Page 39 of My Best French Wedding

Fortunately, Mr. Prescott was oblivious to tone. Probably a survival mechanism, as the father of two daughters. With a vague farewell, he wandered off to hobnob with his other guests.

Meanwhile, Maude and her handsome history expert had joined the rest of the party in the tasting room. Loïc struck up an animated conversation with one of the staff members, who handed him a heaping taste of foie gras. That would have been a fifty-dollar dollop stateside, but he didn’t hesitate to feed it to Maude, one hand cupped under her chin as he watched her lips close around the spoon.

Talk about gourmet foreplay. Get a plate, people. Maude dabbed at the corner of her mouth, which was still glossy and pink. Perks of being fed like a baby bird.

Hildy glanced at Walter to see if he’d noticed, but he was looking at her.

“What do you think it is?” he asked.

Unbridled sexual tension, Hildy almost said in response. “What do I think what is?”

Walter frowned, as if Hildy was the one missing the obvious. “The issue with the castle.”

“Roof or plumbing, if I had to guess.” She couldn’t quite read his expression. “Are you digging? Even though your girlfriend’s dad asked you to hush it up?”

He tried to disguise his flinch by scratching his neck. “It’s not a cover-up.”

“It’s a little bit of a cover-up.”

“Maybe it’ll be a moot point, if everything goes smoothly.”

In wedding-adjusted terms, “smoothly” translated to “nothing is messed up enough for guests to notice.” There was almost always a minor disaster behind the scenes. The lighter ones—like choosing your wedding day to switch to a natural deodorant—made it intoLife, Styledunder the heading, “Psst! Letter to My Past Self.” A sewage-related disaster would be harder to laugh off.

“What will you do if the wedding doesn’t happen?” Hildy had an impulse to cross her fingers or toss salt over her shoulder to ward off the bad luck of saying the words out loud, but Walter seemed unperturbed by the question.

“Move on to the next extreme wedding.” His eyes flicked in her direction. “What about you?”

“Continue to thrive,” she lied.

No way was she going to tell Walter how much was riding on this story. If Hildy couldn’t deliver on the promises she’d made to advertisers, a lot of them would walk, tanking the magazine’s budget for the entire quarter and possibly beyond. So basically the wedding had to happen, even if Hildy needed to climb up there and hammer some roof beams herself.

Maybe if the person in charge of restoring the castle wasn’t distracted by a certain Frenchman, things would be progressing more rapidly. Oh brother, now Maude was brushing crumbs off the front of Loïc’s shirt. Unless they were stuck on with superglue, she really didn’t need to rub that hard.

When Walter started to turn in that direction, Hildy grabbed his arm without thinking, spinning him to face the back of the barn. “Is that a hayloft? Have you ever thought about how hay is like beef jerky for horses?”

He gave her a funny look. “I have not.”

“A little less handsy with the sister-of-the-bride’s boyfriend.” Corinne hooked her elbow around Hildy’s, towing her to a table in the corner. “What do we have here?” she asked an aproned staff member.

“Magret de canard fumé.”

“Like prosciutto, but it’s duck,” Hildy translated.

Corinne accepted a thin slice on a round of crusty bread. “Oh shit. Sorry! I meant ‘merde.’ This is incredible.”

The magret maker laughed.

“Try it,” Corinne urged. “You need to find a different object for your lustful thoughts. A foodgasm will make you forget—”

“Thank you,” Hildy interrupted, turning to make sure Walter wasn’t in hearing range. For once, he and Maude were together, though her gaze kept flitting to Loïc, who was looking right back at her from his post near the door.

“What’s he even doing here?” Hildy wondered out loud. “Are they expecting a rock art emergency at the duck farm?”

“I think he gave her a ride.”

“I bet he did.”

“In hiscar.”