"You sure you're all right?"
I look up and find her watching me with an expression I can't quite read. There's concern there, but something else too—a wariness, like she's not sure how close she wants to get.
"I'm fine," I say. "Just tired."
"You've been working hard. We both have." She hesitates. "Maybe we should take a day off. Go into the village, have lunch somewhere."
The suggestion catches me off guard. "You want to take a day off? You, the woman who made a spreadsheet for everything?"
"I've been told I need more chaos in my life."
She says it with a hint of a smile, and I feel something shift in my chest. Is she flirting? She can't be flirting. She's straight and polished and completely not interested in me like that.
"Lunch sounds good," I manage.
"Great. I'll go for my run, and then we can—"
The sound of an engine cuts her off. Through the kitchen window, I see a car coming up the drive—not Jacques's familiar truck, but something sleek and expensive and completely out of place on the dirt road.
Iris's face goes tight.
"Who is that?" I ask.
Before she can answer, the car pulls up to the house and a man gets out. He's sixtysomething, dressed in a linen suit despite the morning heat, and he surveys the property with the expression of someone calculating value.
"Jean-Pierre Beaumont," Iris says flatly. "My grandmother's younger brother. Maître Duval warned me he'd turn up eventually."
"Her brother?" I've spent whole summers here and never once heard him mentioned. "I didn't know she had one."
"Neither did I, until Duval walked me through the family. He's the only Beaumont of her generation still living." Her mouth twists. "And the reason he'll never let this go quietly. The farm was supposed to be his."
"What do you mean?"
"It passes through the women. Always has—Grand-mère inherited it from her aunt, not from her parents. Jean-Pierre was the eldest, the son, the one who assumed the land was his by right. And it went to his sister instead." She watches him pick his way across the gravel like it personally offends him. "He's spent forty years waiting for it to come back around to him. Now it's skipped him a second time."
"The one who wants to contest the will," I say.
"The very one."
Jean-Pierre is, in a word, insufferable.
He sweeps into the farmhouse like he owns the place—which he doesn't, much to his obvious displeasure—and begins talking before either of us can get a word in.
"Ladies. I've come to discuss the situation." His French is rapid, upper-class, dripping with condescension. "I've consulted with my lawyer, and we believe there are grounds to challenge Marguerite's will."
"On what basis?" Iris asks coolly.
"Undue influence. Emotional manipulation. My sister was clearly not in her right mind at the end—leaving her estate to two women with no experience running a lavender farm, one of whom isn't even family—"
"I am family," I say, and my voice comes out sharper than I intended.
Jean-Pierre turns to me, his eyebrows raised in theatrical surprise. "You? The British girl Vivian brought around? You're not a Beaumont, child. You never were."
The words land like a slap. I see Iris stiffen beside me.
"Grand-mère considered me her granddaughter," I say. "Her will makes that clear."
"Her will makes nothing clear. That's rather the point." Jean-Pierre pulls a folded document from his jacket pocket. "I intend to file a formal contest. This has been Beaumont land for four generations. It should have come to me the moment Margueritewas in the ground—not been carved up between a stranger and a granddaughter she never once bothered to meet—"
