She’d hoped she might find some small thing to take with her as a memento, but the only thing she had found was the poor decapitated doll, and she didn’t want that. So she left the way she’d arrived: empty-handed.
And perhaps that was better. No sad talismans, just memories.
She’d noticed a farmhouse on the way to her mother’s house; she would ask there for a bed for the night. She would even sleep in the barn if there was no bed available. Country people were reputed to be hospitable, and besides, she had money to pay.
But when she knocked on the door and inquired, the reaction shocked her. She’d no sooner made her inquiry when “Begone with you! We don’t want your kind here!” And the woman had slammed the door in her face.
Zoë blinked.Your kind?What kind was that? Did thewoman think she was a beggar? Admittedly her clothes had picked up a little dirt, first from the fox hole and then dust from the abandoned château. But she’d been very polite when she asked whether she could procure a bed for the night. And she was happy to pay. There was no call for such rude hostility.
Pondering that hostile reception, she walked back down the lane, heading for the intersection where she’d parted company with Reynard.
We don’t want your kind here!
Your kind?Realization hit. No, the woman didn’t think she was a beggar—quite the opposite, despite her dusty clothing. It was her aristocratic accent at fault. Zoë hadn’t thought twice about it, having learned her French from Maman, but Lucy had drilled into her the importance of accents.
Lucy had been working to eradicate Zoë’s English accent, which reeked of the slums of London. It wouldn’t matter how elegantly she dressed and how ladylike she appeared, Lucy often said, Zoë’s lowly upbringing had been obvious to all the minute she’d opened her mouth.
Lucy herself had personal experience of it, having developed her own elegant English accent in a series of exclusive private schools, and learning Viennese accented German from a well-born opera singer, as well as aristocratic French from a comtesse.
Accent prejudice worked both ways. The farm woman was probably a rabid revolutionary. Oh well, lesson learned. She would be more careful in future, not just wearing Marie’s clothes, but imitating her soft country accent.
The sky was darkening. With any luck she was not too far from the next village, otherwise she’d have to find a place in the open to sleep. Under some bushes or beneath a bridge, perhaps.
It was a sobering thought. Her impulsive decision to go by herself to see her mother’s former home was proving farriskier than she’d imagined. Still, although having to sleep in the open was a daunting prospect, she couldn’t regret the decision. She was glad to have seen for herself where her mother came from. And seeing for herself that Maman’s tales were true, and not fantasies or wishful thinking, as some people had thought—and said.
“You? Daughter of a count? Pull the other one.”Émigrés often had stories like that, boasting of their grand former lives. Nobody believed them anymore.
But Maman’s was true.
Ruined as the château was, it was better than knowing you sprang from a run-down slum in the back streets of London. Or a strictly run orphan asylum where you were nobody and a nuisance—and where they even changed your name because they said the name her mother had given her was “too foreign” for an orphan.
No, she had no regrets about coming here.
She reached the road and began to walk. She hadn’t gone far when a voice called out, “Grand-mère not home, then?”
She whirled around and saw the painted wagon parked in a shady nook just off the road. Reynard strolled forward. “So was there nobody—?” He broke off with a look of concern. “But you’ve been crying.”
She swallowed, tried to think of what to say and decided on the truth. Well, some of it. “My grandmother is dead. There’s no one left.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said gently.
She gave a fatalistic little shrug, and picked up the bundle she’d dropped when he first spoke.
“What will you do now?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Maybe catch thediligenceto Paris and look for a job there.”
His brows rose. “Thediligence? It’s not cheap.”
“I have sufficient.”
“And thediligencedoesn’t pass through this way. You’ll need to get to a bigger town, a busier road.”
“I know.”
“It’s quite a way even to the next village.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “And in the meantime it’s getting dark.”
She shrugged.“Ça se voit.”
