PART FIVE
Reunion
Chapter 27
Alexandra had already done all her packing, and all she had left to do was organize the girls when Henri confronted her in the hallway, and grabbed her by the arm.
“I thought you understood me. I told you, you are not going to New York.”
“Henri, I have to.” She didn't want to fight with him about it. It was something she had to do, and it wasn't fair to try to stop her now. He followed her back into their bedroom where he stood glaring at her in silent fury as her suitcases lay open on the bed.
“Why are you being so obstinate about this?” He knew instinctively it had to be a man. There was no other conceivable reason.
“Because it's very important to me.”
“You've told me nothing that explains that. Why does a trip to New York with your mother mean so much to you now? Would you care to explain that?”
Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him across the bed. He had been so unkind to her all summer, and it was so unfair of him to be difficult now. “I really can't explain it. It has to do with something that happened a long time ago.”
“Something that involved a man?” He looked at her accusingly, and as she watched him in the harsh sunlight of the Riviera, he suddenly looked very old, and she wondered if perhaps he was frightened … frightened that she was involved with a younger man. It made her feel sorry for him and for a moment she let her guard down, as she shook her head.
“No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with a man. It has to do with my parents.” That was true, but she did not mean the Comte and Comtesse de Borne.
“What about them? Alexandra, I expect you to tell me what's going on.” And then suddenly, as though she could fight him no longer, she sat down in a chair, and began to cry. But he did not approach her. He offered her no comfort. From all that he knew, she still owed him an explanation, and perhaps much more.
“I didn't want to explain this to you … it … it's difficult to explain. I've only known it myself since June.” She looked up at him with deeply troubled eyes, and he suddenly realized that something was very wrong, that the transgressions he had punished her for for two months were perhaps not what he had thought them. A shiver of guilt sliced through him, but only briefly, as he waited, standing near the window, as she went on. “My mother … my parents … there was something they should have told you … I should have told you, except that I had almost forgotten, and I told myself it wasn't important. But I suppose now that it was….” There was an inner shudder of horror as he waited and she caught her breath and continued, “Henri, I was adopted.” He stared at her in utter amazement.
“You were? Why didn't someone tell me? Your father never said anything.” He looked horrified, but she bravely went on. She was going to tell him all of it, no matter what it cost her.
“I was also adopted before that. By Margaret and her previous husband as well.” She waited for the full impact to hit him, and as it did, he sat down slowly on the bed and went pale as he stared at Alexandra.
“Are you serious? You were not the biological child of Margaret and Pierre de Borne?.” It was as though someone had just told him the Renoir for which he had paid five million dollars was a fraud. His lovely wife with the impeccable breeding was not a countess by birth, but an unknown. She nodded. She knew how deeply it had shocked her when Margaret told her, and she knew how much more Henri would be stunned. “And before that? Margaret is not even your mother?” His voice was a whisper and Alexandra nodded, ready to tell him all.
“No, she's not.”
He gave a bitter crack of laughter. “And to think how often I've worried that you or the children were too much like her. Then who are your parents? Do you even know?” She could be anyone … a girl from the streets … from the gutter … of unknown parents and breeding. The thought of it almost made him ill. For ten centuries his family had married and bred with the utmost caution, and he had married a complete stranger of unknown background.
“I have known for two months. And I've wanted to spare you. That has been the secret I've been keeping from you. Nothing else.” But he was not appeased, he looked at her angrily, and strode across the room with fury, as he glanced at her over his shoulder.
“I'd have much preferred if it was a man.”
“I'm sorry to disappoint you.” She spoke with great sadness. He was letting her down. She had inwardly prayed that he would accept her … that it wouldn't matter to him. But she had known better than that. These things meant too much to her husband for him to be magnanimous about a surprise of this kind. And she had known it. She had only wished it might be different, but it wasn't.
“And your parents? Who are they? The real ones …”
She took a deep, brave breath and told him. “My mother was a Frenchwoman, I know only that her name was Solange Bertrand, a ‘commoner’ as you would put it. My father met her when he liberated Paris with the Allied forces. I know nothing more. My father was an actor, a well-known one, much respected, named Sam Walker. They were said to be very much in love, and they had three daughters, of which I am the second one. And then …” She almost choked on her words as she told him, but in an odd way it was a relief to say the words, “… as a result of some madness, he killed her. And when he was convicted of the crime, he committed suicide in his cell, leaving me and my sisters penniless and orphaned. We were left with an aunt for a few months, and then a friend of the family, an attorney, found homes for us, and got us adopted, two of us anyway. I was very fortunate in that I was given to Margaret and her first husband, a lawyer named George Gorham. I was five years old at the time. I was apparently four when my father killed my mother, which is why I don't recall it. And I don't remember anything about the man named George Gorham. Apparently, six months later, he died, and my mother … Margaret, that is … came to France to recover, and she met my father … Pierre … and you know most of the rest. He adopted me as soon as he married my mother, which you did not know, and I suppose I had forgotten, and we lived happily ever after, and then you came along, Henri.” She tried to smile, but her face froze as she watched him.
“What a tidy little story.” Henri looked at her with unleashed fury. “How dare you perpetrate that hoax on me for all these years? And even if you had forgotten, as you say, your mother certainly hadn't. And your ‘father’ as you call him … bande de salopards! … I could sue you for divorce on the basis of fraud … and damages in the bargain!”
“Do you call your daughters ‘damages’ Henri? I had no idea … truly….” The tears coursed slowly down her cheeks and onto her yellow silk blouse as she watched him, but she saw no mercy there.
“I call the entire charade disgraceful! And this trip to New York? What is that all about? To put flowers on your parents' graves?”
“The lawyer who placed us for adoption was my parents' closest friend, and he is dying. He has spent months trying to locate my sisters, and he wishes to bring us together. He feels he owes it to us for whatever pain he caused us in taking us away from each other. I was very fortunate, but at least one of us was not.”
“And what is she? A prostitute in the streets of New York? My God, it's unbelievable! In one hour I have inherited a war bride, a murderer, a suicide, and God knows what else in the bargain, and you expect me to wave my handkerchief and shed tears of joy that you are being reunited with your sisters, whom even you cannot care about after all this time. And your mother? What part has she played in this? Is she responsible for getting you back in touch with the attorney? Did she think you needed a little excitement in your life? I know how dull she thinks me, but I assure you this is not my idea of excitement.”