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She says we are more like sisters than she is.”
    “Does she?” Adrienne seemed genuinely surprised. “Well, there is a certain family resemblance, I suppose. How could there not be? Your father is my oldest brother! Of course we look like sisters. We have the same dark eyes and olive skin, and all this crazy hair.” She gave a chuckle. “But that’s only on the outside. Inside, I think we must be quite different.”
    Again, I was discovering Adrienne had unexpected facets to her personality.
    She settled back against me. “I think you must find all this terribly provincial.”
    I was speechless. Had she forgotten I’d just left a convent in the middle of nowhere?
    “What do you yearn to be when we leave here?” she asked. “We have only two years left. I think you should become an actress. Or perhaps a grande cocotte . Yes, that would suit you! You could go to the Opéra with pearls about your throat, and bring men to their knees with a mere glance of your bold black eyes.”
    I had to laugh. I couldn’t help it. Pressing a hand to my mouth, I rocked the little bed with my stifled guffaws. When my mirth subsided, I found her regarding me patiently.
    “I have no desire to be a—what did you call it?”
    “A grande cocotte,” she said. “A courtesan.”
    “Yes, well, I have no desire to be one or bring men to their knees. That, I should think, is something you could do well enough for both of us.”
    “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I only wish to marry for love.”
    So, she had a spark of foolishness after all. Marrying for love was a fantasy only the naive would indulge; even I knew that.
    “I’ve always dreamed of meeting a man who will fall deeply in love with me,” she went on, unaware of my scorn. “Someone handsome and gallant, not rich necessarily, or even of exalted birth—although that couldn’t hurt—but kind and considerate, who wants to marry me because he cannot live without me.”
    “I see,” I said dryly. “And does this gallant knight of yours have a name?”
    “Not yet.” She turned a smile to me. “But he will, I have no doubt. We will meet and—”
    “He will bring you to your knees,” I cut in, and when I saw her flinch, I added more gently, “Or you to his. In the end, it’s the same thing. Or so I hear.”
    She brightened. “What about you? I told you my dream. Now you must tell me yours.”
    “I . . . I don’t have any dreams,” I said haltingly. “I only know I want to do something.”
    “Do?” she echoed, as though the notion was unfamiliar.
    “Yes. Be someone.” I hadn’t ever contemplated such an idea before, hadn’t even realized it skulked inside me, and I thought she would laugh at me, for my dream was even more ridiculous than hers. I was poor and female. Working for someone would be sufficient accomplishment, if I ever got that far.
    But she appeared to consider me as if it was possible. “I think you will,” she said at length. “I believe you can do whatever you choose. You simply require the opportunity.”
    “And opportunities are like stories in books,” I retorted. “All we need do is pick one.”
    “I believe you just did. You want to be someone.” She kissed my cheek before she folded back the covers to return to her own bed.

VI
    V arennes-sur-Allier wasn’t much of a village. I had known others like it in my childhood—a scrabble of whitewashed houses and shops huddled together, encircled by a road that exuded massive quantities of dust whenever a coach rattled past on its way to better places.
    There was an ancient church near the travelers’ inn and railroad station where Uncle Costier worked. In the village itself, surrounded by crop fields, men doffed their berets and black-clad widows eyed us as we made our way to Aunt Louise’s house—a simple stone structure with a red-tile roof, reached by a pathway through a vegetable patch. In the doorway, a tidy woman waved to us. Her resemblance to my father, to Adrienne and