A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘We’ll all say goodnight, though the night is almost over.’ Henri motioned Albert out of the room. Before he closed the door he said, ‘You can lock yourself in, if you wish.’ She knew he was really saying, ‘You had better lock yourself in.’

  Too right, she would.

  Chapter Twenty

  Yvonne washed, undressed and got under the bed covers wearing only the silk slip she’d put on hours ago in England. It matched the knickers she’d rinsed out in her washing water and hung over a chair to dry.

  The sheets felt deliciously cool, though never before had she slept with so little on. Growing up in Derbyshire, in a cold stone house, heavy-duty nightshirts had been essential for survival. More recently, during her SOE training, she’d discovered the benefits of men’s pyjamas. Now, in a strange bed, her unguarded body suddenly felt vulnerable. Yet alive. Her hair, free from its pins and bindings, curled against one side of her face. Sliding her palms across her belly, down her thighs, she recognised the craving and knew perfectly well what – and who – she was longing for.

  That would be breaking every rule. Tomorrow, she’d ask if she might borrow a nightshirt or pyjamas. Actually – though she was reluctant to trespass on her host’s helpful nature – she might ask if there was anything of the late Madame de Chemignac’s that she might use. A change of outfit would become necessary if she was going to be here for more than a few days.

  Had Henri not locked the wardrobe before he left, Yvonne thought slyly, she’d have raided it by now.

  The rigours of the last twenty-four hours caught up with her. Sleep fell on her like a smoky fug. And with it, a dream in which she actually opened the wardrobe and stepped inside…

  She had no idea how long she’d been deep under, but a noise woke her. She sat up, every faculty instantly alert. For a while, she attuned to every sound; the night breeze ruffling the cypresses; the geese far below, their murmurings reaching her like the brush of the sea over stones; a fox barking lustily a distance off. And breathing. Human breathing.

  Sliding out of bed, she felt for her shoe and from inside it, plucked the penknife she’d hidden there when she’d undressed. Flicking out its blade, she stood tense as steel in the dead dark. A scrape of feet told her that somebody was on the landing outside.

  Advancing stealthily, she made a half-curtsey against the door, flattening her ear to the wood. There it was again, followed by the faint clearing of a throat. A moment later, a rapid knock, and a hoarse, ‘Madame!’

  She mouthed, ‘I’ll give you “Madame”!’ Her teeth closing in a snarl, she turned the key and pulled open the door, immediately stepping back, leaving the way clear. As a shape came through the doorway, she rammed the door shut. The intruder spun around and Yvonne drove her fist into a hard, flat stomach. The intruder staggered at the unexpected blow. Without hesitation, she kicked his feet from under him. He fell and within a heartbeat she was astride him, her knife blade against his neck.

  ‘You unutterable vermin, heavy-breathing outside my door! Is this how young men treat their guests round here? Does your brother Henri know what you’re doing?’

  A panicked, wheedling voice returned, ‘Please, Madame, I am not vermin. Stop hurting me.’

  She lifted the blade clear of the bobbing throat. ‘Albert de Chemignac, if I ever find you outside – No!’ A hand had shot up, taking her wrist in a crushing grip and twisting it. Yvonne tried to block the move, as she’d been trained, but the hand around hers was powerful and the pain, fierce. A moment later, her penknife hit the floor and she was flipped onto her side, rolled on her back and a heavy form was lying over her. She felt the ripple of laughter, the heavy pounding of another’s heart.

  ‘Oh, Yvonne, you do not possess the killer’s instinct! You should have struck when you had me on my back.’

  ‘Henri – what the –? I thought you were - ! Oh, get off me. How dare you?’

  He rolled away from her but did not stand up, and she felt he was again devouring her. Drinking in the shape of her abdomen and thighs, her bare legs and arms. Her slip had ridden up to her hips. She sat up, covering herself, ashamed of being so easily overpowered.

  When Henri spoke again, his voice was staccato, his breathing that of a man aroused. ‘You should have cut my throat, Yvonne. I could have been anyone. Did I not in truth creep up the steps to spy on you?’

  ‘Well, did you?’ She felt a piercing disappointment. How bold she’d thought him on the battlefield. How gallant afterwards, and honourable. Now, it seemed he was just a more polished version of his irksome brother. ‘I do wish you hadn’t!’

  ‘Well, let me assure you, I did not come to spy on you and I’m sorry you think I would. Allow me.’ Getting up, he put out his hand and helped her to her feet. For a moment, they stood close, his free hand sliding across her hip to rest on the small of her back where it remained, controlled and still. ‘I came to wake you, and I’m hacking for breath because I have just ridden my horse at the gallop to Amillac– that’s the next village, six kilometres there and back - to rouse the doctor. I have just run up the tower steps, all seventy-two of them, so forgive me if I am out of breath. Your colleague has taken a turn for the worse. His cries woke me.’

  ‘Cyprien? How bad is he?’

  ‘We thought it just a flesh wound, no? That he was in shock from losing blood. But I now fear that the bullet smashed bone as it went through – please, dress yourself and come down. We need to clean the wound more deeply, before it turns septic. Or worse.’

  “Or worse” probably meant “gangrene”. Yvonne was already reaching for her blouse, pushing her arm into its sleeve. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for the doctor to come?’

  A grim laugh answered her. ‘We’ll wait a long time. The Amillac medic is one of us.’ Résistance he presumably meant. ‘He has his hands full with those of my friends who were brought injured from the drop field and there’s no other doctor within reach whom I trust. His wife gave me morphine and scalpel blades. But no surgical spirit or anaesthetic; she thinks her husband took his supplies with him.’

  ‘Took them where?’

  ‘To the place where our wounded are taken. She was very frightened, poor lady. If her husband is caught… Alors. Forget the doctor, we must do this ourselves. I hope you can withstand the sight of blood, Yvonne.’

  ‘Trust me, I’ll faint like the delicately-reared damsel I am,’ she flicked back at him. Buttoning on her skirt, blouse and knitted waistcoat, she squared her jaw and showed with a gimlet gaze that she was once again the trained agent, Yvonne Rosel. The sensual creature who had lain in bed craving seduction had been dismissed. The only hint of her, the hair falling untamed over her shoulders. She hadn’t time to pin it into a bun.

  As she entered Henri’s bedchamber and heard shallow breaths coming from the bed, the word ‘fever’ flew at her. When she’d tripped over Cyprien on the battlefield, she’d correctly assessed that he’d been shot from behind. Later, cleaning the wound with warm, salty water, Yvonne and Henri had agreed that that the bullet had probably been a .303 from a Milice Bren gun. Fortuitously, it had passed through Cyprien’s arm a little below the bicep and while the exit wound was messy, there was no sign of bones or major blood vessels being ruptured.

  Now, Yvonne was less sure. As she approached the bed, she felt a waft of heat. Infection. The bullet could have nicked the humerus bone after all. Shattered fragments might be lodged in the wound, or a scrap of cloth might be in there, taken in on the tip of the bullet. Enough to set up a bacterial infection, at any rate. The prospect of spreading gangrene, necessitating amputation, presented itself, but she stamped on the idea. They must get Cyprien well. His wireless skills were vital, but that was actually a secondary consideration. Ill, he was a terrible liability. As Henri had implied, not all medical staff were sympathetic to the Resistance. Dump a feverish spy in a local hospital and someone would report him. It would then only be a matter of hours before the Gestapo, the brutal German security police, arrested him. Poor Cyprie
n would be dead meat – once he’d revealed everything he knew about his mission and those who had helped him.

  They must play deadly doctors and nurses, and do it well.

  Henri came in to the room behind her. He had a bottle tucked under his arm and was carrying fresh candles and an oil lamp, which he put down and lit. Fully fuelled, it supplemented another one that was flickering weakly. In the sudden uplift of light, Yvonne saw that there was a third person in the room. Turning her back to hide her instinctive loathing, Yvonne murmured, ‘Good evening, Albert.’ Going to the bed and laying a hand on Cyprien’s forehead, she said to Henri, ‘Albert might as well get some sleep, don’t you think, Monsieur de Chemignac?’ She would not use the name ‘Henri’ in front of the younger brother. ‘No merit in three of us wearing ourselves out.’

  ‘None at all,’ Henri agreed. ‘Go and sleep on the chaise-longue in the sitting room, my boy, so you’ll be near if we need you. But Madame, this is not Albert, it’s Raymond Chaumier, who works for me.’

  She looked round in surprise and saw that indeed, it was a much younger boy than Albert. She judged him to be somewhere between twelve and fourteen years old. But this was no stripling. He had a worker’s physique and, unlike Albert, whom she’d privately likened to a loosely-tied bundle of beanpoles, this boy’s gaze was steady and open. She smiled. ‘Pardon, I didn’t look at you properly when I came in. But then, I was expecting Albert.’

  Henri gave a disapproving sniff. ‘My brother cycled into town after I took you to your room, and he isn’t back yet.’ A jerk of the shoulders communicated Henri’s opinion of that. ‘He frequents a certain bar in Garzenac, where he plays chess till the early hours with other men of his sleepless ilk. He says it’s chess, anyway. Raymond, take a blanket with you. Has our friend been settled this last hour?’ Henri pulled up a chair, placing it next to the bed so Yvonne could sit down. ‘Is his fever climbing or levelling out?’

  The lad shot a quick glance at Yvonne. ‘He was very restless, Monsieur. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.’ Here another glance for Yvonne. ‘He… He was grunting. I think, in English.’

  Yvonne almost laughed, tickled in spite of the gravity of the situation. Cyprien, who had corrected her pronunciation of English many times, would be mortally affronted. She thought, I do hope I get to tell him one day that he was grunting. Hiding her smile, she asked Raymond, ‘Can you first bring jugs of hot water and any clean rags you can find?’

  ‘Oui, Madame.’

  Henri lit the candles he’d brought in and placed them on a tall sconce, sending a pool of light over the bed. They now saw that Cyprien’s face carried a sweaty sheen. Stripped of his shirt and vest, his throat and torso glistened and his chest hair was matted. As Yvonne stroked back a cowlick of damp hair from his brow, he moaned and muttered, ‘“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”’

  ‘Oh, God, he’s giving us his Romeo.’ Distractedly, Yvonne tucked her own hair behind her ears. It flopped back, too heavy to be kept off her face without the help of a band. ‘You know he was an actor before he got involved in all this?’

  Henri sat down at the other side of the bed. Their eyes linked. He said, ‘“Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.’”

  She laughed out loud, impressed that a Frenchman should be able to quote Shakespeare so accurately. Sorry, too, that there was no time to ask how he came to know it. Instead she asked the more critical question. ‘Who betrayed our arrival to the Milice?’ Deliberately, she broke their eye contact. ‘Can you trust your brother?’ The idea of Albert peddling off to a sleazy bar when men had died nearby disturbed her profoundly. Had he no soul? He knew too much to be on the loose, for sure.

  ‘To answer your questions in order,’ Henri said, ‘I don’t yet know who betrayed tonight’s reception. In time it will be clear who died, who has survived and who, of the survivors, knew enough to have passed on information. That person will emerge, like a shipwreck becoming visible at very low tide. In the meantime, we all lie low. As for Albert… Yes, I trust him. The drinking den he goes to is owned by a Resistance colleague who will silence him if he says too much. And though Albert has precious little love for me these days, he is afraid of me and will do nothing to jeopardise his right to live here at Chemignac. It is not only passion that makes a man loyal, Yvonne.’ Jet-black eyes caressed her hair, burying themselves in its rich colour. ‘We are all bound by the thing we most fear losing.’

  Raymond came back just then with the first of several canisters of boiled water. He had brought table napkins to use as bandages and wash-cloths. While Yvonne soaked one of them, Henri poured cognac from the bottle he’d brought with him into a tin cup. He took a gulp then proffered the cup across the bed. ‘Stiffen your sinews, Yvonne. The rest is for our patient. We’ll use it to clean his wound and it will sting like scorpion bites. I doubt poor Cyprien will be quoting Shakespeare once we get to work on him.’

  Dawn was seeping through the window by the time Henri stooped over the bed to tie a final, clean bandage on Cyprien’s arm. The candles were almost spent and the oil lamp was sputtering. Yvonne watched him, physically and emotionally drained. She had done the actual debriding of the wound, paring away contaminated and mutilated tissue, and not just because her fingers were more delicate, but because it had taken a man’s strength to hold Cyprien down when the probing became unbearable. When the teaspoons of cognac they gave him every few minutes failed to anaesthetise.

  ‘My grandmother would have made a poultice of mouldy bread and put that on the wound,’ she said. Her voice was frail as feathers. They should perhaps stitch the makeshift bandage into place, she thought. Only, she didn’t have the strength to search out a needle and thread.

  ‘I haven’t seen bread go mouldy since the Germans invaded,’ Henri replied. ‘It’s eaten to the last crumb the day it’s made. Mon Dieu, my back.’ Patting the linen strip bandage to make sure it would hold, he straightened up and stretched. ‘Another day begins. Will you stay here with our patient a while? I must get out to my work. Later I will go to Garzenac and see if word has come in about your next safe house. Though everything is in chaos, it may be ready to receive you. I wish it were not so dangerous for you here.’

  ‘The most perilous part is always the journey,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll be glad when we’ve gone, though. We're dangerous for you. But it’s not so simple…’ She sighed at Cyprien, who lay against his pillows like a man punched to unconsciousness. ‘I’m not sure I can do my job without a wireless operator. Our Romeo isn’t going to be tapping out messages for a while, is he?’ She glanced around Henri’s bedroom, at the discarded napkins and the containers of discoloured water. ‘I suppose I’m a prisoner in this room now. I can’t return to my tower until it’s thoroughly dark again. Do you have books? Some Shakespeare, perhaps?’

  ‘I have the entire works. I admire Shakespeare very much.’

  ‘You have good taste for a Frenchman!’

  ‘I’m working on a book that proves finally that Shakespeare was a Frenchman.’

  ‘A what?’ She staggered to her feet, outrage momentarily blinding her to the glimmer in the dark eyes. ‘Oh, very funny.’ She lobbed a napkin at him. ‘I dare say I will learn to recognise when you’re ribbing me.’ A yawn ambushed her. ‘I have to lie down. I’ll put a cushion on the floor. Why don’t you try and catch some sleep too?’

  ‘I have too much to do outdoors. I must work and supervise the small amount of labour I can get. There are no men, you see. No young ones, anyway. The able-bodied are either prisoners of war, or in forced labour in Germany.’

  ‘I’m glad they didn’t send you away. How has Albert escaped?’

  ‘Not physically fit, a problem with his joints. He was lucky; many frailer young men were dispatched. Me, I am forty-two next birthday.’ A touching defensiveness crept into his face, a shred of that French vanity she’d warned herself against. ‘I am still strong, but my profession makes me t
oo valuable to waste in some factory in the Ruhr. We may be at war, but wine still reigns supreme. My job is to keep it flowing.’

  ‘I’d love to see round your estate.’

  He shook his head regretfully, took her hand, covering it with both of his. His skin was warm and dry. ‘How could I explain your presence to the old men and women who work for me? Please, be patient. I have promised you books, and will bring goose-feather cushions so you rest in comfort while you keep guard here.’ Seeing anxiety cross her face, and perfectly translating it, he nodded. ‘I will ensure Albert stays away from you, though I know you can defend yourself.’

  ‘Can I? I failed against you. You won hands down in the tower room.’ More than hands down. Blushing, she thought of herself astride him, and of the sudden reversal of position. Flipped over like a pancake, him lying across her. Was he picturing the same scene, from his advantage? ‘Had you been an assassin or the Gestapo, I’d have been done for.’

  ‘Next time, you will be faster and more ruthless.’

  ‘Is there going to be a “next time”?’

  ‘That depends.’ His eyes were dark diamonds, pledging his desire to resume their tussle, without a knife blade between them. Nor clothing. Nor a hard floor beneath. She lowered her eyes, then raised them because… Well, who had time for coyness? They were dancing on the lip of an abyss, the rules re-written. Hadn’t they just spent a night together? Working to save Cyprien’s arm, an intimacy had cemented itself between them. They could not retreat from that. She’d never known anyone in her life like Henri de Chemignac. Écharde-the-splinter had embedded himself in her skin. As he held her gaze, she drank in his pledge and her body fizzled with champagne bubbles.