Free 1416934715(FY) by Cameron Dokey Page A

roses. The fruit trees in the orchard gave every sign that this would be a year when they would behave themselves and provide the kind of fruit they were supposed to.
    As the weather grew warmer, both Amelie and Anastasia began to spend more time out of doors, often in my mother’s garden. Amelie in particular seemed drawn to it, even beginning to go so far as to work
in
the garden herself. Since the day I had taken her to see Constanze d’Este’s grave, the same day I finally finished the seemingly endless task of going through Anastasia’s dresses, as it happened, it seemed to me that Amelie was working hard to make her peace with the circumstances that had brought her to the great stone house.
    Even Anastasia seemed calmer now that the weather had improved. She would sit on a stone bench in the shade, her own sun hat firmly in place upon her head, chiding Amelie for the fact that hers had fallen off and that her hands and nails were filthy from working the soil. To which Amelie always replied that some young men found freckles attractive, and dirt could bewashed off. But it was a gentle sort of teasing, as if the warmth of the weather had mellowed them both. Now that she was finished torturing me with the endless examination of her wardrobe, Anastasia seemed content to leave me alone. Neither of us mentioned Raoul again.
    The only one who did not seem warmed by the change in the weather was my stepmother. She roamed the house and grounds like a phantom as if unable to settle, to find peace anywhere, her skin still as fine and pale as the winter’s day upon which she had first crossed our threshold. More and more often, I was reminded of my first impression of her: that she was like a spring in full flood with its surface still encased in ice.
    At first, I had believed that this was a sign of the strength of her own will, her refusal to give way to the turmoil and despair which filled her mind and heart. But, as the days and weeks went by, I began to wonder whether or not Chantal de Saint-Andre had made herself a prisoner of what she felt. If my father’s heart was empty, then my stepmother’s was too full. And I wondered what would happen when the ice finally broke.
    “Poor lady,” Susanne sighed while preparing dinner one night. She was chopping vigorously, the knife thunking against the cutting board. Susanne had made getting my stepmother to eat her own personal crusade. To that end, she tried a different dish each night. Tonight’s attempt involved chicken andvegetables cooked on top of the stove. The smell of it filled the whole house.
    “Forced into a loveless marriage, then packed off like a piece of furniture that’s gone out of style. She’ll waste away to nothing, you mark my words, and then Etienne de Brabant will have what he wants.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked from the far end of the table, where I was preparing a great pile of green beans. I had kept the conversation I had shared with Amelie outside my mother’s door strictly to myself. But there wasn’t one person in all the great stone house who believed my father had married Chantal de Saint-Andre for love.
    “What does he want?” I asked now.
    “Why, to be rid of her, of course,” Susanne snorted. “Why else would he send her to the ends of the earth and then leave her alone, without any kind of word, for five whole months? It would eat me alive with frustration and fury, I promise you that. If you ask me, unless something happens to change the way things are going, that man will be a widower before the year is out.”
    “Then it’s fortunate nobody did ask,” Old Mathilde’s voice suddenly sliced through the room, sharper than any kitchen knife. Susanne dropped hers with a clatter and pressed a hand to her heart.
    “Gracious, Mathilde,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you know better than to startle a body like that?”
    “I know better than to indulge in idle gossip,” Old Mathilde replied, and I saw the way sheglanced at me