It was amazing, thought Emmie, that a newspaper could do what all their passports and carnets and feuilles hadn’t. She was very impressed that Julia had thought of it. Although she did rather wonder why Julia had bothered to cut out the article at all. Julia wasn’t the sort to keep a scrapbook of their adventures.
Which reminded Emmie that she really needed to start keeping a scrapbook of their adventures.
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Rutherford cannily as the guard handed back the newspaper, “we never did have lunch. Would you care to share our bread and cheese with us? We might have a bit of jam put by as well. . . .”
The confiture clinched it. By the time the bread and jam had been eaten, they were all firm friends, and Monsieur Shaw had become a great joke, with Liza laughing hardest of all, even if her laughter did sound a bit forced.
It was just a little delay, and they would have been on their way at once—if their oil can hadn’t rolled off and had to be retrieved.
“I do think if they didn’t want oil cans to roll, they ought not to have made them round,” contributed Alice.
“I wonder if the children might like to construct a square one?” mused Miss Dawlish.
Half an hour later, the oil can had been wrestled back into place. And the Ford refused to start.
“I told you we needed to stop on a downgrade,” said Fran with grim satisfaction.
Another hour passed. With their new friend, the guard, working the crank and four of them taking it in turns to push, the Ford condescended to move again.
“It’s past five,” said Julia grimly. “We’re barely halfway.”
“At least we’re not halfway back to Paris,” said Emmie. “It was clever of you to think of the paper. I hadn’t realized they’d printed an article about us already.”
“Oh, several. This was the most fulsome.” Julia looked sideways at Emmie. “I intend to send them all on to my mother.”
“Oh, how nice,” said Emmie, even though it wasn’t really at all. It represented a declaration of war. Or, rather, the continuation of a war that had begun a long time ago, when Julia had announced her determination to go to Smith and Emmie’s parents had agreed to pay her tuition and board.
“You can’t mean to encourage Julia to become a spinster,” Aunt May had raged at Emmie’s parents, so loudly she’d heard it all the way through the oak doors of the drawing room and the marble entrance hall and into the music room.
Spinster. The word had a sting to it. But that was what they were, weren’t they? The paper called them girls, or, rather, being French, jeunes filles, but the truth was that all of them, with the exception of Miss Cooper of the class of ’14, were closer to thirty than they were to Ivy Day. Emmie generally tried not to think of that sort of thing, to tell herself that she was married to her good works, but there were times when the truth stared glaringly out at her, and she could hear Auntie May’s voice, from long, long ago, saying, with shattering clarity, It’s a pity she looks so much like her mother.
That hadn’t stopped her mother from marrying, but her parents’ marriage was something Emmie tried not to look at too closely. She liked to think that her handsome, dissolute father hadn’t married her mother entirely for her money. She didn’t think he had; her father respected her mother, she was sure he did. And they had liked each other enough to produce seven children.
But there was no denying she had no desire to re-create their circumstances. She didn’t want to be married for her dowry and left to do good works while her husband spent his time drinking at the Union Club—or dining in the private rooms of Delmonico’s with actresses young enough to be his daughter.
“Oh no,” said Alice, and Emmie dragged herself out of her muddled thoughts. While she had woolgathered, they had bumped their way into the medieval town of Noyon, where they seemed to have stopped in the town square.
Emmie rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. The dust of the road had got in them, making them water. “What’s wrong?”
Alice pointed at the Ford, which had come to a complete stop in front of them. “That’s not a downgrade,” she said darkly.
The Ford, apparently, had stopped of its own accord. Something had gone wrong. Something mechanical. They gathered an interested crowd of townspeople and soldiers, all with opinions, none of them encouraging.
The sun set over the towers of the cathedral.
“If we were working for the Red Cross, this would never have happened,” said Maud darkly.