As it happened, she had not been present at her father’s funeral, when relatives from all over France had journeyed to Beauharnais to pay their last respects to the Head of the Family.
Perhaps because she had been so abjectly miserable and so shocked by the suddenness of his dying when he was away from her, she had contracted a form of pneumonia and the doctor had forbidden her to leave her bed.
She had not minded being absent from her father’s funeral. She wanted to remember him not still and lifeless but full of vitality and laughter as he had been the last time she had seen him.
So she had cried alone in her bedroom and an elderly cousin who lived in Tours had played host to all those who must be entertained after the ceremony.
For the first time Yola wondered now if the Marquis had
