Chapter 18

Part III

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We’re now on chapter 18 of 38. This is the latest novel of the Muldoon series (book 2). Chapter 17 concluded with Hugo spending his first night under Edward French’s roof as a boy.

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Copenhagen, 1880

“It doesn’t look safe.” Mrs French stood looking up at the scaffold, holding a hand to her heart. She shook her head and looked back at her husband. “You want my Ellen to try this?”

“It’s safe. We will practice. It’s all the rage, my dear. They’re doing it all over France now.” He put his hands on her shoulders and looked directly into her face. “Trust me. I’ve seen it with my own eye.” He winked, generating a smile that Mrs French hadn’t wanted to give. He laughed, and let go of her. “It’s only a swing.”

“And then some! What if she falls off?”

“We will catch her. There are plenty of us down here. Perhaps we could even put the elephant in the ring—she can land on it or something.”

“Edward, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“Trust me on this,” he said, looking to the entrance. “Hugo!” he called. The French boy, or, more like a young man, entered the ring. “Hugo, would you climb up and show Mrs French how easy it is?” The years of performing and more reliable nutrition had been kind to the boy, and he carried himself with the grace of a ballet dancer, his arms and legs strong and chiselled. Mrs French watched him climb up the ladder with the same straight-backed elegance and stand on the platform. He dusted his hands with some chalk and reached for the trapeze nearest him. He held the handle, awaiting instruction.

“It’s so high up!” Mrs French remarked, thinking of how pedestrian her horse tricks looked compared with the giant swing in the rafters. She sat down, not taking her lovely dark eyes off the platform and the potential peril it presented.

“He’s had a lot of practice. Very well, Hugo. Show Mrs French what you’ve got,” Mr French insisted.

Mrs French, audibly gasping as Hugo jumped from the platform, watched in delight as he flew and rolled, catching the handle and swinging to the next one. “How…when did you…?”

Edward French sat down beside his wife. “It was invented in Europe, you know—some say the Romans were doing this. Do you remember the time we stopped near the woods in Belgium? That little village—oh, bugger the name—it’s not important. Anyway, some of the boys made a rope swing, and I happened to catch him flying across the pond on it. He’s quite the climber, and seems to have no fear up there. Aerialists are all the rage at the moment, and I have a natural, right here.”

“And Ellen?”

“Well that was the thing. She was joining in with the rope swing. She’ll be a dab hand at this.”

“I’m not sure.” Ellen, the only child Mrs French had carried to term, was now fifteen years old, but for her mother, every day with Tilly Mint was a miracle. Their infant daughter had arrived earlier than expected, and not as pink and lively as the doctor would have liked. Her mother, thought to be too old to bear children, lay there in an exhausted haze, remarking how small the baby was. How very small, and quiet. Her heart sank. Not another one. The doctor, however, knowing of Mrs French’s history, sprang into action. The water bowl, originally reserved for mopping Mrs French’s brow, acted as a small bath for the newborn. He sighed with relief as the child changed from blue to pink and drew breath, fighting against the towel the nursemaid wrapped her up in. Mrs French, now watching the trapeze pass back and forth like a pendulum, remembered the moment she’d cried in unison with the squalling, tiny girl wriggling in her arms. The girl who was now old enough to defy her, and do dangerous things with or without her mother’s consent. “It looks dangerous,” Mrs French said.

“Trust me. She’s a natural. You let her balance on Fiora, for goodness’ sake.”

“Fiora is a tame horse. I can control her actions. This requires one having command of gravity! I am no match for gravity.”

“It’s all the same. She’s light, like a pixie. Hugo will catch her.”

“Edward…”

“Elle,” he said, pouting. “Take a leap of faith, if you will. This will change our fortunes.”

A leap of faith. Mrs French, twisting her kid gloves on her lap, let her mind wander across the years, seeing her estranged, sun-tanned husband for the first time since Crimea, and wondering why he wouldn’t speak about it. The years between their marriage and his disappearance left her with unanswered questions. He was with her now, but more than five years of his life had passed without word. Where did he go? He wouldn’t even speak about the glass eye—another thing that went everywhere with them, but had no story. Curious, and struggling to sleep at night, Mrs French frequently took a moment to study the eye. Each time, as she turned it in her thumb and forefinger toward the light at her bedside, she would remark to herself that even in the time of steamships and railways, no man-made paint was a match for the palette God had used to create the colours in her beloved’s natural eye. She wondered where the other one was, and fancied that if it were still whole, would it be recording the everyday occurrences that unravelled before it each day? Perhaps that was what occupied her husband’s mind as he slept—the eye in another wearer’s head posing as a dream. Speculation was the soil that filled many a mysterious hole in Mrs French’s mind, and more often than not, it was far more entertaining than the grey reality.

Mrs French, as much as she was indeed silly for indulging in titillations concerning her husband and his adventures, was grateful for how things had ended up. She felt it had been luck—not a leap of faith—that kept her from accidental bigamy. She was a lovely woman still, but as a girl and then a young widow, suitors were never in short supply. It was Edward French’s luck, and luck alone, that she desired none of them. A stubborn spirit even then—she had decided, even at twenty-four, that if she couldn’t spend the rest of her life with Edward French of the Prince of Wales’ own Hussars, she wouldn’t spend it with anyone.

Realising that her mind was wandering again, Mrs French cleared her throat and returned her gaze to the issue before her. “She’s all I have, my dear,” she said.

“And she will come to no harm. Hugo will teach her.” He looked at his wife. “You trust Hugo, don’t you?”

Letting go of her clenched jaw, she adjusted her skirts and nodded reluctantly as she watched the young man catch the bar of the trapeze. “He appears to be doing a fine job. But I do wish you’d told me about these rehearsals.”

“I believe, my dear, I was correct to assume you’d never back it. I had to let the horse run before you’d see sense.”

Her mouth fell open and promptly narrowed. “Well, I must say, this is a flattering portrait you are painting of me, Edward.”

He smiled. A smile that, different as it was now, still worked. “My love, you know I am teasing.”

Did she? She could never be sure. Even so, his selective assurances penetrated, as they always did. Damn you, Edward French. Damn you and your silver tongue.

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