"Genevieve is a teller and collector of stories. In the orphanage, she whispers her tales to the other girls at night. As maid to Madame Patin, she becomes the breathless audience to her mistress's alarming folk tales, in which cunning and doom are hidden under beauty, "meanings sealed under a skin of silence, as you seal pate under fat."". "When Genevieve must take flight, she escapes to another word-spinner, a poet who has the hearts of all his women - his mother, his mistress, his niece, his niece's governess - and before long, his new maid's. Kind the poet may be, but he too is a collector of stories, and, as Genevieve learns, when you speak your story, sometimes you give away more than words."--BOOK JACKET.