“I don’t think Maggie uses this,” he said, smelling it.

“I should hope not,” Alva said, rather scandalized. “What’s appropriate for a disgraced thirtysomething widow is certainly not for a girl of seventeen.”

“Ohh,” he said, looking at the pot with interest. “It’s something shocking. How can an oil-based dye be shocking?”

“Prostitutes use it,” she said.

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“Huh,” Sam said, setting the rouge back down. “I’ve learned many confusing things since I met you, Mrs. Webster.”

Alva’s mouth twitched. “You spent your evening chatting with a ghost and this is the thing that confuses you?”

“I’m a genius. I can be confused by many things at once.”

His hair was long enough that it brushed the top of his collar. Alva found herself mesmerized by the way the gentle curls lapped at the cloth, both a little damp from his walk. The night air from the open window brought a wild crispness in, the smell of evergreens and smoke—and something indefinable, the promise of freedom.

He was still pawing at the pots and bottles on her vanity, his back bent slightly so he could reach them. He hadn’t put his coat back on, and the shirt he was wearing had seen better days. The material was worn thin between his powerful shoulders—really, where did the man buy his shirts? They obviously weren’t made for him, and with shoulders like that they needed to be. He probably tore through the backs of them with regularity. Alva gave a little internal shiver at that image.

Actually, she was quite warm, despite the chill from the window.

Any minute now she’d ask him to leave. Any minute now she’d stop watching him, noticing how small the perfume bottle looked in his hand, letting her eyes caress the line of his back.…

Why did he have to leave?

She almost gasped at the thought. It was shocking in its clarity, the first gulp of cold water on a hot day. Quickly she recited all the usual reasons—she didn’t get involved with men, look at what had happened the last time.…

But Alain was dead.

And she remained so afraid of him that not ten minutes ago she’d been nauseous with fear.

He’d never really stopped dictating her decisions. Not when she’d left him. Not when he’d died. Not when she returned to America, not with an ocean between them. Had she left Paris because she’d wanted to? Or had it been because of the elegant gray tomb she’d chosen and paid for and never seen, which stood in Père Lachaise Cemetery a few yards from the wall where 147 Communards had met their bloody end four years earlier?

She’d escaped. She’d survived. Why was she living like she was the one who was dead?