Monsieur CrĆ©pet let go of the tapestry. āRowena, Iām sure the child wishes to rest.ā
āOf course, of course.ā She rubbed her hands together. āAnd supperā¦should I send up a tray?ā
I nodded. āThank you.ā
As they left the room, Madame paused in the doorway. āI hope you will regard Mille Mots as your home as long as you need to, my child. Your parents were dear friends and we mourn with you.ā
āThank you, but Iāll only be staying until you can find my mother.ā
Madame and Monsieur exchanged glances, the same kind that grown-ups had been exchanging over my head for the past six weeks.
āFather always said sheād return for me.ā There was that lump again in my throat, one Iād been carrying around since the night he died.
Madame hesitated, so it was Monsieur who finally said, āIām sure she will.ā
When the door closed behind them, I fell onto the bed and wept.
Later that night, I woke grainy-eyed. A candle burnt low on the dressing table, next to a supper tray. I rubbed at my eyes with a wrinkled sleeve and pulled myself up from the bed. The tray held some slices of cold roasted duck, flecked with herbs and black pepper, a crusty chunk of bread, and some kind of soft, pungent cheese. Miss May, my governess, always said that pepper excessively aroused the constitution. I ate the bread in small torn bites and left the rest.
As I chewed, I went to the window and pushed it open. I wondered how late it was. Stars sprinkled across a sky as black as the one Iād known in Scotland. Maybe France wasnāt so different after all. In the dark, it didnāt look as intimidating.
After Mother left, I used to slip from my bedroom onto the roof of Fairbridge, to look off across the night sky and wonder where she was. One night, I found my father while I was out on the roof.
He was in a rumpled cardigan and slippers, his hair uncombed. He leaned out of his own window, eyes fixed on the dark sky, the way mine were every night. I thought to creep back into my room, but without turning his head, he said, āDo you know the constellations?ā
I stayed where I was, knees drawn up under my nightgown. āNo, sir.ā
He drew in a breath. āThat there, thatās Pegasus.ā He pointed up at a faint collection of stars. āDo you see? Look, there are his forelegs. That rectangle is his body. And straight on that way is his neck and head.ā He traced shapes with his finger, shapes that I couldnāt see but trusted were there.
I scooted closer. āAnd what else?ā
āThere, next to Pegasus is Perseus, with his sword. There, and there.ā
I didnāt want him to go inside and end this quiet conversation, the most Iād had with him in a long while. āI like the constellations.ā
āI do too.ā He sighed, a puff of frost in the dark night. āThe world may come and go, but the stars always stay the same.ā
I thought of that now, leaning out of the tower window of Mille Mots. Much of my little world had changed. Iād lost the only person I had left. Iād left Scotland. And yet, here in this strange chĆ¢teau in this strange country, the constellations were still spread about above, keeping their stories for always.
Somewhere below my window, someone turned on a gramophone. I didnāt recognize the musicāsomething lively and quick on a pianoābut a weight lifted in my heart.
āGood night, Father,ā I whispered up to the stars, and crawled into bed with the gramophone music at the edge of my sleep.
The next morning, my growling stomach woke me up. Sunlight pushed against the corners of the bed curtains. France was still as bright as yesterday. I sat up. My dress was wrinkled and spotted with crumbs from last nightās almost-meal. My impolite stomach informed me that it hadnāt been enough.
I washed up and waited, but no one came to dress me or do my hair. No one brought a fresh tray. Maybe I was meant to dress myself and go down to the dining room. Did the French eat porridge for breakfast? I didnāt know. They probably ate strange things like Iād been given last night. My stomach growled again.
Somewhere outside my window there was a rhythmic thumping. I pictured woodsmen with axes, like in fairy tales, I pictured giants with butter churns, I pictured marching soldiers. I leaned out over the windowsill and looked for the sound, but all I could see was green lawn, tangled roses, and the mossy slate of the chĆ¢teauās roof.
I took off my crumpled dress and all of my underthings. My trunk had been halfway unpacked at some point while I napped yesterday, maybe by whoever had brought my supper tray. I had to search through the trunk for fresh combinations and petticoats, for new stockings and garters, but those hateful black dresses of mine hung in a row in the crooked wardrobe.
Iād had six weeks of black. Iād had a lifetime of gray. In France, the palette was much bigger than that. The colors Iād seen since arriving, they were ones Iād only ever read on the unused tubes in Motherās paint box. Maybe thatās why they overwhelmed me. Iād never even seen them splashed across a canvas. But to see the ultramarines and viridians and carmines painted across a country, across a house, across people, I wondered. Did people feel the same when their lives were as bright as a painting? Could they mourn and wish and hate and dream when their days glowed with color? I thought again of the gramophone music drifting up through my window last night, those exuberant trips and trills of the piano. Here, so far from Scotland, so far from the life Iād always had, could I be different, too? I shut the wardrobe and opened my valise.
The dress in there wasnāt black and it wasnāt new. It was an old dress of Motherās, a tea dress already five years out of fashion when she left it behind at Fairbridge. It had a pouty bodice, a froth of a skirt, and sleeves ending at my elbows in tiny pearl buttons. It was utterly romantic and as green as the Scottish hills in springtime. Iād cut it down and basted it with my embroidery needles when Miss May wasnāt looking. It wasnāt stiff crepe, it wasnāt mourning black, it wasnāt sedate as schoolrooms. It was just the different I needed.
I slipped into the green dress. It felt faintly rebellious, to be putting on a color only six weeks into mourning. Miss May, that old Victorian relic, would faint at the thought. But she wasnāt here. Madame CrĆ©pet, with her honeycomb yellow dress, Monsieur with his paint-spattered coat, and Mille Mots, so white and green and twined with flowers, they were here, and I meant to be part of them. I sent a quick, guilty prayer up to Father, hoping heād forgive me.
I finger-combed my hair back and regarded myself in the mirror. I wondered if I looked older. I wondered if I looked like a little girl playing dress-up. I supposed there was only one way to find out.
The rest of Mille Mots was as shabby as my bedroom. The hallways were lined with peeling wallpaper and mismatched furniture. Here and there, on scuffed tables, perched sculptures, some grotesque in their subjects, some heartrendingly beautiful. I found a staircase carpeted in a faded green runner that led down to the front hall I remembered from yesterday, all pale stone and dark wood and a cacophony of paintings. I hadnāt been given a proper tour. I wasnāt sure which way to the breakfast room.
As I was standing in the hall, contemplating four equally quiet doorways leading to places unknown, the front opened with a bang. A boy entered, whistling and swinging a tennis racket. It barely missed me.
I ducked. āBlast, but France is a dangerous place!ā
The boy broke off with his whistling and stared.
He wasnāt exactly a boy, I realized upon second glance. He was fully a head taller than me. Fresh from his exerciseāhis dark hair damp and curling, his shirt spotted with sweat, his face pink from exertionāhe looked a man.
āPardon,ā I said, and stepped back against the wall.
He tilted his head. I didnāt know who he was to stare. He wasnāt dressed like a gentleman at sport. Father always wore a jacket, even when playing croquet. I felt a pang thinking of Father, always respectable. But this man wore neither jacket nor vest. Just a white shirt, open at the neck, tucked into loose trousers. Like a pirate, heād tied a crimson scarf around his waist.
My face burned under his scrutiny and I looked down at the toes of my boots.
āBut youāre right, of course. France is a dangerous place.ā I looked up to see his eyes twinkling. He brandished his racket like a fencing sword. āIt is a country of the three musketeers, of the guillotine, of opera ghosts. But itās also a place of art and of love.ā
āWe have art in Scotland,ā I said, a trifle defensively.
āAh, are you an artist, mademoiselle?ā
āIām only fifteen.ā
āAnd Iām nineteen, but what does that matter?ā
Maybe heād understand about the scores of sketchbooks in my valise. āAre you then?ā
āI sketch Paris for tourists. Amongst other things.ā
Paris! āAnd yet youāre here, in the country, playing tennis?ā
āI have to visit my maman occasionally.ā He gave an elaborate bow. The red scarf at his waist swept the tops of his plimsolls. āLuc RenĆ© Rieulle CrĆ©pet.ā
He certainly wasnāt the āpetit Lucā Madame CrĆ©pet had promised. āClare Ross. Just Clare Ross.ā
āClare Ross.ā He tried it. From his tongue, the familiar sounds that made up my name suddenly sounded exotic and magical. I wished heād say it again. āBut surely you werenāt wandering Mille Mots in hopes of meeting me.ā