Page 34 of A Stolen Heart

“Of course I do. You were a toddler. You were always running everywhere—I had the worst time keeping up with you. I was so afraid when that gang of hoodlums stopped our carriage on the road to Calais. I was afraid you would slip out and go exploring, like you had that morning at the inn. That big, rough man that opened the door and peered inside—” Rhea shuddered, her face scrunching with remembered fear. “And Hiram was already ill. And the—”

She stopped suddenly and turned her face toward the window.

“And the what, Mother?”

“Nothing,” Rhea said brusquely. “It was terrible. Your poor father was so sick, I was afraid you would catch it, too, and then I would lose everything.” Tears welled in her mother’s eyes. “But you were so good in the inn in Southhampton, when I was half out of my mind with worry over Hiram. You would sit beside me, good as gold. You didn’t run about a bit. And you would pat my hand—just as though you knew how sad and scared I was.”

Tears flowed from her mother’s eyes, and she put up a shaky hand to her face. “Please, Alexandra, don’t ask me any more. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry, Mother.” Alexandra rose and went to her, her chest contracting in sympathy at her mother’s pain. She felt like a selfish monster for having disturbed her. “I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She put her arms around the older woman, and Rhea leaned against her for a moment, murmuring, “My baby. It’ll be all right.”

“Of course. It will be all right.”

Rhea pulled away and went to her bed. “I believe I’ll lie down now. Tell Nan I don’t want the cocoa. I’ll just lie here until supper.”

“All right. Mother, I’m sorry….”

Rhea nodded, curling up on the bed and wrapping her shawl around her. She closed her eyes. With a sigh, Alexandra sat and waited for Nancy to return. Her mother had not soothed away any of her uneasiness. Indeed, her evasive answers only troubled Alexandra more. It wasn’t surprising, she supposed, that memories of the revolution bothered Rhea; she had been afraid for their lives, and her beloved husband had succumbed to a fever on the frantic trip from Paris. But that did not explain why she was so reluctant to talk about Alexandra’s birth a year and a half before that. Surely that would have been a joyous occasion, one she would have remembered with love. After all, she had been a doting mother when Alexandra was little. Alexandra could remember Rhea telling her how much she loved her, how perfect she was, how long she and her father had waited before they had a child, hoping for a beautiful daughter like Alexandra. How could Rhea have forgotten the name of the midwife or what she had looked like? Why would she dismiss the event as if it had been unimportant?

Alexandra wandered into her room and went to her dresser, where a small double frame stood. In it were two pen-and-ink sketches of her parents, done during the time when they were in Paris. The small folding frame had been one of the few things her mother had grabbed and stuffed into their suitcases when they fled the riots. Her father looked sternly from one side, his head covered by a formal white wig. He had a long, thin, ascetic face, nothing like hers. She could not tell his eye color nor his hair color from the drawing, but Aunt Hortense had told her that Hiram’s coloring was much like Aunt Hortense’s—light brown hair and hazel eyes. His stature, too, had been much like Aunt Hortense’s, short and square. Her mother was short, as well, though softly rounded rather than square. Her hair in the picture was powdered, and it was now quite gray. What color had it been when she was young? Had it been dark like Alexandra’s?

It was odd, surely, that she resembled neither of her parents. Alexandra searched the portraits, looking for some similarity in chin or mouth or nose. Of course, she reminded herself, some people did not look like their parents. There was Elizabeth Harmon, for example, whose plain face was an anomaly among her attractive parents and siblings. But it was said Elizabeth was the spitting image of her father’s sister Abigail. Perhaps, Alexandra reasoned, she looked like some other member of her family, though she could think of no one on either side who was tall and dark-haired. But she had no idea what her grandparents had looked like when they were young. And her mother had had a brother who had died when he was a child and a sister who had died in childbirth before Alexandra was born. Perhaps they had been cut from the same cloth as she.

She whirled and hurried out of her room, going first to her aunt’s bedroom, then to the informal sitting room on the second floor. There she found Aunt Hortense sitting, working on the needlepoint she was sewing for seat cushions back home. Aunt Hortense looked up and smiled.

“Hello, dear, did you have a nice outing?”

“I met a nice woman, but she is troubled.”

“That’s too bad. What—”

“Aunt Hortense,” Alexandra interrupted, not even aware that she was rude, so wrapped up was she in her worry. “What was my mother’s hair color when she was young?”

Aunt Hortense stared at her. “Your mother’s hair? What an odd question. It was brown.”

“What sort of brown? Very dark like mine?”

“Oh, no, dear. Much lighter.”

“So was Father’s, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Aunt Hortense stuck her needle into the piece of cloth stretched across her frame and set it aside. “Something’s troubling you. What is it?”

“Is there anyone in my family who looks like me?” Alexandra asked almost desperately.

Her aunt’s brows rose, but she considered the question thoughtfully. “My aunt Rosemary was a very pretty woman, too,” she said at last. “She was blond, though, and had blue eyes. But your features are like hers.”

“In what way?”

“Well, uh, she was—she had large eyes and a slender, straight nose like you.”

“That seems very little.”

“What is the matter with you, child? Why are you asking me such odd questions?”

“Because it seems odd to me that there is no one among all my relatives who looks the slightest thing like me. Yet I saw the portrait today of a complete stranger who could have been my twin!”