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Back The Shoe Queen Save as PDF
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. “And may I say, those shoes are adorable.”
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. ( I )
  7. ( one )
  8. ( two )
  9. ( three )
  10. ( four )
  11. ( five )
  12. ( six )
  13. ( seven )
  14. ( eight )
  15. ( nine )
  16. ( ten )
  17. ( II )
  18. ( eleven )
  19. ( twelve )
  20. ( thirteen )
  21. ( fourteen )
  22. ( fifteen )
  23. ( III )
  24. ( sixteen )
  25. ( seventeen )
  26. ( eighteen )
  27. ( nineteen )
  28. ( IV )
  29. ( twenty )
  30. ( twenty-one )
  31. ( twenty-two )
  32. ( twenty-three )
  33. ( twenty-four )
  34. ( V )
  35. ( twenty-five )
  36. ( twenty-six )
  37. ( twenty-seven )
  38. ( twenty-eight )
  39. ( twenty-nine )
  40. VI
  41. ( thirty )
  42. ( thirty-one )
  43. ( thirty-two )
  44. ( thirty-three )
  45. ( thirty-four )
  46. ( VII )
  47. ( thirty-five )
  48. ( thirty-six )
  49. ( thirty-seven )
  50. ( thirty-eight )
  51. ( thirty-nine )
  52. ( forty )
  53. ( forty-one )
  54. ( forty-two )
  55. ( VIII )
  56. ( forty-three )
  57. ( forty-four )
  58. ( forty-five )
  59. ( forty-six )
  60. ( forty-seven )
  61. ( forty-eight )
  62. ( forty-nine )
  63. ( fifty )
  64. ( fifty-one )
  65. Acknowledgments
  66. Acknowledgments
  67. Questions for Discussion

She thought again of the sad, pink face of the child who’d dropped her rag doll.

“Madame?”

She turned away to conceal her tears and hurried to get off the platform in her beautiful but impractical shoes just as the whistle sounded.

A shunting and squealing signaled the first movements of the engine. A grinding and rolling as it inched away. A few stragglers waved and flapped white handkerchiefs.

At the head of the platform, she shut her eyes tight, dropped her case and stood hugging herself, very small and still while people surged around her. When she opened her eyes again, there was a boy standing in front of her. A grubby-faced boy of twelve or thirteen with dark, greasy hair and short trousers, his shoelaces trailing on the floor around his feet.

“What do you want?”

The boy just stared.

“Are you begging?”

Hollow eyes. There was something familiar about him.

Now he thrust something at her. A folded piece of paper. She reached out and took it, and while she was still opening it, he span around and ran away.

I can’t come with you. I’m sorry.

I love you.

P

Genevieve’s heart thudded—once, twice. The boy was sprinting past the ticket office, scattering people to the left and right as he went charging on—and then he was gone.

She crumpled the note in her hand. Scrunched it tight in her clenched fist while pigeons fluttered around her and fought over a piece of bread.

( forty-six )

ROBERT WALKED TO HIS office. He couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. This city was not his. It never had been. And he’d never felt more like a loose, dangling thread.

Wait here, he’d said to Genevieve. We’ll talk when I get back. But what was there to say? Harry was right about her. The sooner he faced up to that, the better. It was time to go home. He should have gone home long ago—years ago. He should never have come to Europe in the first place.

It had been a fiasco from start to finish. He’d only traveled out of some abstract notion of romance and heroism. Everyone back home had laughed or raised their eyebrows at his fervor to join up. They seemed to see it as a sign of his immaturity, and they humored him. Indulge the boy. Let him get it out of his system. They’d been right. He’d ended up as a bit-part player with no direct experience of the gore and the glory of the battlefield. He came through the war without medals or scars. He didn’t even come through it with Agnes, his first love, on his arm. How different his life would have been had she chosen him over the lost-and-found Edward.