He stopped speaking, no doubt realizing that both Phillipe and I were staring at him.
“Sorry. I was a history major and played football in college, so I kind of know a lot of useless information about both topics.”
I wanted to tell him that they weren’t useless, but I was mentally occupied trying to squeeze all of my thoughts and feelings about Kit and La Fleur into a little box and lock it. It was all I could do to remain in the room without running outside for a gulp of fresh air that didn’t smell like pipe smoke.
Philippe approached the desk with the volume, its cover nicked and discolored in places, and plopped it on the surface in a cloud of dust. “Here. This is what I was looking for. It is damaged, but my grandpère never threw out anything. So we keep it back here for reference—not that anyone has ever asked for it in the last twenty years.” He shrugged. “It’s a history of French noble families and includes their family crests. As a little boy, I loved to look at all the pretty pictures since I couldn’t read. And you are correct, monsieur. There are many with wolves—those were my favorites.”
A bell rang at the front of the store and Philippe looked up. “I will leave you here with this to see if you can find what you are looking for.”
We watched Philippe leave and then Drew turned to me. “I can come back alone if you want to get out of here.”
I found his solicitousness comforting, and his invitation tempting, but I couldn’t leave. I felt like the mouse at the edge of a trap, lured by the cheese even though it would result in the mouse’s imminent demise. “No. Really, I’m all right. Besides, I’m assuming you don’t read French.”
“Fair point.” He found a sturdy-enough chair and upended a small table with a round base, moving them both up to the desk, and we sat down. After a cursory thumbing through the pages, Drew said, “It looks like it’s alphabetical by family so let’s just hope the family name doesn’t start with Z.”
“Or we could start at the back of the book and go that way,” I suggested.
He frowned down at the pages. “Knowing my luck, the name will be somewhere in the middle.” He thought for a moment, flicking through the pages. “It looks like the pictures of the coats of arms all appear on the top right of the page. Why don’t we flip through the pictures and mark the pages where we find ones with a wolf and a cross, and then go from there?”
I scavenged for pieces of discarded paper scraps for bookmarks, but after more than an hour of scouring through the pages, we’d only marked a single page. There’d been many pictures of wolves and crosses with other icons including a plethora of dragons and unicorns, but there had been only a single crest that contained a simple lone white wolf on a royal-blue background, a thick gold cross dividing the crest into quadrants.
He turned the book to face me, his finger pointing at a name. “De Courcelles,” I read out loud first, if only not to hear Drew’s interpretation of how to pronounce it. I ran my finger down one of the columns of small French text. “It appears their family seat is in Picardy. And there’s a chateau.” I pointed to a pencil sketch of a grand French chateau with rounded towers and banners flying from the parapets and a small flock of sheep gathered in a pasture behind the castle walls.
“Where is Picardy?” Drew asked. “Is it close enough to drive?”
I flipped to the back of the book where a map showed black dots indicating the seats of the prominent families listed in the book. “It appears that it’s only a little more than seventy miles from Paris to Picardy. About a two-hour car ride, I should think.”
“Definitely close enough, then,” Drew said. “We should go. I’m sure it’s a wild goose chase, but we really don’t have any other leads to go on right now, so why not?”
“Oh, er . . .” I wasn’t sure why my words were trying to say no when the rest of me appeared quite a bit more interested. “Today?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’ve got to go into the office. What about tomorrow?” He seemed so matter-of-fact and strictly business about it all. Even Precious couldn’t read anything into his invitation. And then he added, “We could make a day of it, bring a picnic lunch, even.”
I just wouldn’t tell her about that last bit. “I, er, yes. I believe I’m free. Shall I ask the hotel to prepare the picnic basket?”
“Great idea—thank you. Ten o’clock in the lobby, then?”