“Would you two kindly shut the hell up?” their aunt Bibi asks in a voice I suspect is even more slurry than usual, thanks to all the champagne she put back earlier, while stonily ignoring her estranged husband, who continues to make every effort possible to sit or stand near her and include her in the conversation. It is kind of sad, actually, to watch how excited Monsieur de Villiers is to have his wife back-even if only temporarily and even if only for her niece’s wedding-and how totally unexcited she is to be back.

“Really, you two,” Mrs. Thibodaux says, looking close to tears, “now is not a time for bickering. It’s a time for pulling together, to try to weather this crisis as best we can.”

“Crisis?” Monsieur de Villiers looks confused. “What crisis? Victoria is getting married! How is this a crisis? It is a joyous occasion, no?”

Both Bibi and her sister look at him and say at the same time, “No.”

Vicky, after looking from one woman to the other, suddenly pushes her chair back, leaps to her feet, and runs from the dining room, a hand flung dramatically over her face.

Which is when Shari stands up and says, “On that note…thank you so much. We’ve had a lovely evening. And I’m pretty sure we’re all clear on what we’ll be needed to do tomorrow when the rest of your guests start arriving. But right now I think Lizzie and I will just get a head start on the dishes.”

“I’ll help you,” Chaz says, springing to his feet, obviously eager to get away from the fighting and talk of floral arrangements.

“Me, too,” Luke says.

But the minute he starts to get up, his mother lays a restraining hand upon his wrist and says, not slurring the word at all now, “Sit.”

Luke sinks slowly back into his chair, a pained expression on his face.

I start clearing the empty plates around my end of the table. I don’t think I can get out of that tense silence fast enough.

As I come into the high-ceilinged-but still old-fashioned-kitchen, I smile at Agnes and her mother when they look up from the supper they’re sharing at the massive butcher-block table.

“Ne pas se lever,” I say to them, not sure if this is the right way of saying “Don’t get up.” But I guess it is, since it has the desired effect-they both sit back down to finish their meal.

“Oh my God,” Shari says to me after smiling at the Laurents. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What was that out there?”

Chaz looks visibly shaken. “I feel violated,” he says.

“Oh, whatever,” I say, grabbing a trash can and beginning to scrape the remains on the plates off into it. “My own family is way more embarrassing.”

“Well,” Shari says, “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that. But that is a good point.”

“Weddings are just stressful, you guys,” I say, reaching for the plates Chaz has carried in and scraping them as well. “I mean, the expectations are so high, and then if things don’t go perfectly, people melt down.”

“Sure,” Shari says. “Melt down. But not spontaneously combust. You know what her problem is, don’t you? Vicky’s, I mean?”

“She’s a Bridezilla?” Chaz asks.

“No,” Shari says. “She’s marrying beneath her.”

“Shut up,” I say, laughing.

“I’m serious,” Shari says. “Dominique was telling us all about it at the pool today after you left for your little vineyard tour, Lizzie. Vicky’s marrying some computer software programmer whose family all comes from Minnesota or something, instead of the rich Texas oil baron her mom had all picked out for her. Mrs. Thibodaux is fit to be tied about it, but there’s nothing she can do to change Vicky’s mind. It’s lurve.”

“Where’s Mr. Thibodaux in all this?” Chaz wants to know. “Vicky’s dad?”

“Oh, he has some big important meeting to go to in New York for his investment company or something. He’ll be here just in time to walk her down the aisle, and not a minute before, if he’s smart.” Shari hands Chaz a dish towel. “Here. I’ll rinse. You dry.”

“Oh, I love it when you talk dirty dishes to me,” Chaz says.

I gaze at the two of them as they bicker at each other over the sink, thinking how lucky they are to have found each other. It hasn’t all been funny one-liners and trips to France for them, of course. There was the time Shari had to kill and dissect Mr. Jingles, her university-assigned lab rat, in order to pass advanced behavioral neuroscience, and Chaz urged her to spare Mr. Jingles by surreptitiously replacing him with a look-alike rat he found at PetSmart in the mall.

But Shari wouldn’t swap rats because she said as a scientist she needed to learn how to distance herself from her subjects…after which Chaz wouldn’t speak to her for two weeks.

Still. Overall, they are the cutest couple I know. Besides my mom and dad.

And I would give anything to have a relationship like that of my own.

Except, of course, I wouldn’t resort to busting up someone else’s to get it. Even if I could. Which I can’t.

So I don’t even know why I’m standing here thinking about a certain person I met on a train just the day before.

Agnes and her mother, once they finish their meal, refuse to leave without helping us with the rest of the dishes, and the job is done sooner than I would have thought, given the number of courses we had and the number of utensils we’d ended up using to eat them.

But even better than being done with our chores sooner than I thought we would be is the fact that Madame Laurent actually understands me when I ask her if she knows whether there’s any creme de tartre in the kitchen. Even better yet-she manages to produce a container of it for me. She looks a little confused at my joy over securing a common acidic compound but seems pleased to have been able to help. She and her daughter both wish us a bonne nuit-which we enthusiastically return-before returning to the millhouse for the night.

Chaz announces he’s going to see if he can’t rescue Luke from the clutches of his mother and Mrs. Thibodaux and cajole him into having a nightcap. He and Shari invite me along, but I tell them I’m tired and am going to bed.

Which is a lie, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I have other plans…and that they involve needing to find a basin big enough to soak the Givenchy dress in-with the cream of tartar-overnight.

I’m on my hands and knees with my head in the cabinet under the kitchen sink examining something I think might work-a plastic bucket that must have been placed there during some ancient leak-when I hear a door open behind me. Worried it might be Luke, and that if so he’ll be seeing me from my least flattering angle, I start to get up, misjudge the distance between the sink and my scalp, and bang my head on the inside of the cabinet.

“Ouch,” says a male voice from behind me. “That had to hurt.”

Clutching my head with one hand, I look over my shoulder and see Blaine, in his baggy black jeans, dyed-black hair, and Marilyn Manson T-shirt, which I believe he is wearing to be ironic.

“You okay?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah,” I say. Letting go of my head, I reach for the bucket and climb to my feet.

“Whatcha doing down there, anyway?” Blaine wants to know.

“Just getting something,” I say, trying to hide the bucket behind my voluminous skirt. Don’t even ask me why. I just don’t feel like getting into an explanation of why I have it.

“Oh,” Blaine says. That’s when I notice the unlit, apparently hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips. “Okay. Well, listen. You got a light, by any chance?”

“Sorry,” I say. “No.”

He sags in the doorway. Really. He looks genuinely crushed. “Shit.”

I don’t approve of smoking, of course, but considering what this guy has had to sit through all night, I don’t blame him for needing a little stimulant.

“You could use one of the burners,” I suggest, pointing at the massive-and ancient-stove in the corner.

“Oh,” Blaine says. “Sweet.”

He slouches toward the stove, switches on the flame, bends down, and inhales.

“Ahhhh,” he says after he’s straightened again and exhaled. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

And I recognize a sweet, pungent scent that immediately reminds me of McCracken Hall. That’s when I realize what’s rolled into his cigarette is not tobacco.

“How,” I ask, truly stunned, “did you get that onto a transatlantic flight?”

“They’re called tighty-whities, baby,” Blaine says, dropping down into the kitchen chair Madame Laurent only recently vacated and swinging his combat-booted feet up onto the butcher-block table.

“You smuggled marijuana into France in your underwear?” I am stunned.

He looks at me and chuckles. “Marijuana,” he echoes. “You’re cute, you know that?”

“They have those sniffy dogs at airports now,” I remind him.

“Sure they do,” he says. “They’re trained to sniff for bombs, though, not ganja. Here.” He takes a deep toke on the joint, then holds it out to me. “Have some.”

“Oh,” I say, wrapping both arms around my bucket, then realizing, belatedly, that I must look very prim. “No thank you.”

He eyes me incredulously. “What? You don’t smoke weed?”

“Oh no,” I say, “I can’t afford to lose any more brain cells. I didn’t have that many to start with.”

He chuckles some more. “Good one,” he says. “So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?”

I assume he’s joking, since Chateau Mirac is hardly a dump.

“Oh,” I say, “I’m just visiting with my friends.”

“That tall dude,” Blaine says, “and the dyke?”

I take umbrage at this. “Shari isn’t a lesbian! Not that there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian. But Shari isn’t one.”