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Christiane, Monique), the days of butlers with their armies of footmen, valets, chefs, housemaids, gardeners (head and under), coachmen (who taught them to sit on a horse properly), gamekeepers, park-keepers, mole-catchers , laundry women, ironing women, and the man who came once a week to wind the château clocks, seemed far off. It was a world to set people dreaming, which, even in the great châteaux, where the hard-pressed owners now worked extremely hard to ensure that everything ran smoothly, would not return.
    Her childhood home with its marble entrance hall, its colonnades and rotunda, its mysterious attic crammed with discarded fancy-dress costumes, ball slippers,musical boxes and trunks of old papers, the smells of the waxed floors, the coolness of the hallways, the park full of dark pines and lime trees, the walks to the kitchen garden, the races to the farmhouse to fetch the eggs: her memories were written in these images. They belonged to the past.
    Now she subsisted, in her Hyde Park flat, on a very small income from the estate of the late Selwyn Donaldson, augmented by her pension, which was paid directly to her bank. From it, august and austere, with her head held high and her back still remarkably straight, accompanied by the current Louise, Chantal or Monique, she made her way to Harrods’ Food Hall.
    This morning, expecting and receiving the same deference from the white-coated assistant behind the fresh-meat counter as she had from her bygone cooks, she had purchased a gigot. Carrying the leg of lamb home (a figure of speech: it was Louise who actually carried it), together with some petit pois and carrots and a horrendously expensive slice of Brie de Meaux (le roi des fromages, which, as she was fond of explaining to the au pairs, had originated in the court of Charlemagne), she gave specific instructions as to its preparation before settling down to a day spent as any other.
    The Baronne was a prodigious reader and the flat was filled with an eclectic collection of books, which extended in range from the latest Muriel Spark to the essays of Montaigne. In addition to being extremely well read and a not inconsiderable historian, she was an accomplished water-colourist (the spare bedroom was stacked with her paintings of trees and flowers), and with the help of National Health spectacles, which she kept hidden on occasions when she was not alone, an adept at petit point.
    By the time Clare arrived with Jamie, the Baronne, assisted by Louise, had changed into a black crepe dresson to which she pinned a diamond brooch in the shape of a butterfly given to her by Thibault on the occasion of Charles-Louis’ birth – and rouged her cheeks. An appetising smell of roast lamb, seasoned with garlic and a little rosemary, pervaded the high-ceilinged flat.

Four
    Retracing her steps along Bond Street in search of a birthday card for the Baronne, Clare had caught sight of a book in Sotheby’s window called Caring for Antiques: A Guide to Handling, Cleaning, Display and Restoration, which she thought might come in useful in tarting up her Saturday-morning stock.
    She had been pressing her nose to the shop window, shielding her eyes from the reflection, and trying to make out the name of the author, when she felt a tap on her shoulder and heard the surprised sound of a Mid-Western voice which belonged to her past.
    ‘Excuse me. Isn’t this little Clare de Cluzac?’
    Turning round, Clare looked up into the eyes of Big Mick (‘the nose’) Bly. At the same time she observed, from the gilt-lettered placard that stood on the pavement, that this morning there had been a sale of Fine and Rare Wines, Spirits and Vintage Ports in the auction rooms.
    It was at Château Kilmartin, more than fourteen years ago, after playing tennis with her ‘cousins’ Pierre and Chantal (distant relatives on her mother’s side), during her final summer in Bordeaux, that she had been introduced to the larger-than-life American wine writer,