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to that forest and the wider world beyond it, to the smudge of smoke and rooflines that lay further still than Saint-Germain-en-Laye, past the next bend in the bright river: Paris.
    Daily she had looked in that direction and had wished and hoped and dreamed, and all the while she had stayed rooted in this village as securely as these rows of tied and fruitless vines that slumbered here and waited for the sun.
    We do not always get the things we want , her father’s voice reminded her.
    Aunt Magdalene was watching her. “Marie, my darling, you are twenty-one. Your mother, at that age, had met your father, and she would have never done that if she had stayed here.”
    “I know.” Anticipation waged a war with reason in her heart. “But I don’t like to think of leaving.”
    “Then perhaps you ought to view it not as leaving, but returning.” Her aunt laid a warm arm over Mary’s shoulders. Hugged her close. “We have been blessed to have you with us, but I think that always here”—she tapped her fingers on her cloak, above her heart—“you’ve had a little voice that calls to you. And maybe now, my darling, is the time for you to let it lead you home.”

Chapter 4
    Thou scarce hast been known to me…
    —Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Five
    On the road near Poissy
    January 22, 1732
    His eyes were blue. She marked the fact because her own were brown, just like their mother’s in the portrait. And where her hair was brown, as well—a plain dark brown, and straight—her brother Nicolas had hair so fair that when he’d combed the front and sides up over the front edges of his wig, he’d needed hardly any powder to blend all into the same clean shade of white. His eyebrows, too, were fair, as were his lashes, and his features weren’t at all like hers. He had her mother’s oval face, the same long nose and narrow mouth, the steady eyes that made him look intelligent and thoughtful.
    Her face, she knew, was like a heart, more pointed at the chin, and while she’d often been called pretty she’d met no one who, at first glance, had assumed she was intelligent. She didn’t really mind. It often worked to her advantage and she’d used it as a shield, having observed that people seemed to value wit above intelligence; vivacity and merriness above demure and shy behavior. Wanting to be liked, she’d learned to bury her own shyness and become another person when in public, one who entertained with turns of phrase and flirted with a confidence she rarely felt inside. It made her popular and sought-after at gatherings and village dances, and had drawn the admiration of a few young men, but it had also kept her safe.
    She wore that braver face, so lively and at home in bright society, to guard the smaller girl within her who’d been left behind once, and who’d long ago determined she would never be so vulnerable again.
    Except today. Today, that braver face gave no protection. This was Nicolas, her brother, and from earlier this morning when he’d greeted her so warmly with a genuine embrace, to this moment when she sat here pressed so closely to his shoulder in the confines of the horse-drawn chaise, she’d felt every inch that smaller girl. He only had to smile at her, as he was doing now, and she had no shields left to hide behind.
    He said, “You always used to do that.”
    They were speaking English, and for once she felt most grateful that her uncle had insisted she not lose that language, even if she had to think more carefully to answer, “Do what?”
    “Frown so that it made this little line, just here”—he touched one finger lightly to the spot between his own pale brows—“whenever you were thinking.”
    “Oh.” She consciously relaxed her forehead, trying to make light of it. “I can’t imagine that it happened often, then.”
    He told her, “On the contrary. You were a small philosopher. I always had to work to make you smile.”
    “You used to toss me in the air.”
    “I did. You