by Kate Quinn
I looked at myself in the mirror. The trousers and jersey might be secondhand, but I looked rather smart. A bit boyish. And comfortable, no waist cinchers or crinolines. The saleswoman perched a little straw hat over my eye at a rakish angle, and I grinned. I’d never chosen my own clothes before; Maman always dictated what I wore. But I was a madame now, a grown woman, not a helpless girl, and it was time I looked like it. “How much?”
We haggled. I had limited francs to spare, but I’d seen how covetously the saleswoman eyed my traveling suit even as she turned up her nose at the New Look. “Modeled right off the Dior collection, and I’ve got another at my hotel. I’ll drop it by tomorrow if you give me the trousers, the two skirts, the jerseys, and that black dress.”
“You may only have the black dress if you promise to wear it with pearls and very red lipstick.”
“I haven’t got the pearls right now, but I can do the lipstick.”
“Done.”
I headed back to the hotel with my parcel of clothes and a swing in my hips, and I had the pleasure of seeing Finn’s eyebrows go up as I joined him and Eve where they were having drinks at the hotel café. “Happy to meet you,” I said, and presented my hand with its new wedding ring. “I’m Mrs. Donald McGowan.”
“Bloody hell,” Eve said, and took a gulp of martini that looked like straight gin.
I patted the Little Problem. “A cover identity seemed practical.”
“Donald McGowan?” Finn asked. “Who is he?”
“Dark haired, lantern jawed, Yale law school, served in the tank corps.” I dabbed my eyes with an imaginary black-bordered handkerchief. “The love of my life.”
“Not bad to start,” Eve critiqued. “Did he like his socks folded or r-rolled?”
“Um. Folded.”
“No um. Black coffee or cream? Did he have brothers and sisters? Did he play football at university? Details, Yank.” Eve pointed a stern finger. “It’s the little details that sell a cover story. Make up a biography for your Donald and study it till you can reel it off with no flubs. And wear that ring all the time, till you get that little groove in your finger that long-married w-women have. People look for that groove when they see young girls wheeling baby prams and calling themselves Mrs.”
I grinned. “Yes, ma’am. Shall we go get supper?”
“Yes, and I’ll c-cover this one. You’ve been buying till now.”
A small acknowledgment that she wasn’t here anymore for my money—that touched me, though I knew better than to say so. “As long as you let me check the bill,” I answered instead. “You’d sign your name to any set of numbers they wrote down.”
“Whatever you say.” She took the bill the waiter had just put down for drinks, and pushed it over to me. “You’re the banker.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Somehow, over the course of this week, money matters had matter-of-factly become my domain, even if I was the youngest one here. Finn and Eve automatically looked to me to haggle with hotel clerks over room rates; receipts were passed promptly to my hands for proper calculation; spare coins and cash came to me to be organized since my traveling companions would otherwise let everything float loose in a mess of pocket change and pencil stubs. “Honestly, you two,” I scolded as I scribbled on the bill for the drinks. “Eve up to her neck in espionage skills and you able to keep that car running on spit and baling wire, Finn, and neither of you can calculate a tip without ten minutes’ figuring and a scratch pad.”
“Easier if we just let you do it,” Finn said. “Wee little adding machine, you are.”
I grinned again, remembering the London banker who thought me too young and stupid to manage my own money. Here I was managing money for three. It made me wonder what else I could manage.
I turned my false wedding ring around my finger, imagining myself sitting behind a well-organized till, dish towel tucked into my narrow trousers, hair chopped smartly at the chin. I imagined Rose with her blond curls and chic black dress, presiding with me as French jazz played and two babies crowed—not just Little Problems but Growing Problems with fat little feet, gabbling in both French and English . . .
I imagined Mrs. Donald McGowan and Madame Étienne Fournier, both of them doing fine. Just fine.
CHAPTER 18
EVE
July 1915
Eve had never seen Lili so exasperated. “Focus, little daisy! Your mind is a thousand miles away.”
“I’ll f-focus,” Eve promised, but all she could think was, I’m sore.
Not very sore. René Bordelon had taken some care not to hurt her. Not overwhelming care—just as much as didn’t interfere with his own enjoyment—but care, yes. There had been a little blood, but not a great deal of pain. That will be all, Eve thought when she was permitted to dress and go home. One more night working, then the morning train with Lili to Brussels and Captain Cameron, the report on the kaiser’s visit to Lille. She would not have to think about René until after that.
But he kept her the next night too, after her shift was done, which had shocked her. “I know I should give you more time to heal,” he said with his faint smile. “But you are very tempting. Do you mind?”
“No,” Eve said, because what else could she say? So there was a second time, and she rose from bed afterward and dressed as René watched her.
“I look forward to your return,” he’d said. Sitting up in bed, extraordinarily long fingers pleating the sheet about one knee.
“As d-d-d—As do I,” Eve replied, keeping an eye upon the clock, ticking toward four in the morning. She was scheduled to meet Lili at Lille Station in less than four hours. “But I’m afraid I m-must go. Thank you”—never forget the gratitude—“for the day off f-f-from work, monsieur.”
He didn’t ask her to call him René, even though he’d taken full possession of her name. He just smiled as she shrugged into her coat. “How little you ever really say, Marguerite. Most women are such cackling hens. ‘Silent one, I love you all the more because you run from me . . .’”
Eve didn’t have to ask the poet. Baudelaire, she thought. It’s always bloody Baudelaire. And not four hours later she had gone to meet Lili, not composed and cautious and focused on the task ahead, but short of sleep and smelling like René Bordelon.
And sore.
Eve was careful not to let that show in her walk as they hurried to the train station. Lili would have to know at some point, but not now when she was focused on getting them through a border crossing. And Captain Cameron would not know at all. Eve Gardiner was not trading her virginity for a trip back to England away from the fight. She was going back to René’s bed because even after just two nights, she already knew that he liked to talk over a pillow. There was the bit he’d let slip about the German flier Max von Immelmann; there were a few more details on the kaiser’s upcoming visit. Oh yes, René talked in bed, and Eve intended to listen. As for the rest . . . Well, she would get used to it, that was all.
“Not good,” Lili muttered, and Eve realized she’d gone into a daze again. Focus, she snapped to herself, and saw what worried Lili. The station platform swarmed with German officers, German soldiers, German officials. Eve’s gloved palms began to sweat.
“Has someone been taken?” she murmured inaudibly. The great fear in the Alice Network was that one of Lili’s sources would be arrested, made to tell what they knew. They were all careful to know as little as possible, but—
“No,” Lili murmured back, craning discreetly through the shuffle of uniforms. “It’s some stuffed shirt of a general getting a grand welcome. Of all the days . . .”
They pressed their way toward the sentry checking tickets and identity cards, but the crush was fierce, and the train already there, chuffing like a horse impatient to be off, and the sentries were meticulous with so much high brass on the platform. “Let me do the talking,” Lili said. She was Vivienne the cheese seller today, with a straw boater and a high-throated blouse of worn lace, and the story was prepared: she would address the
guards while Eve had an armload of packages ready to juggle and drop so they were more inclined to be impatiently waved through. But eyes were lingering fiercely on anyone not in a German uniform, and the lines inched along. We cannot miss that train, Eve thought, gnawing her lip until Lili got to the front of the line. She was just reaching for her identity cards when a German-accented voice called out in French.
“Mademoiselle de Bettignies! Can that be you?”
Eve saw the German first, over Lili’s shoulder—mustached, perhaps forty-five, his hair combed to a point on his forehead. He glittered gold and rank: heavy epaulettes, a double row of medals, and Eve recognized him: Rupprecht, crown prince of Bavaria, Generalloberst of the Sixth Army and one of the best generals the Fritzes had. He had visited Lille three weeks ago, Eve remembered with frozen clarity, and dined at Le Lethe where he complimented both René Bordelon’s tarte Alsacienne and the German airfield’s new Fokker Eindecker aircraft. Eve, pouring his brandy, had stored away his comments about the Fokker.
And now here he was, bearing down on them both in a crowd of German aides, his hand falling on Lili’s shoulder as he exclaimed, “Louise de Bettignies, it is you!”
For an instant Lili still faced away from him, her hand half out of her handbag with the identity cards of Vivienne the cheese seller—and Eve saw her eyes go blank. Only for a split second, and then Lili swept Vivienne’s cards back into the bag like a gambler flicking away a losing hand. Her shoulders straightened as she turned, her smile dialed from Vivienne’s eager-to-please smirk up to something far more brilliant, and she dropped a curtsy Eve was fast to imitate. “Your Royal Highness! You know very well how to flatter a lady, knowing her only from the back of her neck under an exceedingly unattractive hat!”
The general kissed Lili’s hand, his stars and medals flashing. “You need no stack of silk roses to dazzle, mademoiselle.”
Lili (Louise?) dimpled at him, and even in the midst of dizzying shock, Eve marveled at how completely the leader of the Alice Network had altered herself. Her smile was now a flash of confidence, her chin had a proud angle, and with a tip of a finger her dismal boater sank over one eye at a dashing angle just like any of those cartwheel-size mounds of gauze she’d left in train compartments all over France. Her voice was liquid-pure French aristocrat—down-on-her-luck aristocrat, perhaps, but the court drawl was unmistakable as she said, “Such is always my luck. I meet the crown prince of Bavaria in last year’s lace!” A flick for her old blouse. “Princess Elvira would never let me forget it.”
“My cousin was always very fond of you. Remember that game of chess we played in her drawing room in Holleschau, the night of—”
“Yes! And you won. Encircled my knights from behind and pried my king out of his castle. I should not be surprised you command the Sixth Army now, Your Royal Highness . . .”
More chatter. No one had glanced at Eve, not the general nor his aides nor Lili. Eve clutched her armload of packages and shifted behind Lili like a maid. In a drab hat of her own, with none of Lili’s sparkle, she undoubtedly resembled a servant. The train, she saw with a shiver of fear, was leaving.
“What are you doing in Lille, Mademoiselle de Bettignies?” the general asked, oblivious to the train or his hovering aides. Laugh lines grew at the corners of his eyes, and his smile was avuncular. If he weren’t one of the best leaders at the kaiser’s disposal, Eve would probably have liked him. “Such a dreary place!”
You made it dreary, Eve thought, and any possibility of liking disappeared.
“On my way into Belgium to see my brother. If I can even get across the border now, mon Dieu, my train has gone . . .” Lili made a comic face of despair, a tragic columbine clown, and the general immediately snapped for one of his hovering aides.
“A car for Mademoiselle de Bettignies and her maid. You will be escorted across by my own driver.”
“If mademoiselle has her identity cards,” the aide said, and Eve froze. The only cards Lili had were for an imaginary cheese seller named Vivienne, and if she was caught with them while claiming to be someone else—
But Lili stood laughing, perfectly at ease as she rummaged through her handbag. “I have them somewhere—” Upending a handkerchief, a few keys, a scatter of hairpins. “Marguerite, do you have my papers?”
Eve knew what to do then: begin laboriously opening every package in her arms, shaking her head like a slow-witted country girl, all as the general looked on amused and his aides shifted from foot to foot. “Your Royal Highness,” one murmured, “the Kommandant awaits . . .”
“No need for papers, I know Mademoiselle de Bettignies perfectly well.” The general looked sad as he kissed her hand. “From more peaceful days.”
“Happier days,” Lili agreed, and when the car pulled up before the station, the general handed her in himself. Eve, scarcely knowing what to think, scrambled in behind her, still juggling packages. The car’s seats were richly cushioned; the smell of expensive leather overlaid motor oil. Lili fluttered her handkerchief out the window at the general, and then the doors shut and they were gliding away. In much greater luxury than a cramped train car.
Lili didn’t speak. Her eyes touched on the driver, and then she made a fussy comment or two about the heat like any aristocratic lady traveling in summer. The questions rising in Eve’s throat were choking her, but she looked at her lap as a lady’s maid should. The car remained silent as they crossed into Belgium. In the car of a general—and a crown prince, no less—they were waved straight through the checkpoints. Though the driver offered to take them to their destination, Lili refused with a charming smile and asked to be dropped at the nearest train station. A much smaller place than the station in Lille, just a platform with a few benches.
“Merde,” she said as they watched the gleaming car disappear back up the road. “I wouldn’t mind a ride all the way to Brussels—mon Dieu, I’m sick of trains!—but leading a German general’s aide to Uncle Edward’s doorstep would probably be frowned upon, no?”
Eve was silent. She didn’t even know where to begin. The platform was hot and dusty; they were alone except for an old woman dozing on the other side, well out of earshot.
Lili dropped onto the nearest bench, setting her valise beside her. “So, little daisy,” she said matter-of-factly. “Are you going to accuse me of being a German spy, just because the general of the Sixth Army happens to know me by sight?”
“No.” That had flashed briefly across Eve’s mind at the general’s first smile, she felt ashamed to admit, but now she shook her head. If she knew nothing else, she knew that Lili was no double agent.
“Well, now you know my real name.” Lili smiled, tugging off her gloves. “Very few in the network do. Just Violette and Uncle Edward.”
Violette, loyal lieutenant that she was, would kill Eve slowly if she ever endangered their leader by revealing her identity. Eve accepted the secret, turning it over. “Louise de Bettignies. Who is she, then?”
“The daughter of minor French nobility, who really should have been an actress, given how much she adores putting on new identities.” Lili took out a handkerchief, blotting her forehead in the morning heat. “But the daughters of minor French nobility do not become actresses, my dear.”
“What do they d-do, then?”
“When they come from families as poor as church mice? Become governesses for the children of lecherous Italian lords and Polish counts and Austrian princesses.” Louise shuddered. “Bullets, let me tell you, are quite preferable to pounding French verbs into a lot of snobbish little heirs to crumbling castles and defunct coats of arms.”
Eve felt her way, cautious but ravenously curious. “And how did Louise de Bettignies come to know the crown prince of Bavaria? Teaching his children?”
“Those of his cousin, Princess Elvira. Bitch. Face like a potato, temper like a prison wardess. Her lock-jawed children were dumb as paint and thought they owned the earth. My training turned out to be useful; governesses get plenty of pract
ice lurking and eavesdropping. But still—” A sigh. “It was so dull. I’d tell myself that at least I wasn’t hauling coal in a mine shaft or working eighteen hours in a laundry getting my fingers crushed by mangles. But I was so tired of it all, it was coming down to a choice: heave myself under a train like Anna Karenina, or become a nun. I did think rather seriously about a nunnery, but really, I’m far too frivolous.”
The drone of summer insects rose all around them; the heat baked down and the old woman across the tracks snored on her bench.
“Anyway,” Lili concluded. “That’s Louise de Bettignies. But she isn’t really me, anymore. I’ve become Lili instead, and I like her far better.”
“I can understand why.” Louise de Bettignies sounded rather grand and a little silly, a woman with a lace bertha and no skills besides pretty handwriting. It didn’t match frail little Lili at all, with her darting gaze and her false-bottomed bag lined with half the secrets of the German army. “I’ll never let it slip, Lili. Not to anyone.”
A smile. “I trust you, little daisy.”
Eve smiled back, the trust warming her to her bones.
“Merde,” Lili sighed again. “This goddamned train, will it ever get here?” And they never mentioned it again.
The train ride was dismal but short, the excitement of their encounter with the general slowly fading to leave Eve with her brooding thoughts of René and last night. Eve didn’t bother to track the streets they traversed on the way to the meeting point. She had no desire to be able to identify this house with the faded blue door where they were quickly ushered inside.
Lili had gone into Uncle Edward’s study first. Eve waited in the sitting room outside, watched by a weedy young lieutenant. Lili came out, dropped a wink. “In you go. I’m going to hunt down some brandy.” She leaned close, speaking in Eve’s ear so the lieutenant couldn’t overhear. “Our dear uncle seems quite eager to see you. Perhaps more than just professionally eager—”