Which meant she had so little experience of the kind of love that came with family that she’d never wanted to push Victorine, to hurt Victorine, to question Victorine—D’Arcy couldn’t afford to lose the only family she had. That uncertainty had carried over into every other kind of human connection D’Arcy had formed; she’d been quick to look toward the end, wanting only the momentary balm of lust misconstrued as affection. And now, suddenly and swiftly, D’Arcy realized she’d never wanted to fall in love because she was afraid that her illiteracy in that emotion meant she’d ruin any such relationship.

But here was Josh, the kind of man who’d wait at a station—for how long? All morning, watching trains pass through until hers arrived?—so he could drive her home, the kind of man who just wanted to kiss her, to know her, the kind of man she wanted to hold her when she was hurting, the kind of man she didn’t want to let herself love because she had no idea how to. Not when she’d be gone next week and would never see him again.

“Why are you here?” she asked tiredly, trying to hide every confronting and wretched thought that had just swept through her mind. “I’m the kind of person who was going to do what you used to do: sleep with you and forget about you.” It was meant to show him the negative of D’Arcy, the darkness that lay beneath the smile and the bright dresses, meant to rend whatever fragile connection they’d forged at the picnic.

But he already knew. “That’s why I said no,” he said. He paused but she couldn’t reply; opening her mouth was too great a risk when she could still feel the desolation pressing against the back of her throat.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” she managed.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Then she added, inexplicably, because she’d made up her mind not to tell him anything, “Not yet.”

“Let’s go home,” he said, holding out his hand.

Home. Where was home? Not with Victorine, the woman who couldn’t be D’Arcy’s mother. Not in France, a country to which she’d thought she was linked by blood. Nowhere. Home had been mercilessly taken from her.

Still, she took Josh’s hand, the feel of it so warm and gentle that it was difficult to relinquish it when they reached the car. They rode back to the chateau in silence, Josh glancing at her every now and again but she stared out the window and pretended not to notice.

* * *

Even though she was exhausted, D’Arcy spent the morning organizing the transport to the airport for the crates, speaking in furious French to the company she normally trusted with the job who’d seen fit to tell her, in a jocular manner, that a forklift had punched a hole through a crate from the Musée D’Orsay just last week. After five minutes of her wrath, they became suitably contrite for her to believe that none of the inherent dangers of moving artworks—forklifts, fire sprinklers or simply being dropped—would be permitted to happen to her consignment.