“You look stupid,” Violette said matter-of-factly, and Eve glared. She didn’t much like Violette, but there was no doubt she excelled at her job. Evelyn Gardiner was gone; the room’s single badly polished mirror reflected dull-skinned, hungry-looking Marguerite Le Fran?ois.
Eve looked at Marguerite, and performer’s anxiety stabbed her like any actress preparing to step onstage. “What if I f-f—what if I fail? What if Le Lethe’s owner doesn’t hire me?”
“Then we send you home.” Lili wasn’t unkind, merely blunt. “Because we can’t use you anywhere else, little daisy. So go lie your head off, try to get hired, and try not to get shot.”
If René Bordelon was a beast, he had a very elegant den. That was Eve’s first thought as she waited in Le Lethe.
Six girls, Eve included, had assembled among the linen-draped tables and dark paneling, waiting to be interviewed. There had been two more, but they admitted when asked by the ma?tre d’ that they spoke German, and were dismissed at once. “No one working here is to have any fluency in the language of our patrons, who require the utmost privacy in the places where they converse freely.” Eve wondered how the people of Lille could avoid learning German if enemy occupation continued for long, but did not advance the question, merely stating her own firm lie that no, she did not understand a word of German beyond nein or ja, and was waved to a seat to wait.
Le Lethe was an oasis of elegance in drab, downtrodden Lille: the crystal chandeliers gave off a muted glitter, the deep wine red carpet swallowed all footfalls, and the cloths on the tables—spaced perfectly for privacy—were spotless as snow. The front window was distinctively bow shaped and gold scrolled, and overlooked the river De?le. Eve could see why the Germans came to dine here. It was a civilized place to relax after a long day of stamping on your conquered populace.
The air wasn’t civilized at the moment, however. It was tense and savage as the six girls eyed one another, wondering which two would be chosen and which four would go home. Working here meant the difference between eating and not eating—Eve had been in Lille for only a few days, but she already knew what a razor’s edge that was to live on. A month here, and she would be ashy skinned like Violette. Two months here, and her cheekbones would jut out like Lili’s.
Good, she thought. Hunger will keep you sharp.
One by one, the girls were led upstairs. Eve waited, clutching her pocketbook, allowing herself to look nervous, not allowing herself to worry about being hired. She would be hired, and that was all there was to it. She was not going to be sent home a failure before even getting a chance to prove herself a success.
“Mademoiselle Le Fran?ois, Monsieur Bordelon will see you.”
She was led up quiet carpeted stairs to a door of sturdy polished oak. Apparently, René Bordelon lived in a spacious apartment above his restaurant. The door opened to reveal a private study, and it was obscene.
That was the word Eve found as she took it in. Obscene but also beautiful, with a gilt clock upon an ebony mantelpiece, an Aubusson rug, and armchairs of deep mahogany leather. Satinwood bookcases were filled with leather-bound volumes, decorative Tiffany glass, and a small marble bust of a man’s bowed head. The room with its walls hung in jade green silk whispered of money and taste, luxury and self-indulgence. And with the terrible conquered world that was Lille visible through the spotless muslin drapes, such opulence was obscene.
Eve despised that study and its owner before a word was spoken.
“Mademoiselle Le Fran?ois,” René Bordelon said. “Please sit.”
He indicated the second of the deep armchairs. He reclined in his own with boneless elegance, trousers creased to a razor’s edge, snowy shirt and immaculate waistcoat fitted with Parisian precision. He was perhaps forty, lean limbed and tall, hair graying at the temples and swept back from a thin inscrutable face. If Captain Cameron reminded Eve of the consummate Englishman, then René Bordelon was surely the consummate Frenchman.
And yet downstairs every night, he apparently played gracious host to the Germans.
“You seem very young.” M. Bordelon surveyed her as she settled on the edge of her chair. “You are from Roubaix?”
“Yes, monsieur.” Violette, who grew up in that tiny town, had armed Eve with pertinent details if necessary.
“Why did you not stay there? Lille is a large place for an orphan of”—glancing at her papers—“seventeen.”
“There is no work. I thought I might find a job in L-L-Lille.” Eve drew her knees close together, gripping her pocketbook, letting herself look swamped and lost in all this luxury. Marguerite Le Fran?ois would never have seen a gilt clock or a ten-book leather-bound set of Rousseau and Diderot, so she gaped, wide-eyed.
“You may think that to work in a restaurant is simple. The laying of silver, the removal of plates. It is not.” His voice did not flex up and down like normal voices. It was a voice made of metal, slightly chilling. “I require perfection, mademoiselle. In the food that comes from my kitchens, in the servers who convey it to table, in the atmosphere in which it is eaten. I create civilization here—peace in a time of war. A place to forget, for a while, that there is war. Hence the name Le Lethe.”
Eve opened her eyes to their widest and most doelike. “Monsieur, I don’t know what that m-m-means.”
She expected a smile, a patronizing glance, even irritation, but he just studied her.
“I have w-worked in a café before, monsieur.” Eve rushed on as if nervous. “I am d-deft and q-q-quick. I l-learn fast. I work hard. I only want t-t-t-t-t-t—”
She hung up badly on the word. For the past few weeks she hadn’t noticed her own stammer much—perhaps because she did most of her talking with Captain Cameron and Lili, who had the gift of not noticing it either—but now a random syllable stuck behind her teeth and wouldn’t come out, and René Bordelon sat and watched her struggle. Like Captain Cameron, he didn’t rush to finish her sentence for her. Unlike Captain Cameron, Eve didn’t think that was out of courtesy.
Eve Gardiner would have balled her fist and pounded her own thigh in sheer, stubborn fury until the word came loose. Marguerite Le Fran?ois just stuttered into red-faced silence, looking so mortified she could sink through the sumptuously carpeted floor.
“You stammer,” M. Bordelon said. “But I doubt you are stupid, mademoiselle. A halting tongue does not necessarily mean a halting brain.”
Eve’s life would be considerably easier if all people thought this way, but not now, for the love of God. It would be far better if he assumed I was an idiot, she thought, and for the first time her nerves prickled. He should think her stupid. It wasn’t just the stammer—she’d been layering Marguerite for him in precise strokes ever since she walked through the door. If he wasn’t buying the easy camouflage her stutter gave her, she was going to need a different shield. She veiled her eyes with her lashes, pulling confusion around her like a blanket. “Monsieur?”
“Look at me.”