A room I would soon be hard-pressed to pay for, since I had lost my most recent position as a governess. There was only a tiny room in a dusty boarding house along a back street.

Now, though, there was no one to return to, no Papa waiting for me, no fine apartment. It was almost frightening, and I was always glad when we returned home to our books and fires, our own company. The soaring, vaulted ceilings of the old buildings, the stone staircases, the solemn air of quiet, secret importance. The air smelled of dust and decay, of damp neglect. It was obvious at once that no one had been there for some time. Then, as we journeyed there from our comfortable apartment so he could give them his translation work, I had been awed by it all. I tiptoed inside, vowing to just take a quick glimpse. They merely murmured to each other, making the rustle of papers on the receptionist’s desk all the louder.Ī mairie was always a discreet place, especially the section that housed the foreign services, as I remembered well from when I accompanied my father there as a child. No one spoke loudly there, in the city council’s mairie. That sense of cold distance, as if I saw everything in a dream, grew stronger as I watched the receptionist at his desk, the crowds that hurried past in a blur of identical dark suits. I folded my hands tightly on the handle of the valise on my lap, the old, cracked leather case that held nearly all I owned in the world, and studied the room around me. Matters seemed to have reached a crescendo of.

I couldn’t help but feel that I was suddenly living a life that was not my own. glimpse the wraith-man again, busy as she was pouring the rum and ale and mixing more punch. Mystery–and possibly love, with the enigmatic Mathieu Favril–are in the chilly air. Russia How fascinating, I answered, hoping he would at last tell me more about himself. Her employer suffers from a mysterious illness in the old house, which is filled with strange and beautiful Tahitian artifacts, and the servants are silent. No, my last foreign posting was in a place altogether differentRussia, he answered, opening another of the boxes. But when her scholarly father dies and leaves her penniless, she must take a position as lady’s companion at the crumbling Chateau de Pierpont in faraway Normandy. Sandrine Duplessis was raised to be a fine Parisian lady.

Sea of Darkness by Amanda McCabe