Laura spoke over the nursery maid’s grumblings. Little had her parents realized that those acting classes in her youth, the elocution and projection, would be used not to awe the audiences at the Comédie-Française but to overawe provincial nursemaids and defiant children. In her mind’s eye, stone angels wept.

“I will teach you everything you need to know to comport yourselves as an educated young lady and gentleman. Provided, that is, that you have the capacity to learn.” Addressing herself to Gabrielle, she asked, “What schoolbooks do you have?”

Jeannette jumped in. “Monsieur Beniet taught them out of his own library. And very bright they were, too, he said. He was a wise man, Monsieur Beniet.”

“But his library, I assume, is not here?”

Jeannette nodded reluctantly.

“Is there a library in the house?”

“If there was, it’s not here anymore, is it?” said Jeannette belligerently, as though Laura had accused her of personally appropriating its contents. “Not so much as a lick of furniture, scarcely a pot in the kitchen, not a pint of fresh milk to be had. But what can one expect of Paris? It’s no place for a Christian.”

“I take it that’s a no to the library, then,” said Laura. “Since I do not make a habit of traveling with all my books on my back, new ones will have to be acquired before we can begin our lessons.”

Gabrielle smirked.

Laura clapped her hands together. Like animals, children responded well to basic noises. “Come along, children. I believe we can begin our acquaintance with an outing to the bookshop.”

The smirk disappeared from Gabrielle’s face. Jeannette drew herself up in her chair, prepping herself for outrage. “An outing? In this weather?”

Laura looked pointedly at the window. Through the grimed panes, the sun was shining and a bird chirped determinedly on one of the bare trees in the courtyard. “Better than being ‘locked up in a schoolroom,’ don’t you think?” Jeannette might be obstreperous, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew exactly when she had been had. Laura smiled beatifically at her. “If you would be so very kind as to help the children into their outdoor things, Manette?”

“It’s Jeannette.” The nurse set her knitting aside with an audible click of needles.

“Of course.” Laura’s smile didn’t waver. “Jeannette.”

For a moment, the nurse seemed prepared to defy her. The children watched, expectantly, as Jeannette remained stolidly in place, her hands firmly planted on the arms of the chair. Laura kept on smiling.

Finally, with a creaking of joints and a rustle of fabric, Jeannette hauled herself up. She levered herself out of the chair with obvious reluctance, making a production of the simple act of standing.

“Catch their deaths of cold,” she muttered, but the battle had already been lost. She stomped her way to the clothes press, busying herself among a pile of miniature woolens, all sturdily made and decidedly provincial in cut.

Gabrielle cast a stricken look at her nurse’s retreating back, clearly feeling this treachery deeply. Squaring her shoulders, she fought on alone. “What if we don’t want new books?”

“If you prefer to remain ignorant,” said Laura pleasantly, “that is, of course, your choice. It would be unkind, however, to stand in the way of your brother’s education.”

Gabrielle folded her arms protectively across her chest. “I like the books we have.”

“If you only read the same things over and over again, how do you expect to learn? A narrow library leads to a narrow mind.” As aphorisms went, it wasn’t one of her better ones, but it got the point across.

“Books, books, books,” sang Pierre-André, ignoring Jeannette’s attempts to stuff his arms into his coat. “Books, books, books. Can I wear my red mittens? The ones with the tassels on them?”

The mittens having been provided, Jeannette turned her attentions to Gabrielle, yanking the collar of her pelisse so high that only the little girl’s nose stuck out.

Pawing it down, Gabrielle looked challengingly at Laura. “What happens when we run out of room to put them all?”

Taking Pierre-André’s mittened hand in one of her own, Laura herded Gabrielle in front of her, through a whimsically shaped antechamber, that led, through a cunningly concealed plasterwork door, onto the second-story hall, where tapestries four times the height of a man hung in the space above the great marble staircase. “I don’t think you’re going to have that problem here, do you?”

Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder at the vast bulk of the house and fell sullenly silent. Round one to the governess. It was hard to argue that one couldn’t fit the odd book or two into an immense city palace that had lost most of its furnishings somewhere between the Revolution and its occupation by its current owner. From the way Gabrielle and Pierre-André tiptoed past the statuary and started at the echo of their own voices against the soaring ceilings, Laura felt safe in guessing that their home back in Nantes had been more of the three-bedroom-with-room-for-two-servants variety. One could hide an army in the Hôtel de Bac and still have room for an amateur theatrical troupe, a haberdashery, and a few aspiring sopranos.

What was Jaouen doing in a house like this? The faded grandeur of the Hôtel de Bac sorted ill with the man Laura had met the night before.

There was no sign of the master of the house as Laura hustled his children down the stairs, their shoes sending up strange echoes along the time-dulled marble. Laura wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Relieved, she decided. It was no bad thing to have time to get the lay of the land before encountering those too-keen eyes.

“Is your father at home?” she asked.

“He’s never at home,” said Gabrielle. “And he certainly wouldn’t be at home for you.”

“He’s at the Abbaye,” volunteered Pierre-André. He tugged at Laura’s hand. “Monks used to live there, but they don’t anymore.”

“Monks are a degenerate relic of the old regime,” said Gabrielle loftily. Not quite under her breath, she added, “Like governesses.”

“I’m not quite a degenerate relic yet,” said Laura, “but give me a few weeks.”

Gabrielle looked at her uncertainly, trying to tell whether she was joking. Catching Laura watching her, she hastily looked away again.

“Coats buttoned and mittens in place?” Laura asked as they approached the front door. No circuitous side routes for her today. Pierre-André proudly displayed his mittens. Gabrielle shrugged farther into the neck of her pelisse like an irritable turtle.

There were no servants to open the door, so Laura did it herself, feeling rather as though she had fallen into a strange variant of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. This was the sort of establishment that should command a score of servants at the very least, but the only staff she had seen were Jean and Jeannette. The flowerbeds that lined the walk from the porte cochere to the gate were as scraggly with neglect as the interior of the house. The hedges bristled with several years’ unfettered growth, while dead vines draped like widows’ weeds from the grand stone arch that ran across the center of the courtyard. There had once been a clock in the middle of the arch, but the hour hand had dropped off, leaving only the play of sun and shadows to mark the time.

Laura half expected Jean to stop them, but he emerged from his lair by the gate without a murmur, shoving the gate so that it yielded with the maximum squeak. Pierre-André squealed delightedly at the noise. Gabrielle looked pained.

Gabrielle scuffed her shoes against the cobbles. “Is it far?” she asked in a way that made “Is it far?” translate to “If I make enough of a fuss, will you let me go home?”

“Not very far,” Laura lied. “The walk will do you good.”

That last part, at least, was true. As if repenting of the gloomy drizzle of the previous day, it was one of those crisp, clear January days where the air is cold and thin and the sunshine edged with ice, bringing everything into a relief so sharp as to be almost painful. It pinched the children’s cheeks and quickened their step and brightened their eyes as Laura herded them through the gate and down the street. The buildings of Paris, so quick to turn gray in the rain, shone in the sunlight, in the shades of taupe and beige so peculiar to Paris, so unfamiliar to Laura after her time in London.

The Hôtel de Bac stretched along for a full city block, nothing but continuous stone wall. There were other houses like it as they walked, great town palaces hidden behind the anonymity of beige stone, recognizable only from the gates that offered glimpses into hidden courtyards marked by intricately carved pilasters and fanciful stonework. But there were smaller houses too, as they walked along, and little shops whose proprietors, encouraged by the good weather, had piled goods on tables beneath colorful awnings.

Laura led the children down towards the river, navigating by memory and instinct. Gabrielle expressed her feelings by trudging along as though every step pained her, puffing out her cheeks and scowling at the tips of her boots. Pierre-André danced along ahead, singing a song of his own devising, which consisted solely of the word “books,” repeated multiple times at varying pitch.

Laura made a note to herself to begin his musical education immediately, if only for the sake of her own ears.

It wasn’t far from the Hôtel de Bac to the Seine, but the crooked nature of the streets in the Marais made the trip longer. The temperature had dropped as the rain had lifted, freezing the mud in the streets so that the brown slicks shone like exotic minerals quarried in a faraway land. Laura handily caught Pierre-André just as the heel of his shoe went skidding on a patch of petrified mud.