Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (81 page)

“Once I looked out and they were in the back garden, the two of them. Adele was laughing. It was a strange noise, almost rusty sounding, for I never heard her laugh but for when Monsieur Jamie was with her. On this particular day, the weather was very warm as it sometimes is in Paris in the spring. There were cherry blossoms everywhere, like a snowstorm outside, and Jamie was holding her up so that she might feel the sun on her face. She had that beautiful golden hair just as Monsieur and his
grand-père
had, and it was filled with petals.” She took a deep breath and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I did not have children of my own. Adele was my child. I loved her so very much and I only hope that she knew it somehow.”

“I’m sure she did,” Pamela meant the words, for the very house around her was the sort of home in which love had been so long fostered that it had grown of its own accord. She knew such houses, for she lived in one herself.

“Though Adele was in so many ways his opposite, like Monsieur Jamie, animals and insects found her most attractive. You will have witnessed this with Monsieur, no doubt.”

She nodded. She had seen his way with horses, with children, how if he stood still in the garden for more than a few minutes, the butterflies would land on his head and arms, the foxes would come and sit near him without fear, and deer, shy and beautiful, would take food right out of his hand.

“Once he said to me, Madame Felicie you must not worry about Adele, for this is only her body. The rest of her was stolen away by the fairies when we were born. She was so perfect they had to have her for themselves and so they took her, and left me behind. Some day they will come for her body too and she will dance in marble halls and know neither pain nor fear ever again.” Madame Felicie shook her head. “Poor Jamie, to have such gifts and feel that one does not deserve them. The universe, as you know, has seen fit to make him pay dearly for those gifts.”

“Where is Adele now, Madame Felicie?” Pamela asked, though she thought she knew the answer. It was lingering in the very air around them. It was, perhaps, the ghost whose touch she had felt earlier.

“She died just over three years ago, Madame. It was pneumonia; her lungs had never been strong. Monsieur Jamie was with her at the end. As much as she was capable of love, she loved him. There was no better hand to hold hers than his, this he knew.”

Pamela reached across the table and took the woman’s hands in her own. “I’m sorry you lost her but I am certain she knew she was well loved.”

“She was an angel, and angels are not meant long for this world of ours. So we must love them as they pass us and thank the Lord for the blessing, however brief.”

“Do you have any pictures of her?”

“Of course, Madame. I will fetch some.”

Madame Felicie left the kitchen, returning moments later with a photo album bound in pale lavender silk, silver embroidery looping around its worn edges.

The first ones where black and white, a tiny girl in pale-colored pinafores, slight and delicate as a fairy, with a terrible vacant stare. Then slowly she began to grow, and became adolescent, still slight, but tall, as though she would fold up to nothing. The color photos, when they came were startling. She gasped aloud, a thin ache under her heart like a cut from a knife.

“The resemblance is startling, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” There it was, the beautiful golden hair, the slanted green eyes, the profile that was carved, it seemed, with especial care and love by a Master. And yet… and yet, there was that terrible vacancy in the face whereas Jamie’s face was always animated by laughter, by the lift of a sardonic brow, by a supple grace that imbued his every movement and word.

There were a couple of photos of Adele with her grandfather. Jamie and Adele looked a great deal like him. He had been a beautiful man even well past his middle years.

The last four pages of the album were mostly of Adele with her brother, her twin, the golden side of their mutual coin. Jamie always had his arm around her and Adele was often looking up at him, not at the camera. The photos were a little eerie, as though one was truly looking at one person who had been split into two. Jamie’s ease with the girl who had been his twin was apparent, and she felt a sharp pang of longing for his presence.

“Madame Felicie, how does this connect to the reason I am in Paris?”

The woman stood and took an envelope from the pocket of her capacious apron.

“I believe I will let Monsieur Jamie tell you himself.”

Pamela took the letter to the study, still numb with the revelations of the last hour. She went to the desk where she had sat contemplating the grounds earlier and opened the pale grey envelope. There was no letterhead, for Jamie did not like formality with his personal correspondence. She smiled to see his writing across the page, his hand which managed to be precise and sprawling at the same time. She could see him, golden head bent over the paper, measuring his words and writing quickly in one sitting as was his way.

Dear Pamela,

You will know about Adele now and be wondering how this connects to everything else that is going on. The answer is that I don’t entirely know. But if you’re here now reading this letter, it means it does connect and is important. I do not want my secrets used as a weapon against you. However, I fear that is what may happen. I wanted to tell you about Adele but it never seemed like the right time and I didn’t want the knowledge of it to burden you.

Some time ago, I discovered that Lucien Broughton and I share a birthdate—same day, same year, born only minutes apart. I was born in my home, he was born in a home for unwed mothers. Adele was recorded as having died only moments after birth. This of course is not true, but no one was to ever know that. I think the Reverend believes that he was the twin that died that day. Of course, that is not true in any way, but it is what he believes. Why is the mystery. Beyond sharing a birthdate and a geographical location, there is no reason for him to think he is my twin. I don’t know enough of his life to guess what lies at the bottom of all this but I understand that he believes it to be true. He thinks that I have stolen his birthright and sees himself as Fortune’s outcast.

For a long time, because I was young, I saw Adele’s life as a tragedy, and because she was my twin I felt that I had stolen from her, taken the life she might have led. I will tell you this, however, she was mostly happy in her own way and her life was a blessing, as most lives are. I loved her, and for me that was a gift beyond price. She taught me that there is more than one meaning to life for there are as many meanings as there are individual lives.

It was as though she was a princess, her body the glass coffin in the fairytale, her spirit roving elsewhere, crossed over into a far land to which mere mortals did not have access. When I first found her I wanted to bring her home, to have her live at Kirkpatrick’s Folly as was her birthright and so that she might reside in the heart of a family. This was not to be, as you know, and Felicie showed me long ago that Adele was better off in the Paris house where she had always been and things were familiar to her, where she had her routines and touchstones.

Felicie was right, for there was a strange contentment at Adele’s core. Perhaps that was her half of the deal, to have that peace while I took the darkness in exchange for all the other things the universe bestowed. My grandfather told me once that the universe always seeks balance and it seems to be true, as tip-tilty as the world is at times.

If you have to reveal the truth about my sister, then it will have to be. After all, the world cannot hurt her now.

Do what you must with this knowledge, Pamela, and know that you have my blessing as your judgement in this matter is also mine.

Love,

Jamie

She sat for a long time after reading the letter, hearing the soft tick of the clock and the creak of the house around her. She was tired but knew sleep would not come easily tonight. Jamie was right, the world could no longer hurt Adele, but it could still hurt Jamie, a fact of which she was all too painfully aware. Sometimes it felt as though Jamie’s world was one of mirrors and the further one advanced into said world the more distorted and shifty the parameters became. How he had managed for so long to keep the many parts of his life separate and balanced was beyond her imagining.

Much later she made her way upstairs to the bedroom that Madame Felicie had prepared for her. It was a beautiful room, well proportioned, with a set of three stairs that led up to a sitting room of windows and comfortable chairs as well as a daintily appointed vanity filled with her perfumes and creams.

She changed into her nightgown, cleaned her face and teeth, and brushed out her hair.

The bed was like a scalloped shell, mother of pearl inlaid into the base, the curtains in hazy shades of blue and grey with hints of pearled lavender and moonlit green. The sheets were fresh and matched the bed hangings and were, of course, the finest grade of Kirkpatrick linen. The pillows were heaped high, and when she leaned back into them they released the sweet scent of lime water. Madame Felicie was a housekeeper that missed no detail.

She had brought books up from the downstairs study, for she rarely fell asleep without the panacea of a story, as soothing to her as a sleep potion. Some in English, some in French, for she had been well enough schooled in the latter to read fluently. But even the delights of reading the letters of Madame Sevigne in the very neighborhood in which she had lived could not hold her attention. Her mind’s eye held only the photos of Adele and Jamie, of that strange vacant face which was, like the empty vase that Madame Felicie had compared it to, still a thing of beauty.

The bed was high and she could snuggle deep into the heavy quilts and still see out into the garden. The moon was low, soon to set. It washed the bare lime branches with a soft gilt, tilting over the stone walls, sifting thick in the piles of ivy. It was a beautiful night, clarified in the cold so that the old world hung there visible in the arms of the new.

The last picture in the album that recorded Adele’s brief life was of her and Jamie in the garden on a spring afternoon, the abundant green all around them proof of the most extravagant of seasons. Adele was lying in a garden chaise, wrapped in blankets against any stray chill that winter may have left behind. Jamie was seated in the grass beside her, his hands describing airy worlds, his face alight with the creation of something that would give another joy. Adele’s gaze rested with contentment upon his face. They were happy, the two of them, captured unaware in that moment.

And around them, caught like silken leaves against the backdrop of virulent green grass and pale winter blankets were butterflies, dozens upon dozens of them. Too early for the season yet undeniably there.

Pamela sighed and closed her eyes to the moonlit garden. Behind her eyelids she still saw the butterflies, delicate upon stalk and leg, feeling every vibration through their wings and seeing no color, only turning to where the sun guided them. They knew the necessity of warmth and sought it always.

“She died only two weeks later,” Madame Felicie had said, closing the album as though she could no longer bear to look at Adele’s face. “This house felt so empty afterwards. Then, near the end of that summer, I was outside one day and a butterfly lit on my finger and sat there for a long time. I didn’t dare breathe nor move for I knew it must be Adele come to say goodbye.” The woman smiled in memory. “You will think me a doddery old fool with such fancies. Only sometimes I think I feel her touch in passing or smell her skin, but it goes by too quickly before I can embrace it and hold it to me. That is how ghosts are, passing in a moment, leaving us behind.”

Pamela turned in the bed, hearing the echo of Madame Felicie’s words. She remembered her earlier fancy of a ghost touching her through the veil of centuries but it no longer felt like an ancient phantom, for the ghosts that dwelt here were real and one did not need to reach far back to find them.

Chapter Sixty
The Black Pope

The following day was filled with errands
, business that needed to be dealt with while she had these few days in Paris. She had arranged meetings with Jamie’s French bankers and solicitors, shareholders and vintners. Throughout the entire day the revelations of the previous night occupied part of her mind and she felt as though the golden wraith of Jamie’s twin followed her everywhere. She also had the sense that someone far more corporeal was watching her and by lunchtime, over a bottle of Sancerre that tasted like a cold winter peach, shared with one of Jamie’s bankers, she realized it was the lumpy little man in the bad suit that she had run into outside the solicitor’s offices. She turned around and smiled at him where he sat ostensibly reading
Paris Match
and he disappeared shortly thereafter.

Still, the feeling would not leave her, not through her afternoon appointments, nor over dinner, nor as she walked out in the November evening for a breath of fresh air. It was quiet in the streets, for most people were inside keeping warm, eating supper and looking forward to the warmth of their beds on such a night. She looked behind a couple of times and thought she saw a small figure slide behind a tree, though it might have been a trick of the shadowy walls, overhung as they were with tree branches and bare vines.

She was tired, and she missed Casey and Conor terribly. There were times when she felt that she lived a divided life, a foot in each world, the one she lived with Casey and Conor in their wee home where she was safe and loved, and then the world she stepped into each morning as she drove the winding road up to Kirkpatrick’s Folly. She assumed a mantle, particularly since Philip’s arrival, that was like to invisible armor and she moved within it with an assurance she rarely felt. Jamie might have believed she was equipped for all this intrigue and financial derring-do but most days she felt that he had severely overestimated her abilities.