We were so busy entertaining ourselves that at first I didn’t notice the woman sitting at the table outside the Café Le Victor Hugo. She rose to meet us as we approached, the heat lamp striking orange glints off her smooth, dark hair.

The last time I had seen her, her hair had fallen past her shoulders; now, it was cut short, in a modified flapper bob. The style made her seem even thinner and more fragile, her eyes wider and darker, like a fashion plate from the 1920s. She looked like a member of the Brideshead Generation, those lost souls trapped between World Wars I and II.

“You got a haircut!” I exclaimed. And then, belatedly, “Are we late?”

Serena dropped her cigarette and ground it under one heel before hugging me. “No, no,” she said. “I’m early. I just wanted a little time to . . .”

Her thin hands floated through the air, white against the gathering darkness.

She had saved a table for us, at the far end of the outdoor seating area, a marble-topped thing surrounded by three deep wicker chairs. There was a champagne flute in front of her, three-quarters empty, with a sticky residue on the sides that suggested it had been a champagne cocktail of some kind rather than straight-up bubbly.

Colin nodded at the cigarette butt. “I thought you’d given it up.”

Serena looked away. “Drinks?” she suggested, dropping down into a wicker chair. “We’ll need them.”

I wished they would stop saying that.

I made small talk with Serena while Colin dealt with the important matter of ordering the drinks—white wine for him, kir royale for me. When that was all set, I leaned my elbows on the table and looked from one sibling to the other. “Tell me more about the party tonight. What should I expect?”

All I knew was that it was being hosted by Colin’s mother’s Paris distributor—part birthday party, part private sale.

The combo seemed a little crass, but then, so did Colin’s stepfather. Jeremy struck me as the sort of guy who would filch the fillings from your teeth and then sell them back to you at a markup. On the other hand, what did I know? Maybe it was Colin’s mother’s idea. All I knew of Caroline Selwick-Selwick-Alderly was what Colin’s great-aunt had told me, and Mrs. Selwick-Alderly couldn’t exactly be called an unbiased source.

“Lots of Eurotrash,” said Colin. “And Americans. Art people.”

Apparently, André Jaouen wasn’t the only one to have gatherings of artists.

I grimaced at Serena, who worked in an art gallery. “Do you want to be offended or shall I?”

Serena mustered an unconvincing smile and took another drag on her cigarette. She was fidgeting. I had seen Serena sick; I had seen her flustered; but I had never seen her fidget.

I looked quizzically at Colin. “What is your mother like?”

There was an awkward silence. “She can be very charming,” said Colin guardedly.

“When she wants to be,” murmured Serena.

That was another first. I’d never heard Serena utter a nasty word about anyone, and she’d been given some provocation in the time I’d known her.

Serena took a long drag on her cigarette. “I shouldn’t worry if I were you.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“What she means,” said Colin kindly, “is that Mum only notices people when she wants something from them. Usually men.”

Serena ducked her head, her bird’s wing hair falling gracefully over her brow. “I didn’t say that.” She twisted to look over her shoulder, her thin fingers toying with the stem of her glass. “Do you see the waiter? I think I’d like another.”

The empty glass rocked and nearly went over, but she caught it just in time. I wondered if she’d eaten anything today. One drink on an empty stomach went a long way.

“Do you think we could get some snacks?” I said, too loudly. There was an uncomfortable quality to the silence, everyone trying to catch or avoid someone’s eye, the mist from the earlier rain heavy in the air. “Do we have time for that? I’d love to get something to sop this up before I meet your mother. I don’t want her thinking I’m a total lush.”

Colin flagged down the waiter, ordering another round of drinks and some snacks high in carb and calorie content.

Serena drained the last three drops from the bottom of her glass, shaking it to make sure she got every last bit.

I tried to catch Colin’s eye, but his attention was on his sister. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

“Fine. Perfectly.” She slid another cigarette out of its crumpled paper case and jammed it against the tabletop. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“How are things at the gallery?” I asked quickly.

“I’ve been promoted.”

I lurched across the table to hug her, nearly colliding with the waiter, who had appeared with Serena’s glass of bubbly. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations! I’m so happy for you!”

She suffered herself to be hugged and then twitched away. “It isn’t anything to make a fuss about.”

“Good on you,” said Colin heartily. “When did you find out?”

Serena’s eyes were fixed on the elaborate ballet of bubbles swirling and pirouetting in her glass. “I heard on Wednesday.”

Colin looked genuinely confused. “Why didn’t you say?”

Serena shrugged, the sharp lines of her shoulder blades showing through her shawl. “I didn’t want to make a to-do about it.”

“Does that mean that we get to make a to-do on your behalf?” I said, bouncing a bit in my chair for emphasis. I lifted my glass. “A toast! To—”

“No!” Serena hastily cut me off. She seemed, for whatever reason, genuinely distressed. “Don’t. It’s not official yet. I won’t know for sure until Monday.”

“Oh, right!” I said. That, I understood. “Okay, I won’t jinx it by talking about it. Still, it’s all very exciting.”

Serena bit her lip. “Yes,” she agreed. “Very.”

“Speaking of excitement . . .” Colin nodded to the right, to the covered path that led along the side of the Place des Vosges. A woman was climbing out of a taxi on the Rue des Francs Bourgeois side of the Place des Vosges, taking her time about it, extending one long leg, then another, like a movie star in an old film. “There’s Mum.”

She didn’t see us. She was too absorbed in her own toilette. She finished unfolding herself from the cab, twitching her scarf into place, adjusting the crystal earrings that cascaded like chandeliers from either ear. Her dress was shorter and tighter than either mine or Serena’s, but there was nothing tarty about it. It didn’t hurt that it screamed couture. There was a subtle pattern of diamond-shaped cutouts that stretched from one shoulder to the opposite hip.

I only hoped I looked that good at almost fifty.

A man followed her out of the cab, pausing first to pay the driver. This man I knew. I had met him once at a party in London, but I had seen numerous photos of him in the albums in Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s flat in London. It was Colin and Serena’s second cousin, Jeremy, their mother’s husband.

Colin drained his glass. Pushing out his chair, he held out a hand to me. “I think this means it’s time to get this party started. Coming?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

Chapter 15

Laura wore her gray gown to the party.

She resisted the urge to tug at her cuffs as she made her way out of the darkened schoolroom on her way to the stairs. Jaouen had picked a fashionably late hour for his gathering of the artists. Jeannette had long since put Gabrielle and Pierre-André to bed, retreating to her own room to entertain herself with whatever pastimes she used to beguile her leisure hours, patently uninterested in the revelries planned below. As the schoolroom went silent, Laura had sat at the dressing table of a former Comtesse de Bac, among the voiceless birds and the scentless foliage, staring at her own face in the streaky glass of the mirror, resisting an entirely unaccountable urge to prink.

For what? And more important, with what? A governess’s wardrobe didn’t exactly lend itself to grande tenue. She was fresh out of silks and laces. And she didn’t have the sort of natural beauty, so commonplace in heroines in fairy tales, that could be expected to stand out above humble raiment.

Still. She could do something with her hair. She might not be pretty, but her hair was well enough, thick and long and dark enough to pass for black. She could take it out of its accustomed knot, pile it up on top of her head, tie a simple white bandeau around it, pull out some little bits around her ears, imitate the artful disarray of the ladies in the fashion papers.

Yes, because that would go so well with her plain gray gown.

Why did she even care? It was only a gathering of artists, after all. Quickening her pace down the stairs, Laura could picture the scene—smoky air, red wine sloshing over the sides of a glass, careless disarray, and tawdry finery. She had seen it all from the fringes, all the carefree soirees of her parents’ youth, assembled ad hoc, sometimes in a studio, sometimes in a tavern, deliberately free of ceremony.

Laura paused on the turn of the stair, one hand on the banister.

The entry hall of the Hôtel de Bac was all but unrecognizable. Below was revelry and laughter, bright jewels and expensive gowns, food piled in careless profusion on gleaming platters. From her position behind the bend of the balustrade, she could see the front door open and close, admitting a clutch of gaily garbed guests in a waft of cold air and expensive perfume.

The gentlemen wore stickpins that glittered even from a distance—diamond and ruby and sapphire—splashes of color against the snowy white of starched neck cloths. And the ladies—the ladies were something out of the fantastical pages of a fashion paper, clad in insubstantial wisps of muslin, shimmering with gold thread and precious stones, bracelets clattering on their wrists, decked out like a barbarian chieftain’s burial horde. What they lacked in fabric, they made up for in gems.