“How would we manage two weddings on two different continents, though?”

“We could manage it,” he said. “Look at all the organizers we’ve got around us. They’d love to get their hands on our wedding. They love nothing better than to throw a big party.”

I looked around me. “It does sound fun.”

When I looked back at the others, Claudine was watching us, smiling happily and nudging Bruno.

Justine tapped my shoulder. “Do you want to go sign up for the stilt race?”

“There’s a stilt race?” I sat straight up. “Yes!”

We found a portly gentleman in loose shorts and an untucked shirt registering contestants at the other end of the pavilion. “Are you here for the stilt-walking contest?”

“Of course!” Not that I had ever touched a stilt, but that didn’t seem a good reason to shrink from entering a top-speed race to me. Justine knitted her hands together and hesitated uncomfortably when she saw the sign-up sheet. There were two categories—under fourteen and over fourteen. She had turned fourteen only a few months earlier.

I grinned at her. “Don’t consider yourself a child?”

She looked demure. “I don’t want to take advantage of anyone.” I stared.

She coughed delicately. “I mean, I, um . . . I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“You’re a stilt-walking expert?” Why didn’t my family produce these kinds of talents? “How did that happen?”

“Summers in Provence. My grandfather made me a new set every year because I kept growing out of the old ones.”

I watched her sign her name under mine in the adult category, deeply impressed. We just didn’t encourage such vital skills in the U.S.

“Good for you,” the portly gentleman said heartily, pleased to have his first two adult entries. “Do you have any stilt walkers at your table? We don’t have enough people in the adult category.”

As it turned out, everyone at our table of Parisians had stilt-walked at least once. I would have thought their skills would be confined to how to call a taxi, but I had noticed before how close some Parisians were to something rural and peculiarly authentic. Valérie, only thirty-two, often casually referred to daily trips to collect milk from a nearby farm when she was growing up in Brittany. Suave Bruno, at thirty-five the third highest ranking executive of a major French hotel chain, could, from personal experience, tell you how to kill and dress any barn animal you cared to name, including quite a few that weren’t barn animals in the U.S. What’s more, this was good cocktail chatter. I swear. Everybody but me always had something to contribute on the subject.