“I hadn’t thought of that before,” she admitted.
“You make an excellent point, Monsieur Howard,” étienne said. “It is most unfair. I shall ask the ma?tre about it on Monday.”
“Oh, don’t,” Helena pleaded. “What if he should take offense? He might expel you from class.”
“I doubt it—you know how he adores me. Even today, when he was in such a temper, he still had praise for me.”
“We have our life drawing class on Friday mornings,” she explained for Sam’s benefit. “Today the model was an ancien combattant, and he had trouble maintaining his pose. Ma?tre Czerny was frightfully rude to him. But étienne calmed everyone down.”
“Yes, well . . . I’m a peace-loving man. And I could see that Daisy was creating something quite remarkable with her drawing. I didn’t want her work cut short.”
They all looked to Daisy, who was blushing furiously.
“It was lovely. I ought to have said so earlier,” said Helena.
“Thank you. I, ah . . . I spent some time among the wounded,” Daisy stammered. “Years ago, that is. During the war.” Her eyes darted to Louisette, who was sitting at a table near the door, her sharp gaze ever watchful. They were too far away for the woman to overhear their conversation, so why was Daisy so apprehensive?
The conversation over lunch was unremarkable, turning on the falling franc, the League of Nations, and the rising cost of bread. Sam listened, asked questions when the discussion faltered, and ate every scrap of his enormous serving of cassoulet. When his friends progressed from beer to brandy, he instead ordered a café allongé. “Keeps me awake,” he explained. “Was up early this morning.”
Daisy left as soon as she’d finished her soup, fearful that her father would worry, and though Helena was sorry to see her leave it was also a relief to be rid of Louisette. In Daisy’s absence étienne and Mathilde switched to French, which they spoke so rapidly that Helena could only make out one word in ten. Sam’s friends had moved on from horse racing to baseball, but he ignored this new conversation and simply sipped his coffee.
“Hold still,” he said. “I just noticed something.”
Reaching across the table, to a glass of ice water Daisy had left untouched, he dampened the corner of his napkin and touched it to her temple. “There’s a smudge of paint here,” he explained. “I only saw it now, when you tucked your hair behind your ear.”
“You don’t have to . . .”
“All done. I have to go to work now, but I’m off tomorrow. Will you come to dinner with me?”
His manner was so appealingly open and straightforward, and it really did seem that he wished to be friends. Nothing more; simply her friend.
“I . . . yes. Yes, I will.”
“Do you want me to come to your aunt’s house?”
“You don’t . . . I mean, there’s no need. It’s out of your way, I’m sure. I’ll take a taxi.”
“Fine. Let’s go to Chez Rosalie. Rue Campagne Première. Seven o’clock?”
“Yes, seven is good.”
“Until tomorrow, Ellie. I hope you don’t change your mind—but if you do, send me a petit bleu.”
Chapter 13
Helena’s taxi turned off the boulevard du Montparnasse onto the dark and narrow rue Campagne Première. Peering through the window, she could just make out CHEZ ROSALIE in faded lettering on an old-fashioned storefront near the corner. A man stood outside, his shoulders hunched against the rain, and though his face was in shadow she knew it was Sam.
“Ici, s’il vous pla?t,” she told the driver. She paid her fare and went to open the door, but Sam was there already, taking her arm as she stepped down onto the cobbled street.
“You didn’t have to wait outside,” she chided. “You must be soaked through.”
“I’m fine. The sign’s hard to read at night. Didn’t want you to miss it.” He held up an umbrella, still tightly furled, and made a show of tucking it under his arm. “And this isn’t rain, besides. More like one of your London fogs. Didn’t even bother to put up my umbrella.”
“How very stoic of you. Shall we go in? I can smell something delicious.”
“Everything here’s good. It doesn’t look like much, but I think you’ll like it. Rosalie is a real character, that’s for sure.”
He guided her through the door and several steps down, into an establishment that might charitably be described as modest. Four long marble-topped tables, with room at each for eight stools, took up nearly all the space; at the back, through a single door, came the sounds and smells of a busy kitchen.
A large man, his apron none too clean, was wiping glasses at a bar to their right. Recognizing Sam, he threw down his cloth and came rushing over. He greeted Sam in Italian, which Helena understood only imperfectly, and in short order had seated them at a table, which they shared with six other diners, and brought them a basket of bread and a carafe of red wine.