~Eight~Fully dressed in a day gown of yellow with lace and pearls, she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the activity outside her chamber door.
“Make haste, Adelaide, Bernadette. It is already two o'clock,” her father barked.
“Oui, Gaston, we are coming,” came her mother's singsong answer.
Clacking hard heels undulated from close to far. A loud click and the door to the suite closed behind the retreating figures of her parents and sister.
Jeanne jumped off the bed as if a musket shot burst in the air. Alone, at last, she was alone. With a shoulder push against the tall dresser she and Bernadette shared, she turned it outward until it opened off the wall like a door. Squatting down, the many layers of her skirt billowing with air, Jeanne pulled at the slat of woode
