This was not how Bruno had expected the first talk of their brief time together to begin. They had met and fallen in love when she was a detective inspector for the Police Nationale in the Périgord. After a delicate but successful operation, she had been invited onto the staff of the Minister of the Interior in Paris, had then been wounded in an otherwise successful operation against a shipload of illegal immigrants, and was now on the staff coordinating the antiterrorism efforts of the European Union. If anyone knew about brilliant careers, it was Isabelle. Bruno, who thought of her as the love of his life but felt no temptation to move from his native Périgord, knew the personal cost to each of them of Isabelle’s ambition.

But this was no time to think of that as they sat together in the warmth of a waterfront restaurant’s glass-fronted terrace, a plate of fresh oysters, and a glass of Mouton Cadet sauvignon blanc before each of them. Isabelle loosened an oyster from its shell, squeezed some drops of lemon on it, and slurped it into her mouth. With her eyes closed, she chewed it once, twice, and finally swallowed with a purr of deep satisfaction. Eyes open again, she nodded her appreciation and reached for her wineglass.

“Mon Dieu, that was delicious. That hint of iodine makes these the tastiest oysters I know,” she said, and reached for another. And then she smiled roguishly at him. “Oysters always make me think of you, and here you are.”

“Here we both are, just you and me and the oysters,” he replied, and she responded by loosening another oyster and lifting it to his mouth, keeping her eyes on his.

“Eat,” she said, and when he’d swallowed, she took the almost-empty shell back and raised it to sip the last of the juices before saying, “I’m glad our room is just upstairs.”

Two hours later, their desire for each other slaked for the time being, they took a local bus to the huge Dune of Pilat, which she’d never climbed before, looking at the bay below them and turning to survey the vast stretch of the forest of Landes behind. They turned back to the sea again, watching the distant oyster boats, when suddenly Isabelle pulled a pair of binoculars from her bag and seemed to focus on one boat that she thought was behaving differently. She explained that while the others remained in one small area and kept stopping to take in more oysters, this one was sailing slowly but without stopping along each of the lanes between the oyster beds.