and he smiled. Lily had become a fine fisherman over the course of the summer, and she didn’t share his inclination to toss the fish back in. They’d made many a good meal from Lily’s catch, and it looked as if she planned another for this evening.

He sat on the cottage steps, waiting for Bean to finish her run. Everything looked so normal, so typical of the life he and Lily had built together. Yet it all felt different. He was not the man he’d thought he was. His parents had not been the people he’d thought they were. Nothing was the same, nothing ever would be again.

He had been born into the world in the most ignoble of ways. The next ten years of his life had been built on a lie, and the following twenty had perpetuated it. Since he couldn’t change the past, he could only try to live with it—and hope that Lily wouldn’t eventually come to despise him for being the bastard she’d once called him.

Pascal walked upstairs to the salon at the butler’s direction. Lily’s voice echoed clearly down the hall as he approached, her mother’s lower tones answering in response. He was about to knock on the half-open door, when Lily’s words stopped him cold.

“No, Mama, you don’t understand. You see, I
deliberately
went to St. Christophe to find Pascal, because I thought he could bring the land back, and Jean-Jacques was in such trouble.”

Pascal’s hand fell from the door and he stiffened with shock. Lily? Lily had deliberately sought him out? She had
known
? Oh, God, it wasn’t possible—it just wasn’t. But her next words confirmed the fact.

“That’s why I feel so guilty. I’ve never told Pascal the truth, and I don’t know how to. It will sound so awful to him. I mean, tracking him down and falling off the wall and making false accusations, that’s all bad enough. But the forced marriage—and my bringing him here, only to have him discover who he really is? How do you think he’ll feel?”

“I don’t understand,” Pascal heard the duchess ask through the horrible pounding in his ears. “How did you hear about him in the first place?”

“Oh, it was something Father Chabot said last spring. He told me where to find him, so I went immediately,” Lily replied.

It was enough for Pascal. It was more than enough. No wonder she had called him base-born in the carriage when they’d gone back to England, thinking he couldn’t understand. No wonder she’d been so disdainful of him. And no wonder she’d accused him of assault. How else would she have dragged him down to Saint-Simon? He would never have left St. Christophe of his own accord.

Lily had planned the entire thing to get the bastard son back to the land.

He leaned back against the wall, his arms wrapped around his chest as if they could protect him. He felt as if cold water were sucking at him, and if he let go for an instant it would drag him down into its terrible depths. He’d been there once before when he’d drowned.

He was about to drown again, but this time his body was safe. It was his spirit that was in mortal danger. And this time there was no heaven waiting for him, only the echo of Lily’s words—words that spoke of more lies and betrayal. He had to get away as quickly as possible before he heard anything more and was pulled completely under.

It was one thing being lied to by parents twenty years dead. It was another having been lied to by the priest he’d called his friend. But to have been lied to and manipulated by the woman he loved more than life itself—that was more than he could bear.

He somehow managed to get himself out of the chateau and down the hill. He somehow managed to write a brief letter to Lily telling her his intentions. And he somehow managed to pack his satchel and saddle the horse.

Pascal left Saint-Simon without a backward look. He couldn’t afford one—not unless he was willing to stare into the depths of hell and know it for his own.

Lily felt better about having unburdened herself to her mother, not that they were on easier terms. But who else was there who was so familiar with the Saint-Simon history? On the whole, she thought her mother had handled the prospect of Pascal’s being Jean-Jacques’s baseborn cousin rather well, even if she had been upset over the matter.

“I honestly thought she was going to be much more shocked, Bean,” Lily said, filling the puppy’s water bowl and setting it on the floor, “especially since she was so close to Serge’s wife.”

Lily cocked her head. “What’s the matter with you? You’re not looking very cheerful. It’s not that bad. Pascal will grow accustomed to the idea with time.”

The puppy miserably rested her head on her paws.

“Don’t you want to go fishing? You love fishing. Come on, little dog.”

Bean didn’t move.

Lily bent down and felt her little nose. It was cold and wet. She didn’t look ill, but maybe she’d eaten something to upset her stomach, Lily decided. She straightened, intending to make some chamomile tea just in case. As she put the water on to heat she noticed a folded paper on the table, addressed to her in Pascal’s clear hand.

Pascal didn’t usually bother to address things to her; he just wrote them and casually tossed the paper on the table. She picked it up and unfolded it, and her knees buckled in shock. She had to grasp the corner of the table to steady herself.

Lily. I overheard you speaking to your mother today. I wish to God I hadn’t. I can’t remain in a marriage that has been based on a lie from the very beginning. Whatever other truth there has been between us, this will always be in the way.

I’ve taken one of the horses, but I’ve left you the other and the carriage. I’ll write to Nicholas and ask him to release your dowry to you, so that you will have plenty to live on.

I’m going back to St. Christophe. Don’t come after me. Let me go, Lily. For God’s sake, if you care for me at all, let me go.

He hadn’t signed it.

Lily doubled over, her entire world crumbling. She sank to her knees, shaking her head back and forth, back and forth, as if she could deny what she’d read. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be gone. Not Pascal, not her love, her life.

Don’t leave me, Pascal.

Never, beloved. Never.

But he had.

Lily cried every day and every night for the next ten weeks, her pain too acute to deal with in any other way. She felt stripped bare, as if everything that had ever been her essence, everything that Pascal had found to love—and in the end found lacking—had disappeared along with him. She was nothing more than a wraith who woke and moved through the gray place that her life had become, as insubstantial as she. She lived as a shadow in a shadow-world, unable to bear the invasion of the real world beyond. It was too vivid, too deafening, too acute.

She refused her mother’s offer of refuge at the chateau. She held her little cottage to her, a silent reminder of Pascal, and kept to herself. It was an effort just to do her chores, to cook the food that continued to appear outside the door, although it tasted like sawdust and she could keep little of it down.

Everywhere she looked, there were echoes of Pascal. His medicine chest sat where he’d left it, although he’d taken his bag with him. Books. A shirt that had been drying on the line. So many little things that tore at her, that only made the silence more absolute.

The letters that she wrote to him were returned unread, and as each bleak day passed with no word, she began to understand that he really wasn’t coming back. He had well and truly cut himself off.

She knew she shouldn’t be surprised. One way or another every person she’d ever loved in her life had left her. She should have realized that Pascal would eventually do the same. She ought to have prepared herself for the inevitable. Instead she’d allowed herself to bask in the glory of his love, to believe it was as infinite as her own for him, that nothing could ever mar it. She’d been wrong. She’d been wrong about so many things, most especially about the depth of Pascal’s love for her.

Lily woke one November morning to her usual misery. She hated the moment when she surfaced to consciousness and the terrible jolt of realization that she was alone. At night, in her dreams, she felt him with her in that place he’d made, that part of her that
was
Pascal. She drifted with him, held safe and close, her soul bound to his. Then came daylight, and the sick ache began all over again.

She answered the knock at the door with no enthusiasm. Coffey stood there, as she did every morning, her wizened face filled with concern.

“I’m fine, Coffey,” Lily said colorlessly before Coffey could start on her daily litany. “Thank you for coming by, but no thank you, I do not wish to speak to my mother, or my brother, or Father Chabot, nor do I wish to take a stroll.”

Coffey looked her up and down. “Lily, I’ve had quite enough of this attitude, and I won’t hold my peace a minute longer. Every couple has disagreements, but this has become ridiculous. Look at you, so deeply unhappy. It must stop.”

“Is that what you advised my parents when they separated?” Lily asked caustically. “Did you write to my mother and tell her to pull herself together, to forget her unhappiness? It’s ironic, isn’t it, Coffey? First my mother locked herself away in a convent, and now my husband has decided he prefers a monastery to me. I don’t seem to hold the same appeal as God.”

“Don’t blaspheme,” Coffey said tartly. “And as for your husband, I wonder how long he will stay in his monastery once you tell him you’re with child. He doesn’t strike me as a man who neglects his obligations.”

Lily stared at her nurse. “Are you mad? Do you think I’d lie to him, just to make him come home? I’m not that stupid—not to mention immoral.”

“Maybe not, but you’re as bad-mannered as ever. You might at least offer an old woman a seat.” Coffey pushed past her and abruptly pulled out a chair at the table. “Now, see here,” she said, gingerly settling herself. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense.”

Lily furiously rounded on her. “What do you mean,
nonsense”!
You really are heartless, Coffey. Can’t you see I’m suffering? I’ve lost Pascal, and it’s my own fault. Why can’t you leave me alone?” Lily sank into a chair and covered her forehead with her hand, choking back tears.

Coffey’s eyes softened. “You really don’t realize, do you?”

“Realize what?” Lily asked bleakly, looking up.

“Think, Lily,” her old nurse said. “How long has it been since your last courses?”

Lily hadn’t thought about it at all. Time had ceased to have meaning, and her monthly flow had been the least of her worries.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Before the harvest?”

“Just as I thought,” Coffey said with satisfaction. “That was September. You realize it is coming up to December? You have the look of a woman with child—you’ve had it for some time, at least to my eye. But then, I’ve known you from the day you were born.”

Lily looked down at herself in disbelief. “You really think I might be with child? I—I haven’t been able to keep very much down…”

“A little dry bread in the morning will help with that. You need to think about your coming child, Lily. All this grieving you’ve been doing isn’t good for either of you. You might better spend your energy thinking about what you’re going to do to bring your husband home where he belongs.” She planted her stick on the floor and stumped out without another word.

Lily impatiently waited for the door to close behind Coffey, then immediately smoothed shaking hands over her abdomen. Yes, it was more rounded than usual—and her breasts had been sore too. She had been so caught up in her own misery that the idea she might be pregnant had not occurred to her.

She went straight to the bookshelf and pulled out one of Pascal’s medical books, leafing through it until she came to the section on childbearing, reading everything about the early stages of pregnancy. She closed the book and sat down again. A happiness she hadn’t felt in months took hold of her, singing in every part of her being, throwing sharply pulsating color into the gray confines of her soul.

Pascal’s child was growing inside of her, tiny, safe, and secure, a living part of him. She reverently cupped her hands over the swell of her abdomen. She had a strong feeling that she knew when their baby had been conceived, and she thought about the words Pascal had spoken so tenderly to her that night, the night of the harvest.

Should we have a child together, created by love, born from it and into it, do you think we’d ever be able to stop loving that child?

“Oh, Pascal,” she said fiercely, “I swear to you I’ll love this child with every breath I take. I won’t ever abandon him to someone else’s care. I’ll be here for him from this moment to my very last, protecting him with everything I have in me.” She released a deep breath of despair. “I only wish you could do the same,” she whispered. “Pascal … won’t you please come home?”

Lily leaned her cheek on her fist, her happiness tainted with a deep misery. How was she supposed to provide her child with a father if he insisted on locking himself away in a monastery? How was she supposed to tell him he was going to be a father if he wouldn’t even read her letters? She slumped back in her chair, feeling utterly alone and helpless.

And then the most extraordinary idea began to occur to her. Lily’s mouth slowly lifted in a smile, the first since Pascal had left her. Pascal might be able to refuse her and her letters, but he’d never refuse his own child. It was perfect.

Oh, she did feel pleased with herself.

Pascal looked up as a scratch sounded at the door. He supposed it was dinnertime, not that he had any appetite. Julien was persistent, bringing him trays of food whether he wanted them or not. He was equally persistent. He wanted only to be left alone. He divided his days between the gardens and his room, and spent much of the night in the church in solitary prayer.

Julien understood, naturally, knowing all about the far reaches of hell. Pascal still didn’t believe in a hell beyond mortal life, but he reckoned that man more than made up for it with his infinite capacity for pain. If God protected one’s soul from hellfire, He didn’t protect it from immolation on the altar of one’s own humanity.

Pascal waited until he was sure Julien had gone away, then opened the door and took the tray, looking at it with disinterest. Soup. Bread. Wine. And a letter from Saint-Simon.

Just the sight of it tore at him like predatory teeth viciously ripping at the guts of a helpless animal. He groaned, wondering why Julien had not sent it the way of all the others, and then he looked again. It was addressed not in Lily’s writing but in an unfamiliar yet distinctly feminine hand. It could only be the duchess’s, which explained the letter’s presence on the tray. He’d never thought to instruct Julien to return a letter from the duchess, since it hadn’t occurred to him that she would write. Why would she? She must have been thrilled to see the last of him.

He thought about it for a moment. The duchess wouldn’t have written without serious reason, and he refused to believe she would petition on Lily’s behalf, or that Lily would allow it. The only thing he could think was that something had happened to Lily. The very idea compelled him to pick up the letter in panic and unseal it.

His eyes scanned the page, first in dread, and then in disbelief. It was disjointed, rambling to a degree, but it made its point with sickening clarity.

My dear Mr. LaMartine,

This is a very difficult letter to write. I have struggled long and hard with my conscience, but I have also seen how the people grieve for you. They are right to do so, and I have been wrong to keep you from them.

There is a reason that the land returned to life under your care. By all rights it belongs to you. You are the legitimate son of Serge and Christine de Saint-Simon, and by the laws of succession, the seventh duke.

I am sure this seems preposterous, but it is the truth, and Michel Chabot will swear to it. He took your mother’s deathbed confession and saw you into the LaMartines’ safekeeping to protect you from my husband. I knew nothing of this until the day you lef
t, when I guessed the truth and went to Michel Chabot for confirmation. He could not tell you himself, but urged me to speak with you.

Forgive me for not writing before. I thought I could keep my silence, but it became impossible. Jean-Jacques’s father did not love Saint-Simon, nor did he care about its people, not as your father did, with all his heart and soul. Jean-Jacques doesn’t car
e either, not really, not as he should. But you do. I should not have tried to hold on to Saint-Simon for the sake of my son. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I will be grateful. But I pray most especially that you will find it in your hear
t to forgive my daughter. She suffers.

Yours in Christ, Frances Montcrieff

He sank onto his hard bed, his hands clutching the paper as if he were trying to grasp reality. He read it one more time, then dropped it. It fluttered to the floor as he lowered his head to his knees, trying to catch his breath, to ease the stabbing pain that cut through his shredded gut and sliced directly up into his already savaged heart.

When he lifted his head again, the early-evening light had dimmed into the darkness of night, and he had come to a decision. He might rightfully be the Due de Saint-Simon, but he would never go home to claim his birthright.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” Dom Benetard said once again. “I wish I could help you, but I cannot. Your husband has chosen seclusion and silence. It would be wrong of me to disturb him.”

“But why?” Lily repeated. “I must speak with him. He refuses my letters. How else am I meant to communicate with him? Please, Father—it is a matter of the greatest urgency. I know if I had the chance to see him for even a few minutes I could make everything right.”

“Elizabeth. When your husband is ready to speak about what troubles him, he will come to me. At that time I will tell him of your visit. For now it would be best if you returned home.”