Leonie (62 page)

“Sebastião,” she called, trotting her horse up to his along the firm sand, “I’m starving, aren’t you? Let’s have breakfast at the
churrascaria
at Barra de Tijuca.”

He glanced apprehensively at the gray sky. “I think we’re in for a storm.”

“We’ll beat it,” she said, ever the optimist. She was enjoying herself, it was fun to have someone to ride with. Roberto never did these days, he was always too busy, or too tired. She didn’t want to think about Roberto, it was too nice being with Sebastião again, she didn’t want anything to spoil that. She leaned across and took his hand with a smile. “Tell me about Paris,” she asked. “I keep trying to persuade Grandmère to take me, but so far without any luck. I can’t think what she imagines would happen to me there. Is it really a wicked city, Sebastião? Is it all whiskey and champagne and tense games of chance played for high stakes by suave men of the world with fancy women dressed in satin and bedecked with jewels?”

“Of course it is,” he replied teasingly. “Why do you think I stayed so long?”

She giggled. “Then I better get there quickly, it sounds like fun. Can’t you just see me as one of those women—draped in ermine, flirting with kings and princes? Oh, why won’t she take me, Sebastião? It’s really not fair, after all, I was born there—it’s my homeland. There are still relatives there, more d’Aurevilles and Grandmère’s old friends … she should go back to see them.”

Her words took him back to the warm red intimacy of Voisins, to the vision in misty chiffon with Amélie’s eyes, Amélie’s hair—she
must
be a d’Aureville. “It’s odd you should say that,” he said, “but I saw someone in Paris who must be related to you—you look exactly like her. I was tempted to speak to her, to ask her, because the resemblance was so uncanny, she had to be a d’Aureville. But she’s so famous, I didn’t want to intrude on her privacy.”

“Famous? You mean we have
famous
relatives in France? Sebastião, how
exciting
. Why is she famous, what does she do?”

“She’s a singer. She has her own style, her own way with popular songs. She has a very different look, very exotic.”

Amélie threw back her head and laughed. “Not quite like me, Sebastião, there’s nothing exotic about me.”

“I’m telling you, Amélie, she could have been you—except she’s older, of course. She’s still very beautiful, even though she’s old enough to be your mother.”

“Sebastião, you’re so romantic, I hope someone will say that about me when I’m older—that ‘she’s still very beautiful.’ ” She tossed back her hair, tilting her chin at him in an arrogant flirtatious pose. “I’ll look sort of like this, but a bit more ‘experienced’!”

He laughed. “Well, that’s just the way Léonie looks.”

Her eyes opened wide in surprise. “Who did you say?”

“Léonie, the beautiful singer.…”

“Her name is Léonie?”

“Yes. She doesn’t seem to have another name, she’s just known as ‘Léonie.’ Perhaps the d’Aureville family cast her out when she went on the wicked stage.”

Amélie reined her horse and stared at him. Léonie? There was a Léonie who looked like her—
exactly
like her, he’d said—and she was old enough to be her mother? It was surely more than a coincidence. She didn’t know if she really wanted to hear the
answer, but she had to ask him. “Did she really look like me … I mean
really?
It wasn’t that you’d drunk a little wine and she was blond like me and she was beautiful—and you were feeling romantic?”

She was so serious all of a sudden that Sebastião was surprised. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t like that at all. She looked so like you, Amélie, that I was shocked.”

“Sebastião, almost the only things I’ve ever known about my mother—the only
positive
things anyone has ever told me about her—are that I look exactly like her and that her name was Léonie. I don’t look like the d’Aurevilles, I’m not like my father or Edouard … I look like my
mother!
”

What did she mean? That Léonie was her mother? “Your mother is dead, she died in a boating accident when you were a baby. You
know
that.”

“I don’t
know
that, Sebastião. I only know what they’ve told me. Oh, you can’t understand, you just can’t imagine what it’s like not knowing about her. She’s always been a mystery, like a secret that no one wants to talk about. Sebastião, could that be because she is still alive and they don’t want me to know?”

Oh, my God, thought Sebastião, what have I put into her head? I should never have said anything. Of course it can’t be true, she’s just always had this yearning for her mother. What were the words I used? She could have been your mother? Fool, what a stupid fool!

“Amélie, it can’t be true.”

“My mother’s name is Léonie. I look like her. That’s the truth, Sebastião. Maybe you were right, maybe the d’Aurevilles hated her for being on the stage, perhaps they thought she wasn’t good enough for them. Charles might have run away with her. Oh, I don’t know, but I mean to find out.” She turned her horse and set off down the beach at a gallop.

He matched his horse to hers, racing along the beach toward home. “What are you going to do?” he yelled over the wind.

Amélie looked at him exultantly. “I’m going to ask Edouard,” she cried. “I want to know if my mother is still alive.”

Edouard folded his newspaper neatly and poured himself a second cup of coffee. Amélie’s two cats lurked beneath the breakfast table, hoping for the small treats that they knew Xara would give them, though Edouard had forbidden it. “They have such a sweet
tooth,” she said indulgently. “Look, they adore melon, see how they lick the juice?”

They glanced up in surprise as the door was flung open and Amélie burst in, barefoot and windblown and straight from the stables, where she had left Sebastião taking care of the horses.

“I must speak to you, Edouard,” she demanded.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, surprised by her tone.

“I must speak to you, in
private.
”

He smiled at her. “This is private, it’s just the three of us—and the cats, of course.”

Xara caught the glint of tears in her eyes. “Go with her, Edouard,” she urged. “She needs to be alone with you.”

Amélie led the way out of the house and through the garden, heading instinctively for the wide space of beach where there was nothing but the ocean to overhear.

Clouds banked and scudded in the pull of the wind and the sky was rapidly losing its light, changing the sea from green to blue-gray flecked with white. Edouard picked up a pebble and skimmed it across the waves, watching until it sank with a plop into their depths, waiting for her to speak. What could Roberto have done this time? he wondered. She cares too much about him, she should go to more parties, meet other young men. She was old enough now. “What is it, Amélie?” he asked gently. “Are you in trouble?”

“Edouard—who is Léonie?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Why, Léonie was your mother, of course.”

Amélie moved closer to him, pushing the hair from her eyes impatiently, her heart beating faster. Should she ask him? If she did and he had been lying to her all these years, she’d never be able to trust him again—not him, or Grandmère—and yet if it were true, and surely it must be, the coincidence was too great, if it were true, then she had a mother who was alive.
She had to know
. “And is she the same Léonie, the famous one? The singer in Paris who looks exactly like me?”

Edouard’s heart sank like the pebbles into the sea. My God, he thought, I expected some small story of how mean Roberto has been to her and she asks me this. How had she found out? It could only have been Sebastião. What was he to do? What could he say? She was staring at him, waiting, her tawny eyes already accusing.

“Edouard, I must
know,
” she cried.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “she is your mother.”

She couldn’t stop the trembling, it seemed to sweep across her in uncontrollable waves. “Why did you
lie
to me?” she screamed. “Why did you do it? Why did you tell me she was dead?” The wind tugged at her words and carried them echoing across the crash of the waves until they faded, sighing, into the surf.

He threw his arms around her. “Amélie, it’s all so difficult, we had to tell you that. We had to do it for your own safety. Léonie asked us to, Amélie, when she gave you to us to look after.”

She pushed him away shouting at him over the wind. “She gave me away … to you? Why? Didn’t she want me?”

“Yes, yes, of course she wanted you. But she couldn’t keep you. It’s a long story, Amélie.”

“And my father … is he alive somewhere, hidden from me, too?”

“No! Your father was killed in the accident. That was true.” He looked at her worriedly. Her face was ashen and she was shaking. “Let’s go back to the house, Amélie, come on, darling, come home with me.”

“No. I couldn’t bear to be shut in … I need to be out here.” She threw her arms wide, staring out at the wild tossing sea as the tears came. She remembered Xara’s tenderness with her newborn babies, but
her
mother had abandoned her, given her away. “How could she, Edouard?” she cried, crumpling in his arms. “How could she leave me? Didn’t she know what it would do to me? Other people have mothers who love them, who want them … what was wrong with me?”

He brushed the tears from her eyes with a gentle finger. What should he tell her? How much of the story should he edit to save her the pain? He couldn’t tell her that her father had been murdered—he could
never
tell her that. “Come on, little one,” he said gently, “let’s walk and I’ll explain everything. But when I do, Amélie, you must remember two things. First, that your mother loved you. I saw her holding you in her arms and she loved you. Never doubt that. And it was because she loved you that she gave you to us—your grandmother and your father’s brother. Second, though you are very young, you are going to have to try to understand some very complex adult relationships. It may be difficult for you, but you must try.”

They walked slowly along the beach hand in hand in the gathering
gloom. “Where to begin,” he wondered out loud. “Yes, I suppose it all begins with Léonie.”

It was the story she had told him that evening by the river, the story of her poor childhood, of her tangled relationship with the mysterious Monsieur, and finally of her surrendering her baby to their care, convinced that it was the only way to save her life. “And she knew,” Edouard concluded, “that you would have a good life, a better one than she could give you. It broke her heart, Amélie d’Aureville, when she put you, her baby, in Grandmère’s arms and kissed you for the last time. It’s a scar she’ll bear forever.”

Amélie clutched at his hand, struggling to comprehend the emotions that were filling in the missing pieces of her life.

After he finished the story, there was silence between them, broken only by the crash of the surf. The rain began, heavy drops that pounded into the sea, eroding the smooth surface of the waves, and soaking them as they stood oblivious to the storm, locked by memories of the past.

“You do look like her,” he said finally, “more and more as each year goes by.” He stroked her wet hair back from her face. “Your hair is exactly the same,” he said, his voice faltering. Amélie flung herself into his arms and they clung together, their tears mingling with the rain on their faces.

“I must see her, Edouard. You do understand that, don’t you?” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “She is my mother.”

“But, Amélie, after all these years … she didn’t want you to know. Would it be right?”

“Don’t you see, now that I know I have a mother, I must know her to know who I am!” Looking at the determination in her face he knew that, by whatever means it took, Amélie meant to find her mother. Could he let her go to France? Surely it must be safe now, after all these years, and she did have the
right
.

“Very well,” he said, kissing her gently, “we’ll go as soon as possible.”

“Oh, Edouard, thank you, thank you,” she sighed, hugging him.

“Come on, we’re soaked,” he said. “Let’s go back to the villa … we have arrangements to make.”

They ran the length of the beach with the glowering sky pressing close, back to the warmth and security of the Villa d’Aureville.

*   *   *

Diego sauntered through the gate of the Villa d’Aureville. He wasn’t welcome here and he knew it, but he was looking for Roberto. He hadn’t seen him all week and he knew he wasn’t at home because he’d called there first. The garden was empty, as were the stables, and he wandered around to the shady terrace. A table held an empty glass and on a chair was an open book, but there was no one around. The door stood open invitingly and he walked in. His glance swept the hall, assessing the trinkets displayed on the polished chests. Edouard’s gold cigarette case lay next to a bowl of flowers on the circular rosewood table in the middle of the hall. He slid it silently into his pocket and then walked back outside. That should be worth a bit, he thought with satisfaction. Just so his trip wasn’t wasted if Roberto wasn’t here!

Avoiding the paths that ran near the windows of the villa, he slipped through the gardens to the Pavillon and in through the kitchen door. The atmosphere was frantic as pots steamed on the big stoves and meats were lifted spitting from the oven. It smelled wonderful and he sniffed appreciatively. He wouldn’t mind having lunch here. Why did Roberto never take him?

It was an easy matter to slip unnoticed through the kitchen to the corridor where the small office was; he’d bet that was where they kept the money—and knowing them, they probably trusted everybody and left some lying around. More fool them. He grinned, treading soft-footed down the corridor. The door to the office stood slightly ajar and he could hear voices inside. Edouard was speaking.

“You see, Maman, it seems the best thing to do. If we don’t let Amélie go to Paris to see her mother now, she’ll find a way to do it later—alone. It would be safer this way.”