Christopher frowned as he drank some wine, replacing the glass on the table as he took a hard swallow. "Be thankful for that, Thérèse. It is a horrid curse which takes over most of your life and has a tendency to rip out your insides. You have not truly known grief until you have known love. I felt it in its entireity, and it did not waver over ten years. A decade of pining for a love I had lost, only to lose her forever. I know which I would prefer."
He did not wish to drag the conversation down but he had to if he were to enquire of Julien. "You said your husband was a Duc?... how did you meet him, or was it one of those arranged affairs..." And so it began.