‘At the height of the Terror then, when the bloodletting in the aftermath of the Revolution was at its peak,’ Jack said. ‘I think that must be significant.’
Celeste frowned. ‘I cannot see how. My father—Henri—he was not a member of the aristocracy. He was not a politician, or indeed a man of any influence. Besides, we lived in a tiny fishing village, not Paris, or any other important city. We were just an ordinary family.’
Jack tapped his finger on his notes. ‘You were four when this marriage took place. Do you remember anything from the time before? Anything at all,’ he asked. ‘Sometimes the most insignificant details are the ones that matter most.’
Celeste shook her head. ‘I was thinking only this morning, just before you arrived, how little I can recall of my childhood. An English storybook. Painting lessons. Setting the stitches on a sampler. Maman telling me the etiquette for polite conversation at a dinner party, though why she should think it important to instruct me in that I cannot imagine.’
‘What’s your earliest memory?’ Jack asked.
‘That is easy,’ Celeste said with a smile. ‘I found a shell on the beach one day, a huge pink shell, the kind that you put to your ear and can hear the rush of the sea. I remember it was too big for me to hold with one hand. I must have been five, perhaps six. What is yours?’
‘That’s easy too. Charlie had a toy horse, a wooden one on wheels. He called it Hector. I was forbidden from riding it because I was too little, which Charlie delighted in reminding me, so of course that made me all the more determined. I managed to climb up on Hector, and Charlie caught me and pushed me off, and I split my forehead open on the marble floor. I still have the scar. Here,’ Jack said, taking her hand.
It was very faint, right in the middle of his forehead. She ran her finger along it, feeling the tiny notches where it had been stitched, and could not resist pushing back his hair from his brow. It was silky-soft. She snatched her hand away. ‘Your first battle scar,’ she said. ‘Sadly, not your last. How is your arm today?’
Jack shrugged. ‘That wound is healing.’
And so he edged a tiny step closer to admitting there was another, deeper wound. Celeste bit her tongue. Trust, she was learning, was a skittish beast, so she turned the subject to a different sort of animal. ‘Hector is a peculiar name for a horse. What age were you when you stole it?’
She was rewarded with a small smile. ‘I didn’t steal it, I borrowed it. I had to use a stool to climb up on to the saddle, and my legs didn’t touch the ground. Three, perhaps?’
‘Is it odd, do you think, that I can remember nothing from such a young age?’
‘I don’t know, but in my experience, people actually take in a great deal more than they can recount. Memory works in different ways for different people. For some, smell is the most evocative sense. I tend to remember things in the form of patterns. As an artist, for you it might be colour. There are tricks that can help flesh out a memory that I used in my days of gathering information professionally,’ Jack said.
‘You mean when you were interrogating enemy agents?’
‘Lord, no, I mean when I was debriefing our chaps after a reconnaissance. No thumbscrews or rack, in case that’s what you’re imagining either. Simply a case of relaxing the subjects’ minds before gently directing their thoughts. We can try it later if you like.’
‘No,’ Celeste said firmly, ‘I will keep my thoughts to myself, thank you.’
Jack raised a quizzical brow, but turned his attention back to his notes. ‘I can’t help but feel that your mother’s marriage to Henri Marmion must be connected somehow with the Terror.’ He picked up the letter. ‘“Without Henri, I do honestly believe we would have perished. I doubt you will believe him capable of heroism, but back in those dark days, that is what he was. A hero.” She is convinced that both your lives were in danger. That’s too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
It was hard to disagree with Jack’s logic, though difficult to conceive of it being true. Celeste nodded, this time reluctantly.
‘Good, then that is our starting premise.’ Jack pulled out another sheet of paper. ‘So, what else do we know? First, your mother was English. Second, she gave birth to you in France in 1790, so she must have gone there at some point before. I don’t suppose you know your place of birth?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Or your mother’s maiden name? Is there a certificate of her marriage to Henri Marmion?’
She shook her head again. ‘The number of things I don’t know are considerably greater than the number that I do. I don’t even know where they were married, so church records aren’t available as a source of information.’
‘Then you won’t know if she was married previously?’
‘You need not spare my blushes. I have already said I must assume that I am illegitimate,’ Celeste said brusquely. ‘That is the only explanation for my mother’s insistence that she had no family—everyone has family, hers obviously disowned her, and since she was a woman—’ She broke off, struck by a sudden flash of memory. ‘My mother once said to me that a woman’s reputation was all she had. In her letter she wrote that the love she had for the man who sired me was the source of her downfall. The implications are clear enough.’
‘Sired? You speak of your father as if he means nothing to you?’
‘I obviously meant nothing to him. I am merely reciprocating his indifference.’
Jack picked up the letter again. ‘“Your father would have loved you, of that I am sure,”’ he read. “‘He too would have been proud of you.”’
Celeste crossed her arms. ‘That is the kind of soft soap a mother would write to console a bastard child, don’t you think?’
Jack made no reply.
‘You think that I am callous.’
‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that perhaps your father never knew of your existence. “Your father would have loved you” is what your mother writes. Would have, implying he was for some reason prevented from having the opportunity to do so.’
It had not occurred to her to interpret her mother’s words thus. A veteran of parental rejection, she had assumed that this was yet another case in point. Would her father have loved her? It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘It is hardly relevant,’ Celeste said, steeling herself, ‘since he is in all likelihood dead.’
Jack consulted the letter again. ‘Your mother mentions “tragic consequences” resulting from the “impossible choice” she had to make?’
‘Tragic can only mean a death. I think we must assume it refers to my natural father.’ Saying it aloud brought a lump to Celeste’s throat.
‘Talking of fathers, tell me what you know of Henri Marmion.’
‘I don’t see what Henri has to do with anything.’
Jack sighed. ‘Then it’s as well you asked me to read this letter, because it’s perfectly plain to me that he must have loved your mother a great deal. Think about the circumstances for a moment, Celeste. Your mother is in dire straits of some sort. She’s alone, with an infant child and no family, in a strange country. By 1794, simply the fact that she was English would have put her on a list of suspicious characters, and it would have been impossible for her to escape France. To marry her was to take an enormous personal risk, and Marmion not only married her, but it sounds as though he cut himself off from his own friends and family in order to keep you both safe. A man doesn’t do that unless he’s deep in love or perhaps deep in debt.’
‘He was a schoolteacher. He was a very educated man, but he taught at the village school. He could read