Free A Rather Charming Invitation by C. A. Belmond

correctly.”
    Jeremy grinned. “Better watch out, though. A woman like Leonora will take over the whole wedding if you let her.”
    “Shh! They’ll hear you!” I cried, “with your big booming voice and these big booming rooms.”
    Jeremy obligingly lowered his tone to a stage whisper. “Do you want to get married here?”
    I hesitated. “You’re right about Leonora. She’d expect to be in charge. My dad says his relatives used to drive him crazy, always wanting things done exactly the way they expected them to be, according to tradition. Philippe’s family goes back a long way. They must have been very honored and quite wealthy.”
    “Maybe so,” Jeremy said gently, “but it looks as though they’re struggling now.”
    “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Did you not see how incredibly big the estate is?”
    “Haven’t you noticed all the shabby edges around the old château?” he asked.
    “Nonsense,” I scoffed. “Frayed carpeting and dusty old drapes and scuffed furniture are sure signs of old money. Aristocrats don’t spend their fortune on ostentatious new purchases. Everything is supposed to be musty and moth-eaten, to prove it was handed down through the centuries.”
    “True enough,” Jeremy allowed, “but these people have no valet and very few servants. I’m not sure who carried our bags up. Looks to me like a case of land-rich, cash-poor.”
    I pondered this. “Then their offer is all the more generous,” I said. But I felt a trifle uneasy. It occurred to me that Tante Leonora, having achieved her social position through marriage, now saw herself as protector of the family, watching over her children to ensure that, like actors, they played their assigned roles, so that the fabric of her family didn’t fray at the ends and come unravelled. She clearly saw my free-spirited father as a threatening loose end.
    Being an only child, I harbored romantic ideas about big families, but I could see why my father wasn’t in such a hurry to return to the provinces of his youth, despite his deep and abiding love for France. He’d said he felt hamstrung by the watchfulness of small-town life, even in Paris, with its highly structured society of age-old privilege and connections. America had offered him the anonymity of a new place, where no one could admonish him for not playing his part exactly as they wanted. It made me wonder what role my French relatives now expected me to play.
    So that night, as the entire household settled into sleep, I lay there listening to the creaking floors, the groaning pipes, the wind making trees scratch against the windows like cats. The château was undeniably beautiful, and it stood as a bulwark against time and all the uncertainties of life—wars, plague, storms, persecutions. It had the quality of a museum or a church; a place that reminded one of death as well as life. For the first time, I felt I understood Honorine’s flight. With all these medieval, cryptic images surrounding us in every carving, painting and artifact—those angels and ogres, knights and kings, youth and age—I fell asleep dreaming of galloping off on a white horse, beyond the avenue of trees, beyond the woods, all the way down to the coast . . . and the wide-open, liberating sea.

Chapter Eight
    T he next morning, at the breakfast buffet—laid out in a smaller dining salon overlooking the garden and woods at the back of the house—our hosts surprised us by casually announcing that they had arranged “a shooting party” in Jeremy’s honor. After David delivered this invitation, Jeremy marched upstairs to change clothes. I followed him.
    “Shooting!” I cried, appalled. “Are you going to go off and kill some poor little deer or duck?”
    “No, mercifully,” Jeremy told me as he rooted around in his suitcase. “They gave me a choice, of either slaughtering animals or shooting trap. They are operating on the huge assumption that, just because I’m English, I fancy a