Moonlight Over Paris by Jennifer Robson
Dedication
To my editor, Amanda Bergeron, and my literary agent, Kevan Lyon. I am so
grateful to you both, and so lucky to count you among my friends.
PART ONE
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
—Paul Valéry
Prologue
Belgravia, London
December, 1923
Helena had heard, or perhaps she had read somewhere, that people on the point of death were insensible to pain. Enveloped in a gentle cloud of perfect tranquility, all earthly cares at an end, they simply floated into oblivion.
It was rubbish, of course, for she was in agony. Pain seized at her throat and ears, so fierce and corrosive that she could sleep only when they drugged her, and even then it chased her from one nightmare to the next. She hurt from her scalp to her fingernails to the soles of her feet, and despite that very real reminder of her state among the living, she knew the truth, too—she was dying.
She had heard the doctor say so not a half hour earlier. He had told her parents there was no hope, she had heard her mother weeping, and she had wished, then, that she had lived when she’d had the chance. There were so many things she ought to have done, and would never have the chance to do, not now. Not with the doctor so certain and her parents so broken.
She slept, waking only when day had faded to night and her room was empty of everyone apart from one woman, a stranger, dozing in the corner. A nurse, she supposed.
She felt a little cooler, and the ache in her throat was a trifle less pronounced. A drink of water would be nice, but if she called out the nurse would insist on painting her throat with that bitter substance again. Something-something of silver. It ought to have been cool, for silver put her in mind of moonlit nights and alpine lakes, but instead it burned horribly and made her choke.
So she lay still through the slow, beckoning hours before dawn, and presently it occurred to her that doctors were sometimes wrong. People did rise from their sickbeds and astonish their families from time to time, and there was a small chance—admittedly a vanishingly small one—that she might be among the few to do so. She had always been a healthy girl, never much given to illness, and had recovered from the Spanish flu in record time only a few years earlier. Perhaps she would survive after all.
And if she did? What next? Another twenty years of trailing dutifully after her mother, all the while knowing what people were whispering behind their hands?
Cast aside at the eleventh hour, all so he might marry the governess. Such a tragedy for her. And her poor parents—the shame of it all. The shame. . .
For five years she’d been engaged to a man who scarcely noticed her existence, treating her as an afterthought in his life. And then, after their engagement had been called off, nearly everyone she’d known in London had erased her from their lives, choosing to believe she had been at fault. No one, apart from her parents and sisters, had defended her.
Invitations had ceased. Callers had stopped coming by. Doors had been shut in her face. Lord Cumberland had been a war hero, awarded a chestful of medals for his valor, and she had, it was assumed, heartlessly cast him aside. No matter that she had released him from their engagement only after he begged her to do so. After he confessed that he had never loved her, and had agreed to marry her only because of pressure from his family.
Looking back, it seemed almost impossible that she had stood meekly by and allowed people to treat her so shamefully. Why hadn’t she defended herself with greater vigor? Why hadn’t she simply gone abroad? It seemed obvious now, but it hadn’t once occurred to her then.
It was high time she moved past all of that. She would go somewhere . . . she wasn’t sure where, but it would be somewhere else, somewhere new where no one cared about her disappointments and failures. And she would . . . she wasn’t sure what she would do, not yet.
But she was certain of one thing. If she survived, she would live.
Chapter 1
Belgravia, London
March, 1924