Where the Light Falls(99)

Jean-Luc entered his apartment, his heart racing. Instantly, he knew. Knew exactly to whom Lazare had been referring.

“What are you doing here?” Jean-Luc asked, staring into the beautiful face of a young blond woman who he guessed must be Sophie Vincennes.

“Jean-Luc St. Clair.” Marie stepped forward, putting her hands on her hips. “Is that any way to speak to a guest?”

“Papa!” Mathieu ran toward his father, tripping over his own feet so that he tumbled before reaching Jean-Luc. The lawyer leaned over and scooped up his son and walked toward the two women.

“I apologize; I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’m stunned to see you. You must be Sophie?”

The woman nodded.

“What are you doing here?” Jean-Luc repeated his earlier question.

“What has come over you?” Marie walked around the table where she had been depositing plates of dinner food and approached her husband. “Where are your manners?”

But Jean-Luc kept his focus fixed firmly on their guest. Sophie lifted her gaze, her tight facial expression showing fear, but also hope. “I had nowhere else to go. André told me you were one of the few who could be trusted.”

“Papa! Mademoiselle Sophie is going to draw me a flying balloon!” Mathieu pounded his fists excitedly on his father’s shoulders. “Mademoiselle Sophie, please draw a flying balloon!”

“Not now, Mathieu.” Marie took her son from Jean-Luc and placed him on the floor before his toys. “First Mademoiselle Sophie is going to have dinner with Mama and Papa.” And then, turning her dark eyes on her husband with a look that told him he had better agree, she asked: “Isn’t that right, Jean-Luc?”

He sighed, nodding. “Yes, of course.”

Dinner was a strained affair. Marie did her best to engage Sophie on lighthearted topics, such as Mathieu’s refusal to eat certain foods and Madame Grocque’s ongoing feud with each dog in the neighborhood. But Sophie’s laughs, though polite, were forced. Jean-Luc said very little.

“Have you heard from André?” he asked as they cleared the table following the meal.

Sophie shook her head. “He’s had no idea where I was for months.”

“Where were you exactly?” Jean-Luc asked, as Marie listened in, stacking a pile of dirty dishes for scrubbing.

“At first,” Sophie spoke quietly, evidently fearful that someone might hear her, even here, “Remy found me a place in an old château about three days’ ride south of the city, outside Le Mans. The family had departed in the first wave of emigrants and I suppose those who chose to remain were…arrested…so the château was empty save for an old caretaker and his blind wife. The couple took me in, allowing me to pay for a bedroom. They didn’t ask any questions.”

An old château near Le Mans—had it been one of the properties he had inventoried? Jean-Luc wondered. He didn’t recall a château outside Le Mans. His memory didn’t hold the faces of any ghosts related with that place.

“And what became of you, once you were settled at the abandoned château?” Marie’s question pulled Jean-Luc back to the room, to the dinner table.

“Remy deposited me there, then returned to his garrison outside Versailles. He would visit every few weeks, bringing any extra rations or resources scrounged from his already starving camp. And then one day…” Sophie’s voice trailed off, and her eyes stared past her two eager listeners, through the garret wall and beyond.

“Yes?”

“He found me there. Or, at least, came close to finding me.” At this point in her story, Sophie’s voice broke and she cupped her face in her hands. Marie and Jean-Luc exchanged a glance, allowing her this pause in the narrative.

Eventually she resumed. “Remy helped me flee. That was the worst night of my life,” Sophie whispered, her blue eyes turning to Mathieu as if unwilling to let him hear. “I rode through the woods all night on that horse. I didn’t stop once. Just shortly after daybreak, I came out on a lane. That was about the time the horse lay down; his legs just buckled beneath us. He wouldn’t get up, poor creature. If I’d had a pistol, I would have shot him dead, put him out of his misery.”

Marie paused her scrubbing, allowing the wet dishrag to trickle a slow stream of suds onto the wooden floor as she listened, her face creased in sympathy.

“Do you know…what happened to Remy?” Jean-Luc asked.

Sophie simply shook her head, her whole body sagging in on itself as her light eyes filled with moisture. “No,” she said, suppressing a shudder of tears. “I haven’t seen him since that night.”