“Of course you could!” Claudine exclaimed, her eyes lighting up. “You would look wonderful in a twenties-style dress!”

My jaw dropped, and I decided I definitely loved Claudine. Nobody had ever been able to share my twenties vision of myself before.

Bruno leaned forward excitedly. “Could we all dress up in twenties style?”

“Yeah!” I leaned toward him, just as excited, then sat back, trying for a cooler head. “We couldn’t ask our guests to do that. Everyone wouldn’t be able to find the right clothes.”

“I’m sure they could manage something, if they tried,” Bruno said sternly. His gaze grew lost in the middle distance. “The twenties. Do you remember those little boater hats men wore?”

“And the flapper dresses!” I said eagerly. “Do you think I could have a jade cigarette holder?”

Claudine looked at me blankly. “Non, non, non. I was thinking of those dresses with bustles and little lace collars and S corsets for you. Isn’t that the twenties? Those flapper dresses just wouldn’t suit you.”

Damn it.

“But you would look wonderful in a lace collar,” Claudine tried, sensing she was losing me.

I scowled.

A dozen feet from our table, a sixty-something gentleman installed himself behind a synthesizer, and a teenager picked up an accordion. They burst into a polka, and Bruno grabbed me, over my protests that I didn’t know how to dance the polka. He solved that problem by holding me in a very firm grip while he danced it. Trailing my stumbling body around the floor, Bruno danced the polka, a Viennese waltz, a fox-trot, and various numbers I didn’t even recognize. Sébastien regularly tried to cut in, but Bruno ignored him. Only when the musicians paused and put on a CD mix did I get a break: Bruno had to let go of me to pull off his shirt and wave it over his head, per the instructions of a popular song that year. Over by the spit, organizers finished pulling Babe into pieces for our main course, and we returned to the table, breathless and hot. Claudine laughed through gasps for air. “That’s so much fun. French weddings are kind of like this, don’t you think, Titi?”

“Our PACS was like this, anyway,” Titi agreed, tugging on his diamond stud. “But with more champagne. Remember how you danced, Sébastien?”

“I remember the wheelbarrows of champagne,” Sébastien said, flexing his shoulders.

“I asked the mayor if we could borrow that dance floor,” Bruno said. “Just in case you two decide to have the wedding here. But she said they had borrowed it from another village.”

“A dance floor?” Jean-Charles waved a hand dismissively. “I can put together a dance floor for you. Don’t you worry about that.”

I leaned closer to Sébastien and squeezed his thigh. “It does sound fun,” I whispered.

His face lit up. “Really?”