"Don't look now, but someone is staring at us," JB whispered.
Without thinking, Sam turned her head away from the gorge and twisted her neck to see a young couple standing behind them. The woman lowered her gaze when Sam met her eyes.
"I said don't look!" JB hissed.
"Sorry." The couple was approaching them now. The man was tall and lean. He wore a large brown coat over faded blue breeches tucked into a pair or worn boots. His tricorn had had a few subtle dents, but he looked fairly presentable, though certainly part of the working class. The woman wore her hair under a cap and a bergère over that. Only a few heavily powdered red roots were visible underneath. Sam imagined she took great care to mask her hair's natural color, as red was considered unhealthy and therefore unattractive in this period.
"Pardon, Monsieur," said the man to JB, "but my wife seems to recognize your…"
"Sister," JB replied quickly.
"Sister, yes. She believes your sister is an old friend of hers."
"My apologies, Mademoiselle," Sam said to the woman, "but I'm afraid I cannot be who you think I am. You see, my brother and I have spent most of our lives in the colonies until the end of the war. We've since returned to our birth country here, but I've no recollections of my early childhood before our family's departure to the colonies." Sam's expertise on the Seven Years' War was limited, but she hoped her story was convincing enough.
The couple exchanged glances. JB took that moment to nod approvingly at Sam.
The redheaded woman finally spoke, her voice breathy and timid. "Forgive me, Mademoiselle. You see, I had a friend as a child when I lived on Île de Ré and she vanished one day when we were but twelve. You look just like her, but all grown up."
Before Sam had a chance to respond, JB swung his legs back over the stone wall and landed with a sharp thump on the cobblestone. "What was your friend's name?"
"T'was Élodie Poirier."
"Why, my sister's name is Isabelle, but we do have a cousin named Élodie. Our mother used to receive letters from her sister and I believe they did come from an island in France. The correspondence stopped after our mother's death, but I definitively recall several mentions of our cousin." JB spoke with a relaxed and even tone, but a single twitch of his eyebrow indicated to Sam that he needed her to play along. She guessed this was as good an opportunity as any to interact with locals and segue into questions about the beast, so she, too, slid off the wall and joined the small group on the ground.
"Perhaps you would like to join us for tea tomorrow afternoon on our grounds and we could discuss the subject further," she offered. "Our estate is just a short walk downhill on the edge of the forest."
The woman's eyes inflated and the man, who had been twisting a stray thread from his coat, froze mid-twist.
"You mean to say that you own the estate by the river?" The woman looked both dazzled and nervous, like a maid who just realized she was speaking to a queen. The man removed his hat and nodded awkwardly at JB. JB smiled, but Sam noticed a thick vein jut out in his neck.
"T'is a very generous offer," the man finally said to JB. "Are you certain?" Sam was mildly annoyed that the man hardly looked at her even though she was the one who'd made the offer, but such was the way with men in the eighteenth century, she supposed.
"Certain indeed. I shan't disappoint my dear sister," JB said. Sam heard a note of sarcasm in the last sentence, but the couple did not seem to notice. "First, however, might we learn your names?"
"Ah, yes! My name is Pierre Rochelle," the man answered with another small bow of the head, "and this is my wife Lucie." Lucie bent into an anxious curtsey, still looking starstruck.
JB returned the bow and said, "I am Jean LeBaron. My sister's name, as already mentioned, is Isabelle." Sam leaned into what she hoped was an elegant curtsey.
The Rochelles left shortly after to tend to their farm and Sam and JB were alone once again.
"Did you really have to invite them to tea?" JB complained. "How are we supposed to explain why we have a giant house and no staff? Now I'll have to spend all night trying to program some holograms to somehow serve tea without touching anything."
Sam's stomach twisted as she realized her carelessness. Still, she tried to defend her decision. "At least now we can get a conversation going about the beast with some time natives."
"Oh, look at you, using fancy time travel terms as though you've got it all under control."
"I do have it all under control." Even Sam knew this was an absurd claim.
JB rolled his eyes. "You just want to show off our fancy house. Now you've gone and made everything complicated."
"Says Albert Einstein's time traveling son from the future."