The Secret History of the Pink Carnation Read Free Page B

some, while others had lost corners to the depredations of time and the clutching fingers of eager readers. Some were written in a bold black hand, others in a spiky copperplate, and many in a barely legible scribble. But they all had one thing in common; they were all dated 1803. Phrases rose out of the sea ofsquiggles as I thumbed through…‘provoking man…brother would never…’
    I forced myself to return to the first page. Sinking down onto the carpet before the fire, I adjusted my skirt, refreshed my cold cup of tea, and began to read the first letter. It was written in ungrammatical French, and I translated as I read.
       
    ‘4 March, 1803. Dear Sister – With the end of the late hostilities, I find myself at last in a position to urge you to return to your rightful place in the House of Balcourt…’

Chapter One
    ‘…T he city of your birth awaits your return.
    Please send word of your travel arrangements by courier at first opportunity. I remain, your devoted brother, Edouard.’
    ‘The city of your birth awaits your return.’ Amy whispered the words aloud.
    At last! Fingers tightening around the paper in her hands, she gazed rapturously at the sky. For an event of such magnitude, she expected bolts of lightning, or thunderclouds at the very least. But the Shropshire sky gazed calmly back at her, utterly unperturbed by the momentous events taking place below. Wasn’t that just like Shropshire?
    Sinking to the grass, Amy contemplated the place where she had spent the majority of her life. Behind her, over the rolling fields, the redbrick manor house sat placidly on its rise. Uncle Bertrand was sure to be right there, three windows from the left, sitting in his cracked leather chair, poring over the latest findings of the Royal Agricultural Society, just as he did every day. Aunt Prudence would be sitting in the yellow-and-cream morning room, squinting over her embroidery threads, just as she did every day. All peaceful, and bucolic, and boring.
    The prospect before her wasn’t any more exciting, nothing but long swaths of green, enlivened only by woolly balls of sheep.
    But now, at last, the long years of boredom were at an end. In her hand she grasped the opportunity to leave Wooliston Manorand its pampered flock behind her forever. She would no longer be plain Amy Balcourt, niece to the most ambitious sheep breeder in Shropshire, but Aimée, Mlle de Balcourt. Amy conveniently ignored the fact that revolutionary France had banished titles when they beheaded their nobility.
    She had been six years old when revolution exiled her to rural England. In late May of 1789, she and Mama had sailed across the Channel for what was meant to be merely a two-month visit, time enough for Mama to see her sisters and show her daughter something of English ways. For all the years she had spent in France, Mama was still an Englishwoman at heart.
    Uncle Bertrand, sporting a slightly askew periwig, had stridden out to meet them. Behind him stood Aunt Prudence, embroidery hoop clutched in her hand. Clustered in the doorway were three little girls in identical muslin dresses, Amy’s cousins Sophia, Jane and Agnes. ‘See, darling,’ whispered Mama. ‘You shall have other little girls to play with. Won’t that be lovely?’
    It wasn’t lovely. Agnes, still in the lisping and stumbling stage, was too young to be a playmate. Sophia spent all of her time bent virtuously over her sampler. Jane, quiet and shy, Amy dismissed as a poor-spirited thing. Even the sheep soon lost their charm. Within a month, Amy was quite ready to return to France. She packed her little trunk, heaved and pushed it down the hall to her mother’s room, and announced that she was prepared to go.
    Mama had half-smiled, but her smile twisted into a sob. She plucked her daughter off the trunk and squeezed her very, very tightly.
    ‘Mais, maman, qu’est-ce que se passe?’ demanded Amy, who still thought in French in those days.
    ‘We can’t go