“What troubles?” He managed the irony much better than she did. “I’ve just come home after fifteen years away, and everyone welcomed me with open arms. Exactly the opposite of what I expected. What troubles could I have?”
Hell if she knew. Merde, the number of fantasies she’d had as a kid of being exactly in his shoes at that moment—she’d found her family, they were beautiful, they loved her, they’d been looking for her all her life and were so happy to have her home.
“You’re in the wrong,” she guessed. “You feel in the wrong.” Yeah, she knew about that.
“All the ways of wrong there are. I—” He broke off and shook his head, dropping her hand to fold his arms across his chest and gaze out over the roses. “Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”
Jesus, she got sick of men sometimes. With their absolute conviction that they were the center of the universe. “Try me,” she said dryly.
He gestured suddenly. “They took me in. They loved me. They raised me. And all the time, I was like some damn…damn…cuckoo bird that my mother planted in this family to make them waste their resources on me. When I was never part of them at all.”
Yeah. She knew about that. And she realized, suddenly, that she was furious with him. So angry she could hit him, shake him, do anything to break through that damn oblivion of his. “Like the ugly duckling,” she said flatly.
“What?” He looked confused.
Good. “The egg that ended up in the wrong family, so he didn’t look like the others, and all the ducks picked on him and made fun of him and chased him away.”
“Well…no,” he said slowly. “Not like that. Worse. I was part of this family. Until I wasn’t.”
Was that worse? Was it really? Maybe he thought so. Hell, maybe it really was. She’d never had the opportunity to find out. “But then he grew up into a swan, though, so that was okay,” she said. “Because it was a boy ugly duckling, right? Would have been a sad flip on that story to make it a girl ugly duckling and see what happened to her when she started growing attractive.”
She had to give Lucien credit, he focused on her at that. Really focused, his eyebrows drawing together. And she regretted it immediately, because, as satisfying as it was to break through his pity party, she hated talking about her past or even remembering who she had once been.
“Tell me,” he said slowly, reaching for her hand. “What did happen to her, when she started growing attractive?”
She pulled her hand away. “She had to learn to fend for herself, that’s what.” She turned back toward the pavilion.
He walked beside her, frowning down at her as if he was measuring the difference between their sizes. Yeah, she’d had to measure that kind of difference plenty of times. “No one was around to help her with that?”
She slanted a glance up at him. He’d filled out a lot more since he was nineteen, but even back then he’d been this tall and developing that breadth in his shoulders. “Maybe once.”
It didn’t jog his memory at all. Good. But it did jog hers. Once upon a time he had rescued her.
“How many times did she need help?” Lucien said. “More than once?”
“I’m thirsty.” Elena headed toward the pavilion entrance. A cigarette gleamed in the shadows a few paces outside the tent door as she passed.
“Everything okay?” Antoine said.
She started. Had he been out here watching them all this time? She smiled at him to let him know everything was fine, but he wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were locked on Lucien’s.
Purée but men were annoying sometimes.
“Just thirsty,” she said, and went into the tent. The water bottles on the tables were all empty again, so she ended up serving herself from one of the white wine bottles. Almost immediately, as a general wooziness sank through her, she realized she’d just slipped over her limit, going from loose and easy to slurred and, knowing her, a tendency to cling and get maudlin.
Damn.
She went back outside, thinking maybe she could sit somewhere until her head cleared a bit and she didn’t embarrass herself. Antoine and Lucien were no longer facing off like two men warring for dominance, so whatever dog-growling thing they had had to do had worked out all right, but Lucien was frowning, looking across at his Tante Colette under the plane tree as if he wanted to ask her a question. Antoine looked as if he was very ready to go home.
Maybe she was, too. She did love dancing all night, but…she was so highly tempted to just slouch onto Lucien’s chest and let him hold her up that she’d probably do better to leave while she still had her pride.
“Ready to go?” she asked Antoine.
He took a sharp pull of his cigarette and stubbed it out. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Lucien moved sharply. “You go home with him?” His voice had gone low and stern, and she wasn’t sure he even realized that he had just shifted to block their path out of there.
Antoine gave him a slow, mean smile and tucked Elena’s hand in his arm.
Seriously, what the hell was up with Antoine? “I don’t think I should drive,” she explained.
“What about him?” Lucien said hard. He was looking at Antoine with controlled hostility, like a man who was usually quite efficient at ridding himself of enemies.
“Not a drop,” Antoine told him sweetly. Yeah, because he didn’t want to chance any exposure of weakness around the Rosiers. Antoine was nuts where they were concerned. Elena rested her head against his shoulder a second, feeling dizzy.
Lucien’s jaw tightened. He looked from Antoine to her. “I haven’t been drinking.” It was crazy how erotic she found the change in his tone when he spoke to her, that gentleness that entered it, such a contrast with the hardness for Antoine. “I can take you.”
Oh, please. “Will you quit trying to use any excuse to escape dealing with your family?” Elena demanded, exasperated.
“Yeah, you’re pissing us both off with that,” Antoine said.
Lucien gave him a sharp, searching look.
“Although, in his defense, he probably doesn’t think of you as any excuse, Lena,” Antoine said dryly, with that edge to his voice that seemed like the opening of a knife fight.
“You told me in Italy that you didn’t have a boyfriend,” Lucien said to Elena, his voice stern. “Were you lying to me about that, too?”
Wait a minute. “I didn’t tell any lies!” She’d gotten a little ensnared by the romantic sunset, but he was the one who was so damn good at seducing. He should at least take some of the responsibility.
“Then why’s he taking you home?” Lucien demanded aggressively.
“Not really your business, is it?” Antoine said, in a voice as sweet as honey to a fly.
Elena sighed heavily. “I’m just going to go sit over here for a while, okay? Leave you two to it.”
She abandoned them for the plane tree, under which Madame Delatour now sat, resting from the dancing and maybe all the noise under the pavilion. Elena sank to the ground near her chair.
“Sorry,” she told Madame Delatour. “I didn’t feel like dealing with two men acting like idiots right now.”
“Who ever does?” the old hero said, amused. She looked tired, although in a contented way. It was after midnight, quite late for a ninety-seven-year-old.
“Do you want us to take you home, too?” Elena’s apartment was in the old part of Sainte-Mère, so it would be easy enough to take the older woman with them. Antoine lived in Grasse, but since he was going to be dropping her off, he might as well drop both of them. Damn. How was she going to get her car back tomorrow? That was what she got for not getting back from Italy in time to ride with Antoine as he’d suggested.
“It’s good to be here,” Colette said, with that profound, quiet peace in her. Elena smiled and inched closer. Colette Delatour was another person she hero-worshiped, as well she should.
“You did a good job there,” Colette said, and Elena flushed with pleasure.
�
�I was afraid he wouldn’t come,” she confessed. “I thought I had screwed up.”
“You tried. I like to hope that matters more than screwing up,” Colette said.
Elena rested her head on her knees, relaxing. She loved it when that tough old lady said things like screwing up. She’d bet Colette had cursed like a sailor back in the Resistance sometimes. “You’re right,” she said softly. “It does.”
Elena was absolutely determined to break the cycle that had started with her grandmother, to tell those fucking Nazis that their destruction of her family stopped finally, finally with her. But even if she didn’t break the cycle, even if she never learned how to make a strong family for herself, Colette Delatour, and Jean-Jacques Rosier, and all the people in their cell had tried. It wasn’t their fault that everything hadn’t come up roses for a little girl smuggled away in them from a hatred so strong it had killed her parents, killed everyone who loved her, and tried to kill her.
“There you are,” a cheerful voice exclaimed over by the tent, Tristan appearing from it beside Lucien. Elena had never met anyone in her life who had such a warm voice as Tristan. Laughter almost always seemed to lurk in it, somewhere deep down in its depths even when he wasn’t amused, as if it was ready to leap out and take over in any and all conditions. Tristan draped his arm over Lucien’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze.
Elena smiled. She had always liked Tristan. He’d been only a year ahead of her in school and so full of charm and niceness pretty much everybody had liked him. Hell, he’d been nice even to her, the spotty, hopeless example of humanity she’d been at thirteen.
She hugged herself just at the memory of how rare niceness had been in her life back then and how much even the most careless gifts of it—a friendly word from the cute, older Tristan, for example—had meant. It was stupid, but sometimes there was an ache in her middle still to this day from that time.
“We were looking for you,” Tristan told Lucien. “We have to take silly pictures with Damien. Apparently it’s a wedding tradition. Jess said so.”
Elena laughed. Good for Jess. She gave herself a tiny pat of her knee in self-congratulations: You did a good job finding that one, too.
Antoine stepped back from the two cousins and glanced around for Elena, his expression so intensely neutral that Elena stood and brushed off her dress. “I have to go now,” she said, looking down at the older woman. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“You helped bring them together,” Madame Colette said. “Did you ever tell them?”
“I thought I was your secret ally.” Like Madame Colette used to have back in the war, only a lot safer, because no one was going to torture or kill Elena if she got caught. Elena had found something subtly consoling about the mental game of secret allies, as if she was still part of that war only the healing end of it. The one who could help stitch people together, apply bandages, make them all whole. Soothe those last raw edges.
Colette smiled at her. Colette Delatour was tough as they came with her great-nephews, but she almost always had a gentleness for Elena. Elena hoped that didn’t mean the old hero found her fragile or something. Elena, too, was as tough as they came. I will survive, and I will thrive, and I will beat those Nazis at last and raise a happy daughter one day.
“Yes, but I think we’ve finished,” Colette said. “You’ve brought the last one home.”
Antoine joined them. Behind him, Tristan was dragging Lucien into the big tent. Good for Tristan. Lucien gave her a look back as if he was hoping she would rescue him, which made her want to smack him. They’re welcoming you with open arms. It’s the prodigal son’s dream come true. Go with it!
“I did mention to Malorie,” she said. “So I guess the secret is out.” She might have made a lousy Resistance fighter. It wasn’t that she truly trusted people, it was that she wanted to trust them so damn bad.
Colette smiled at her.
“Can we go now?” Antoine asked under his breath. And more audibly and courteously, “Madame Delatour, I would be happy to give you a ride, too, if you want one.”
“I think I’ll sleep here,” Madame Delatour said, which made Elena’s eyebrows go up. Colette usually made it a point of pride not to sleep in her old childhood home, now her stepbrother’s, and sometimes Elena worried that this recent, very subtle relaxation between the two old war heroes was a sign of the last stretch of age. Going gently into—no, not into that dark night. Into a beautiful sunset that stretched across the valley and its mountains, maybe.
Gentle was good. So many scary things in life could be made better with a little gentleness.
She turned her face into the cool car window as they headed home and closed her eyes, drifting into a dream of incredible gentleness in which a callused thumb and index finger softly, softly caressed one lock of her hair. Brushed almost-not-touching over her shoulder. Let her fall into him.
Chapter 8
The very first buds were opening. Too few today for a harvest, but tomorrow they would have to have a crew in the fields. Matt would. Lucien tasted that thought. Matt grown up, in charge. Big, burly, growly…so glad to have him back that tears had glimmered in his eyes.
Lucien scrubbed his hands over his face, an ache in his chest that only grew as the sun rose and spread pink-gold light over the rose field, the rays stretching right through the gap in the hills and kissing his eyes, making them sting.
He angled his face toward shadow and took careful, deep breaths.
“You’re up early,” an old, old voice said to him, and he braced. Oh, hell. His grandfather came up beside him. “Military habit?”
Jean-Jacques Rosier had fought a war but never been in any proper military. Not that some people would necessarily call the Foreign Legion a proper military, Lucien thought with a twist of Legion humor.
“Monsieur,” he said, finally, because fuck it, he had to say something. He couldn’t manage grand-père. He controlled his instinct to kiss the old man’s cheeks as he would have as a boy and held out his hand.
His gran—Jean-Jacques Rosier clasped it once, blue eyes assessing and unreadable on Lucien’s face. “I prefer grand-père. Pépé.”
Lucien took another slow breath and gazed out over the rose field. Yeah. Breathing here prickled the backs of his eyes.
Jean-Jacques began to walk, a slow, measured pace, much slower than it had once been, and Lucien fell into step with him automatically, noticing with an odd discomfort that he had to shorten his stride these days. It felt like stepping down in the dark and not finding a step below. The ring burned against his chest.
“You do good in the Legion, boy? Did you do me proud?”
Oh, fuck, Lucien could feel a shaky onslaught behind his eyes, like a shipwrecked sailor who had finally washed up to shore and wanted to clutch two fistfuls of its sand and weep. The ownership in the statement—that Lucien was one of Jean-Jacques’s descendants who could do him proud. “I made captain, monsieur. Grand-père.”
“Captain. From an enlisted man?” The old man’s light blue eyes gleamed.
Lucien inclined his head. He was afraid to look up. His eyes might be red. “And…and some medals. Sir.”
“Grand-père,” the old man said firmly, a superior commander who would brook no argument.
Lucien’s fists clenched to try to hold onto his emotions. “Grand-père.”
“These medals…I take it you have some stories to tell.” Jean-Jacques glanced at him sidelong but mostly focused across the fields.
Just the way he always had, all those times Lucien walked with him as a teenager looking for a role model while his own parents fell apart. “I don’t know that I would be good at telling them, monsi—grand-père.” He had to clear his throat.
“You can say Pépé,” the old man said dryly. “If grand-père is too hard.”
Lucien took two full steps in complete blindness, his eyes closed tight to try to hold in all those emotions. The dancing last night with Elena had been wonderful, as if it reached across
fifteen years and put him right back into the same place he had abandoned. This was…deeper. Harder.
“There were plenty of stories I couldn’t tell you boys,” Jean-Jacques said, with that rough, old voice of his. “Maybe some of them I could tell you. Now.”
That sparked in Lucien’s heart. All those stories they’d clamored for, all his grandfather’s silences…Lucien had earned some of the secrets?
“I…certainly, monsi—grand-père.” Lucien took another deep breath and stared at those limestone cliffs in the distance. “I have something I need to give you first.” Get it over with.
He drew his dog tags out from under his shirt and over his head.
His grandfather held them in an old wrinkled hand. “Julien Fontaine,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s your nom de guerre?”
“They picked it out of a book.” Back in those days, the Legion had still made all engagés volontaires start with a new identity. It had been a huge part of the Legion’s appeal, and like most of the old guard, Lucien still thought they’d lost an essential part of the Legion culture when they changed those rules. The sergeant sitting across the desk from him, looking him over with a complete and utter lack of compassion, had flipped a page, dropped his finger to it, and given him a name, along with a Belgian nationality, since he’d had to give up his French one for the first five years. Lucien could have taken his own name back along with the citizenship, after those first five years were up. But…he hadn’t. He’d thought that identity was gone.
Jean-Jacques Rosier ran his thumb over Lucien’s blood type. O negative. His cousins were all A or B or AB, which maybe should have been a sign, but no one had considered it one at the time. It had, conversely, made him an extremely valuable blood donor, so he supposed his blood ran in a lot of his men’s veins now. “You’re not out of the Legion yet. Better keep them, mon grand. I’ll be proud to take them when you know you won’t need them anymore.”
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