And predictably, Phillip was absolutely outraged when they told him. He said it was the most vulgar thing he’d ever heard, and his father laughed out loud at him. But the other children were both pleased. Julian genuinely thought it was wonderful news, and Isabelle could hardly wait to play with the baby, and neither could Sarah.

She designed a few pieces of special jewelry before Christmastime, and was very pleased with the way they were made, and Nigel and Phillip bought some excellent new stones, and she was extremely impressed with their choices.

And this time, she didn’t argue with William about having the baby at home. They went to Paris, and she checked into the clinic in Neuilly two days before her due date. After her performance in ten minutes with Isabelle, William told her she was lucky he let her wait that long. She was extremely bored staying there, and she insisted she was twice the age of any of the other mothers But in a funny way, it amused both of them, and William sat with her for hours and played cards, and talked about the business. Julian and Isabelle had stayed at the château with the servants. And it was already almost a week after Christmas.

On New Year’s Day, Sarah and William drank champagne, she had been there for five days then, and she was so tired of it, she told him that if the baby didn’t come the next day, she was going to Whitfield’s. He wasn’t even sure it would do her any harm, but her water broke that afternoon, and by that night, the pains were strong and she was looking very distracted. They had just come to wheel her away from him, when she reached out and took his hand, and looked at him. “Thank you … for letting me have … this baby …” He wanted very much to stay with her, but the doctors had balked at that. It wasn’t the policy of the hospital, and given Madame’s age and the high risk involved, they thought it would be better if he waited elsewhere.

By midnight he hadn’t heard anything, and by four in the morning, he was beginning to panic. She had been gone for six hours by then, which seemed odd after Isabelle had come so quickly, but each baby seemed to be very different.

He went to the desk and asked the nurse again if she’d heard anything, and he wished he could go to find Sarah and see for himself. But they told him there was no news, and they would let him know when his wife had had the baby.

And by seven o’clock in the morning when the doctor finally came, William was frantic. He had done everything he could think of to pass the time, including pray. And he suddenly wondered if he had been mad to let her have this baby. Maybe it was too much for her. What if it killed her?

The doctor looked serious as he entered the room, and William’s heart sank when he saw him.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly. “Madame la Duchesse is doing very well, as well as can be expected. You have a fine son, Monsieur. A very big boy, more than ten pounds. I’m afraid we had to perform a cesarean. Your wife tried very hard to deliver him, but she simply couldn’t.” It was just like when Phillip had been born, and he remembered how awful it had been. The doctor had threatened her with a cesarean then. And she had managed to escape it, and have five children. And now, finally, at forty-eight, Sarah’s baby days were over. It was a respectable career, William smiled in relief, and then looked at the doctor.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s very tired. There will be some pain from the surgery…. We will do what we can for her, of course… to make her comfortable. She can go home in a week or two.” He left the room, and William sat thinking about her then, about how much she meant to him, and the children she had borne … and now this baby.

It was late that afternoon when he finally saw her again, and she was half asleep, but she smiled at him, and she knew about the baby.

“It’s a boy,” she whispered to him, and he nodded, and smiled, and kissed her. “Is that all right?”

“It’s wonderful,” he reassured her, and she drifted off to sleep again, and then she opened her eyes suddenly. “Can we call him Xavier?” she asked.

“All right,” he agreed, and she had absolutely no recollection of it afterwards, but said she had always loved the name. They called him Xavier Albert, for his cousin the late king, Queen Elizabeth’s father, whom William had always been very fond of.

She stayed at the hospital for a full three weeks, and they brought the baby home triumphantly, although William teased her mercilessly about not being able to have another baby. He told her it upset him terribly, and that he had hoped she would have their sixth child on her fiftieth birthday. “We could adopt, of course,” he said on the way back to the château, and she threatened to divorce him.

The children were enchanted with Xavier, he was a huge, happy child with an easy disposition. Nothing seemed to bother him, and he liked everyone, but he still didn’t have the magic of his brother Julian. What he had was an open, happy nature. But he seemed to have a mind of his own, although fortunately, not such an extreme one as his sister.

And by the following summer, Xavier was constantly being dragged everywhere by everyone. He was always being held or taken somewhere by Julian or Isabelle or his parents.

But Sarah was less focused on the baby than she would have liked to be. William wasn’t well, and by the end of summer, he took up all her attention. His heart was giving him trouble again, and the doctor in La Marolle said he didn’t like the way he looked. And his arthritis was rampant.

“It’s such nonsense to be such a burden to you,” he complained to her, and when he could he took Xavier to bed with him, but the truth was that much of the time, he was in too much pain to enjoy him.

Christmas was sad and strained that year. Sarah hadn’t been to Paris in two months, or to London since before the summer. But she just couldn’t tend to her business then, and she had to trust Nigel and Phillip and Emanuelle to do it for her. All she wanted to do now was give William her full attention.

Julian spent every moment of his vacation with him. And Phillip even flew in from London on Christmas Eve, and they had a lovely dinner in the dining room, and even managed to go to church, although William wasn’t well enough to join them. Phillip noticed that he seemed to have shrunk somehow, he looked frail and gaunt, yet the spirit was still there, the strength, the grace, the sense of humor. In his own way, he was a great man, and for a brief moment that day, Phillip saw it.

Emanuelle drove down from Paris on Christmas Day, and she didn’t tell Sarah how shocked she was at the way William looked, but she cried all the way back to Paris.

Phillip left the next morning. And Julian was going skiing in Courchevel, but he hated to leave, and he told his mother that if she needed him, he would return immediately. All she had to do was call him. Isabelle went to spend the rest of her holiday with a friend in Lyon that she had met the previous summer. It was a big adventure for her, and the first time she’d been away from home for so long. But at nine, Sarah thought she was old enough to do it. She’d be back in a week, and maybe by then her father would be feeling better.

But he seemed to fail day by day. And on New Year’s Day, he was too weak to celebrate Xavier’s first birthday. They had a little cake for him, and Sarah sang happy birthday to him at lunch, and then she rushed back upstairs to be with William.

He had been sleeping most of the time for the past few days, but he opened his eyes when he heard her enter the room, no matter how quiet she tried to be. He just liked knowing she was somewhere near him. She thought about taking him to the hospital then, but the doctor said it would do no good, they could do nothing for him. The body that had been so battered twenty-five years before was finally wearing down, its parts broken beyond repair once and only pasted together for a time, and now that time was drawing to an end. But Sarah couldn’t bear the thought of it. She knew how strong his spirit was, and that eventually he would recover.

The night of Xavier’s birthday, she lay quietly next to William in their bed, and held him in her arms, and she felt him clinging to her, almost like a child, just the way Lizzie had, and then she knew. She held him close to her, and covered him with blankets, and tried to give him all the love and strength she could. And just before dawn, he looked up at her, and kissed her lips, and sighed. She kissed him gently, on the face, as he took his last breath and died quietly in the arms of the wife who had loved him.

She sat there like that, holding him, for a long time, the tears pouring down her face. She never wanted to let him go, to live without him. For a long moment, she wanted to go with him, and then she heard Xavier wail in the distance, and knew she couldn’t. It was almost as though he knew his father was gone. And what a terrible loss it was for him, for all of them.

Sarah laid him gently down, and kissed him again, and as the sun came up and long fingers of light crossed the room, she left him, and closed the door silently as she cried. The Duke of Whitfield was gone. And she was a widow.






Chapter 23





HE funeral was somber and serious, in the church at La Marolle, as the local choir sang the “Ave Maria,” and Sarah sat beside her children. Close friends from Paris had come, but the principal memorial service was to be held in London five days later.