The head of the hospital asked Carole if she was all right, in broken English, and he bustled out again a minute later to bang some heads. The last thing they needed was an American movie star being murdered in their hospital. It would make for some very bad press.

The doctor left again then, with a warm smile at Carole, and a cool glance at Matthieu. She didn't like being told what to do by laymen, whether retired ministers or not, although in this case she knew he was right. Carole had very nearly been killed. It was a miracle that the boy hadn't succeeded in his mission. If he had found her asleep, he would have. A dozen ugly scenarios came to mind.

Matthieu sat down in the chair next to her bed and patted her hand, and then he looked at her with a gentle expression that had nothing to do with the way he had spoken to the hospital personnel. He had been outraged at how badly they had protected her. She could so easily have been killed. He thanked God she hadn't.

“I was planning to come to see you today,” he said softly. “Would you like me to leave? You don't look well.”

She shook her head in answer.

“I have a cold,” she said, looking into his eyes. She felt a jolt of recognition gazing into them. They were eyes she had once loved. She didn't remember the details of what had happened between them, and she wasn't sure she wanted to, but she remembered both tenderness and pain, and a feeling of intense passion. She was still shaking from the shock of the incident that had just occurred. She had been terrified. But something about him made her feel protected and safe. He was a powerful man, in many ways.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Carole?” She nodded yes. There was a thermos of hot water in the room, and a box of the teabags she liked. Stevie had brought them from the hotel and left them for her. He made it just the way she liked it, not too strong and not too weak. He handed the mug to her, and she took it, sitting up on one elbow. They were alone in the room. The nurse had stayed outside, knowing who was in the room. If nothing else, she was in good hands, and she was in no medical danger now. The nurse was there for her comfort, not due to any dire need. “Do you mind if I have a cup too?” She shook her head, and he went to make himself a mug of the same tea. She remembered then that he was the one who had first given it to her. They had always drunk that tea together.

“I've been thinking a lot about you,” he said to her after a sip of the vanilla tea. Carole hadn't said a word. She was too frightened by what had just happened.

“I've been thinking about you too,” she admitted. “I don't know why, but I have. I've been trying to remember, but I just can't.” Some things had come back to her, but nothing about him. No details. She only remembered his eyes and that she had loved him. That was all. She still didn't know who he was, or why everyone jumped to attention when he approached. More important, she didn't remember living with him, or what their life together had been like, except for the tea, just now. She had the feeling that he had made tea for her before. Many times. At breakfast, at a kitchen table where sunlight poured into the room.

“Do you remember how we met?” She shook her head. She felt a little better after the tea. She put the empty mug on the table and lay down again. He was sitting very near her, but she didn't mind. She felt safe next to him. She didn't want to be alone. “We met while you were making the movie about Marie Antoinette. There was a reception at the Quai d'Orsay, given by the Minister of Culture. He was an old friend of mine, and he insisted that I come. I didn't want to. I had something else to do that night, but he made such a fuss about it that I went. And you were there. You looked staggeringly beautiful. You had just come off the set, and you were still in costume. I'll never forget it. Marie Antoinette never looked anything like that.” Carole smiled at the memory. She vaguely remembered it now, the costume, and a spectacular painted ceiling at the Quai d'Orsay. She didn't remember him.

“It was spring. You had to go back to the set afterward and return the costume. I took you there, and after you changed, we went for a walk along the Seine. We sat by the river, on the dock, and talked for a long time. I felt as though the sky had fallen in on me, and you said you did too.” He smiled at the memory, and their eyes met again.

“It was a coup de foudre,” she said in a whisper. They had been his words after that first night … coup de foudre… bolt of lightning… love at first sight. She remembered his words, but not what had happened next.

“We talked for many hours. We stayed awake until you had to be back at the set at five that morning. It was the most exciting night of my life. You told me about your husband leaving you for another woman. She was very young, as I recall. Russian, I think. She was having his baby. You were devastated, we talked about it for hours. I think you truly loved him.” She nodded. She had gotten the same impression from Jason. It was strange, having to rely on all these people to tell her how she had felt. She had no recollection of it herself. Not with Jason. But she was beginning to recall some things about Matthieu, not so much events as feelings. She could remember loving him, and the excitement of that first night.

She vaguely remembered going back to the set, without having slept. But she didn't know how he had looked at the time. In fact, he had changed very little, except for the white hair. It had been dark then, almost black. He had been fifty when they met, and one of the most powerful men in France. Most people had been afraid of him. She never had been. He had never frightened her. He had loved her too much for that. All he had wanted to do was protect her, as he did now. He didn't want anyone to harm her. She could feel that now, as he sat close to her, talking about the past.

“I invited you to dinner the next night, and we went to some silly place from my student days. We had a good time, and talked all night again. We never stopped. I was never able to express myself to anyone like that in my life. I told you everything, all my feelings and secrets and dreams and wishes, and some things I shouldn't have, about my work. You never broke my trust. Never. I trusted you completely, right from the beginning, and I was right.

“We saw each other every day until you finished the film five months later. You were going back to New York, or Los Angeles, you weren't sure where to go, and I asked you to stay in Paris. We were deeply in love by then, and you agreed. We found the house together. The one near the rue Jacob. We went to auctions together, we furnished it. I built a treehouse for Anthony in the garden. He loved it. He took all his meals there that summer. We went to the South of France when they went to see their father. We went everywhere together. I was with you every night. That summer, we spent two weeks on a sailboat in the South of France. I don't think I've ever been that happy in my life, before or since. They were the best days of my life.” Carole nodded as she listened. She couldn't remember the events, only the feelings. She had the sense that it was a magical time. Thinking about it made her feel warm, but there had been something else too, something that was wrong. There had been a problem of some kind. Her eyes searched his and then she remembered, and said it out loud.

“You were married,” she said sadly.

“Yes, I was. My marriage had been over for years, our children were grown. My wife and I were strangers to each other, we had led separate lives for ten years before you came along. I was going to leave her even before I met you. I promised you I would, and I meant it. I wanted to do it quietly, without embarrassment for any of us. I talked to my wife about it, and she asked me not to, not right away. She was afraid of the humiliation and scandal for her, with my leaving her for a famous movie star. It was painful for her, and it was liable to become an international cause célèbre in the press, so I agreed to wait six months. You were very understanding about it. It didn't seem to matter. We were happy, and I lived with you in our little house. I loved your children, and I think they liked me, in the beginning at least. You were so young then, Carole. You were thirty-two when we met, and I was fifty. I could have been your father, but I felt like a boy again when I was with you.”

“I remember the boat,” she said softly, “in the South of France. We went to Saint Tropez, and the old port in Antibes. I think I was very, very happy with you,” she said dreamily.

“We both were,” he added sadly, remembering all that had happened after that.

“Something happened. You had to leave.”

“Yes, I did.” He was amazed that she remembered. He had almost forgotten it himself, although it had been an enormous drama at the time. They had radioed him on the boat. He had had to leave her at the airport in Nice, and had left on a military plane himself.

“Why did you leave? Someone was shot, I think.” She was frowning, trying to remember as she stared at him. “Who was shot?” She had to know.

“The president of France. It was an assassination attempt, which failed. During the Bastille Day parade on the Champs Elysées. I should have been there, but I was with you instead.”

“You were in government… something very high up and very secret. What were you?… Was it secret police?” She was squinting at him from her bed.

“That was one of my duties. I was the Minister of the Interior,” he said quietly, and she nodded. It came back to her now. There was so much she didn't recall about her own life, but she remembered that. They had sailed the boat into the harbor, and left for the airport in a cab. He had left her minutes later, and she had watched him take off in the military plane, and gone back to Paris on her own. He had been apologetic about leaving her that way, and there had been soldiers around him with machine guns. She wasn't frightened by it, but it seemed strange.

“There was something else like that … another time… someone was hurt, and you left me somewhere, on a trip… we were skiing, and you left by helicopter.” She could still see it rising in the air, blowing snow everywhere.

“The president had a heart attack, and I left to be with him.”

“That was at the end, wasn't it?” She looked sad.

He nodded, silent at first, remembering it too. It was the incident that had brought him to his senses and reminded him that he couldn't leave his job, and he belonged to France. They owned him, no matter how much he loved her, and wanted to leave everything for her. He couldn't in the end. They had had a little more time after that, but not much. And his wife had been making a lot of trouble then too. It had been an impossible time, for both of them. “Yes, it was nearly the end. There were two years between those two events, and a lot of wonderful times.”

“That's all I remember,” she said, watching him, wondering what the two years had been like. She had a sense that they had been exciting, because he was, but hard at times, which he was too. As he had just told her, he had had a complicated life. Politics, and the drama that went with it, had been his life's blood. But for a time, so had she. She had been the heart that kept him alive.

“We spent Christmas in Gstaad together the first year, with the children. And then you started another movie in England, and I came over to see you every weekend. When you came back, I wanted to go to the lawyer to get divorced, and my wife begged me not to again. She said she couldn't face it. We'd been married for twenty-nine years, and I felt I owed her something, some respect at least, since I no longer loved her. She knew that, she knew how much I loved you, and she didn't hold it against me. She was very compassionate about it. I was planning to leave my job in the government that year, it would have been the perfect time to end it with her, and then I got named for another term. You and I had been together for a year by then, the happiest year of my life. You agreed to give it another six months. And I had every intention of getting divorced. Arlette promised not to stop it, but then there were scandals in the government involving other people, and I knew it was the wrong time. I promised that if you gave me another year, I would resign and come to the States with you.”

“You would never have done it. And you'd have been miserable in Los Angeles.”

“I felt I owed my country something … and my wife… I couldn't just walk away from either of them, without fulfilling my duty, but I had every intention of leaving and coming with you, and then…” He stopped for a moment, and Carole remembered what had happened. “Something terrible happened …”