The rose-colored stone façade of the Grand Trianon looked very feminine. It lacked the deliberately rustic charm of the Petit Trianon, but it had all the bearing of royalty.
The garden was also very "Versailles," only smaller in scale. There were many sculptures as well, and with the Roman-style columns, it had a mixed aesthetic.
Corsicans loved Rome. His first son had been the "King of Rome." France at the turn of the nineteenth century was actually more "Roman" than Italy, where Rome truly stood. Werewolves were everywhere in the city.
When working hours arrived, more carriages and officials began appearing around the Grand Trianon. Georgiana and Madame Leoncourt would only have seemed to be in the way if they remained there, so they moved their "morning tea" to a small house in the garden.
Sophie came along. She now looked every bit the head maid of the Grand Trianon, standing nearby and busily attending to things, while Alice sat beside her mother and kept them company as they chatted.
Sometimes, a woman's social standing was determined by the status of the men in her family. If Sophie's father or grandfather had not been struck down by the French Revolution, she might have sat obediently at the dining table like Alice, listening to the "old women" talk.
But because her family had fallen, she had become a maid like those pretty blonde, blue-eyed village girls who barely knew how to read. Had they stayed over there, perhaps some official visiting the palace on business would have taken a fancy to them, then led them onto his carriage like shepherdesses being taken away by those "Romans." Foolish girls imagined they could become those officials' mistresses, escape the status of servants, and become people waited upon by others.
If they had read