*****
The little dog cocked its head, causing a small scruffy ear to flop into one of its eyes. It sat, attentive and enduring, in Nicole’s lap. The little girl’s small fingers pressed into the animal’s fur.
“Grandmère says he’s got fleas,” Nicole said, her face screwed into a mask of serious concern.
Maggie stood by the fireplace in the library of her parents’ home and watched the flames. Christmas was a week away and she never remembered their home looking or feeling more enchanting. The whole mansion smelled of fir boughs and toasted cinnamon sticks, with the scent of even greater, impending wonders wafting in the air.
Maggie moved from her position by the fireplace and sat down next to Nicole on the overstuffed settee. She could hear the low rumble of male voices as Laurent and her father conversed in the den down the hall. The puppy looked at her with solemn, large brown eyes. She touched its soft fur.
“I have a cadeau for you, Nicole. An early present.”
Nicole looked up questioningly into Maggie’s eyes, her little hands momentarily stopped in their incessant searching of the dog’s coat.
“Is it from Maman?”
Maggie bit her lip. “In a way,” she said, placing the glittering bracelet of charms in Nicole’s lap of swans’ down and cashmere. “It belonged to your mother when she was a little girl.”
Nicole touched the tiny charms with her fingers, lifting the bracelet up to watch the tinkling figurines. An ice skater, a ballerina, a miniature horse and rider, a typewriter, a Cocker Spaniel dog.
An easel.
Nicole looked into Maggie’s eyes and smiled.
“Merci, Aunt Maggie.”
Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries Page 60