The acclaimed author of Letters from Skye returns with an extraordinary story of a friendship born of proximity but boundless in the face of separation and war. Luc Crépet is accustomed to his mother's bringing wounded creatures to their idyllic château in the French countryside, where healing comes naturally amid the lush wildflowers and crumbling stone walls. Yet his maman's newest project is the most surprising: a fifteen-year-old Scottish girl grieving over her parents' fate. A curious child with an artistic soul, Claire Ross finds solace in her connection to Luc, and she in turn inspires him in ways he never thought possible. Then, just as suddenly as Claire arrives, she is gone, whisked away by her grandfather to the farthest reaches of the globe. Devastated by her departure, Luc begins to write letters to Claire—and, even as she moves from Portugal to Africa and beyond, the memory of the summer they shared keeps her...
Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Brockmole
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Brockmole, Jessica.
At the edge of summer : a novel / Jessica Brockmole.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-345-54789-7 (hardcover : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-345-54790-3 (eBook)
1. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 2. World War, 1914–1918—Fiction. 3. First loves—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R6324A95 2016
813'.6—dc23
2015028301
ebook ISBN 9780345547903
v4.1
ep
Contents
Part 1: The Summer
Chapter 1: Clare
Chapter 2: Clare
Chapter 3: Luc
Chapter 4: Luc
Chapter 5: Luc
Chapter 6: Luc
Chapter 7: Clare
Chapter 8: Clare
Chapter 9: Clare
Chapter 10: Clare
Chapter 11: Luc
Part 2: The Letters
Part 3: The War
Chapter 12: Luc
Chapter 13: Luc
Chapter 14: Luc
Chapter 15: Clare
Chapter 16: Luc
Chapter 17: Clare
Chapter 18: Luc
Chapter 19: Clare
Chapter 20: Luc
Chapter 21: Clare
Part 4: The Studio
Chapter 22: Clare
Chapter 23: Luc
Chapter 24: Clare
Chapter 25: Clare
Chapter 26: Luc
Part 5: The Mask
Chapter 27: Clare
Chapter 28: Luc
Chapter 29: Clare
Chapter 30: Luc
Chapter 31: Clare
Chapter 32: Luc
Chapter 33: Clare
Chapter 34: Luc
Chapter 35: Clare
Epilogue
The colors in France were all wrong.
I was used to the grays of Scotland. The granite blocks of Fairbridge, the leaden sky, the misty rain, the straight stone walls bisecting fields. Even the steel of Father’s eyes.
Scotland wasn’t all gray, of course. In summer, the hills of Perthshire were muted green, in the spring flecked with the yellow-brown of gorse, and in the autumn, brown. But washed over all of it, gray. It was the color I knew best.
Lately, though, I saw more black than anything. It was draped on our front doorknob, it edged my handkerchiefs, it hung in my wardrobe in a modest row of new dresses. Six weeks of mourning black. Six weeks of sympathetic looks, of waxy pale lilies, of whispered conversations about what was to be done with me. But then Madame Crépet swept into the house, smelling of violets in a dress the color of honeycomb, and set about straightening things. The household was too happy to leave me in her hands. They didn’t know what to do with me anyway. As soon as Madame had my new black dresses packed up, we left for France.
Right away, France was too bright. From the blue-green of the Channel lapping the edges of Calais, past orange-roofed houses and yellow rapeseed fields, all the way to a château rising up white in a jewel green lawn. An automobile brought us down a slash of a burnt sienna drive, past golden-blossomed lindens and sprinkles of violets. Madame Crépet leaned over to me and said, “Welcome to Mille Mots, Clare.”
The people waiting in front were no different. Two young girls were introduced as maids, though they wore green flowered dresses instead of dark broadcloth. The butler had a great drooping orange mustache. The cook had her hair tied up in a paisley scarf. I heard the whispered buzz of French and was suddenly afraid to step from the car.
But then Madame Crépet took my hand. “It’s your home for as long as you need,
Was I? I didn’t know. A week ago I’d been back at Fairbridge, in the same square parcel of Scotland I’d spent the past fifteen years. I left with Madame Crépet, thinking I was setting off on an adventure. I forgot that polite, well-bred girls weren’t supposed to have adventures.
My head ached with the color and the light and the unfamiliar words my ears strained to catch. The air smelt like roses—heady, drowsy roses. Wasn’t it too early for them to be in bloom? A man approached the car, in a waistcoat speckled blue like a raven’s egg. He smiled widely and held out both hands.
