“He turned up in the Seine, early this morning. His body was dumped there sometime in the last day or two. He didn’t drown, he was strangled.” He had been found with a thin wire around his neck. “He made a few too many deals for his own good. I don’t know where he’s been since he disappeared—Russia probably, or maybe he’s been in hiding somewhere. I think he made promises he couldn’t deliver on. I’m not sure who his client was for your château, but he may have already taken an advance on a commission and couldn’t return it, or perhaps he promised your husband’s angry investor that he could deliver you this time for the balance and it all went awry. The kind of people he dealt with don’t take kindly to not getting their way, and there’s a price to be paid for that. His matchmaking was bound to catch up with him one day. It did. He poisoned you, and God knows what else he would do for money. Money is a god to some people, and it’s a dangerous one to have.”

There was a final sense of closure with Pierre de Vaumont’s death. He had led an empty life. His victories were hollow, and none of the people who had known him and profited from the connections he made seemed to miss him. Many didn’t even remember him. Men like Pierre de Vaumont were soon forgotten.

—

Mike was relieved to hear the news of the final kidnapper being arrested and Pierre de Vaumont’s ignominious end. He was satisfied with the stern warning to Dmitri Aleksandr from the British and the French. And he was relieved for Theo, as much as he could be. None of it would bring back the people she loved. But at least the criminals would be punished for the crimes they had committed. Two of the kidnappers had died, the first ransom had never turned up, and had been laundered somehow, somewhere, and whatever part Pierre de Vaumont had played in it had cost him his life. Theo’s life had been altered forever, in ways that could never be repaired or replaced. The life of a thirteen-year-old boy had been snuffed out like a brightly burning candle, which was the cruelest of all.

—

Theo took a long drive to Deauville with one of her bodyguards after she heard all the news from Guy Thomas. She needed time to absorb it and think about what the future would look like without the people she’d lost. She was still working it out in her own mind.

They stopped for lunch at a little café, and she looked at the ocean and the beach. She thought of when she had gone there with Mike. He was recovering in New York, missing Theo and chafing to get to work. He was almost back to full strength, but not fully there yet. His doctors were pleased and told him every time they saw him how lucky he had been. He knew it in many ways, and a woman like Theo crossed your path once in a lifetime.