The Porcelain Dove

Delia Sherman

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A castle locked in time, before the Revolution turned France to a bloodbath. A young girl, married off to a ducal collector of exotic birds. A boy enslaved, torn from his homeland, finding another path to power. A child, bound to break her family's ancient curse. The lady's maid Berthe sees it all with her sharp eyes and silently keeps her own secret. Eighteenth-century France is the setting—a time and place where age-old superstitions shadow an age of enlightenment, where the minuet of aristocratic life is deaf to the approaching drumbeats of revolution, where elegance masks depravity and licentiousness makes a mockery of love. Against this background, Berthe Duvet, maid to Adele du Fourchet, later mme la duchesse de Malvoeux, tells her tale of a doomed society and of a family seeking to break a terrible curse.