As a child, Esmé had thought of Marc Blanchard as an honorary uncle. Roland had decreed that he should not know more than that. “The little fellow needs some simplicity in his life, not more complication,” he’d said. And both Marie and Marc had agreed.

But when Esmé was thirteen, and Marc became seriously ill, it was decided that he should learn the truth.

“And so I suddenly acquired another grandfather,” Esmé had told her. “And learned that I share the same blood with Grand-mère and with you, my dear Claire, which makes me very happy. I think it was then,” he added, “that I began to realize that all life is mysterious.”

Marc had seen quite a lot of his grandson during the last year of his life. He’d show the boy his paintings, and talk about Aunt Éloise, who’d started the collection, and about the old days when he would visit Monet at Giverny. When Marc died, he’d left Esmé both the art and his considerable fortune.

Roland had lived another five years after that. And after he’d died, very peacefully down at the château one summer, Esmé had inherited that as well. As an illegitimate heir, he could not have the title, but he had everything else. Fortune, it seemed, had smiled on him.

But not quite. There were still things that his family had concealed from him.

“I knew that Louise had been the child of Marc and one of his models,” he had told Claire on one of her visits, “that she’d been brought up by upper-middle-class English parents and left an inheritance. I knew that she was a heroine of the Resistance, like my father. But then in my twenties, I began to notice that people would sometimes give me a curious look. It was as if they knew something I didn’t know.” He’d shaken his head in wry amusement. “I had a vague memory of my early life, of course. I supposed that my mother had owned a hotel of some kind. It was only after making more inquiries that I discovered my mother ran one of the most famous brothels in Paris!”

“Was it a shock?” Claire had asked.

“Yes. At first. I made Grand-mère give me all the papers she had about me. I discovered everything about my mother, including her own mother’s family, who are called Petit.”

“Did you meet them, too?”

“Yes. They had disowned Louise’s mother and we had nothing to say to each other. But I’m glad to have known everything. In fact, it’s been very useful to me.”

“How’s that?”