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the hinged lid with her red fingertip. “Give it to me.”
    Silently Elise handed her the goblet. Ombrine tilted the vial, and a black, viscous liquid seeped out. The first large, thick drop hung from the lip, then plopped into the wine.
    Ombrine put in three more drops. Then she snapped the lid shut and put the vial back in her sleeve.
    “
Et voilà,”
she said.
    Elise took it. Studying it, she hesitated and said to Rose, “You’re calmer now, eh,
mon enfant?
You don’t need this?”
    Despite her wild grief, Rose heard the urgency in her nurse’s voice. Elise didn’t want Rose to drink the wine. She didn’t trust Ombrine.
    “Give it to her,”
Ombrine bit off. “Or I’ll have you whipped for your disobedience.”
    “I’ll take it, madame,” Rose said quickly. But as she took the cup, she pretended to hiccup and let go of it. The goblet crashed to the floor, spraying wine in a flume.
    “Ah,
non!”
Ombrine cried. Her ebony skirts rustled as she leaped to her feet.
    “I am sorry!” Elise said, taking the blame.
    “It is as he said. Everyone here is dim-witted and clumsy,” Ombrine muttered. “Well, no matter to me. This is an old cloak and I have others. But this ...
was
one of a kind.”
    She swept a graceful motion downward to the floor and gathered something up that must have fallen off the bed.
    Rose cried out. It was her magnificent birthdaygown. The starry skirt showed a purple wine stain the size of an embroidery hoop. Ombrine folded the delicate fabric in half, then in half again, then again.
    “At any rate, you won’t be needing it,” she said, turning away with the gown crumpled like a rag against her chest.
    Desirée trailed after her. “Give it to me,” she urged.
    “Nonsense,” Ombrine told her daughter. “It’s ruined.”
    “We can cut it down,” Desirée said, digging her fingers into the dainty tissue. “I’ve not had such a lovely thing in ever so long, Mother. Before the fire—”
    Ombrine’s icy stare moved from Desirée’s fingers to her face. “Show some decency. We’re all in mourning.”
    Ombrine stopped at the door and waited for Desirée to open it.
    With a huff, Desirée stabbed her thumb against the handle and yanked open the door. “He wasn’t my father.”
    As soon as the door was shut, Rose begged Elise to help her get out of bed. Her forehead was burning.
    “Take me to him. It’s a mistake. It’s not my father.”
    Elise sniffled as she laced up the back of Rose’s gown. When she was done, she laid a hand on Rose’s shoulder.
    “I saw him,
ma petite
. It is Laurent. His own physician has signed a death certificate, and—”
    “Don’t say that,” Rose begged. “It’s a trick. That horrible woman has arranged all this. My father wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t
die.”
    Elise cupped Rose’s face with her hands and stared hard into her eyes.
“Attends-moi
. Listen to me, my darling.
You did not kill him
. No matter what happens next, it was not your fault.”
    But Elise’s words carried no more weight than a whisper on a breeze.
    The funeral was arranged at lightning speed. Monsieur Valmont had taken the liberty of sending riders to invite the masters and mistresses of the nearby estates to the funeral. Ombrine was livid, insisting that she was unprepared to meet her new neighbors in the midst of tragedy.
    Laurent’s corpse lay on a bier in the family vault, and Rose could not deny that it was he. His skin was waxy and gray. His dear cheeks were sunken. He looked dead, but Celestine had told Rose stories of people who appeared to be dead, only to revive when someone who truly loved them gave them a kiss. So Rose bent over him and kissed his cheek. His skin was ice-cold. Life had left him.
    Choked with despair, she ran from the vault and raced to the rose garden. Rose pressed her face into the purple blossoms and inhaled their perfume. They smelled like her mother.
    The bitterest tears came, and she clenched her fists against her terror and her