The square teemed with life on most days, and this fair afternoon was no exception. Market stalls marched down the center of the square and vendors' carts jammed any open spaces they could find. Shoppers swarmed them, and thieves and pickpockets abounded, I knew, awaiting their chance. Young women bearing baskets of bright, ripe strawberries on their shoulders strolled the crowds, and milkmaids balanced heavy buckets on yokes across their backs, calling out to housewives and maids.
I passed through the throng without stopping and turned my steps to King Street on the western side. King Street was lined on both sides with tall houses and ended in a tangle of small lanes that meandered to St. Martin's Lane and up to Long Acre.
The street contained respectable houses, nothing grand enough for gentry or Mayfair aristocrats, but nice enough for the middle class and those who aspired to be middle class. The easy camaraderie of Grimpen Lane or Bow Street or Covent Garden was here replaced with quiet neighbors and dependable servants who looked after their masters.
As I walked along, eyeing the faceless windows, I seethed that Carlotta had never told Gabriella about me. Carlotta had taken my daughter away from me not only in body, but in her mind and heart. To Gabriella, I'd never existed.
My friends would no doubt have advised me to wait for the meeting with them and Denis tomorrow morning, but I could not. I wanted to see Gabriella. I needed to see her. I began to ask the dependable servants which houses took paying guests.
Three of them did, number 37, number 31, and number 19. Nineteen I dismissed because it was above a milliner's shop, and I doubted Carlotta, who had always been rather snobbish about tradesmen, would agree to live above a shop.
Inquiring at number 37, I found that the landlord rented only to elderly military gentlemen, which left number 31.
The maid who answered my knock replied in the affirmative that Madame Auberge and her daughter and husband were staying here. What name did I want to say?
I did not think that Carlotta would agree to see me. I paused on the threshold, wondering whether to send up my card or whether it would be wise to give a false name to lure her down, when Gabriella herself crossed the hall on her way to the stairs. She saw me standing in the sunshine and stopped.
My daughter. Lord, she was so beautiful.
Gabriella gazed at me with some hesitation, no doubt remembering the odd encounter from this morning and wondering what to make of it. 'May I help you, sir? Captain, was it? My mother is resting.'
I drank her in, from her fresh, light brown curls to her pointed chin to her sensible, high-waisted gown now covered with a long apron. 'I would talk with you,' I said. 'Please.'
This morning, I had spoken rudely to her mother and had tried to block Carlotta's escape from Covent Garden market. Gabriella must have thought me a bit mad. But the way she gazed at me now revealed the trait that made me know more than anything that she was my daughter. Curiosity.
'Perhaps, sir,' Gabriella said, 'we may converse here in the hall.'
She glanced at the maid as though seeking her approval. It was not the thing for a young lady to speak to strange gentlemen, but as I said, she was my daughter. I read in Gabriella that she would bend the rules as far as she could in order to satisfy the same curiosity that ran rampant in me.
I answered that speaking in the hall would do very well for me. The maid, who looked as though she did not like it but felt it not her place to say so, sent me a warning look, but opened the door wider to admit me.
I walked into a foyer that was dim and small but scrupulously free of dust and mud. The maid closed the door, shutting us into a narrow rectangle with doors opening off one side into whatever rooms lay behind them. At the back of the hall, the staircase rose then twisted back on itself to the next floor.
Gabriella waited politely as I took off my hat and relinquished it to the maid. With a last disapproving glance, the maid trotted off to the back of the hall and down the stairs to the servants' demesne.
My daughter stood calmly near the foot of the stairs, her hands clasped loosely around the newel post, as though waiting for me to explain my errand. Her hair, light brown with a touch of honey blond, was pulled into a simple knot on the crown of her head. She wore no jewelry, nor was her dress cluttered with perfusions of lace and ribbons that seemed to be fashionable these days. In short, she was simple and unadorned, a fresh-faced girl waiting for her life to begin.
I could not speak. I gazed at Gabriella while she stood poised, likely wondering whether she'd been wise to let me in the house. Her eyes were brown like mine and like my mother's had been.
'Are you all right, sir?' she asked after the silence had stretched.
I suddenly wondered the real reason I'd come here. Had it been simply to feast my eyes on my daughter? Or had I come to tell her the truth, to burst into her world and explain to her who I was and what she was to me?
Something held my tongue. I realized I did not want to spoil her innocence, did not want to wipe the ingenuous expression from her face. I wanted her to know, but I did not want the knowledge to hurt her.
'Are you well?' I asked her at last.
'Yes, sir.' She looked relieved that I had asked a polite question. 'Though I am finding London rather crowded.'
My mouth moved in polite response, although I hardly knew what I said. 'I am sorry that the peach seller tried to cheat you. It was a poor example of English hospitality.'
Amusement lit her eyes. 'They did the same in Paris. I believe it is a habit of market sellers to try to take as much coin as they can from the country folk.'
'And you have always lived in the country?'
'Oh, yes, always. My father has a little estate near Lyon. He likes farming,' she finished with a fond look.
The look broke my heart. I cleared my throat. 'Do you like life in the country?'
'It is pleasant,' she said. 'But I was happy to see Paris, and I am excited to be in London. I had never been farther than Lyon before, you see.'
She spoke politely, making the same sort of small talk a young woman might to an acquaintance of her parents.
I could barely contain my patience. I wanted to sit her down and have her tell me all about her life, what she had learned and who had taught her and what she knew of Latin and Greek and geography. I wanted to know what was her favorite color and what she liked to read and what were her dreams and her hopes. I wanted to know everything.
My anger rose. I should already know everything about her. Carlotta had stolen from me the joy of watching her grow and learn and become the young woman she now was. I should have been at Gabriella's side for every one of her triumphs and every one of her heartaches and everything she'd discovered in her life. I should have had that.
I had grown used to the fact that Carlotta had left me. The insane rage that had visited me the day I discovered her gone had long since worn down. But seeing Gabriella again brought home the pain that all the years between then and now could never be recovered.
'You are not called Gabrielle, in the French way,' I said.
'My mother is English,' Gabriella said, as though she'd grown used to explaining this. 'But you know that, sir. You know her. You spoke to her familiarly in the square this morning.'
I realized, with a jolt, that while I was standing here watching Gabriella and trying to discover everything about her, she was trying to discover everything about me. The pain twisted tighter.
'I was a captain in the English army. Cavalry, Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons. I was posted to India at the end of the nineties, and then Paris during the Peace of Amiens. That was fifteen years ago.' I stopped.
'Did you know my mother and father there? I was born in France.'
'No,' I answered. 'You were born in India.'
Gabriella looked perplexed. 'No, sir, in France. My mother has never been to India.'
I stilled my tongue. Carlotta must have constructed a world in which I did not exist, cutting out the years she had been married to me. In spite of my hurt and anger, I knew why Carlotta had done so-simple lies were easier than the complicated truth, and Carlotta ever sought the easier path.
'She was there,' I said. 'And so were you. Your cries used to annoy my colonel. I was not very contrite about
