Changeling

“When I’m through with college we shall be twenty. Then we’ll get married and say nothing about it until after the deed is done.”

I laughed. “How exciting!”

“In the meantime,” he went on. “Let’s not announce it … just yet. We can leave it until later.”

“All right. For the time being it is our secret.”

He gripped my hand and held it tightly. Then we lifted our glasses and drank to the glorious years ahead of us.

That was my first grand ball and I had enjoyed almost every minute of it. I was ecstatically happy. Pedrek and I were engaged—secretly for the moment, it was true, but that added to the excitement.

I looked beyond the next two years. They would pass quickly, lightened by the knowledge that when they were over I should be Pedrek’s wife. We should have a house on the moor possibly. I loved the moor, and I should not be far from Cador. Pedrek’s grandparents would be close by. We should have ten children and they would be loving and as devoted to me as Lucie was. That was another problem which had been solved. Some husbands would not have wanted Lucie in their households and I would never be parted from the child. I regarded her as my own and my husband must do the same. Pedrek had understood at once.

This was the happy ending which all romances should have and mine with Pedrek had lasted for years already. We had been destined for each other from the moment we had been born on that dusty goldfield in Australia.

Life was now a round of gaiety. This was the Season. Eager mothers, and those who were bringing out young ladies, gave balls, dinners and parties to the newly emerged young people. The fact that Benedict was my stepfather meant that I was invited to many of them.

I saw a great deal of Pedrek during the next three or four weeks. He would be at the functions as the good-looking son of one of the sponsors. He might not have been in the highest echelons of society, lacking the necessary blue blood, but his grandfather was well known in mining circles and a man of great wealth, and money and blood were often weighed equally in the social scales.

We used to meet in the park where I often walked with Morwenna, for it was permissible for her son to join us.

Long happy days they were but at last the time came for him to go off to his college. He would write every week he told me and I must do the same. I swore I would.

I was lonely after he had gone, but there was always a great deal for me to do. There were the constant social engagements and during these I often met Oliver Gerson and Jean Pascal Bourdon. The latter, having connections with exiled royalty at Chislehurst, was acceptable; and Oliver Gerson’s links with my stepfather gave him the entry, if not to all, to a great number of occasions.

I was rather glad of their company. I found them both interesting and in a way amusing. Moreover they expressed admiration for me and I was vain enough to enjoy this.

Jean Pascal was an excellent dancing partner. I loved dancing and, thanks to Madame Perrotte, when I danced with him I thought I did really well. People actually commented on how well our styles matched.

I learned a little about both men. Jean Pascal had become a wine importer and paid periodic visits to France.

“I must do something, you understand,” he said. “I cannot dance all day.”

There was something completely sophisticated about him. He was a cynic and a realist at heart, I believed. It was his great hope that one day the monarchy would be restored in France and then he would return to his own country and live in the old chateau in the style to which he had become accustomed under the rule of his good friends the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie.

“Will that ever be?” I asked him.

He lifted his shoulders. “There have been movements. There is trouble with the government. It sways this way and that. Our great tragedy came with that accursed revolution. If we had kept our monarchy then all would be well today.”

“But that happened a hundred years ago.”

“And nothing has been right since. We had Napoleon. Then we began to be great again … but now … these communards … I always hope … So I go to France. I bring in the wine. I do England a great favor. There is no wine in the world like French wine.”

“The Germans wouldn’t agree with you.”

“The Germans!” He snapped his fingers with contempt.

“They beat you, you know,” I reminded him maliciously.

“We were foolish. We did not believe in their strength. They ruined everything when they came.”

“And now we have a big power in Germany in Europe.”

“A tragedy. But one day perhaps we shall come back.”

“You mean the French aristocrats?”

“And then you will see.”

“Well, now you have connections in England. Your sister is married to one of our members of Parliament.”

He nodded. “Yes, that is good.”

“For your sister?”

“Yes, for my sister.”