The first time Célestine Vauclair kissed Alaric von Eltz, she was wearing another woman’s engagement ring.
The second time they met, he was sitting behind a desk worth more than her annual salary.
And by then, according to the documents in front of him, Célestine was married, raising a little girl, and living a perfectly respectable family life.
Alaric remembered the kiss.
He remembered the way she’d looked at him beneath the fireworks, her fingers holding the lapels of his jacket, her laughter disappearing when their lips met.
He had spent three weeks trying to find her.
Now she was sitting across from him in a job interview, explaining how much her husband supported her career.
Alaric looked down at her application.
Then back at her.
“Your husband?” he asked.
Célestine smiled.
It was an impressive smile, considering that she was approximately three seconds away from being sick.
“Yes, Monsieur von Eltz.”
“And your daughter?”
“She’s seven.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“How lovely.”
His voice remained perfectly pleasant.
His eyes did not.
Six weeks earlier, Célestine Vauclair had been standing in a Parisian supermarket trying to decide whether she could afford strawberries.
She was twenty-seven, had a degree in art history, spoke three languages, and possessed the sort of delicate, striking beauty that strangers occasionally mistook for wealth.
Her hair was a pale golden blonde that fell past her shoulders in loose waves. Her eyes were grey-green, her face finely shaped, with a small beauty mark beneath her left eye.
She dressed well, mostly because she’d inherited some excellent coats from her late grandmother and knew how to alter secondhand clothing.
Her bank account, meanwhile, contained forty-eight euros.
She put the strawberries back.
“Célestine?”
She turned.
Her younger brother, Théophile, stood beside the refrigerated section holding a bottle of orange juice.
At twenty-three, he was tall, dark-haired, and handsome in a slightly disorganised way. He also had the unfortunate habit of treating problems as though they would become less serious if he refused to look directly at them.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Buying juice.”
“I can see that.”
He shifted his weight.
“Have you checked your phone?”
Something in his expression made her stomach tighten.
“Why?”
“Maman called.”
Their mother, Odette, lived in a small town outside Rouen. She had been experiencing worsening mobility problems for several months but insisted that she was managing perfectly well.
This morning, however, she’d fallen while coming down the stairs.
Célestine abandoned her shopping basket.
An hour later, she was on a train to Rouen.
By evening, she was sitting beside her mother’s hospital bed, listening to a doctor explain that Odette would need surgery followed by months of rehabilitation.
Most of the treatment would be covered.
Not everything.
