After much dithering at his hotel room door about who should leave first and how much time should lapse before the second person left, we ended up leaving together. Not that it would have mattered as the hallway was deserted. A maid had brought me clothes and makeup from my room, and I’d blushed only once when she’d shown me the variety of knickers to choose from, none of which the old Babs Langford would have found in her dressing table.
As we exited the lift downstairs, I felt quite sure that everyone was staring at us, knowing what we’d been doing for the last three days in Drew’s hotel suite. It bothered me a bit, but not anywhere near as much as it might have once. And even if it had, I wouldn’t give up those three days for anything.
The clacking of Prunella’s typewriter made us turn in unison in the opposite direction, nearly running into Precious Dubose. I almost didn’t recognize her. Her hair was half loose, falling down one side of her face. Her lips were bare, her makeup nonexistent except for her mascara that had migrated below her eyes. Deep purple crescents showed through the mascara, making her appear more than a decade older. Even her usual immaculate clothing was rumpled, as if she’d slept in them.
“There you are! Where have you been?” Her voice held a note of desperation.
If she hadn’t been so distraught, I would have told her that I had been at an assignation. It would have made her proud. Instead, I immediately felt guilty for asking Drew to call the front desk and tell them that we were indisposed until further notice.
“Did you find something about La Fleur?” Drew asked.
Precious leveled an odd look at him that I couldn’t decipher. “What is it, Precious?” I asked. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Margot. She was taken to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital yesterday. We think . . . we think this might be the end. We’ve wired for the children to come to Paris.”
“Oh no.” I felt Drew’s hand on my shoulder as he pulled me against his side.
“I’ve been with her at the hospital. She’s still conscious. I believe she’s waiting to say goodbye to her children. I’ve only come back to pick up a few things for her that I thought she might need to make her more comfortable.”
“Let us do that,” I said. “You must be exhausted. You can’t take care of a sick friend if you make yourself sick. Stay here and try and sleep for a few hours and when you’re more rested you can join us at the hospital.”
It looked as if she might refuse.
“Precious,” Drew said sternly. “Tell us what you were going to get and we will take care of it and then rush to the hospital. We won’t leave her side until you get there, all right? She won’t be alone.”
She frowned as she swayed on her feet, no doubt from exhaustion. “I promise,” I reassured her.
She appeared to be as grateful as she was relieved as she gave us her list of things to fetch from Margot’s room, remembering as we started back toward the lift to give us Margot’s key.
The room smelled of the daisies that filled every vase in the room, almost completely masking the scent of medicine. “I’ll get the things Precious requested from the bedroom if you’ll look in the closet for some sort of traveling case we can use to transport everything.”
He nodded and while he opened up a closet door, I entered the bedroom. During my visits, I’d always kept to the living room, where Margot sat on the chaise while I read to her. The bedroom had been decorated in the same ivory palate, with a dark antique dressing table with a mirror above it. I hesitated just for a moment before pulling open one of the top drawers, hoping Margot would forgive me for invading her privacy.
Brightly colored and lacy lingerie sat in perfectly organized piles inside, surprising me. I had somehow not expected Margot Lemouron to be the type to own sexy undergarments. Or perhaps she actually wasn’t and Precious had decided to take matters into her own hands.
I took out a small stack of knickers, not counting them on purpose. I didn’t want to put a finite number to the days Margot might need them. I continued to open the drawers, searching for the silk scarves Margot often wore to cover her bald head. I found sweaters and nightgowns—I took a few of both—before opening the last drawer.
I recognized several of the brightly patterned silk scarves and plucked out the ones I’d seen her wear, assuming they must be her favorites. As I was lifting up the small pile, something fell out of one of the scarves, unfurling it as if it had been wrapped carefully. I stared down into the dark recess of the drawer and spotted a gold ring.
I pulled it out, planning on rewrapping it in one of the other scarves and returning it to the drawer, then stopped. Everything stopped. My breathing, the world. The earth’s rotation. It all seemed to stop. My eyesight went all fuzzy and then straightened again. I sat down on the bed, unsure of the stability of my own two legs. I must have said something or called out because Drew raced into the bedroom. He wore a look of surprise, as if he already knew.
I held out the gold ring. Kit’s ring. The one with the two swans engraved on the top. The ring that had been passed down by his father, Robert. The ring that wouldn’t be going to Robin because Kit had lost it in France. Or perhaps in the German prison camp. I didn’t know because we never discussed it. I had been afraid to bring back unpleasant memories for Kit, more fuel for his nightmares.
“Was this Kit’s?” Drew asked, the ring looking small and lost in his large palm.
I nodded. “I just can’t figure out why it was in Margot’s drawer. It was wrapped in a silk scarf as if it were being kept safe.”
As if in answer, he gave me a frame from his other hand, the photograph explaining his expression when he’d rushed into the room. “I was looking for Margot’s bottle of perfume that Precious said would be in the side table drawer. I found this inside, facedown. I wondered why it was hidden in the drawer until I turned it over.”
I stared at the familiar faces of the two children we’d seen in the photograph in Pierre Villon’s apartment. The photograph of his two children, an older girl and a younger boy. Daisy’s children. In this photograph, the girl—Madeleine, Pierre had said—held the hand of a younger girl with long hair, lighter than her sister’s, held back with an enormous bow. Her face was turned from the camera, her other hand reaching for someone we couldn’t see.
“I don’t understand . . . ,” I began. Or maybe I did and didn’t want to.
Drew handed me the signet ring and began putting the piles of clothing and the framed photograph into a small valise. “Come on,” he prompted gently. “Let’s get to the hospital before it’s too late.”
I slipped the ring on my finger, feeling how loose and heavy it was. How cold. Or maybe that was just me as my teeth had begun to chatter. I smelled the overwhelming scent of the daisies as Drew and I left the room, the door shutting behind us like a little slap.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aurélie
The Château de Courcelles
Picardy, France
June 1915
Once she went through that door, it would be for the very last time.
Aurélie was dressed. A carpetbag held her few meager belongings. They needed to be meager to be convincing, so people would believe that she wasn’t Aurélie de Courcelles, of ancient lineage and American fortune, but Jeanne Deschamps, of no fortune whatsoever.
“The train will be waiting,” said Max. “It’s a long walk to Le Catelet.”
He was dressed as well, the rumpled bed the only testament to their last night together.
So many nights together.
They had been discreet at first, but as the time for parting grew nearer, Aurélie had grown reckless, scarcely waiting for the sounds of activity from the kitchen below to fade before she crept out, along the familiar route through the storerooms, to Max’s lonely tower. Once, she had had to hide beneath the bed when Kraus had come barging up early one morning with a message from Hoffmeister. She wasn’t sure if her father and the others had guessed, if they were keeping silent out of k
indness, or because they thought she was buying Max’s compliance in age-old fashion.
She didn’t really care. She should care, she knew, but she didn’t.
Aurélie jammed a hat down onto her head. Under it, her hair had been dyed a deep brown with the crushed hulls of black walnuts. Suzanne had assured her the color would last a month, at least, possibly two. Long enough, certainly, to see her to Paris, no matter what detours the convoy took.
Aurélie went up to Max for what might well be the last time, wrapping her arms around his waist, feeling the strangeness of it all, the familiar made foreign again with the knowledge that she was leaving, that it was over. “You will leave as soon as I’m gone?”
“I’ve already put in my request for a transfer to active duty.”
She knew what had happened to his requests in the past. Aurélie looked up into his face, her palms against his chest. “But the telegrams—”
Max dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I sent the messages from Le Catelet. I saw them transmitted. If anything happens to me, there will be questions. And consequences.”
A cold fear clutched Aurélie. “Yes, but what use will that be to you or me or anyone if you’re dead?”
Max rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “I have no intention of dying.”
“I don’t think intent is what matters.” Even entombed in Courcelles they had heard garbled reports from the front, from the haggard troops of German soldiers that had passed through. “The front. I’m not sure if that’s worse.”
“At least it would be an honest death.” Seeing the look on her face, Max quickly said, “But men survive the front. Or maybe they’ll second me to the service of my uncle in Berlin. Be of good cheer. How could I die when I have you to come home to?”
Yes, but those other men who had died had people, too. Wives, children, mothers, sisters. It was a terrifying thought. Once, not so very long ago, she had thought it a grand thing to die for one’s country. She had sent Jean-Marie off to war without a qualm, full of platitudes about honor and glory. But now, now that it was Max, it was a different matter entirely. She wanted to lock him up and keep him safe. Let those other men fight and die so long as Max was spared her.
Aurélie was quite horrified by how fierce she felt about it, how quickly her scruples dissolved when it came to Max and his safety.
She clutched his suspenders beneath his jacket. “Don’t go doing anything heroic.”
“Would you promise the same?” Max gave a lopsided smile, so full of tenderness that Aurélie felt as though she couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t think so.”
There was nothing to do but to kiss him, long and hard, and then wrap her arms around him, trying to memorize the moment, the scratch of the wool of his uniform jacket against her cheek, the feel of his skin through his shirt.
Max squeezed her hard one last time before murmuring, “You should be going. The train will not wait.”
Reluctantly, Aurélie disentangled herself. “I need to say goodbye to my father. And I must stop by the chapel—to say a prayer to Saint Jeanne. She has always guarded my house.”
Max gave his head a little shake. “I never believed in such things before. But I would believe in anything that will see you safe to Paris. I will even pray to your saint with you, if it might help.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Aurélie hastily. “You’re not a daughter of Courcelles, so . . .”
“I understand,” he said, and she was very glad that he didn’t, not really. She was protecting him, she told herself. The less he knew about the talisman, the safer he was. But she still felt soiled somehow.
“Until Paris,” she said softly.
He leaned forward and kissed her, one last time. “I’ll come for you at the Ritz.”
Her father was waiting for her inside the chapel, as they had arranged. He thrust a pile of unattractive brown fabric at her.
“Suzanne made you a flannel petticoat,” he said gruffly. “To keep you warm on the journey. It gets cold at night still.”
“Please thank Suzanne for me.” Her father turned his back as she stepped into the garment, pulling it up and tying the tapes beneath her skirt. In the hem and seams were sewn messages, rolled thin. A coat or a cloak might be taken, but a petticoat, next to her skin, should defy examination. Especially if she wore it from here to Paris without taking it off. She expected it would probably stand by itself at the end of the journey. “Will you tell her goodbye for me? To all of them? Let them know I’m not deserting them?”
“Once you’re safely away.”
“I’ve told Suzanne to tell everyone that I’m confined to my room with female trouble.” In fact, she hadn’t been troubled by female trouble, not for the last month. Fear could stop one’s courses, they said, and Aurélie certainly had fears enough.
Her father, who had once made his way through the boudoirs of the courtesans of Paris, winced, his aristocratic features twisting into an expression of distaste. “You couldn’t have feigned an ague?”
“They might wonder why a doctor hadn’t been called. And you see?” Aurélie nodded at her father. “This is exactly why it’s perfect. They won’t inquire too closely. It should buy me two days, at least.”
“By which time, the train will be well away.”
“I don’t know how long it will take.” In normal times, it was a journey of three or four hours from Courcelles to Paris. Faster if one went by car. Longer if one took the slow train. But Max had warned her the convoy would be diverted first to Germany, where they would be searched and detained, possibly as little as a day, possibly as long as a month, before being sent on first to Switzerland and then, finally, into France and freedom. “Make my excuses for me as long as you can. The longer it takes for anyone to inquire the better. I’ve left a letter for you all on my bed saying that I’m taking my chances with the woods, making my way to Paris on foot. Be sure to bring that to the major when you find it—or make sure he’s with you when you break into my room. Hopefully, they should be so busy searching the woods they’ll never think of the convoy.”
Her father looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “You sound just like your mother.”
Aurélie grimaced. “American?”
“Assured.” Her father turned away, letting his hand rest on the long-dead countess’s pet dog. “It is not such a bad thing. And if I have made you feel that it was—that to be your mother’s daughter was to be a lesser thing—that was my fault and none of your doing.”
He did not, Aurélie noticed, deny that he had done so.
“I was angry. I was angry at the fates, at myself, at your mother. When I met your mother, I thought she was the answer to all my troubles. All that money and a quiet little mouse of a wife who would bear heirs for Courcelles without giving me any bother. But then your mother . . . She wasn’t a mouse. And I was a fool. Instead of appreciating her for what she had become, I drove her into the arms of my cousin.” Aurélie must have made some sound, because her father looked at her, his expression wry. “Oh yes, I knew about Hercule. Everyone did. It was too late by then. And you—you were hers. With that hair.”
“I have your brows. Everyone says.” She had tried so long and so hard to win her father’s approval, to convince him she was his, his more than her mother’s. And it had never been in her power. It was all a drama that had played out before she was even born.
Her father shrugged that away. “Oh, I never doubted you were mine. Your mother wouldn’t have played me false if I hadn’t goaded her into it. In her own way, she is a woman of honor.” From her father, that was a great concession. “She raised you to be a woman of honor.”
Aurélie’s throat felt raw. “I have always wanted nothing more than to be a credit to the name of Courcelles.”
It struck her only now that perhaps she might have wanted something more: her father’s love instead of his approval. Or that love might not have to be earned but might be given freely, as of right.
“
You are. You will be.” Her father didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. “The title will die with me, but the house of Courcelles will live on, through you.”
Once, that sentiment would have filled her with exultation. Now, Aurélie found it hard to muster the requisite enthusiasm. Was she nothing but a womb? A sacred vessel? Like her mother, meant to bear heirs and pay the bills.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I shall try to live up to your faith in me.”
To her surprise, her father reached out and pulled her into his arms, as he had never done, not even when she was very tiny. “My child. My little girl. Take care.” And then, before she had time to lean into his embrace, her father set her upright again, saying briskly, “Now say your prayers and I shall see you on your way.”
“Yes, Papa.” She slipped into the childish address without thinking of it, and saw, before she knelt on the flagstones, her father press his eyes shut, as though in pain.
She knelt, not at the altar, but by the tomb of her ancestress, feeling around the base, into the hidden spot. It was there, where she’d left it, wrapped in a kerchief.
“I have not seen that in many years,” said her father, in a low voice. “Not since your mother—”
“Tarted it up?” Even in the gray dawn light, the jewels were staggering, a ruby as large as Aurélie’s thumbnail, diamonds the size of daisies. But it was the curved crystal in the middle that her father was staring at, the crystal that held the tiny scrap of five-hundred-year-old fabric stained with the blood of the saint.
“Is that—it is!” They both turned as an unwieldy figure came barreling into the chapel. Lieutenant Dreier fumbled for his pistol, pointing it at Aurélie. “You! Stay where you are! Schmidt! Weide! To me!”
“I don’t know what you think you’re—”
“Hush!” Lieutenant Dreier’s voice was high with excitement. His hand was shaking so that Aurélie was half afraid the gun would go off. “Not another word out of you or I’ll shoot! Men, seize that woman!”
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 36