The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)

by Evie Dunmore

Tell me, how English do you feel after not quite two hundred years of union?” Her mouth quirked, conceding a point. “I don’t. Although part of my maternal line was English.” “Three hundred years,” he said with some impatience. “They always stay on our coast for two or three hundred years, then they leave, or the next conquest drives them out. In the meantime, the locals don’t just vanish.” “I suppose not. Not entirely anyway.” “We become entwined, yes; we might take the language, but we give it our dialect; we take a custom or a dish but alter it to suit us. Sometimes, we intermarry. It’s good for survival, good for business. Life goes on, c’est la vie. But when people don’t feel free or at least prosperous, they only bide their time. Governing locals who don’t much like you is costly, and a few centuries don’t erase the old ways. As long as one native is left alive, so is the history.”