The letter reached her in Paris, in the early autumn. Her father had fallen ill. A palsy, it said,  brought on by the loss of his shipping fortune in a financial crisis earlier in the year. Her mother begged her to return to Jolant as quickly as she could.

“Your brother is a wastrel with no more sense than a cow in the slaughterhouse,” she wrote. “Only you have the strength and determination to save us, my dear. Please hurry home.”

Camilla, daughter of Pierre and Anna Maria Dubois, nee Moreau, read the letter a second time, then closed her eyes, wishing she could be magically transported home, foregoing the long journey once she’d broken the news to her Moreau relatives, made the arrangements, and packed.

The disparaging remarks made concerning her brother, Gabriel, were unfortunately true, though she wasn’t sure what her mother thought she could do unless she found a rich husband in her travels or a wealthy gentleman near home who’d ask her to be his mistress. Sighing, she just decided she’d do what she could once home and hope it was enough and that her father’s health wouldn’t deteriorate
further.

She’d always been closer to him than her mother, Papa’s little princess he called her, even at twenty-one, long past the age many of her friends were married, some with children. As long as she married by twenty-five, she wouldn’t be considered an old maid.