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“You know what a new car costs these days, what with the wartime metal drive?”

“Here’s to the Lagonda’s health, then.” I passed him the mug we were using for a wineglass. “I wouldn’t mind driving around Grasse instead of walking everywhere. My feet hurt, and I was counting on a few more months before I get enormous enough for aching feet.” As soon as we’d arrived in Grasse, my morning sickness had dropped away, and so had my perpetual draining tiredness. I didn’t know if it was the flower-scented breezes or all the lovemaking or just that the Rosebud was into her fourth month now, but suddenly I felt marvelous, full of boundless energy and ready for anything—even the endless walking all over Grasse. But I still missed the car.

Finn drained the last of the rosé, then wriggled around so he was sitting with his back against the footboard. He started massaging my toes under the sheet, and I wriggled pleasurably. The night was warm, we had all the shutters open and the smell of jasmine and roses drifted in. The lamplight encircled the bed, turning it into a ship adrift on a dark sea. By agreement we didn’t talk about René here, or the war, or any of the terrible things that had happened because of either. The nighttime hours belonged to happier conversations.

“Wait till you’re eight months in,” Finn predicted, massaging my arches. “That’s when the feet really start to hurt.”

“What would you know about eight months in, Mr. Kilgore?”

“Watching all my friends’ wives. I’m about the only one not hitched—first thing most of my mates in the 63rd did once they got home was knock up some girl and marry her. I’m a godfather at least three times over.”

“I can just see you standing over a font with a screaming armful of lace!”

“Screaming? Never. Babies like me. Go right to sleep the minute I pick them up.” A pause. “I like bairns. Always wanted a few.”

We let that hang in the air a moment before tiptoeing around it. “What else do you like?” I asked, giving him my other foot. “Besides Bentleys.” Last night he’d read aloud out of his motoring magazine the entire mechanical rundown of the Bentley Mark VI, aping my American accent outrageously as I pummeled him with a pillow.

“A man with a Bentley has everything he needs, lass. Except maybe a good garage to keep her in fighting trim. The one that’s got the Lagonda now, they’re good.”

I tickled his chest with my toes. “You could run a place like that, you know.”

“Got to be good with more than cars to run a garage.” He made a rueful face. “You know me. The bankbook would end up under an oil can and you’d never read the check stubs for engine grease, and soon the banks would own it all.”

Not if I were the one keeping the books . . . I didn’t finish the thought even to myself, just released it gently and told him instead about the Proven?al café I remembered so well, how that long-ago day had made striped awnings and Edith Piaf and goat cheese sandwiches my idea of heaven on earth. “Though an English breakfast should be featured. In the ideal café, that is.”

“Well, I do a braw one-pan fry-up . . .”

We both knew what we were doing here, during these lazy nighttime conversations. We were outlining a future and tentatively, almost fearfully, starting to sketch each other into it, then backing away from the unspoken with half smiles. Sometimes the night brought bad dreams for one of us, but nightmares were easier to bear when there were warm arms in the dark to burrow into. When grief came for either of us, it wound its way through the night and became part of the sweetness.

I haven’t known you long enough to be this crazy about you, I thought, watching Finn’s profile in the soft light. But I am.

One afternoon, two and a half weeks into our stay, Eve said over a post-lunch espresso, “Maybe René isn’t here.”

Finn and I traded glances, both doubtless thinking of all the heads shaken no over the photograph since we’d arrived. Three restaurant managers and an expensive tailor had thought they recognized the face, but couldn’t remember the name that went with it. Otherwise, nothing.

“Maybe I should g-give it up. Let Charlie here go back home to knit booties, and have you”—Eve nodded at Finn—“take me back to the land of fish and chips.”

“Can’t say I’m ready to go home yet.” I kept my voice light, but Finn squeezed my hand and I squeezed back.

“Let’s give it another week or two,” Finn said. Eve nodded. “But let’s take the afternoon off. I want to amble over to the garage and check on the Lagonda.”

“He’s going to harangue those poor mechanics to death,” Eve chuckled as he walked away.

“Or apologize to the car for not visiting more often,” I agreed.

We sat for a while, finishing our espressos, and then Eve looked at me. “I’m no good at afternoons off. Let’s pick a few restaurants. I reckon the two of us can b-brace the waiters without our solicitor in tow.”

I looked at her, gray eyes gleaming in her tanned face as she clapped her big hat over her brow at a rakish angle. “Maybe you should introduce me as your daughter this time. You’re not so plausible as my old granny anymore.”

“I’m serious! It’s this flowery air in Grasse; it’s like the elixir of youth.” As we strolled through the oldest part of the city, where the buildings arched overhead, leaning on each other like friendly shoulders, I realized I loved Grasse. All the other cities we’d passed through—Lille, Roubaix, Limoges—had been blurred for me by the search for Rose. But here in Grasse we’d finally stopped to breathe, and the city was unfolding to me like the jasmine blossoms in the fields. I never want to leave this place, I thought, before pulling myself back to the search at hand.

Two unsuccessful restaurant stops later, Eve pulled out her map to search for a third. I munched a concoction of fried courgette flowers to which the Rosebud had become almost as addicted as bacon, eyeing a nearby shop window. The display was all children’s clothes: sailor suits, ruffled skirts, and laid out across a display pram a tiny lacy baby dress embroidered in rose vines. I looked at that dress and had an attack of utter lust. I could see the Rosebud wearing it at her christening. I could feel her now—in what felt like a matter of days, I’d gone from utterly flat in front to just a little rounded. You couldn’t see it through my clothes, but it was there, that tiny bump. Finn didn’t say anything, but he kept running his fingertips over my abdomen at night, butterfly touches like kisses.

“Buy it,” Eve said, noticing my stare. “That armload of lace you’re drooling over—just b-buy it.”

“I doubt I can afford it.” Wistfully, I swallowed my last fried flower. “I’ll bet it costs more than all my secondhand clothes put together.”

Eve crammed her map into her handbag, marched into the shop, and emerged minutes later with a brown paper package that she tossed me unceremoniously. “Maybe now you’ll pick up the pace.”

“You didn’t have to—”