How my mother’s brows had furrowed when she heard I’d signed up for calculus and algebra at Bennington. “I know you like that sort of thing, ma chère—I don’t know how I’ll keep my checkbook balanced with you away in Vermont!—but don’t make too much of it on dates. Don’t do that thing you do, where you add up all the menu prices in your head to see if you can do it faster than the waiter. Boys don’t like that sort of thing.”
Maybe that was why I’d taken the coffee shop job once I got to Bennington. My small rebellion against the litany I’d heard all my life about what was proper, what was suitable, what boys liked. My mother sent me to college to find a husband, but I was looking for something else. Some other path besides the one picked out for me—traveling, working, who knew what. I hadn’t had it figured out yet, but then the Little Problem came along and shot my mother’s plans and mine all to pieces.
“Making change for cups of coffee.” Finn cracked a smile. “That’s a bonny way to spend a war.”
“Not my fault I was too young to be a nurse.” I hesitated, but asked anyway. My stomach was still rolling, and the conversation helped keep my mind off it. “What about your war?” Because everyone’s war was different. Mine was algebra homework, going on the odd date, and waiting every single day for letters from Rose and James. My parents’ war was Victory Gardens and scrap metal drives and my mother fretting about having to put makeup on her legs instead of stockings. And my poor brother’s war . . . Well, he wouldn’t say what it was, but it made him swallow a shotgun. “What was your war like?” I asked Eve’s driver again, blinking James’s face away before it made my throat tighten. “You said you were in the Anti-Tank Regiment.”
“I didn’t get wounded. Had a braw time of it, pure dead brilliant.” Finn was mocking something, but I didn’t think it was me. I wanted to ask, but his face had closed off and I couldn’t bring myself to pry further. I hardly knew him, after all—he was Eve’s man of all work, the Scotsman who made breakfast. I didn’t know if he liked me at all, or was just being polite.
I wanted him to like me. Not just him—Eve too, much as she both baffled and annoyed me. In their company, I had a fresh slate. To them I was Charlie St. Clair, spearhead of the world’s most unlikely search party. Not Charlie St. Clair, complete disgrace and all-around tramp.
Eventually Finn wandered off, and my stomach began churning again. I passed the rest of the journey staring at the horizon and swallowing hard. At last the cry went up—Le Havre!—and I was the first one down to the docks, lugging my traveling case, so glad to be on firm ground that I could have kissed it. It took me a moment to register the scenery around me.
Le Havre showed even more signs of the war than London. The harbor had been bombed flat, I remembered—the storm of iron and fire, they called it. There was still so much rubble, so many missing buildings. More than that, there was a general gray dispiritedness here, a tiredness in the crowds around me. The Londoners I’d encountered seemed to carry themselves with a certain grim humor, as if to say, You still can’t get cream with your scones, but we never did get invaded, eh?
France, despite all the giddiness I’d read about in the papers—General de Gaulle marching down the boulevards of Paris in triumph, the delirious screaming crowds—just looked exhausted.
By the time Eve and Finn had joined me, I had shoved my sudden melancholy away and was fingering the wad of francs I’d acquired in Folkestone. (“Dear, does your father know you’re changing this much money?”) Finn deposited Eve and her dilapidated luggage, then moved off swiftly down the dock to make certain the disembarking crane did not dent his precious Lagonda. “We’ll need a hotel,” I said absently, recounting my francs and staving off a sudden wave of weariness. “Do you know of somewhere cheap?”
“There’s no shortage of cheap in a waterfront city.” Eve looked at me in amusement. “Want to bunk with Finn? Two rooms are cheaper than three.”
“No, thank you,” I said coldly.
“What prudes Americans are,” she chuckled. We stood in silence until the dark blue Lagonda at last rounded the corner purring.
“How did he ever get a car like that?” I wondered, thinking of Finn’s threadbare shirt.
“Probably did something illegal,” Eve said carelessly.
I blinked. “Are you joking?”
“No. You think he works for a bad-tempered bitch like me for fun? Nobody else was about to give him a job. I probably shouldn’t have either, but I have a weakness for good-looking men with Scottish accents and prison terms.”
I nearly fell off my high heels. “What?”
“Haven’t you figured it out?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Finn’s an ex-convict.”
CHAPTER 6
EVE
June 1915
Marguerite Le Fran?ois came in out of the rain and sat down at an isolated corner table in a café in Le Havre: a respectable girl, hatted and gloved, timidly asking the waiter in her northern-accented French for a lemonade. If you looked in Marguerite’s pocketbook you would find all her identity cards in immaculate order: she was born in Roubaix, she had work papers, she was seventeen. Just what else Marguerite was, Eve wasn’t sure yet—the identity was filmy, not yet fleshed out with the details that would make it real. When Captain Cameron—Uncle Edward—put Eve on the boat from Folkestone, all he’d given her was the immaculate packet of false papers; a respectable if threadbare traveling suit and a battered case full of more respectable, threadbare clothes; and a destination. “In Le Havre,” he said on the dock, “you will meet your contact. She will tell you what you need to know, going forward.”
“Is she your shining star?” Eve couldn’t help ask. “Your best agent?”
“Yes.” Cameron had smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. Out of his immaculate khaki uniform and back into his anonymous tweeds. “I can think of no one better to prepare you.”
“I will be just as good.” Eve held his eyes fiercely. “I will make you p-proud.”
“You all make me proud,” Cameron said. “The moment a recruit accepts an assignment, I am proud. Because this isn’t just a dangerous job, it’s dirty and distasteful. Not very sporting, really, to listen at doors and open a man’s mail—even an enemy’s. No one really thinks gentlemen should do such things, even in a time of war. Much less gentlewomen.”
“Rubbish,” Eve said tartly, and Cameron laughed.
“Consummate rubbish. Still, the kind of work we do isn’t much respected, even among those who rely on our reports. There’s no acclaim to be had, no fame, no praise. Just danger.” He tweaked her drab little hat to a better angle over her neatly rolled hair. “So, never fear that you have failed to make me proud, Miss Gardiner.”
“Mademoiselle Le Fran?ois,” Eve reminded him.
“Quite.” His smile faded then. “Be careful.”
“Bien s?r. What is her name, this woman in Le Havre? Your shining star, who I am going to replace?”