I drew my hand away from his to lift the cigarette to my lips. “How interesting that you find it interesting, James. Still, I’d like to finish what we started, before we plot ourselves any brand-new shenanigans. I’m just orderly that way.”
Our knees touched, stool to stool. James leaned his elbow intimately on the bar. His eyes were no longer flat and reptilian, but full of whiskey warmth.
“Orderly, are you?”
“Like a nurse with her favorite patient.”
James plucked a chip of ice from his drink and drew it along the back of my hand. “All right, then. Richardson was working with another pair of agents that summer. An American woman and her son. A woman called the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré, except that the young fellow with her wasn’t really her son. He was another agent of ours, an extraordinarily precocious young American chap, who was pretending to be a student of Grant’s for the summer.”
Violet
The carriage is as still as moonlight. Violet rises and sinks on Lionel’s chest, listening to the motionless air.
A distant shout. A faint bang, like a carriage door.
Lionel slides out of the bed and pulls Violet with him. “Get dressed. No, not the pajamas. Your clothes. That’s it.”
She struggles to cover her guilt: her damp belly, her flushed chest. Lionel fastens her stays with calm fingers and hands her her stockings. He tugs on his drawers, his shirt, his trousers. He fastens his braces and slings them over his enormous shoulders. From the valise he takes a dark object and slides it into his waistband. Violet’s breath sticks in her lungs.
Lionel slides on his jacket and snaps the valise shut. “Ready?”
“For what?”
He cracks open the compartment door and glances down the corridor. Violet hears another bang, louder this time, and voices hurrying in urgent German. “Christ,” mutters Lionel. He draws her into the corridor and taps on the compartment next door.
It opens to reveal Henry’s dark head. “Sir?”
“We’re leaving.”
“Leaving?”
Jane’s voice. “The third rendezvous?”
“Yes.”
The door closes. Lionel tugs Violet to the rear end of the wagon-lit just as the steward appears at the opposite end. “Sir? Herr Brown?” he calls.
“Just taking Mrs. Brown for a bit of air!” Lionel calls gaily.
“Sir! You can’t! There is a police matter . . .”
Lionel forces open the door, tosses down the valise, and leaps to the ground. He turns and holds out his arms. “Now, Violet!”
She jumps into his chest, into the warm and shadowed night. Without a pause, he takes her hand and picks up the valise and runs to the edge of a dark-rimmed wood.
? ? ?
VIOLET STUMBLES between the trees, clutching Lionel’s steady hand. “But the steward!” she pants. “Won’t he raise the alarm?”
“Jane will take care of him.”
Ahead, the trees open up into a clearing. The moon has vanished, but the faint light of the rising dawn illuminates the shapes around them. Lionel stops at the edge, takes out his watch, and makes a slow rotation, taking in every shadowy detail of the landscape around them.
Violet sinks atop a fallen log and draws in as much air as she can. They must have run a mile, at least. “Where are we?” she asks.
“Judging by the time and the mountains off to the south, I’d say we’re about fifty miles from the border.”
“Fifty miles!”
He turns and looks at her. “Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing. Just . . . my stays, I suppose . . .”
“Oh, damn. Of course. I’m sorry.” He unbuttons her blouse and pulls it apart, over her shoulders. His fingers find the tapes at the sides of her stays and loosens them. “Better?”
“I won’t ask where you acquired your familiarity with ladies’ underthings.”
“And I won’t ask why the devil you persist in wearing such wretchedly uncomfortable garments.”
“Walter . . .” She stops. Walter likes my waist small and my breasts high. Or rather, Walter liked. What had begun as an effort to please her lover’s exacting taste had become a habit, a vanity she could not quite shake, like the gradual lengthening of her hair. Her small waist and her high breasts had become as essential to her sense of herself, of Violet Schuyler, as her intellect.
Lionel buttons her blouse again. “When we’re in Paris, Violet, replacing your lost wardrobe, you’ll start fresh, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll buy whatever suits you. Because I don’t happen to give a damn what you wear during the day.” He winks a hungry eye and leaves the night unaccounted for.
“Yes.” She smiles. They stand in the middle of an unknown woods, having leapt off a train in the night, pursued by German police, and Lionel is discussing her wardrobe. Making saucy remarks, as if nothing’s the matter, as if everything is well in hand. As if the shops of Paris are only a mile or two away.
He does it on purpose, of course. To keep her calm, to keep her from panicking. We can’t have the lady panicking now, can we?
Lionel picks up the valise. “Off we go, then. Thank God you’ve got sensible shoes, at least.”