“I hope this isn’t inappropriate, but I have a dear friend from Moscow arriving at the end of the week. He’s desperate to find a home here, and he wants a château not too far out of the city. He has a wife and three small children, with full staff of course. You have such exquisite taste, and I have no idea if you’d be interested in selling your château, after…well, you know. It must be painful for you there now. My friend would even be willing to rent it fully furnished until you make up your mind. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but he’ll only be here for a few days, and he has to find something before his wife and children arrive.” He sounded obsequious and apologetic, and just as slimy as before to her. Possibly even more so.

“Well, I certainly couldn’t move that quickly. I haven’t thought about it. I have no idea if I’ll want to sell it one day, and I’m not interested in selling it now.” But he was right, she thought. It was unbearable going there now. She hadn’t braved it yet, and she dreaded it. She’d been meaning to go in the next few weeks to bring back some of her fall clothes. “If I do sell it, it will be through a realtor,” she said pointedly. He could smell a fat commission if he could convince her to sell or even rent it. And he suspected she’d be more likely to rent or sell to someone she knew than someone she didn’t.

Matthieu’s family château, which he had repurchased, was an extraordinary showplace he had lovingly restored and redecorated with the help of one of the best decorators in France. It looked like a smaller version of Versailles, and the gardens had originally been designed by Le Nôtre, who designed the Versailles gardens. The place had meant so much to him that she felt guilty selling it, but going there to stay again was impossible for her, knowing that Matthieu and Axel had been kidnapped from there. “I just don’t know,” she said vaguely, upset by the question, and even having to think about it. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you now. And I’m late for a meeting. If I put it on the market, I’ll let you know.”

“Could I go and visit it sometime, so I can describe it to him, and tell him if it would work for him? I’ve actually never been there myself.” Of course not, she thought. Matthieu would never have let him in the front door, given the slimy little opportunist he was.

“I have to pick some things up there myself in the next week or two, but I don’t know when.”