Read Online Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics by Carolyn Jourdan - Free Book Online

been owned by the Most Serene House of Condé.
    Being serene sounded like wishful thinking on their part, just like it did for the royal family of Monaco. She thought the Condé line might’ve been started by a Protestant. Good luck with finding any serenity in France as a Protestant back in the old days.
    She had trouble remembering the difference in a Condé and a Conti. She thought both families were big deals, but she didn’t remember why. Unfortunately, life for both families had been hard—really, really hard. She was pretty sure both hereditary lines were now considered extinguished , to use the polite euphemism.
    She tried to think of a gentle way to ask Marc about this and was stuttering out a question. He read her expression and said, “Let’s just say if things had gone differently, if there had been no Revolution, this would’ve been my room.”
    They were in the King’s formal bedroom. Phoebe looked around at the splendor. How strange to have so many people hanging around in your bedroom that you needed a gilded wooden fence around your mattress to keep rowdy visitors from jumping in bed with you. It must’ve been a rough life in some ways.
    The prince saw how Phoebe was looking at him.
    “Believe me,” Marc said, looking around at the huge chamber, “I’m content with dusting and inventorying the old pile. Honestly. I wouldn’t want any more responsibility than that.” He fluttered his hands, “It’s too much.”
    Phoebe could tell he meant it.

Chapter 9.
    They continued upwards toward the attic and Marc gave information on the rooms and objects they saw along the way. He seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the house. Of course he would, he was the Chief Curator. She looked at him standing near a portrait of a foxhunt.
    Noblemen, in so far as Phoebe knew, seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time hunting. Time spent around hunting dogs might be the only thing she had in common with a French prince. Or any other kind of prince.
    Phoebe had grown up around hunting dogs. Her father loved Coonhounds. Over the years they’d owned Blueticks, Redbones, Treeing Walker, Black and Tan, and various other mixes. Friends and neighbors raised Bloodhounds, Plotts, and English or French Foxhounds. Hounds were a noisy bunch, but not mean or dangerous.
    There was a lot of teamwork required to work with hounds effectively. Both the dog and the handler had to be well-trained. They had to become familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Sort of like she and J.J. were doing.
    There were different kinds of hounds, two of the biggest distinctions being sight hounds versus scent hounds. Scent hounds were slower and easier to deal with because they weren’t as prone to rocketing off after something they’d caught a glimpse of, and chasing it over the horizon, never to be seen again.
    The world of scent hounds was filled with its own unique jargon, too. For example, there was a term for dogs with exceptional scenting abilities. A hound that could sniff out the faintest of odors was said to have a cold nose . A typical hunting dog had a hot nose , which meant it could detect the fresh smells that came from recently used paths. But an extremely good dog could locate even an old trail and follow it.
    The phrase for this rare talent of finding and following a trail that hadn’t been used recently was striking a cold trail . Phoebe had her own version of this talent. This was especially surprising since never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined she would be of any use in tracking anything. She couldn’t even manage to follow the progress of a t-shirt coming from Lands End with a UPS tracking number and a live link.
    But that’s precisely what she was being asked to do now—to strike a cold trail. She’d only recently learned she had peculiar talent for being a cold nose tracker. Like a bloodhound, she was particularly gifted at tracking men.
    She had a bizarre genius for tracking one man in