She glanced down at the map on the passenger seat occasionally until, after about twenty minutes driving southeast, climbing up high into the Montagne de Reims, the valley spilling out in picturesque impressionist shades below her, she turned off the A-road and onto a D-road toward Verzy, passing a succession of champagne caves. After a short time, she reached a road that was so narrow she found herself breathing in foolishly when she encountered a vine tractor coming in the opposite direction.

All of a sudden she saw the signpost, Lieu de Rêves, almost hidden. She swung into the driveway. An avenue of plane trees, densely planted, made it impossible to see where she was headed. And then, all at once, she was there: in a fairytale. The trees opened out onto a true chateau made of white stone with a blue slate roof and an actual drawbridge, turrets and a keep.

“Oh!” she said, unable to stop the exclamation escaping.

She parked the car and stepped out, glad to stretch after the long journey. She tried to smooth down her hair and her dress, which had at least only had to suffer the train and the car as she’d changed at the airport. It was a floral print dress, brightly patterned with orange and blue, the skirt kicking out at her knees, teamed with brown cowboy boots. She crunched over the gravel and crossed the drawbridge, unable to resist straightening her back, holding out her skirt, slowing her pace and pretending she was a princess despite the boots and the fact that she was twenty-nine years old.

She grinned at herself and just managed to let go of her skirt in time as the door to the chateau swung open and a man stepped out to greet her.

“D’Arcy Hallworth?” he asked.

“That’s me.” Her smile grew wider when she saw that the man in front of her made all synonyms for handsome meaningless, his almost-black hair sexily ruffled in stark contrast to the perfection of his crisp blue shirt, which was just a shade lighter than his eyes.

“I’m Josh Vaughn.”

“Oh, you’re American.” She realized her faux pas the second the words left her mouth.

“Sorry if you were hoping for a dashing Frenchman to go with the castle,” he said, unsmiling.

She decided to risk a joke. “Well, at least you’re dashing,” she said.

He laughed in surprise, which suited him much better than the serious face he’d greeted her with. “For that, you can come in.”

She stepped through the doorway and her body automatically spiraled around, soaking in the grandeur, the elegance, the lack of excess. Even Josh paled in comparison to the surrounds.

The centuries-old chessboard-patterned black-and-white marble floors echoed with the sound of her boots. The walls, which should have felt forbidding, cut as they were from stone too, receded behind the photographs adorning them. Photographs that D’Arcy recognized, photographs she’d studied over the years, photographs she could now reach out and touch except that would be like stroking the crown jewels—a sacrilege.