Cecelia shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, shame tinging her cheeks even more peach. “I wish I knew. I sometimes am certain it is. I’ve spent so many years at de Chardonne alone. Before I befriended you, Jean-Yves was the only comrade I’d ever known. And only then because I hid so often as a girl in his gardens and pestered him into eventual partiality to me.”
“Now I feel like such a dunce,” Francesca lamented. “If you trust him, we shall, as well.”
“The more people who know a secret, the more in peril it is. It is right that we are all cautious.” Cecelia dashed a few errant tears from her peachy-cream skin. “What about you, Frank? Do you have a secret?”
Francesca locked eyes with Alexandra. “I’m an impostor. My name isn’t Francesca Cavendish. It’s Pippa. Pippa Hargrave.”
Their mouths opened, slackened, then nearly unhinged with shock.
Francesca’s emerald eyes were made brilliant by the fire, but a dark veracity emanated from her that distracted Alexandra from her pain, if only for a moment.
“I was born to Charles and Hattie Hargrave in Yorkshire where they served as cook and underbutler to William and Theresa Cavendish, the Earl and Countess of Mont Claire. I grew up in paradise along with their children, Fernand and Francesca.”
Cecelia’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “I thought the Cavendishes all perished in a fire, but for…”
“No one died in the fire.”
Alexandra blinked, wondering if distress had made her a lackwit. “What? What are you saying?”
Francesca’s brilliant gaze dulled as she gazed into a past so tormented, it seemed to make her smaller, as though it could crush her into the dust. “Have you ever heard of a fire starting in a household of nearly one hundred people in the middle of the day, without one soul escaping it alive?”
“The odds of that happening seem quite impossible, unless…” As Cecelia let the thread trail away with a wince, she and Alexandra shared a speculative glance.
Francesca’s next words validated what they’d feared. “Unless everyone inside was already dead.” She plucked at a loose seam in the lining of her robe as she vacantly stared ahead. “Not dead,” she amended. “Butchered. Men on horses came during tea. At eight years old, I thought it seemed like an army, but I’m convinced now it couldn’t have been more than a dozen or so. They slaughtered everyone. The earl and countess, the housekeeper, butler, the groundskeepers, maids, the children … my parents.”
She took a breathless moment to compose herself. “I ran with Francesca, but they caught her. Wrenched her right from my grasp. I watched as they … they … She didn’t even have time to scream.” She put a hand to her throat, and it was easy to guess how Francesca had died.
Alexandra hated that she took solace in the telling. It didn’t speak very well of her, that she found comfort in their secrets. In their pain.
Because it meant she wasn’t so alone. That she wasn’t the only girl in this room who would live with a clandestine shame.
“Oh, Frank.” Cecelia added her other warm, soft hand to the pile. “How did you ever survive?”
For a moment, Francesca’s features softened. “Declan Chandler, he found me, and hid us in a crevasse up a chimney. We thought we were safe until the fire started. We waited as long as we could, until we believed the men had ridden away, until the smoke became too thick and we had to escape it. Declan spirited me out of the house and we were running for the woods, for safety, when we were spotted by a man who’d stayed behind to make certain all traces of foul play were erased in the fire. That only ashes remained of the dead. Of the grand and happy house that had stood there since the white rose of York hung over the throne of England.”
Francesca accepted the handkerchief Cecelia fetched for her, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose in a way that was anything but delicate. “The man followed us into the woods and Declan, always the hero, created a diversion.”
“Did he … survive?”
Francesca shook her head for a long time, her chin wobbling with grief-stricken sobs she seemed determined to hold back. “I’ve looked for him everywhere, but there’s no sign of Declan Chandler ever having been born. He was an orphan, after all, and if his mother never recorded his birth, then … he wouldn’t be missed. What if his poor little body was left there in the woods somewhere, or possibly a bog or a lake? I have this nightmare that I’m the only one left alive who even remembers he existed.” A few sobs broke through her slender throat, hoarse little sounds raw enough to mirror the pain in Alexandra’s heart.
“You loved him,” Alexandra realized.
“Pippa loved him,” she sniffed. “And he loved Francesca. And Fernand loved Pippa. When it wasn’t a bevy of little heartbreaks, it was the most wonderful childhood one could imagine.”
They remained silent for a tear-fraught moment, trying to digest the scope of the tragedy before Alexandra finally asked the inevitable. “When did you become Francesca? Or, I suppose I’m asking, why did you become her?”
“The Mont Claire title was not entailed to primogeniture. Which meant if any one of the Cavendish children survived, male or female, they would be the heir to the entire estate. And so, the gypsies who were allowed to live on the estate took me in, dyed my hair red with henna, and the moment all the paperwork was in order, the trustees and clerks bribed, and my ‘godparents’ established by paper trail, I became Francesca Cavendish. After I was presented to the courts, it was decided I’d be sent to a boarding school out of the country.”
“Why did the gypsies go through all that trouble?” Cecelia wondered. “For the Mont Claire money?”
“No,” Francesca insisted. “No, money means nothing to gypsies. They did it for the same reason I remain in this farce of a life to this day…”
She turned her head toward Alexandra again, and the fire reignited behind her irises.
Alexandra nodded, her throat clogged with emotion. “Revenge.”
“Exactly.” Francesca kissed Alexandra on the cheek, her gaze a mix of ferocity and an aching kindness. “Alexander. I will always keep the secret of this murder in our past, if you will keep the secret of the murder in my future. For when I find out who is responsible for the death of my family…” She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to.
Alexandra returned the kiss, tasting the mingled salt of their tears.
Francesca looked to where Cecelia dashed moisture from her cheeks. “I’m so sorry for you both.” She hiccupped around a delicate sob.
Alexandra’s shoulders came off the bed and she clung to them both. “You two are my family,” she swore. “I will have no husband or children. No man would have me and … and I want none. Never. I never want to be touched again.”
“Nor I,” Francesca nearly snarled. “Men are vile, demanding, violent cretins. We are best off without them.”
“I agree,” Cecelia whispered. “I’ve never known marriage to be a happy institution. Our lives will take us so many places, but we’ll always have each other to return to. To holiday with. To rely upon. We are bound by blood now, as tightly as any family.”