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Rose’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Keep the peace as best you can.”
    Rose licked her lips and headed for Desirée. The two faced each other, dark stepsister, fair daughter.
    “I like these plates,” Desirée announced.
    “They were part of my mother’s dowry,” Rose replied.
    “Well, they’re my mother’s now.” Desirée’s mouth twisted. “All this belongs to her.”
    Rose’s stomach lurched. Her face tingled and her hands trembled. Then she caught sight of Elise, who was directing a servant to fill a plate and remembered what she had said.
    “We had better dishes than these,” Desirée continued, raising her chin as if she were challenging Rose to say otherwise. “Our estate was much grander. It was at least twice as big as this one. We had a moat. There were swans in it.”
    Rose swallowed hard. “You must have been sad to leave it. To come here.”
    The haughtiness faded from Desirée’s face. She looked out the leaded panes at the summer sky. Her shoulders rounded and she was silent for a time.
    “There was a fire.” Her arms closed around the plate so hard that she would have broken it if it were made of anything but gold. “Stupid Gypsies.”
    “Oh,” Rose managed. Her voice cracked. When Desirée said nothing more, she ventured, “And so . . . ?”
    “And so it was destroyed. All of it. Even my clothes,” Desirée snapped, wheeling around and glaring at Rose. “And now we’re
here.”
    Rose remained silent. She didn’t know what to say.
    As the pause lengthened, streaks of color swept across Desirée’s hollow cheeks and high forehead. She took a step back from Rose. Her heel knocked the wall like a hollow laugh.
    “We’re here,” she repeated. Her voice was a little less sure. “And were not leaving.”
    She turned back to the window. Rose stayed where she was.
    “Go away,” Desirée muttered.
    Rose took a step backward, glancing around for Elise, when the nurse rushed up behind her and gripped her hand. Her fist against her mouth, she wordlessly shepherded Rose through the room. Ombrine was deep in conversation—with another male neighbor—and didn’t notice as the two left.
    Elise sped down the hallway and rushed into the music room. Rose’s golden birthday harp stood in the center of the room and Celestine’s lute lay on an ebony table. On the wall, the portrait of a young woman holding a cat gazed down on them with a smile painted on her pink lips.
    “Child, oh, “Elise said as she looked out into the hall. She shut the doors. Then she took a deep breath and calmed herself as she put her arms around Rose. Rose could feel her heart thundering.
    “Ma belle, ma pauvre,”
she murmured. She took another breath. “Rose, Monsieur Valmont has been arrested.”
    “What?”
    “For theft. The plates. The ones he took to pay your father’s debts.’ Elise was shaking. “As soon as she got here, she ordered an inventory of all your father’s possessions. She saw them missing and someone told.”
    “But he took them to save us,” Rose insisted. “We’ll explain. We’ll set him free.”
    “Oui,” Elise said. “We’ll save him.”

 

F OUR
     
    A week later, in a trial lasting two hours, Monsieur Valmont was found guilty of theft. He had no records to prove that he had acted in order to satisfy his master’s debts and neither Elise nor Rose was allowed to speak on his behalf.
    Laurent’s creditors realized that if they denied that Valmont had paid them, they could be paid again. Ombrine had the legal right to loosen the Marchand purse strings. So to a man, they lied—save for one honest graybeard. He described to the court how Valmont had struggled to keep the estate running despite the prolonged absence of his master.
    “I asked him to pay me only because my own lands have fallen on hard times, and I needed the coin,” he announced. “One assumes that . . .
others
pressed him as well and that he took the plates only after his life savings had run