Page 25 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“And the baroness?” Betsy demanded. “Is she an armchair or a footstool?”

“Oh, an armchair, of course. Her mother is descended from not one but two of Louis XIV’s by-blows and she won’t let anyone forget it for a moment. Plus royaliste que le roi. And that, my dear, is why Madame la Baronne lives in state in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and Charles comes here and grubs in the mud.”

Betsy thought of Monsieur de Robecourt, sun-browned and rumpled, laugh lines around his eyes. She hadn’t thought he would mock her for stinking of the carpet mill. “How on earth did they come to marry?”

“It was a family arrangement.” At the look on Betsy’s face, Aikaterini burst into laughter. “My dear. It’s only in the new world that people marry for love.”

“But you—”

“Oh, I’m the exception that proves the rule,” said Aikaterini airily. A little too airily. Every now and then, Betsy was reminded how little she truly knew of Aikaterini, for all that she felt like family. “And John allowed himself to be adopted into the family. It would have been quite another matter if he had insisted on following his profession. Such are the sacrifices we make for love.”

Betsy had fancied Monsieur de Robecourt in love with her, gradually building to a grand declaration. Betsy groaned and buried her face in her hands. “He must think I’m an idiot.”

“Charles? If it will make you feel any less a fool,” said Aikaterini gently, “he told me he thinks you have a—how did he put it?—a unique and refreshing turn of thought. He says you sweep away his cobwebs and make him see things fresh.”

Brilliant. She was something on the order of a patent carpet sweeper, removing dust.

Betsy worried at a cuticle. “Should I not go to Delphi? There’s a whole excursion planned, Delphi and Mount Helicon and Thebes. I’d already said yes—and the others too. But if you think—”

“It isn’t really the season for it,” said Aikaterini slowly. “It gets quite cold on Mount Parnassus in this season. But if it has already been arranged . . . I don’t see the harm in it. As long as you go prepared.”

“I’ll bring my most unflattering woolens,” said Betsy glumly.

Betsy didn’t even need the woolens to make her unglamorous. Their small party traveled by donkey. Betsy defied anyone to look dashing on a donkey.

Not that she should want to look dashing. After many agonized midnight reflections, Betsy had come to the conclusion that she should be grateful that an experienced archaeologist appreciated her mind—and thought her sophisticated enough to flirt. There was no reason that she couldn’t be friends with Monsieur de Robecourt. She had few enough friends in Greece. And no one but Aikaterini ever needed to know what a cake she had made of herself.

Even so, Betsy couldn’t help but look with chagrin at her legs in their unflatteringly thick stockings as her donkey jolted down the path, following a convoy of locals leading heavily laden camels.

“It could be worse,” she muttered to herself. “It could be a camel.”

“Ah, you saw the camels.” Monsieur de Robecourt ambled his donkey up to hers. He rode with a supreme indifference to the silliness of his position. “Odd creatures, aren’t they?”

Betsy glanced over her shoulder. Jenks and Wingate were riding with Ethel, a little ways behind. Betsy wondered vaguely if they ought to wait for them; now that she knew Monsieur de Robecourt was married, riding together like this didn’t feel appropriate.

There she was, being American again. Betsy disliked herself thoroughly. “I hadn’t realized there were camels in Greece.”

“Didn’t you?” It was hard to be stiff when Monsieur de Robecourt was smiling at her like that. “According to Herodotus, Xerxes introduced the camel to Greece.”

“Yes, but you can’t believe everything you read in Herodotus,” protested Betsy. “The man thought India was filled with giant ants digging up gold dust.”

He raised his brows at her. “Don’t forget the people of Libya who squeak like bats, dine on snakes, and pass their time hunting strange troll-like creatures from four-horse chariots.”

Betsy couldn’t help laughing. “And yet we call Herodotus the Father of History. He was really just a big old gossip.”

“Isn’t that what history is? Gossip hallowed by time?”

It was entirely unfair for Monsieur de Robecourt to look quite that debonair with his feet sticking out at an odd angle. “History is about discovering the truth of what happened—of how people lived.”

“But what is truth?” Monsieur de Robecourt glanced sideways at Betsy. “My truth may be different from your truth. Truth lies in recollection and recollection lies.”

“Then it isn’t truth at all.”

“That depends on how one defines truth.”

“Truth is truth,” said Betsy firmly.

“Except when it isn’t,” countered Monsieur de Robecourt, looking ahead to the heights of Mount Parnassus as their donkeys picked their way up the pass. “The Greeks called it aletheia, the art of revealing the concealed. To the Romans, truth was the goddess Veritas, the daughter of Time and the mother of Virtue. And yet, what is it really? What do we mean when we talk about verité? About your English truth? Are they the same? Or something different entirely?”