The French Thief: An International Legacies Romance

by Camilla Stevens

  Then he drops the bomb.

  “My grand-mère—my grandmother is Elise, Noémie Lellouche’s daughter.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Brielle

  It takes a moment for his words to register. Even when they do, it still makes no sense.

  “What?” I say wrinkling my brow and shaking my head slowly. “How?”

  Andrew just nods toward the chair again. This time I take it. Suddenly, I’m quite thirsty. I reach out to grab the glass of champagne and take a sip as I process this information.

  Georgette is the daughter of Adeline Ardant. According to Georgette, she’d tried to find her half-sister once the war was over, and had no luck. Seeing as both Victor and Noémie had died, she assumed Elise had perished like so many others during that time.

  And yet, sitting right before me is evidence of the fact that she actually lived.

  Then I remember what a chameleon Andrew is, how much he’s manipulated me in the short time we’ve known each other.

  “If this is some kind of joke or ploy, it isn’t very funny.”

  “No joke, no ploy,” he says, his face perfectly reflecting those words…or at least pretending to. “Give me your foot.”

  “What?” I’m thrown by the sudden request out of left field.

  “Give me your foot,” he says in a more patient tone.

  “This is not the time to start getting fresh,” I snap with exasperation.

  “Au contraire, there is always time for that. But for now, I’ll settle for comfortable.” He allows his gaze to wander down my robe and ending at my feet. “Quant à moi, I find you remaining in them to be very…fresh.”

  With a long sliver of skin exposed through the part on top and my legs slipping through the opening at the bottom, it strikes me how similar I must look to Noémie in the Chabat painting.

  Andrew Mercier’s great-grandmother…perhaps. I can see it in the eyes though. It isn’t just the speckles of green in them but the sensual touch that comes so easily to his gaze. There’s that same hint of a seductive smirk that touches his lips even when he’s not flirting.

  “This discussion will take a while and I’d prefer it if you were comfortable—for your sake. Give me your foot.”

  I give him a long hard stare before responding. “I can take off my own damn shoe, thank you very—”

  “Give it to me.” His voice is firmer now, stopping me before I can even lift my leg.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your foot,” he repeats in a softer but just as insistent voice.

  I realize how silly this resistance is. So what if he wants to take off my shoe for me? So what if I let him? The main goal here is to get answers.

  “Okay,” I say, giving him a cool look as I lift one leg to settle it on his waiting thigh. I ignore how firm his muscles are underneath the curve of my calf.

  “Bien.”

  I take another sip of my champagne and lean back in my seat, waiting for him to start talking. Most of me is still certain he’s full of shit, and I’m just itching to catch him up.

  Because I, for one, know at least part of the whole story.

  “I’m not sure how much you know, so again I’ll start at the beginning, or at least as much as I was told.”

  “My grand-mère was less than a year old when she had to leave Paris. She was, as you Americans call it, the love child of Victor Ardant and Noémie Lellouche.”

  With his head still down, he pauses to consider something, then blinks once and continues.

  “Elise escaped to Switzerland with the Ardants’ maid, Agnès, both under new forged passports. She became Celeste from that point on, Agnès became Lili. Initially, they went to southern France, which was still unoccupied at the time, but fearing the Germans would eventually start targeting Jews there as well, they ultimately joined a group going to Switzerland.

  “While there, Agnès—Lili met the son of an Italian banker, Niccolò Damiani. The two of them fell in love and planned to raise Celeste as their own.”

  Andrew now looks up at me with a certain hardness in his gaze. Somehow he’s managed to keep me rapt with attention, hanging on to every detail of his story. Now I find myself caught in his fierce gaze, feeling the passion and emotion radiating from him.

  “But neither of them could stand by and watch what was happening with the Nazis, both in France and eventually Italy. Despite the Damiani’s powerful influence, they both died for their efforts. My grand-mère learned most of this from his surviving relatives, his father and younger brother. Agnès—Lili also kept a small diary of things Celeste should know about her mother, things to remember her mother by.”

  Andrew has been taking his time with the straps to my shoe but finishes and motions for the other. Without thinking, I lower the first leg and lift the other. When he finishes, gently slipping the shoe from my foot, I see a hint of a smile touch his lips.

  “My grand-mère was adopted by an Italian couple who couldn’t have children of their own. She eventually moved back to Paris when she was older to learn more about her heritage.”

  How very convenient.

  I don’t know why I want him to be lying. I should be thrilled to learn that Noémie’s daughter survived and went on to have children. Georgette would certainly be ecstatic. So why am I so resistant to the idea?

  It’s the painting.

  Who has the greater claim? Has all my work and effort been in vain? I sip my champagne and eye Andrew over the rim with resentment running through my veins.

  “This has all been very interesting, Andrew,” I say after swallowing. “But it still doesn’t prove that your grand-mère is—was Elise, or the daughter of Noémie and Victor.”

  “Mon amour pour toi vivra plus longtemps que les étoiles.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Andrew

  Brielle stares at me, speechless for a moment.

  I could see the doubt written all over her face as I told my grandmother’s story. With those final words, all traces of it have disappeared.

  “I see you’re familiar with the sentence.”

  “My love for you will outlast the stars,” she loosely translates, her dark eyes steady and focused on me. “The message Noémie wrote on the back of the painting. According to Adeline, not many people knew about it. Even she only found out by accident just before the picture was hung in his study.”

  I nod, taking a sip of my champagne. “Lili wrote about it in one of the diaries. She had seen the message on the back while cleaning the study one day and thought it important enough to include.”

  Brielle presses her fingertip into a crumb and licks it. “Let’s say I do believe you. Isn’t that all the more reason to keep the painting for yourself? Especially since it would seem your grand-mère has the greater claim.”

  “Tell me about Georgette,” I say instead of answering.

  “No.” Her response is almost instinctive. She’s fiercely protective of the woman, fiercely loyal.

  “Tell me,” I urge in a softer but more insistent voice.

  “Why? You yourself said you already know so much about us.”

  “I want to hear her story in your words.”

  I think back to the bathroom and how she broke down in my arms. Yes, I know quite a bit about Georgette already, but I want to see how Brielle tells the story. I want to bring out that strong emotion in her, which will reinforce my own motivations for helping her.

  She regards me with wary suspicion, her guard up. Her eyes fall to the dessert on the table in front of her, focusing hard on the chocolate cake. One hand darts out to grab a fork and she picks at it, forcing tiny crumbs to fall on the plate before she finally frees a larger piece. She plays with it, pushing it around the plate before sighing and mashing it so it clings to the back of her fork. I watch her place it in her mouth, fork upside down as she closes her eyes to savor it.

  I ordered the desserts because I know that’s what she would want (need?). As I watch her practically moan around
the chocolate, I wonder if there’s something more to it. I know some people are comforted by certain types of food. It would seem Brielle’s weakness is that of the sugary persuasion.

  “Georgette is Adeline’s daughter, Victor Ardant’s granddaughter.” She gives me a level gaze. “Further down the ancestral hierarchy than your grand-mère.”

  We stare at each other for a moment, her waiting for me to say something and me searching her face for something more than dry sarcasm.

  “Go on,” I urge.

  “What do you want to know?” she replies with a shrug. “At this point, does it even matter?”

  “Then you have no reason to keep it from me. Do I not have a right to be curious about my relatives, no matter how distant?”

  She blinks a few times at that, ending with a hard stare at me. Panic? Fear? Resentment?

  She jams her fork into the cake and takes another bite, looking off to the side as she chews, her jaw working hard. After swallowing, she exhales and seems to sag into her seat, bringing her knees up to her chin before turning her attention back to me. Her eyes are narrowed with contempt.

  Georgette Howard. That must be it. The bond between them is much stronger than I thought. And here I am, actually related by blood, connected to the woman by some happenstance of nature.

  If only Brielle knew the truth.

  “Fine then,” she says, relaxing into it. “Adeline and her brother Charles managed to make it to England. She became Elizabeth and he became Chester. He stayed behind in England. According to Georgie, he turned out to be what they called in those days, a ‘confirmed bachelor.’ That’s how she referred to it, always with a wink and a laugh. Hence the lack of children on his part.” She laughs lightly at that.

  A soft smile appears on her face and her eyes fall to the side, staring at some abstract spot on the table. “Her mother met an American soldier stationed there during the war, Michael Bisset. Long story short, he brought her back to New York where they had Georgette.”

  Her eyes come back to me with a cynical gleam in them. “No siblings in case you’re wondering. I think it was difficult for them to have her. As for Frank and Georgette, I don’t know if they just didn’t try or tried and weren’t able to have children. So she’s all that remains.”

  “What happened to Charles?” I ask, truly curious.

  “He stayed in England. He died in the late 1980s.”

  For some reason, I feel both saddened and overwhelmed by that thought, as though the last vestiges of the Ardant family line lie with me. I have cousins, of course, most of whom I barely know. Then again, none of them have been so deliberately singled out to handle family business the way I have.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Georgette.”

  Brielle instantly stiffens in her chair, her free arm squeezing her knees in closer. She’s slower to relax this time, her eyes still tinged with wary regard before she speaks.

  “Georgette and Frank lived across the hall from me growing up. My mother was—” She exhales and eyes the cake again, forking off a large piece to chew on before she continues. “My mother was, to put it bluntly, terrible as far as parenting went.”

  She gazes off to the side. “Actually, to put it even more bluntly, she was abusive.”

  Everyone one of my muscles tenses at that. I feel a strong urge to wrap Brielle in my arms again as I did in the bathroom. Then there’s the part of me that wants to find the woman that made her this way—defensive, guarded, perpetually serious—and…do something I probably shouldn’t even be thinking about doing.

  “The two of them were like life preservers. I honestly don’t know where I would be right now without them. Maybe even dead,” she whispers as tears start to bead in her eyes. “I still sometimes wonder how there could be so much good in two people. It’s like somewhere along the line God siphoned off a bit from the rest of the world and put it all in Georgie and Frank.” She frowns with bitterness. “Or maybe just every ounce taken from my mother who had none.”

  A smile slowly begins to creep to her face. “Life with them was like living in one of those movies by Disney or whatever. Movies like Pippi Longstocking, or The Sound of Music, or Swiss Family Robinson. Completely surreal, especially compared to the nightmare that I lived before that.”

  She shakes her head in wonder, sniffing the nose that threatens to run just as liberally as her tears. “They were…” She stops, unable to finish.

  “I see,” I whisper, which draws her attention back toward me in surprise.

  Brielle seems to suddenly realize that her face is completely tearstained and she releases her legs, sitting up straight in her chair to recover as she quickly wipes them away with the palms of her hand.

  “So there you have it,” she says with a tight smile and bright eyes as she shrugs and takes another bite of cake.

  “And your father?”

  “What father?” she replies with a cynical smile. “I learned about him during one of the rare sentimental drunken rants of my so-called mother. Instead of yelling and screaming and hitting me, I was glaringly informed about my birth and how it ruined her life and what could have been with the only man she ever loved.

  “They never married. He left before I was born. In fact, I’m certain the only reason she didn’t abort me was because she thought he’d come running back once I was born. He paid child support but I never once heard from him—not once.”

  She digs into her cake for another bite before continuing.

  “When I was sixteen, I looked him up. He’s a doctor right here in New York. We’ve lived in the same damn city all this time.” She looks off to the side as though pondering that. “I came close enough for him to see me, make eye contact with me. I thought there would be some sort of recognition. Panic? Anger? Happy surprise? A sudden outpouring of love and regret?” She exhales a sarcastic laugh. “But there was nothing. I was just a stranger on the street. That’s when I knew I wanted nothing to do with him. I couldn’t tell who was worse, the woman who gave birth to me or the man who abandoned me.”

  “I appreciate you trusting me with that,” I say softly.

  “It’s a heavily abbreviated version,” she says around a large bite of cake, then swallows before adding. “As for what I know about Adeline, she too kept diaries—a lot of them. She took them with her when they left France, thank God. They’re pretty detailed; I don’t think there’s a thing she didn’t document. Leave it to teenage girls.” She rolls her eyes and smiles, then shrugs. “But hey, that’s how I knew about the painting in the first place. That’s also how I knew about the message on the back of it. It was our proof that Georgette had a claim.

  “So yes, that’s why I went to work for Gaultier, specifically to eventually become his personal assistant. If I could get close enough to access the painting, I could see the message on back and match it to what was written in the diaries. That’s why we decided to keep them in a safety deposit box just so nothing would happen to them.”

  I feel my blood go cold. Without even realizing it, Brielle has just revealed information that will make her a target. She must see it in my face because the smile disappears from hers and her jaw freezes mid-chew.

  “What?”

  “Brielle, don’t ever tell anyone about those diaries. Ever.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Brielle

  A shiver goes through my body at the deadly intensity with which Andrew has spoken.

  “I haven’t really told anyone about them,” I say warily, wondering where this is coming from. “You’re the first, mostly because you seem to know at least half of it already.”

  “Bien, bien,” he says nodding.

  It isn’t that I’ve deliberately been keeping the diaries a secret, it’s that the topic has yet to come up with anyone I know beyond Georgette. Now, suddenly I’m glad of it…even if I still don’t know why.

  “What is it?” I urge.

  His eyes drop to the side with acute focus, that brow of his strai
ghtening into a line. I can see he’s deliberating what or how much to reveal.

  “Tell me. I have a right to know, Andrew.”

  “You’re right,” he says, bringing his attention back to me, his eyes like magnets, green specks blazing. “There’s a third party involved in all of this who is interested in not just this painting, but would also be very interested in those diaries as well,” he says. “Mostly because the history recorded in them may…incriminate certain parties.”

  I think of who might at all be worried about what’s written in those lines and come to one conclusion. “Nazis?”

  Andrew nods. “Oui. They—or rather their descendants, call themselves the Werwolf Order now, named after a plan the Nazis conjured up to infiltrate enemy lines during the war. The rumor is they went underground after Germany lost and have slowly been working behind the scenes to cover up certain wartime activities, say stealing art for example.

  “That’s how I became a thief in the first place—indirectly, naturellement.”

  “Because of this…Werwolf Order?”

  He seems to think for a moment, then nods. “My grandmother has dedicated her life to stopping them. Part of this has involved returning property to the rightful owners. You’d be surprised how many former members of the SS were once caught just by having possession of something they shouldn’t. Most of the original members are dead now, of course, but many of their descendants continue their original mission.”

  I’m finishing the cake as he talks, still trying to absorb everything. The cake is good, damn delicious, really. It makes everything he’s said easier to swallow. Then, a sudden thought comes to me.

  “Do you think they’ll come after me—after Georgette?” I ask, sitting up in my chair with panic.

  “Not as long as you keep those diaries a secret. Right now, their only interest is the painting. The story of Victor and Noémie has too many connections to members of the former Gestapo. That painting is the link tying it together. You were right that first night when you claimed it was confiscated by the Nazis and their collaborators. Yet another reason why stealing it is a better option than…revealing your proof of ownership, so to speak. Steal it, sell it on the black market. All secrets remain in the closet, and they leave you and Georgette alone.”