“Well, you shouldn’t. Hazel can think whatever the ruddy hell she wants. The only conscience I happen to care about is yours. What do you think about sharing a hotel with me?”
“I—well, it isn’t as if we have a choice. Because of the train.”
“You do trust me, don’t you?”
“Of course I trust you.”
Some wary expression must have taken shape on my face, because Simon’s mouth split into another, greater smile. “Why, Miss Fortescue! Surely you don’t think I mean to book us a single room, do you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how! I never had a mother to tell me how to conduct myself at a moment like this. I had some vague idea that I was supposed to draw a very firm line. That my mother, if she had lived, would have told me that under no circumstances were lovers to be trusted, that I should never enter a hotel with a man who was not my husband. That a lady’s reputation might be destroyed in an instant, and virtue, once lost, could not be recovered. That kind of thing.
But my mother no longer existed, and Captain Fitzwilliam did. And Captain Fitzwilliam was now Simon, with whom I had just spent the most beautiful hours of my life. We had picnicked in the Versailles gardens; we had wandered among the fountains; we had examined our infinite reflections in the Hall of Mirrors. We had shared dinner in a small café, while pinpricks of light burst around us in the darkness, and now, in that na?ve moment, standing there on the darkening Versailles pavement, I thought I knew Simon Fitzwilliam in the same way that I knew my own soul.
And if I couldn’t trust my own soul, well, what was the point of anything?
I laid my hand on top of his, where it rested against my cheek.
“One room or two,” I said. “It really doesn’t matter.”
In the end, the hotel had plenty of rooms, and Simon booked two of them. The receptionist—a woman of about thirty, wearing a wedding ring like a clamp on her plump fourth finger—didn’t seem to care. She had the glassy look of someone who has more fearful things to worry about than the precise moral rectitude of a paying customer. She handed us a pair of old brass keys and directed us upstairs. If she noticed our lack of baggage, she wasn’t going to mention it.
Our rooms lay across a narrow, dark hall. Even in Versailles, the blackout had to be observed. Simon unlocked my door and ushered me inside. He checked the curtains and turned on the lamp, and the light revealed an unexpectedly pretty room, dressed in pale, flocked wallpaper and upholstered recently in shades of rose and cream. The two brass beds sat against the middle of the wall, side by side, as prim and white as virgins.
“I believe the bathroom’s down the hall,” said Simon, turning to face me.
“Naturally.”
“I am sorry about this, Virginia. Don’t be cross. I’ll telephone Hazel. If there’s any trouble—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not cross at all.”
“You look cross. All stiff and pale.”
“Well, I’m not. It’s an adventure, that’s all. It isn’t as if—”
“What’s that?”
“Isn’t as if we meant this to happen.”
“My God, no.” He smiled. “And even if we did . . .”
“Did you?”
“Of course not. But there are worse things than sharing a hotel with the woman you adore.”
I tried to laugh. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“And you? Do you mind so very much? Sharing a hotel with me?”
“I don’t mind at all. After all—”
“Yes?”
“After all, your leave ends tomorrow.”
“Yes.” He had taken off his hat, and he fingered it now as he glanced toward the window. “That’s true. And you’re joining the American service, so God only knows when we’ll have the chance again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the damned truth, that’s all.” He flung his hat against the wall. “The bloody war. The damned, bloody war. And we’re just two people in it. Multiply this by a million, by ten million.”
“Don’t. There’s no point.”
“You’re right. There’s no point. There’s no point in anything. We’ll walk out of here tomorrow, we’ll board our trains and say good-bye, and my heart’s going to be ripped from my ribs, and what the devil use was all this? I shouldn’t have come to Paris.”
“That’s not true.”
“No, I’ve made things worse. It was just bearable before, knowing you were out there, beautiful and untouchable, like a dream. And now you’re real, and this thing between us is real, and I’ve got to leave, I’ve got to go back to my wretched hut and patch bodies together again, I’ve got to see lawyers and go through hell in court—”
“Simon—”
“—and it’s like having a glimpse of heaven, and then the gate slams shut, and you’re not allowed to go inside, maybe not for a year or more. So maybe it would have been better not to have glimpsed it at all.”
“Well, I think it was worth it.”
He made a noise of exasperation. Ravaged his hair with one hand. Turned and paced to the window, thought better of it, turned back.
I said, “When we were sitting by the canal, cooling our feet, and you were telling me about the gardener—”
“Trevellyn.”
“Trevellyn. And how he told you the names of the plants, and how to graft a seedling, and that was like a revelation, knowing you had the power to make things grow. To make things live. And you don’t know what that meant to me. My father, he was always thinking about how things worked, inanimate things, machines and pieces of metal, but not about how living beings grew and thrived, and you—you’re like . . . you’re like—”
Simon came to a stop in the center of the room and went utterly still. His hand fell away from his hair. His eyes, wide and quite bright, fixed on my face.
I made myself wait, until the seams in my voice had knit back together. “That was worth everything. Just that moment. Even if I never feel that way again, I’ll always be grateful we had so much as that.”
My voice fell apart again, and this time I didn’t try to retrieve it. I didn’t think I could. I never thought I was capable of such a speech, in front of such a man, and that was all. Those were all the words I had.
Not that it mattered. He didn’t seem to have heard me; he just went on staring, not even blinking, as if he’d slipped into a mesmeric trance. Taken gas of some kind, or been bitten by a paralytic spider. He wore his uniform, despite the heat—a man of fighting age couldn’t go anywhere without his uniform, as a matter of general safety—and the collar of his shirt seemed to strangle his tanned neck. So maybe that was it. He wasn’t getting enough air.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“What are you thinking?”
He shook his head. Movement at last! And a smile, small and bashful. “I can’t say.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not the sort of thought one says aloud.”
I flung out my hand. “You said you could trust me with all your thoughts. The dark corners of your soul.”
“Did I say that?”