“I don’t know any others,” I whispered, feeling a tremble in my voice. Do not cry, I screamed at myself. Don’t you dare cry.

“Why am I not surprised.” She sipped a mouthful of tea. “Cécile, you will repeat after me.”

She sang a few lines, her voice lovelier than I’d remembered. “Now you.”

I imitated her, hesitantly at first, but then with more confidence. She’d sing, and I’d repeat, trilling like a songbird mimicking a flute. My father walked in during the middle of it, the smile on his face sad and proud at the same time. I beamed at him while I stretched my voice to match the higher and higher notes my mother sang, meeting each and every one of them. It was the most exquisitely wonderful moment of my life.

She stopped singing as abruptly as she’d begun. Taking a mouthful of tea, my mother smiled. “Well done, Cécile. Well done.” Then she turned to my father. “I’ll take her when she’s seventeen.”

“No!” My father looked as surprised as anyone that he’d spoken. “No,” he repeated, more quietly this time. “You ain’t taking her, Genevieve. I need her here. And besides, this here is her home.”

“She’s wasted here!” There was heat in my mother’s voice.

My father opened his mouth, looking ready to argue, but she jerked a hand up, cutting him off. “She’s strong, clever, and once she’s grown out of this awkward stage, she’ll be fair enough. And her voice is divine.” Her eyes gleamed. “She’s wasted out here in the country where no one would know talent if it kicked them in the face. I’ll arrange for tutors to come out to Goshawk’s Hollow to teach her – I’ll not have her arriving with the manners of a milk cow.”

“She knows plenty,” my father retorted. “More than most her age. She can keep house and farm, work the land, and hunt for game. She’ll make a good wife.”

“As if that’s all she’s good for,” my mother spat, rising to her feet. “Why should she limit herself to becoming a farmer’s wife when she can be so much more?”

My father went pale. “There was a time you thought becoming a farmer’s wife was a mighty fine thing.”

“And look how well that turned out!”

“Enough, both of you!” Gran’s voice filled the kitchen, drowning them both out. “This is Cécile’s decision.”

The tips of my fingers tingled as I looked from her, to my father, and then to my mother. I was equal parts astonished and terrified to hold my future in my own hands. My mother was offering me everything that I had ever dreamt about on a silver platter, but at what cost? My departure would not only leave my father short-handed on the farm and burden my grandmother with more chores, it would hurt them. Joss, too. I’d be doing exactly what she feared I would – leaving her. They’d think I was choosing my mother over them, when that wasn’t it at all.