Heart of the Diamond (43 page)

“But you meant more to him than any of us,” Nicki could not withhold the despair from clouding her voice.

“No. He could have left all of you behind to be with me, but he did not. He maintained his role as Marguerite's husband and your father. I took what was left, and that had to be enough for me then. I needed him so much I was willing to accept him on any terms.”

Nicki rubbed her eyes. Her heart had become a stone in her breast, heavy with the combined pain of past and present. “Nothing you say can change the fact that my mother took her own life. Whether my father was directly responsible or indirectly, he was the ultimate cause.”

Angelica leaned on the marble surface of the table, bringing her face close to Nicki's. “No, he was not.”

“You cannot know that!”

Pulling a side chair from against the wall nearby, Angelica placed it near Nicki and sat down. She folded her hands in her lap, straightening her back instinctively. “I will tell you what I do know, Nicole, because you have tortured yourself over this. I had no concept of how much until this night.”

Nicki dropped her gaze to Angelica's hands folded in her lap. “You could not have known.”

“I should have. There was a ball the night your mother died, and I was there, as well. I overheard several women talking to Marguerite. They told her that both sons who had lived in the estate neighboring her mother and father's home had been killed in a carriage accident. It was a tragedy, they said. Neither man had ever married and so the estate would go to a distant cousin upon the death of the parents. The women were not aware of Marguerite's feelings for the oldest son, though I am not certain they would have spared her if they had.

“She looked at me, but I do not believe she saw anything but the horror in her own mind. There was an expression in her eyes . . . I cannot describe the agony I saw there. The next day your father came to me and informed me she had died during the night. He said she was lying on her bed, still dressed in the gown she had worn to the ball.”

A sob erupted from deep in Nicki's chest, and she covered her face with her hands. After a moment, she clasped her hands together and held them to her heart while her mind spiraled back in time. Back to a night she had wrapped carefully in dark cloth and kept hidden away. Until now.

“She looked like the princess in the story of Sleeping Beauty that she had read to me so many times. I climbed up onto the bed and kissed her cheek, pretending I was her Prince Charming. But her face was so . . . cold. She was like a beautiful marble statue. The note crackled beneath my leg and I picked it up. I tried to wake her, but she was so stiff, as though she would break beneath my hands.

“When I heard a sound in the hall, I hid under the bed, so frightened I did not come out, even when I heard my father's shout. I had never heard my father cry until that night. The doctor came, servants came and left in hysterics. Still I stayed under the bed, curled into a ball. I wanted to make myself disappear. I was so terrified they would find me there and think I had hurt her somehow. But I would never have hurt her! She was everything to me. All I ever wanted was for her eyes to smile when her mouth did. I only wanted her to be happy.”

Angelica leaned forward to pull Nicki into her arms. “You 
were
 everything to her, Nicole, but you must understand how a woman's heart works. Your mother loved this man very much. That love dwelt in a different place from the love she had for you and for Mina. Her despair was so strong, it overwhelmed her. She truly believed she would only continue to hurt the ones she loved most by remaining in the world.”

Somehow, her soft scent and soothing voice reached deep into the dark recesses of Nicki's grief and misery. But Nicki fought the kindness, hanging on to her sorrow and her guilt, for they were all she had left of the mother she had loved. “Losing her was like dying myself. How could she not know how much I loved her, how much I wanted her to go on living?”

Angelica took Nicki's shoulders, forcing their gazes to meet and hold. “That is what you wanted. What of her? Now that you are a woman, can you not put yourself in her place? If you were to lose Blake, would you not feel as though your heart was withering inside you? Could you spare a thought for your father or Mina, or Shelby, with such pain filling your entire being?”

Nicki thought of Blake and the anguish she had felt when she had learned of his betrayal. Yes, she could understand such a feeling only too well. But it did not lessen her grief.

“I wish I had known of this long ago. We have wasted too much time as enemies. I love your father very much, Nicole. I have since I was a small child. Can you not forgive me for that?”

“It has nothing to do with forgiving you. I—I have not been fair. It was my father I blamed, but I loved him too much. Better to transfer all my anger to you.”

“You were a little girl, not responsible for their happiness. None of what happened was your fault.”

Blake had once said the same thing, but they did not understand how much she had loved Marguerite. Her mother was perfect in every way. She was everything that Nicki wanted to be, but would never be. “I worry so much that . . . if I could not make my own mother love me enough to stay with me . . .”

“I will hear no more of that nonsense! You are a precious, delightful girl. If I have been hard on you it is because I feared you would get into trouble and be hurt—as I was.”

“But I am nothing like you. Mina has always been your favorite because she is a lady, as you are. I could never be what you expected.”

Angelica lifted Nicki's chin. “Mina is Marguerite made over and I have worried over her for that very reason. But you . . .”

“I am like my father.”

“No. You are like me, so very much like me when I was a girl that it frightens me. You have a strength, a resiliency, but you lack self-control.”

“Like my father.”

“No, like me.”

“But you are the perfect lady!”

Angelica stared into Nicki's eyes for a moment. She took a long, deep breath. “I want to tell you a story about a girl, younger than you are now, though very much like you. She loved life and skipped blithely along without a thought to the consequences of her actions. She loved a man, but he was pledged to another. The man loved her as well and though they longed to be together, their parents would not hear of it. So they stole what moments they could. Then the day came when the man was married to the other and the meetings stopped.” Angelica brushed the tears away from her eyes, but her face had taken on a glow.

“Several weeks later, the girl learned she was with child . . . his child. She was terrified. Suddenly, she must account for something she had done, and pay the price for her willfulness. She told her mother about the baby. Her mother told her father. Decisions were made without her involvement. They would remain in the country. Her mother's health was poor, and that excuse was given to their friends and acquaintances. When the baby was born it would be sent away and the girl would never see it again. A marriage with a respectable widower was arranged, to occur several months after the birth.”

In a cocoon of black velvet, Nicki listened to her stepmother's words. A tightness entered her chest. She sensed a building momentum, as though Angelica were about to reveal something Nicki did not wish to hear, could not bear to hear.

“The girl had more spunk than that.” Angelica continued. “She knew she must pay for her actions, and she agreed to the marriage. But she would not have her child sent away to strangers. She spoke to the father of the baby and his wife. An agreement was reached.” Angelica rubbed her eyes as though she could wipe away the rawness of her emotions. “The girl's parents agreed that when the child was born, it would go to the father and his new wife to be raised as their own. Time passed. The girl grew attached to the baby inside her. When the little girl was born, she held her for several minutes and she gave her a name. As she handed the infant over to her new mother, she said, ‘Her name shall be Nicole.’”

Disbelief washed over Nicki in horrifying, pounding waves. Yet she
knew
, perhaps had somehow always known. The girl was Angelica and the baby had been her. Angelica had turned her over to Marguerite.

“This is a fairy tale!”

“Perhaps so—because the girl later married the father and became the mother to her own child as she had always wanted to be.”

“Stop speaking of yourself as if this all happened to a stranger!”

Angelica stood still, the twisting of her hands the only sign of the extent of her distress. “It is the only way I have been able to live with what occurred! You say I have been hard on you, well perhaps I have. I could not allow you to follow in my footsteps. I thought my heart had been cleaved from my breast when Jonathon married Marguerite, but that pain was nothing compared to what it cost me to hand you over to them.”

Nicki's hands clenched into fists so tightly the nails bit into her palms. She welcomed the external hurt. “She never let on—never treated me any differently than she treated Mina.”

“And for that I will be eternally grateful to her. If she had been unkind, I could not have left you with her. But when I came those few times for visits, you were so happy and loved her so very much. I knew I could never take you from her. She had become your mother in every respect. But that did not mean that I did not want to watch you grow or that I did not long to be with you.”

Nicki buried her face in her hands. It was suddenly all so clear. Marguerite had not treated her any differently than Mina because she had not cared that Papa loved another. She had not cared because she had never loved him. “Why tell me now? You could have told me long ago!”

“Jonathon wanted to tell you after we were married, but I saw the way you idolized Marguerite. I could not bear to take that from you.”

Nicki closed her eyes. Little incidents she had so resented became suddenly clear: the way Angelica stepped in after her marriage to her father—so eager to become mother to his children; her kindness and concern for Mina, which Nicki had always viewed with skepticism, was now cast in a new light. Angelica had returned a favor to Marguerite by loving Mina as Marguerite had loved Nicki. But there was a difference that lent Angelica's treatment of Mina a gentleness. Angelica loved Mina's father.

She squeezed her eyelids closed more tightly and fought the scream that threatened to explode from the deepest recesses of her soul. For as long as she could remember Nicki had feared giving in to this pain. Its intensity was such that she knew she could never control it—never make it stop.

“Nicole, I have loved you from the moment I learned you were growing inside me. I loved you too much to send you away to strangers. I had to be able to know you were well and happy.”

Nicki nodded, acknowledging the truth in her words.

Angelica's hands on her shoulders drew her near. Nicki struggled to escape the hold, fought against it. The dark chasm of madness yawned before her—ever threatening because there would be no end once she began to fall.

“Stop it, Nicole! Stop hiding. You loved Marguerite and I think you must know how much you meant to her. I told you the truth for two reasons. The first is that, selfishly, I wanted you to know. But secondly, and more important, you needed to realize that you were not responsible for her unhappiness. If anything, you gave her something to live for. But she had a hole deep inside her no one could fill. Not even you. No matter how much you wanted to.”

The chasm loomed closer, but Angelica's voice surrounded her. With a sob Nicki went into her waiting arms. A heavy blackness descended over her—swirled and caught at her, dragging her into its dizzying vortex. Hot tears rolled down her face, and the breath in her lungs disappeared into the nothingness. She could not breathe.

She felt Angelica's hold tighten, became aware of sobs shaking the woman's slender frame. “Oh, God, my baby.”

A warmth trickled down through the coldness surrounding Nicki, and she felt herself lifted from the edge of the void and carried back toward the light. It could not be possible that she remembered being held as a newborn, but there was a rightness about this—a comfort and security she had never experienced with Marguerite. Somehow she had always felt she must be the one to give love, but now it felt good to receive it. She took a deep breath and pulled away, but her hands reached out to clasp Angelica's tightly.

“I owe you an apology. I . . . I just did not know.”

Angelica offered a watery smile. “How could you? You were just a child dealing with grown-ups and their complicated emotions. You acted in the only way you knew—you took the responsibility onto yourself. It never belonged there.”

“I know that now—thanks to you.”

Angelica sighed, her gaze searched Nicki's face. “I hope we can be friends.”

“As we are to be neighbors, perhaps we can start there. I . . . I think I shall like having you for a mother—now that I think I understand you better.”

“I have been so afraid you would make the same mistakes I made that I did not take the time to give you what you needed. I was too new at being a mother. I hope I have done better with Shelby.”

“I am truly sorry for all that happened to you. The pain you must have felt . . .”

“Since I married Jonathon, all that had nearly been erased. I was happy in my marriage, but it pained me that I did not know how to get close to you. Perhaps that can now become a part of the past as well.”

Nicki pressed Angelica's cold hands. “I promise to let it go, if you will.”

Angelica nodded wordlessly, her tears springing afresh. Nicki met her gaze in silent understanding. Without a word, she picked up Marguerite's note from the dressing table and held it over the candle. As the aged paper caught the flame, Nicki dropped it into the tiny porcelain music box given to her by Marguerite on her ninth birthday. The flame caught the lining, hungrily destroying the velvet. In moments nothing remained but pale white ashes. Nicki's heart lightened. She snapped the lid shut.

She returned her attention to Angelica. “In a few hours, I must go to Blake and make amends. I . . . I have dealt him quite a blow. I must prove to him how much I truly love him.”