Read Chapter 20: The Meeting

The square was small and mean, a triangle of packed earth where three streets met, dominated by a dead elm and a pump that leaked a steady, mournful trickle. Célie had chosen it because it was the only place near the Lefèvre house where a person could stand without being seen from the windows. She had been waiting an hour, leaning against the pump, her laundress's apron slick with the damp that never seemed to leave her skin.

The woman came alone.

She walked quickly, head down, a shawl pulled tight over a plain gray dress. She was smaller than Célie had imagined, her face thinner, her hair the same pale brown as Célie's own—or as her mother's had been. She stopped at the edge of the square, ten paces away, and raised her chin.

"You knocked at my door," the woman said. Her voice was steady, but her hands were clenched at her sides. "And then you vanished. My husband thinks I imagined it. I do not think I imagined it."

"Your husband is a revolutionary," Célie said. "I could not risk him."

"He is a good man. He gave me a name when I had none." The woman's eyes moved over Célie's soaked dress, her cracked shoes, the bruise on her cheekbone from Duval's fist. "You are in trouble. That much is clear."

Célie reached into the neckline of her dress, where she had sewn the seal into the lining of her shift the night before her escape. The wax was soft from her body heat, the imprint of the Vernet arms slightly blurred at the edges. She held it out.

The woman's face went white.

"Where did you get that?"

"My mother gave it to me," Célie said. "The marquise de Vernet. She gave one to me, and one to—" She paused, watching the woman's eyes. "—to her other daughter."

The silence stretched. A cart rumbled past on the far street, and a dog barked somewhere behind the dead elm. The woman took a step forward, then another, until she stood close enough to touch the seal but did not reach for it.

"My name is Rose," she said quietly. "The nuns called me that at the convent where I was left. I did not know I had another name until after she died."

"Amélie," Célie said. "She named you Amélie."

Rose's chin trembled, the first crack in her composure. "How do you know that?"

"Marie. She was laundress to our mother's household. She told me." Célie's voice caught. "She told me everything. About the orphan girl who was brought to the house when I was a baby, who was raised alongside me, who wore a seal like mine. Who was sent away when our mother died and the estate was seized."

Rose turned away, facing the dead elm. Her shoulders were rigid. "I was not sent away. I ran. The new masters of the house—your father's cousins—they wanted to keep me as a servant. They said I should be grateful I had been allowed to eat at the family table at all." She laughed, a bitter, broken sound. "I was twelve. The nuns took me in. I worked in their kitchen until I was seventeen, and then I married a man who had helped me escape the mob that burned the convent. He did not care that I had no family. He gave me his."

"Why did our mother never tell me?" Célie whispered. "I had a sister. All those years—"

"Did you?" Rose turned back. Her eyes were dry, but bright with something that was not quite anger. "We were not sisters by blood, Célie. I do not know whose child I was. Your mother took me in because she found me abandoned on the steps of Saint-Eustache, wrapped in a blanket with a note pinned to my chest. She never told anyone the truth. Not your father. Not the servants—except Marie, who helped her nurse me. She raised me beside you, dressed me in your cast-off clothes, taught me to read from your books." Rose touched her own left shoulder. "She marked me, when I was an infant. A small tattoo, here. So that if I was ever lost again, there would be proof I had been hers."

Célie stared at her. "Proof of what?"

"Of a promise," Rose said softly. "She told me once, when I was older, that she had made a vow to God the night she found me—that if He spared her through the birth of her own child, she would never let another child be alone in the world. She kept that vow with me." She paused. "She kept it with you, too. You were never alone, Célie. You had a mother who loved you. And you had me."

The tears came then, hot and sudden, and Célie did not try to stop them. She crossed the space between them and took Rose's hands. They were rough—the hands of a working woman, not a lady—but they closed around Célie's fingers with a strength that felt like shelter.

"I have nowhere else to go," Célie said. "They are hunting me. They will kill me if they find me."

Rose looked at her for a long moment. Then she said, "I know a place. The convent of Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The abbess is an old friend of my husband's family. She takes women who need to disappear." She squeezed Célie's hands. "It is not a prison. The nuns ask no questions. You will be safe there until we can arrange something better."

"What about your husband? He cannot know."

"He will not. I will tell him I am visiting a sick cousin." Rose smiled, a thin, tired smile. "I have become good at small lies. It is the only way to survive in this city."

They walked in silence through the narrow streets, Rose leading, Célie following a half-step behind. The rain had stopped, but the air was still wet, heavy with the smell of coal smoke and rotting vegetables. Twice they heard patrols and pressed themselves into doorways, waiting until the voices faded.

The convent was a low stone building behind a high wall, its chapel bell silent in the evening gloom. Rose knocked three times. A small hatch in the door slid open, revealing a pair of eyes.

"Tell the abbess that Rose Lefèvre is here, with her sister."

The eyes studied Célie for a long moment. Then the hatch shut, and a moment later the door creaked open.

The abbess was a small, round woman with a face like a wrinkled apple and eyes that missed nothing. She looked at Célie's stained dress, her bruised face, her empty hands, and said simply, "Come in. You are safe here."

Célie turned to Rose. "Will I see you again?"

Rose reached up and touched the seal hanging against Célie's chest. "Keep that safe. It is the only thing that ties us together now." She leaned in and kissed Célie's cheek. "We are not sisters by blood. But we are sisters by her promise. That is enough."

Then she was gone, slipping back into the dark street, and Célie stood in the convent doorway, watching the place where she had vanished, her mother's seal warm against her heart.