Sophie looked at him. The car had just turned past the pear orchard behind its crumbling stone walls; this was the first view of the house. She was used to it, but of course Gregoire was not. He leaned forward in the backseat to admire it: the plain grey walls, almost honey coloured in the full light of the sun, the round tower and its pointed cone, the windows glittering like the surface of the lake to their left. It was a hot, even sultry day, with just a whisper of a breeze; the château’s grounds showing to excellent advantage, its lawns smooth as a billiard table, the topiary hedges neatly shaved into balls and spikes, the gravel walks lined with lavender.

“You like it?” she asked, trying not to sound too eager. All the time she spent with Gregoire, he was so reserved. Sophie could hardly get him to say, flat out, that he liked or wanted anything, apart from his requests for her company. She decided he was proud, but that was a good thing. He had perfect manners.

But she wanted to please him, to see him enthusiastic for once.

“Like it? Like is not the word,” he said, shaking his head. “C’est magnifique. How old is it?”

“It was built in the late 1600s. It was the seat of the Barons Rossigny, but they were wiped out in the Revolution. Pierre bought it three years before we were married. . . .”

Sophie could have kicked herself. Why did she mention Pierre, why? Was it out of respect for him that Gregoire had not declared himself to her?

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember.”

“You must have been here before. . . .”

He shook his head. “We were friends, you understand, but on a business level. He kept his social life separate.”

The car purred on towards the garages, a converted stableblock not far from the main entrance.

“And what is that?”

He was gesturing at the golden stone of the dower house, looking small at this distance, below the lake at the foot of the lawn’s slope.

“That is the lodge where my mother-in-law lives.”

“Ah. Mme Katherine.”

Sophie looked at him in surprise. “You know her?”

“I have only met her briefly, at company functions.” Gregoire added delicately, “Mme Katherine moves in much different circles.”

Sophie blushed and felt a pang of shame. Gregoire meant, of course, that Katherine had cut him dead. He might be a successful businessman, even Pierre’s deputy, but since he had no estates of his own, to Katherine a man like Gregoire would be nothing more than the hired help. And in fact, for him to say that Pierre and he had never mixed outside the office . . .

She wondered with embarrassment if, perhaps, Pierre had treated him the same way. In which case his kindness to her was all the more remarkable. She being the last vestige of a family that had looked down on him. . . .