“What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s really delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite like it.”

“Prune, en français s’il vous plaît.”

“Le vin est délicieux.”

Pascal clapped his hands together. “Très bien.”

I arched my right eyebrow and teased, “Hey, I thought we were eating, then learning?”

“We can do both, non?”

“Agnès, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. But I’m not gonna lie, this is awesome,” Elliott confirmed as he took another sip between bites of his baguette and pâté.

“Oh, I love that word awesome!” Pascal squealed with delight as he clapped his hands together. “It is just so American, is it not?”

“Papa, Parisians say awesome all the time. In fact, they have adopted many American words and phrases into everyday speech. Walking around you would almost think you are in Californie,” Odette said, a wistful longing in her voice. It was clear she missed her life in Paris.

I turned to Odette. “Will you be going back to La Sorbonne soon?”

“Unfortunately, non. I have decided to . . . how do you say . . . postpone my studies next semester to help Maman and Papa with the inn.”

Odette kept her face bright as she explained, but I could see, as someone who fiercely understood what it was like to put on a brave face, that there was something not quite settled behind her eyes. I’m sure she didn’t want to make her parents feel guilty about her decision, but I could tell, from all the conversations we had before and now from the look in her eyes, that half her heart was in Paris, even though the other half remained here.

I felt foolish for unintentionally bringing up such a sore subject and tried to steer the conversation back to the incredible wine. “So”—I held the wineglass up high as if to inspect it—“what is this we’re drinking? It’s delightful! I want to send my father the name of the vineyard so that maybe we can carry it at our B and B? My father’s been on the hunt for a prize-winning white for forever. Even though it’s not his, he might jump at the chance to have something this delicious as a nice substitute.”

Agnès held up the wine bottle and proudly displayed it around the table. “If you can believe it? The wine, it is from Château Mirabelle.”

“Château Mirabelle? But how?” I asked.

“Only a few crates remained after the cellars were bombed. The Muniers gifted one to us at our wedding. We only drink it at the most special of occasions,” she explained, her smile reaching all the way up to her twinkling blue eyes.

I glanced down at my shirt, still stained with a faded purple splotch from my failed attempt to hoover my melty mess of lavender ice cream earlier, and my very wrinkled shorts. I cringed. “If I had known I would’ve . . . made more of an effort to clean up. You see, Elliott used up all the hot water so . . .”

He rolled his eyes, barely looking up from the plate of food he hadn’t stopped eating.

“If my English is not clear, forgive me. Tonight is special because you and Elliott are special. You have come to Maubec, and you have shared with us your stories and a little bit of your lives . . . for us here in this small town, this has been a whole new adventure. It is nice to have new blood surge through this place. More than nice . . . it has been . . . what is the word . . . nécessaire?”

“C’est le même . . . necessary,” I replied. “Holy merde! Did I just say that in French? Like correctly?”

Pascal clapped his hands enthusiastically, “Oui, mon chou! You did! ‘C’est le même,’ means ‘it is the same.’ Félicitations! By this time next week, you will be teaching me French, non?” he joked.

I lifted my glass of wine off the table. “Well, this whole experience has been necessary for me too. I know my life may have looked perfect from the outside—everybody assumes it is, that I am, that my family is—but we are far from it, especially me. Your hospitality . . . your inn . . . your town . . . that is what’s special. I know people believe Maubec lost some of its vitality when Château Mirabelle was destroyed, but it’s still here, in every single person I’ve been lucky enough to meet, well maybe except for Monsieur Grenouille . . . he and I still have a ways to go. Anyway, I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to come here and meet all of you.”

I glanced around the table to meet each of their gazes, my paltry attempt at expressing an iota of the gratitude that was filling me up to the brim. Pascal—his hazel eyes filled with patience and kindness, his cheeks rosy and flecked with a distinct and oh-so-French beauty mark right under his left eye, and his dark hair messy on his head as he animated his stories with wild hand gestures. Agnès, so maternal and so commanding; I was incredibly impressed by how much of the inn and property she ran compared to Pascal, whose arthritis wouldn’t allow it. This was her show, and she was not afraid or ashamed to wear the proverbial pants in order to get things done. I loved that about her. And Odette, who loved her parents so much she was willing to put her own dreams on pause to try to help them hold on to theirs. Together they reminded me that families, though sometimes messy and often complicated, make up the very best parts of who we are, keeping us forever rooted to home no matter how far we may stray.

Finally, I took in Elliott with his brooding physique and floppy boy-band hairstyle. Like a more rugged Beckham in his ’90s glory days, Elliott was remarkably more handsome than I remembered him being this morning when I had been surprisingly taken with his empathy and interest in our research at Camp des Milles. I couldn’t keep myself from staring at him across the table as I remembered how closely we stood lighting candles at Saint Orens, how he guided my trembling hand with his own to make sure the match touched each wick. We’d shared something unspoken in that moment, and I knew that despite our past, something had irrevocably shifted between us.

I sucked in a breath, bolstering up the courage to say this next bit in only French to show my deep gratitude and appreciation for all they had given to me. “Je veux avoir un préservatif pour mon cœur toujours!”

Odette started to choke and practically spit her wine back into her glass. “Um, Plum, what is it exactly that you were just trying to say?”

“That I want to preserve . . . you know, capture . . . hold on to . . . this moment in my heart, always.” I thought back to the gaffe with Pascal a few weeks ago when I said to him that I was très excitée about starting French lessons with no idea of the phrase’s sexual connotation. “Why? Oh God, what did I actually just say?”

The table erupted into giggles—except for Elliott, who seemed just as lost as I was.

Odette did her best to stifle her laughter. “Préservatif . . . it does not mean . . . it loosely translates to . . . a word in English that is more like—”

“Condom,” Agnès finished, causing the table to burst into uncontrollable fits again, including Elliott, who finally understood the meaning.

Odette, still rife with giggles, managed, “What you said was, ‘I want to always have a condom for my heart!’”

“Well, that’s one way to express your gratitude,” Elliott teased, his smile so genuine and heartwarming as it reached all the way to his eyes.

My face flushed with heat, and I pressed my palm, cold from holding my wine, to my feverish cheek.

Pascal, still chuckling, said, “My dear, now you really do look like a mirabelle!”

And the table again erupted into giggles, and at the sheer silliness of my error, I too couldn’t keep the tears from leaking out of my eyes through my uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Pascal, wiping the corners of his eyes with a napkin, stood up from the table and extended his arm out to me. “Come, it seems there is no better time for us to get back to our lessons. It appears we still have much work to do.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

The next morning, at least a dozen flatbed trucks and Vespas lined the driveway leading to the front gates of Château Mirabelle. Since Gervais couldn’t squeeze the van through, he had to stop halfway up the road to let me and Elliott out so we could walk the rest of the way. Construction crews I’d never seen before were making trips back and forth to the trucks, carrying scaffolding and other equipment into the house.

“Oh, good, Plum, you’re here,” Kate said, catching her breath as she jogged up to meet us outside the front gates.

I looked around. “What’s happening? Who are all these people?”

“No surprise, between Bastien’s perfectionism and the mold and foundation issues, we’re massively behind schedule on the château. The network decided it was time to bring in reinforcements.”

No wonder Bastien had become unhinged. Reinforcements meant he was no longer in absolute control of every aspect of the project.

“We’ve assembled construction crews from all across France, and they’ve assured us we will have a finished project ready for the big reveal,” she added.

“Hey, have you heard from Bastien since yesterday?” I asked her.

“Not a word. You?”

Since he stormed off the project, I’d left him a bunch of messages and shot off a handful of texts. No answer. I assumed he was laying low and cooling off, but the truth was, even after these last few weeks, I didn’t really know him well enough to be sure. “No, I haven’t heard a peep.”

Kate’s eyes softened. “I’m sure he’s just blowing off some steam.” Her eyebrows furrowed with concern. “You two are okay, right? You and Bastien?”

Even though Elliott was scribbling away on his clipboard pretending not to listen, his forehead puckered at the mention of Bastien’s name.

I examined Kate’s face at her question, but she wasn’t giving one iota or even a morsel of a hint that there was anything more between them. “Yeah, sure. We’re good,” I answered quickly, but honestly, I didn’t know. My mind replayed the day before: Elliott’s revelation about Kate’s mystery trip to Avignon, the stone crashing through the Sheetrock, the unrecognizable look on Bastien’s face—a face I thought I’d grown to know pretty well. But the realization now hit me that it might be the face of a man I really didn’t know at all. And maybe all this time, I’d just been spellbound by this town and the romance of it all.