From a window in the salle, the upstairs fencing hall of the L’Ecole d’Escrime Français, Colonel Derrick Albrecht watched Veronique Colbert walk up the street to keep their Sunday appointment. He had spent time in many of the notable countries of the world, and nowhere had he found a population with as many stunning women as in France. Slim, graceful, poised, so many of these women walked with a purposeful stride, shoulders back, head held high, gaze forward with never a glance downward, an amazing feat of smooth navigation in a city known for its uneven cobbled pathways.

So it was that Veronique Colbert strode now, the most stunning of the lot, certainly of the women he’d ever known, though known was not exactly the correct word he’d ascribe to her. Today would mark only his second time in her company, and since last Sunday, when they’d first met, he had learned much about his new bout partner without feeling that he knew her. Some of his information had been dredged from her own mouth, in answer to his questions over a truffle quiche in the dining room of the Ritz Hotel after their match. She was unmarried, had been educated at the Sorbonne, and had lived in Paris all her life but for a couple of years in Spain after college, where she instructed foil to the children of the ambassador and staff of the American Embassy. Upon the ambassador’s recall to the United States, she had treated herself to a year’s travel, then returned to Paris and her employment at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français. She had no family. She never knew her grandparents from either side, and her parents were deceased. She had no siblings. Her childhood home and the street where she’d lived had been destroyed by fire while she was in college, the neighbors long since relocated beyond reach to be questioned about the blond-haired little girl who had grown up among them. Her natural skill on the piste had been sharpened by a moonlighting instructor whose coaching came to an end when he emigrated to England in 1939.

It appeared that all roads to confirm the veracity of Mademoiselle Veronique Colbert’s background led to dead ends. Well, he would see.