“And Gerald told me the Château de Chantonney was a ruin, and you said it would be too, too melancholy a place to visit and so far away it wasn’t worth it.” And besides, he was so busy these days, she didn’t like to trouble him. Lucy and Gerald had already done so much for her.
“And was it? Melancholy, I mean,” Lucy asked as she led Zoë upstairs. She stopped to give orders to the housekeeper and then continued, “I’m going to put you straight into a bath and have those dreadful clothes burned. You look a fright!”
Zoë grinned. “I think I look pretty good for someone who’s had to wash in a cold stream the last week or so.”
Lucy shuddered. “Serves you right. Had you just explained—but there, it’s all water under the bridge now, and you’re home safe, and I won’t say another word. So, was it too, too melancholy?”
“It was, but I needed to go there and see for myself. I don’t regret anything”—she glanced at Lucy’s face—“except causing you anxiety.”
“And Gerald,” Lucy added. “You know how he takes his responsibilities so seriously.”
“Yes, I’ll apologize to him when he gets home. But Ihonestly didn’t think you’d worry. I did explain in my letter that I’d be fine.”
“Yes, and when I questioned Marie, I could tell at once that you hadn’t told us the full story. And when Gerald questioned her, she burst into tears and said you were planning to walk wherever you were going—she didn’t know where—by yourself. By yourself!—dressed in her old clothes!”
“Gerald made her cry?” Zoë began indignantly.
“Don’t be silly! You know what a gentleman he is. The truth is, the poor girl was worried sick about you, certain something dreadful would happen to you and that we’d hold her responsible and throw her out on her ear to sink or swim on her own in the big, bad city.”
“But I told her you’d take good care of her.”
“And of course we did. But she’s a good, responsible, truthful girl.”
Zoë sighed. “I suppose I owe her an apology, too. Where is she, by the way?”
“Out shopping with one of the kitchen maids. I’ll send her up to you when she gets back. By then I hope you’ll look more like yourself, although what we’ll do about your complexion I have no idea.”
Zoë put a hand to her cheek. “My complexion?”
“Frightfully brown, my dear. You’ve been out in the sun too much.” She glanced at the cylinder that Zoë had just placed on the bed. “I suppose that contains paintings. You managed to get some work done, then?”
“Yes. I’ll show you later.” Zoë couldn’t wait to show Lucy the painting of her mother as a child. But she needed to think about how to present it. She didn’t want to mention Reynard or what he’d been doing. She wasn’t sure why. Partly she didn’t want anyone to know that she’d spent a week alone with a man, entirely unchaperoned. But more than anything, she didn’t want to talk about how she’d felt about him. Lucy was far too perceptive and would have noinhibitions about asking awkward questions. And how she felt about Reynard, well, that was still too raw a wound.
A knock came on the door.
“Ah, here’s the water for your bath,” Lucy said. “Come down for luncheon when you’re clean and dressed. And then, Miss Gadabout, I will want to hear everything, all your adventures.”
A short time later Marie returned and had a tearful reunion with Zoë. “Oh, mademoiselle, I’m so sorry I told, but I was so worried. And milor’ and milady have been so kind.”
Zoë reassured her, and while Marie helped her to dress in blessedly clean clothes, she gave an animated account of her journey to Paris, and all the amazing sights she had seen since she’d arrived. “Always I was told that people in the city were wicked and ungodly, mademoiselle, but it’s not true! Some of them are, yes, to be sure, but everyone I have met, from the butcher to the greengrocer and the people at the market—and milor’ and milady’s servants—everyone has been so good and kind to an ignorant girl from the country.”
Over luncheon, Zoë gave Lucy an edited account of her adventures, and then, when Gerald came home for dinner that evening, she repeated it all again.
Lucy listened, and at the end of her recitation, said shrewdly, “There’s a man involved in this somewhere, I’m sure of it.”
Zoë, fighting a blush, said, “Well, yes. I’m surprised Marie didn’t tell you about the despicable Monsieur Etienne.” She told them all about him, from his first surreptitious pinches to the final dramatic showdown. She made such a good story of it that by the end they were both laughing—though Gerald was heard to mutter that if that blasted Etienne ever showed his face in Paris, he’d make the swine regret he was ever born.
Then she showed them the painting of her mother as a child, with her grandparents and uncle. Inevitably, this time there were a few tears in the telling.
“But you see now why I had to go.”
Gerald frowned. “You don’t mean you found this just lying around at the Château de Chantonney?”
Zoë swallowed. “No, of course not, not after all this time. It was actually an amazing coincidence, a lucky accident. After I left the château, I met some of the people living in the area. There was a woman, a widow with three children, and she had this painting. I spent a few days with her. Her late father-in-law had given it to her as a wedding present, but she must have known where it came from and had never liked having it in her house. She kept it in a cupboard.” It was the truth, sort of. Just not the whole truth.
She hurried on, trying to gloss over the holes in her story. “We made an exchange—I did a painting of her and her children, and she gave me this.”
“Good heavens!” Gerald exclaimed. “You mean she just gave it to you?”
