“Can I help you? They’re not very helpful to foreigners here. You have to know what you’re looking for very specifically,” he said in excellent English. He had been listening to the exchange. He reached for the paper, and Brigitte handed it to him without a word. He looked as though he was in his early forties. He was French, but spoke English with a British accent, as some educated French people did. But he was obviously fluent. He was wearing jeans and a parka and loafers, and had hair almost as dark as hers. He had warm brown eyes and a nice smile when he looked at her, and he took the piece of paper and approached the desk again. The same woman came up to it, and he explained smoothly in French what he believed Brigitte wanted. The woman nodded, disappeared, came back, and gave him the exact location of the whole section Brigitte was interested in. He hadn’t asked for anything different than she did. He had just said it in better French.

“I’m sorry. They’re not very nice here. I come here all the time. I can show you where the section is. I did a book on Louis XVI last year. I know where it is.”

“You’re a writer?” she asked as he led her to the right section. There were desks and chairs and benches, and endless stacks of books.

“I’m a historian turned novelist because no one buys history unless you lie about it and make it more interesting. The truth is that the real stories are even more intriguing, they’re just not as well written. You’re a writer too?” He handed her back the piece of paper, with a smile. He was of medium height with slightly tousled hair that gave him a boyish look. And he definitely looked French. He wasn’t sexy, he was friendly. She smiled to herself, thinking that Amy would have said he was “cute.”

“I’m an anthropologist. I’m researching some family history for my mother. Or I was. I fell in love with it, and I guess now I’m doing it for me. I’m hoping to find some diaries about the French court. You wouldn’t know of any, would you?” He seemed to be her only hope now of locating anything here.

“There are an enormous number of them. You just have to wade through them. Anything in particular?”

“I’m looking for accounts of the Sioux Indians that Louis XVI invited to the court as guests, and an ancestor of mine who was a marquis.”

“That sounds interesting. You ought to write a novel about it,” he teased.

“I only write academic nonfiction that makes no money and puts people to sleep.”

“So did I, until I started writing historical novels, which is actually a lot of fun. You get to play around with history and add fictional people to the real ones, and they do what you want. Most of the time anyway.” He seemed interested in what she was doing, and he had been very helpful to her.

He went in pursuit of his own research then. Brigitte took down a stack of diaries in the section he had pointed out to her, but she found no mention of Wachiwi or the Margeracs, so it turned out to be a lost day. She ran into him again when she was leaving the archives late that afternoon. She had been there all day, without even stopping for lunch. She had brought an apple in her purse and ate it while she continued reading.

“Did you find anything?” he asked with interest. She shook her head, looking disappointed.

“That’s a shame. You have to keep at it. It’s here somewhere. Everything is,” he said calmly. But he knew his way around. Brigitte didn’t.

“What are you working on?” she asked politely as they left the building together.

“A book about Napoleon and Josephine. It’s hardly an unusual subject, but it’s fun to write. I teach literature at the Sorbonne, so that pays my rent. But the books help a bit too.”

He was very friendly and open with her, and he introduced himself as they stood on the front steps on the way out. He said his name was Marc Henri. His name sounded familiar, but it was a fairly ordinary French name.

She saw him again the next day as she made her way through the stacks. She still hadn’t found anything of interest when he wandered over to her in the late afternoon. And she was exhausted from reading in French. She had to use a dictionary constantly, which made it tedious work.

“What is the name of the ancestor who was the marquis? Perhaps I can find him for you,” he said helpfully, and she wrote it down for him. “We can cross-reference him in their lists.” And five minutes later Marc had found him. She was embarrassed by how easy it was for him, and how difficult for her. But the archives were confusing, and it wasn’t her language.

They looked up Tristan de Margerac together, and it listed his Paris address in 1785. It was on the Left Bank, and she had a feeling it wasn’t far from where she was staying. She wondered what the building was now. But it said nothing about his wife.

“We might find him in some diaries tomorrow,” Marc said hopefully, “if he went to court often. Did he live in Paris all the time?”

“No, the family seat was in Brittany. I’m planning to go there next week, to visit the château.”

“You have very fancy ancestors,” he teased her, and they both laughed. “Mine were all either paupers, priests, or in prison. What about the Sioux Indians you’re looking for? Are you related to them too?” He was kidding, and didn’t expect a positive response when she nodded.

“The marquis married one of them. She was a Sioux Indian, the daughter of a chief in South Dakota. I’m trying to figure out how he met her. I think it must have been at court. But I don’t know how she got there, or to France. She’s an amazing young girl.”

“She must have been, for a French nobleman to marry her. It would be interesting to know how that happened, wouldn’t it?” She told him about her research with the Mormons and at the University of South Dakota then, and he was intrigued. “That is fascinating. I can see why you’re pursuing it. I feel that way about Josephine Bonaparte when I read about her. She was a bewitching woman too. And so was Marie Antoinette. I’d give you some books to read about them, but they’re all in French.” He casually suggested a drink to her on the way out, and feeling somewhat swept away by their mutual interest in history and research, she agreed. She didn’t usually go out with strangers, but there was a café nearby and he seemed like a nice man.

“So tell me, what do you do when you’re not chasing your relatives all over France? Do you teach anthropology or only write books?” he asked her, as they sat at a table in the café.

“I worked in the admissions office of Boston University for ten years.” She was about to tell him she had just quit, but decided to tell the truth. “I got laid off. That means I got fired, and a computer took my job.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. What are you going to do now?”

“This, for a while. And then I’ll probably go back to work in the admissions office of another college. There are a lot of them in Boston, that’s where I live.”

He smiled as she said it. “I did a master’s in literature at Harvard, and one at Oxford. I had more fun in Boston. Where do you live?” She told him, and he said he had had an apartment about four blocks from hers. It was a funny coincidence, and then she realized why she had recognized his name. “You did a book about a little boy who looks for his parents after the war, didn’t you? I remember your name now. I read it in translation. It was incredibly touching. They were in the Resistance and had been killed, and another family takes him in, and eventually he married their daughter. It was the sweetest book I ever read, although it was very sad.”

He looked pleased. “That little boy was my father. My parents actually. My mother is the daughter of the family that took him in. My grandparents were killed in the Resistance. That was my first book. I dedicated it to them.”

“I remember. I cried like crazy when I read it.”

“So did I when I wrote it.” She was impressed that he had written that book. It had been beautifully written even in translation, and very poignant. It had haunted her for weeks after she read it.

“You know, you look a little Indian,” he said, looking at her.

“The woman at the Mormon Family History Library said that too. I think it’s just because I have dark hair.”

“I love the idea that you’re part Sioux. How exotic. And how interesting. Most of our histories are so boring, and look at you. An Indian great-great-great-great-whatever-grandmother, who came from America and married a marquis.”

“Better than that, she was kidnapped by another tribe and ran away from her captor. She may have killed him, and then escaped with a Frenchman, or at least a white man, and wound up here. No mean feat for a woman in 1784.”

“Those are powerful genes,” he said admiringly. But so were his, she remembered from the book he’d written. His grandparents had been war heroes and were decorated by de Gaulle posthumously. They had saved countless lives before they lost their own.

“So what about the rest of your life? You write academic books. You worked at a university until recently. Are you married?” He seemed interested in knowing more about her. And so was she, about him. But she was sensible about it too. No matter how appealing he was, she was going home in a few days, and he lived here. So even if they liked each other, all they could ever be was friends. More than that made no sense. She wasn’t into casual sex or sleeping with men she’d never see again. And she was still feeling raw after the breakup with Ted. So at best they might be friends. Nothing more.

“No, I’m thirty-eight, I’ve never been married, and my boyfriend and I just broke up a few weeks ago. He worked at the university too,” she answered simply and honestly.

“Ah,” Marc said with interest, “both academics. Why did you break up?” He knew it was a little rude to ask her, but he was curious anyway.