He left her in the courtyard and told her he'd be back in a moment. He reappeared five minutes later, driving a black Rolls convertible. It was a very handsome car. Pierre Pettit treated himself very well. His ancestors may have been serfs, but he was obviously a very rich man.

Sarah got in beside him, after explaining to her driver that the gentleman would take her back to the hotel. She tried to pay him, but he said it would be on her bill. And a moment later, she and Pierre sped off. He chatted easily with her on the way, asking her about her work and life in San Francisco. She said she was an attorney, and he asked if she was married. She said she wasn't.

“You're still young,” he said, smiling. “You will marry one day.” He said it almost smugly, and she rose to the challenge instantly. She liked him, and he'd been very nice to her. She was enjoying the ride through the countryside in his Rolls. It would have been hard not to. It was a perfect April day, and she was in France, driving around in a Rolls-Royce with a very handsome man who owned a large château. It was all very surreal.

“Why do you think I'll marry? You didn't. Why should I?”

“Ahhh… you're one of those, are you? An independent woman. Why do you not wish to marry?” He enjoyed sparring with her, and he obviously liked women. And she suspected they loved him.

“I don't need to be married. I'm happy the way I am,” Sarah said easily.

“No, you're not,” he said smugly. “An hour ago you were alone in an old Renault with no one to talk to. You are traveling in France alone. Now you're in a Rolls-Royce, talking to me, and laughing, and seeing pretty things. Isn't it better like this?”

“I didn't marry you,” Sarah said pointedly. “We're much better off like this. Both of us. Don't you think?”

He laughed at her answer. He liked it. And he liked her. She was bright, and quick. “Perhaps you're right. And children? You don't want children?” She shook her head, looking at him. “Why not? Most people seem to enjoy their children a lot.”

“I work hard. I don't think I'd be a good mother. I don't have enough time to give them.” It was a comfortable excuse.

“Perhaps you work too hard,” he suggested. He sounded like Stanley for a minute. But this man was very different. He was all about pleasure and life and fun, not just work. He had learned secrets to life that Stanley never had.

“Perhaps,” she answered. “Do you? You must have worked very hard to have all this.” He hadn't inherited it, he had worked for it, and he laughed as he answered.

“Sometimes I work too hard. And sometimes I play too hard. I like doing both, at different times. You have to work hard in order to play hard. I have a wonderful boat I keep in the South. A yacht. Do you like boats?”

“I haven't been on one in a long time.” Not since college, when she had sailed with friends in Martha's Vineyard, but she was sure the boats she'd been on were nothing like his.

They reached his grandmother's house a few minutes later. It was a small, neat cottage with a fence around it, beautifully maintained, with rosebushes in front, and a tiny vineyard behind it. He got out and opened the car door politely for Sarah. It was a remarkable experience being with him. She felt as though she were in a movie. The movie was her life for the moment. And she was starring in it. She was a long way from San Francisco.

He rang the bell and opened the door, and a woman hurried toward them, wiping her hands on her apron. She spoke to Pierre, and pointed to someone in the back garden. She was his grandmother's caretaker. Pierre led Sarah out through the back of the small house. It was filled with lovely antiques, and had bright pretty curtains at the windows. The house was small, but he took care of his grandmother well. She was sitting in a wheelchair in the garden looking out at the vineyards and the countryside beyond. She had lived in this part of the world all her life, and he had bought her the cottage many years before. To her, it was a palace. Her eyes lit up when she saw him.

“Bonjour, Pierre!” she exclaimed with delight, and then smiled at Sarah. She looked pleased to see her, she enjoyed visitors and especially her grandson. He was the joy of her life, and she was very proud of him. It showed.

“Bonjour, Mamie.” He introduced Sarah to her, and explained why she had come. His grandmother responded with a look of interest, many exclamations, and she nodded her head several times at Sarah, as though to welcome her. As she and Pierre chatted animatedly, the caretaker reappeared with cookies and lemonade, which she poured for them, and set the pitcher down on a nearby table, in case they wanted more. The cookies were delicious.

Pierre turned to Sarah then, and pulled up chairs for both of them. “She said she knew your great-grandmother well, and always liked her. She said she was a lovely woman. My grandmother was seventeen years old, and only a maid in the kitchen when Lilli came here. She said your great-grandmother was very kind to her.” She referred to Lilli throughout the conversation as Madame la Marquise. “Your great-grandmother helped her to become the cook several years later. She said she never even knew she had children until one day she saw her looking at photographs of them in the garden, and she was crying. But she said that other than that, she was always very happy here. She had a sunny nature, and she adored her husband. He was a few years older than she, and he worshiped her. She says they were very happy. He laughed all the time whenever he was with her. She said it was very hard for everyone when the Germans were here. They took over the stables and part of the château. The outbuildings were full of their men, and sometimes they were very rude and stole food from the kitchen. Your great-grandmother was nice to them, but she didn't like them much. She said Lilli got very sick toward the end of the war. There was no medicine, and she got sicker and sicker, and the marquis nearly went mad, worrying about her. It sounds like tuberculosis or pneumonia, I think,” he added softly. It was a fascinating recital for both of them, particularly Sarah, as she imagined Lilli crying over photographs of Mimi and her brother. Strangely, she realized now, he had died the same year as his mother, in 1945, just before the end of the war. Alexandre, her ex-husband, had died that year too. It was hard to imagine how Lilli could survive for all those years without news or contact with her children, or any of the people she had once loved. She left them all for the marquis, closed the door of her past behind her, and never opened it again.

“My grandmother is saying that finally your great-grandmother died, although she was still very young,” Pierre went on. “She says she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. And the marquis was inconsolable when she died. My grandmother thinks he had been in the Resistance all along, but no one knew for sure. He began disappearing more and more after she died, perhaps on missions with local cells, or in other districts. The Germans killed him one night not far from here. They said he was trying to blow up a train, she doesn't know if that was true or not. He was a good man and wouldn't do anything to kill people, except maybe Germans. She thinks he let himself get shot because he was so grief stricken over his wife's death. They died within a few months of each other and are buried in the cemetery near the château. I can take you there if you wish,” he offered, and she nodded. “She said it was very sad for everyone when they died. The Germans had kept the servants in the château and worked them very hard. The commandant moved in after the marquis died. And then the Germans left finally. And after the war, all the servants went to other places, the château was boarded up. Eventually someone bought it… and you know the rest. What an amazing story,” Pierre said to Sarah, who reached out and took the old woman's hands in her own to thank her. Pierre's grandmother nodded and smiled, she understood the gesture. She was every bit as lucid as Pierre had said she would be. The story she had shared with Sarah was a gift she could take home to Mimi, the story of her own mother's years in France and her last days.

“Thank you …merci…,” Sarah repeated, as they continued holding hands. This ancient woman was her only link to her lost great-grandmother, the woman who had vanished, and whose house she now owned. The woman two men had loved so passionately that both died when they lost her. She had belonged to each of them, and had been theirs, and in the end, she had been her own. She was like a beautiful bird that could be loved and admired but not caged. As they sat together, and Sarah mulled over Lilli's story, Pierre's grandmother's brow furrowed for a moment, and she said something more to him. He listened and nodded, and turned to Sarah with a wistful air.

“My grandmother says there was one other thing about Lilli's children. She said that she often saw her writing letters. She wasn't sure, but she thought they might have been to them. The boy who went to the post office said that her letters to America were always returned. He gave them back to Madame la Marquise himself, and she would look very sad. He told my grandmother that she put them in a little box, where she kept them tied up with ribbons. My grandmother said she never saw them until the marquise died. She found the box when she was helping to put away her things, and showed the box of letters to the marquis. He told her to throw them away, so she did. She doesn't know for sure, but she thinks they were letters to her children, all of which were returned. She must have tried to contact them over the years, but someone always sent them back to her unopened. Perhaps the man she had been married to, the children's father. He must have been very angry at her. I would have been, in his place.” It was hard for any of them to understand how she had left a husband and two children, out of passion for someone else. But according to Pierre's grandmother, she had loved the marquis that much. She said she had never seen two people more in love with each other, right up to their deaths. Enough to abandon her children for. Sarah couldn't help wondering if she had regretted it, and hoped she had. Her tears over the photographs and returned letters she saved said something. But in the end, hard as it was to understand, her love for the marquis had been more powerful, and had prevailed, as had his for her. It was one of those passions apparently that defied reason and all else. She had walked away from an entire life to give herself to him, and leave everyone, even her children, behind. She had gone to her grave without ever seeing them again, which seemed a terrible fate to Sarah. And for Mimi, the grandmother she loved so much.