Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of her grandmother standing by the stairs, arms crossed. In a flash, I had Josette back on the ground, my lights extinguished, all the fires relit, and my feet underneath me.

Cécile took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “Gran, this is Tristan.”

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Madame de Troyes,” I said, more than a little worried what the matriarch of the family would have to say to me.

“Well, at least he knows his manners,” her grandmother said. “Have a seat, young man. Girls, get dinner on the table. I can hear your father coming up the steps.”

“She won’t abide smoking in the house,” Louie said, leading me outside after dinner. I sat next to him, drink in my hand, and looked up at the massive moon overhead. It was ominous in its fullness, and I distinctly remembered the last time I had paid it this much attention: the night before Cécile had been brought to Trollus, which I’d spent racking my brain trying to think of a way around being bonded to a human. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Can’t help but think I might have kept Genevieve safe if only I’d tried harder to get her to come to the Hollow.”

I thought about the letters he’d written her, and knew that short of dragging her forcibly, there had been nothing more he could have done. “I’m sure Anushka has her ways of keeping track of her family,” I said. “You would have needed to take her far further than the Hollow to be out of her reach. And quite frankly, I’ve met her – I don’t think she does anything she doesn’t want to.”

“Might be you’re right.” He puffed on the pipe. “She weren’t always this way – her mother’s disappearance changed her.”

“They were close?”

He laughed. “Furthest thing from it. Genny hated her mother. The woman was a dominating old shrew. Was one of the reasons why Genny was so excited to move to the Hollow. She wanted to get as far away from that woman as she could.”

I frowned. Something about what he was telling me didn’t seem right. “She wanted to leave Trianon?”

“It was her idea. She was tired of performing night after night and being away from the children, but after each pregnancy, her mother always convinced her to come back. When my father died, we had to make the decision of whether to take up the reins of the farm or sell it, and she was adamant we go. Sent me ahead with the children while she finished the run of the show she was starring in. I still have the note she sent a couple days before she was meant to arrive, telling me how excited she was for a fresh start. But she never showed.”

“I rode to Trianon straight away, certain that something had happened to her. I found her at the Opera – she told me that her mother had gone missing, and that she could not in good conscience leave until she’d been found. I wanted to stay to help her look, but she insisted that I go back to be with the children. Told me that she’d come to join us.” Louie rested his pipe against his knee. “She never came.”