She called her driver from the office and had him wait; then selected a few key reports—at least she thought they were key—and headed to the small, stifling elevator. Lazard’s door was shut, and Judy was on the telephone. Most of the workers in their cubicles did not give Sophie a second glance. She rode down the ten floors with an uneasy feeling; was she fleeing something?

It was a mild day, a little overcast. Sophie waited as the driver opened the door for her, then slid herself into the backseat.

“Good morning, Madame.” He knew better than to ask why she was leaving so early. “Where to?”

“Home.”

“Very good, Madame.” He pulled expertly into the traffic.

She would go back to the château and just think things through, Sophie told herself. She would—

No. The thought of the château suddenly repelled her. It was so huge and so empty. She could sit in the small library with the west-facing windows, the one she had selected, out of so many, to be her study, but still . . .

“On second thought, go to St.-Aude.”

“Are you visiting Père Sabin, Madame?”

“Yes,” Sophie said, and sank back against the buttery leather of the seat.

“My dear—what a pleasant surprise.”

“I hope I’m not intruding, Father.”

“Not at all. I have absolutely nothing to do. Come in, come in.”

Sophie smiled gratefully as the old man beckoned her inside the rectory. She opened the little wrought-iron gate and let herself in, walking down the cobbled path that wound through his tiny garden. Fr. Sabin was a great admirer of English country gardens and had carefully cultivated pansies and hollyhocks and lupins, along with wisteria and ragged dog roses; in the summer, his tiny patch of earth was ablaze with colour and scent.

“I have not seen you in some time,” he remarked mildly. “Tea?”

“Yes, thank you.” Sophie perched, as she always did, on the edge of one of his ratty armchairs, ripped from the claws of his long-dead and much-missed tomcat, Luther—a wicked joke of the old priest’s, to call his cat that—and stained with tea and coffee and the occasional splash of pastis. Sophie was always trying to buy Fr. Sabin new furniture, and he invariably accepted her donations with pleasure and promptly spent them on the poor.

The priest busied himself in the kitchen; she could hear the swish of his soutane as he bent down to the fridge for milk. He was old-fashioned, and still dressed in a black robe and biretta. Sophie shuddered to think of the chaos in the tiny room as he fussed with the electric kettle, but she forbore to offer any help. Fr. Sabin was proud of his independence; he wouldn’t let her come and clean up his place, pay for a maid, or even make the tea.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have been busy, in Paris.”