She followed him over to the picnic blanket, where she found herself speechless.

Champagne bubbled in glasses. Baguettes piled high with brie sat beside fresh tomatoes and greens so crisp they looked as if they had just walked out of the garden. A bowl of imperfectly shaped berries shone red and purple. A plate filled with luscious chocolate tarts, macarons, palmiers and slices of cherry clafoutis sat in the center of it all.

“If this is what you do when you’re not trying to seduce someone, then I don’t think you should ever show me what you do when you are trying to get someone into your bed. I don’t think I’d survive,” she said, sinking onto the rug.

“See, that’s why I said no last night. I didn’t think you’d be up to it.”

The laugh bubbled out of her like the champagne. “I would call that flirting,” she replied. “Which isn’t allowed during business hours.”

“But proposing to remove your dress is perfectly suitable for business hours.” He sat on the blanket and she liked the way the sun fell on his face out here; she could see now that he was teasing, even though his voice was deadpan.

“I was being practical, not flirty,” she said. “Do you think it’s bad if I start with a chocolate tart?” Before he could answer, she picked one up and bit into it. “That is so good,” she said through a mouthful of chocolate. “How can you not want to spend every day here just eating? No wonder you run. If I keep eating like this, I’ll need to run all the way back to Australia.”

He smiled. “Running means I get to spend time in the gardens. I hardly ever go outside when I’m in Paris.” He picked up a chocolate tart too and she smiled back.

Then he said, wonder in his voice, the same wonder she knew was inside her too, buried below all the questions, “So she is Jessica May.”

“I’m glad you’re impressed,” she said. “That I’m not the only one who thinks she was a real artist.”

“I read a lot of stuff about her last night and today, filling in the gaps around what you’d said. I always knew she was a formidable woman but I had no idea just how formidable, and why. Ask anyone if they could name any photographers from the war and they might say Robert Capa. Joe Rosenthal, perhaps, although he’s more known for that one photograph than a body of work. But she should be one of the names people remember.”

“She should.” D’Arcy felt another moment of affinity settle between them and it made her feel that she could ask: “Before all this, who did she tell you she was?”

“She always told me that anonymity was something she prized more than fame or money. And the way she said it…” He paused. “She sounded almost desperate, as if she would sacrifice anything and everything for the right to remain unidentified. It, I don’t know, touched me, I guess. It was a condition of me becoming her agent that I never try to discover anything about her. And because of the way she’d made me feel when she asked, I never did. To do so would have been akin to killing her. Which sounds overly dramatic but…” He shrugged.