The main course had arrived. And it was a triumph. Bœuf en croûte, made to perfection. A tenderloin of beef, a thick layer of rich foie gras around it and the whole encased in a puff pastry. The aroma alone was sumptuous. Even de Cygne was impressed.

“Madame,” he said to his hostess, with feeling, “you have a wonderful cook.”

As Roland looked around the table, he had to confess that this meal with the Blanchard family hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected. True, they weren’t his sort of people. The apartment was not to his taste, and as for the Art Nouveau dining room they were so proud of, it seemed vulgar to him, simply because it was new.

But his father had been right. He should meet different sorts of people. The Blanchard sons might not be his style, and their aunt seemed too intellectual, but Jules Blanchard was a sensible man. As for the other guests, he liked Hadley. These Americans had a naturalness that was pleasing. Fox was that most British invention, the English gentleman, who had a code of manners that nobody could complain about—and he was certainly behaving very nicely by acting as interpreter.

That left Marie and her mother.

He’d been watching Madame Blanchard since the start of the meal. She was a pleasant-looking woman, a little thicker in the waist now than when she’d been a young woman, no doubt, but with her regular features and blue eyes, she looked somewhat younger than her years. Any middle-aged man with a wife like that might count himself lucky.

She had, of course, a cook and servants to prepare and serve the meal, but he could see from the way that she glanced at each dish, and observed the servants at their work that she was completely the mistress of her household. She knew exactly how everything had been prepared. If there’d been a single fork out of place, she’d have indicated the fact to one of the servants with the faintest nod, and the error would have been instantly corrected.

He discovered that she and her husband were second cousins—just as half the aristocrats he knew had married their relations—and it was evident from things she let fall that her own parents had been no poorer than her husband’s. In short, without needing to assert herself in the least, Madame Blanchard was a woman who was completely sure of herself and comfortable with who she was. He respected that.

And as he observed Marie, it occurred to him that one day she would be just like her mother. She was a little quiet, but then she had been strictly brought up. So much the better. He learned from her mother that she and Marie had both been to Mass that morning, and that they went every Sunday. The girl was a good Catholic. He approved of that too.

She was pretty. He wondered what it might be like to awaken passion in her. Very pleasant indeed, he would guess.