And wouldn’t Kit be amazed, wouldn’t he be delighted at what they had made together? A small, beautiful girl-child to raise and love. Oh, how Daisy had loved to picture the way Kit’s face would look, his expression of wonder when she introduced him to his daughter! That vision sustained her through all the long months of war and exile.
Her mind was wandering again, Daisy realized. She couldn’t quite seem to keep herself in the present. She kept slipping back, and back. That kind couple who were here a moment ago, where had they gone? What was her name again?
This was important, Daisy knew. So terribly important. Why couldn’t she remember?
Babs. That was it. Babs Langford. Of course.
Kit’s wife.
Daisy closed her eyes. There was a time when she had hated this woman, who had stolen Kit’s heart from her. A time, before that, when she had sat at the Little Bar on the rue Cambon side, day after day that autumn of 1945, while Frank refilled her glass. Waiting and waiting. Hope dribbling away as the nights wore on, and still her heart would leap every time a man walked in. That was the worst of it! The stupid hope, the surge of wild, terrible joy that fizzled into despair, a despair that burrowed deeper and hurt more each time the man was not Kit. The way she hadn’t lost faith entirely, how some small part of her kept on believing against all evidence that Kit had actually meant what he said on that last night in the bookshop, their last night in Paris. That she was the only woman in the world for him. That he would love her always.
But always had turned out to be not such a long time, after all. Oh well. Bit by bit, from newspapers and from her few remaining Resistance friends, Daisy had discreetly put together the puzzle. Daisy’s swan had found another swan to mate with. And this particular swan, this Babs of his, she had nursed him back to health! He had known her since childhood! It was right and fitting that he should have married her, after all. That Daisy’s memory should be relegated to the status of a fond souvenir of wartime Paris. A brief, hot flame that belonged to a certain time and place. Probably they would not have suited, after all. Probably this relentless passion would have died into indifference amid the drudgery of ordinary life, in which toast was burned and tires went flat, in which milk was carelessly left to sour on the kitchen table and children brought home some terrible germ from school that left everyone vomiting for a week.
So Daisy had told herself as she traveled through the rubbled landscape of Europe into Poland and stood before the ruins of the castle where Max von Sternburg—her father, the grandfather of her children, who had disappeared into the Paris night to save them all, who had made his life a sacrifice for theirs—had grown up, in the years before all this war, before the Treaty of Versailles had sliced away this territory from Germany. So she had told herself in the cabin of the ocean liner as she steamed to Canada with Grandmère and the children, to start a new life away from all this ruin and heartbreak and sacrifice. And so she had told herself since, as the children grew up, as Daisy found a job as a translator and a teacher of English to the schoolchildren of Quebec, as eventually she took a discreet lover or two.
And time went on and on, the years passed, and the anguish began to fade to a dull sting, so that one day Daisy stared at the sky that sheltered them both, sheltered them all, and realized she only cared that Kit was happy, after all. Dear God in Heaven, if you’re still listening to my prayers, let this woman take good care of him. Let Babs Langford give him all the love he so desperately craved, her darling Kit who had never quite been the apple of his parents’ eyes, who had made Daisy his world as she had made him hers. Babs Langford. She’d seemed like a lovely girl, a shy, pretty woman, an English rose. No doubt she had taken wonderful care of Kit. They had probably been so happy together.
Except . . . that handsome fellow with her, who was not Kit . . .
Except . . . a pair of swans . . . Kit’s ring . . .
Maman!
Daisy opened her eyes. Madeleine was squeezing her hand, and Daisy was just too tired to say Ouch. It didn’t hurt, anyway, not really. Nothing hurt anymore.
The swans. The ring.
Kit loved her.
Babs had told her this, hadn’t she? Babs had showed her the ring and said that Kit had loved her after all. He hadn’t come to the Ritz after the war because he hadn’t known Daisy was there.
Now he was dead.
Maman! Please!
Daisy looked at Madeleine and smiled. Poor Madeleine, who clung to her hand, who didn’t want Daisy to go, who grieved so deeply and felt the tragedies of life like scores on her soul. Daisy wanted to tell her that it was all right, that life took these turns, that darkness came and went but that everything worked out in the end. She wanted to tell Madeleine that she was happy to go. She was ready. Just one thing. One more thing she needed. One more thing she was waiting for.
Maman!
This time, the voice was not Madeleine’s. This voice came from the other side of the bed, beyond Olivier, from the doorway. A head of fluffy golden-brown hair, a pair of straight, dark eyebrows. Blue eyes like the English sky after the rain.
Daisy whispered, Christine!
“Oh, Maman! I’m so sorry. The flight was cancelled, and then I got lost in the hospital, went down the wrong corridor . . .”
The words flowed on. Her chatty baby, her bright Christine, words and images bursting from her seams. She was just finishing up her final year at McGill, studying art and English; she couldn’t decide which she liked more. Her father’s daughter. There was so much of Kit inside her. Sometimes, to Daisy, it had seemed like Kit was there in the room whenever Christine was near.
Daisy’s lips moved. The words didn’t seem to come out anymore, but she said them anyway.
I love you.
“I love you, too, Maman.” Christine smoothed her hair on the pillow. A tear dripped from her eye onto Daisy’s ear. “I love you so much.”
A scent drifted past, the smell of pipe tobacco.
Daisy closed her eyes and slept.
Chapter Thirty-One
Babs
Langford Hall
Devonshire, England
July 1964
I opened my eyes as the train pulled into the station. I hadn’t slept at all on the two long train rides from Paris to Ashprington, hearing Precious’s voice every time I closed my eyes. I began imagining that if I looked in the seat next to mine, I’d find her there, or Drew, waiting for me to do something. I just wasn’t sure what that might be.
I stepped off the train with my new valise—Precious had insisted I take one of hers so that my new clothes wouldn’t revolt—and looked down the platform for Diana, who’d promised to fetch me and bring me back to Langford Hall. I spotted her petite elegant form walking quickly down the platform toward me—my smile and greeting dying on my lips as she walked right past me.
“Diana?”
She spun around looking everywhere but at me.
“Diana!” I said again and this time her eyes settled on me, briefly widening in recognition.
“Babs! Good heavens—is it really you?”
After getting over the initial shock of my own sister not recognizing me, I smiled. “Yes, Diana, it really is. Still the same Babs beneath all the new clothes, though, I can assure you.”
She raised an eyebrow at that, as if not quite believing me. It reminded me of something Precious had said, about how when I wore the right clothes I held my chin differently, as if I were a woman to be reckoned with. Diana had always known that. It had just taken me a little longer to figure it out.