He said it so casually, the vulgarity in his perfect toneless voice, that Eve blushed scarlet. Good, she managed to think. Marguerite would blush. Dear God, get me home!
“Are you blushing?” He tilted his head to look down at her, the silver threads at his temples glinting in the moonlight. “I wondered if you would. Your eyes don’t give much away. Windows to the soul? Not so much with you. ‘My girl has eyes, deep, profound, and immense,’” he quoted to Eve’s growing unease. “‘Their flames are thoughts of love mingled with faith, which glitter in their depths—voluptuous or chaste.’” His own eyes were unblinking as they held hers. “I have been wondering about that last part, Mademoiselle Le Fran?ois. Voluptuous or chaste?” He touched a fingertip to her hot cheek. “From the blush, I would say the latter.”
“A lady does not d-d-discuss such things,” Eve managed to say.
“Don’t be bourgeois. It doesn’t suit you.”
Thank God, they had reached Eve’s door. She stepped into the deep overhang and fumbled for her key, feeling a trickle of sweat run the length of her spine under her dress. “G-good night, monsieur,” she said brightly, but he stepped into the shadow of the overhang with her, crowding her unhurriedly back against the door. She couldn’t see his face, but she smelled expensive cologne and hair oil as he bent his head. His narrow mouth brushed lightly, not over her lips but over the hollow at the base of her throat. His tongue was cool as he tasted her skin.
She stood pinned against the door by that feather-fine touch, too stunned to move.
“I wondered how you’d taste,” he said at length, stepping back. “Cheap soap, sweetness beneath. Lily-of-the-valley soap would suit better. Something light, sweet, fragrant, young.”
There was nothing in Eve’s training at Folkestone, her reams of advice from Lili, or her previous lives in London or Nancy that suggested any kind of response. So she said nothing, standing still as an animal caught in bright light. He will leave. He will leave, and you can sit on the bed and compile your report for Lili. The kaiser is coming to Lille. But the glory of that golden information had left her for the moment. She didn’t dare even bring it fully into her mind with René Bordelon’s razor-sharp eyes so close to hers.
He hooked his silver-headed cane over his arm, tipping his hat to her. A perfect gentleman’s farewell. “I would like to have you,” he said conversationally. “An odd choice for me; I don’t normally like raw virgins or cheap soap, but you have a certain ungroomed elegance. Consider it.”
Oh, sweet God, Eve thought. And didn’t move until he replaced his hat and began his elegant saunter back down the street.
One of her neighbors must have been awake, because a window creaked open two houses down. Eve had a moment to be glad of the deep overhang—no one could have seen her getting her throat licked by a man who was known to take brandy with the Kommandant. Bile rose in Eve’s throat, and she reached up to scrub at the moistened hollow in her collarbone.
Safely hidden by darkness, Eve’s neighbor called down at René Bordelon’s retreating figure. “Collaborator!” the hiss came, and spittle landed in the street.
He turned and raised his hat to his unseen assailant. “Bon soir,” he said with a small bow, and his soft chuckle sounded through the night.
Parbleu, little daisy, well done!” Lili grinned at Eve’s report. “Two more weeks and a lucky air raid, and this war could be done!”
Eve smiled, but her triumph tonight was muted. “The kaiser’s councilors, his industrialists, anyone profiting from the fight would press to continue.” A machine like a war was a vast thing, not easily stopped once set in motion; Eve knew that.
“If the bastard’s dead, that’s the beginning of the end. I’ll be off in the morning as soon as curfew lifts.” Lili stowed the message in the lining of her sewing bag—she was Marie the seamstress tonight, with Marie’s papers, props, and mannerisms—and began unhooking her buttoned boots. “I’m not passing this one off to a courier. I’ll take it to Folkestone myself. Perhaps buy a morally questionable hat while I’m in a country where I can wear it. Though one has to wonder if you English can do morally questionable anything, even hats . . .”
“You can g-get to England?” That surprised Eve. She already couldn’t believe how fast and how effortlessly Lili passed from German-held France to Belgium and back. The distance might be small but the territory bristled with danger, yet Lili seemed to ghost right through the danger. Could she even ghost across the Channel now?
“Bien s?r.” Lili’s voice was muffled as she changed with brisk efficiency beneath the cover of a voluminous old nightdress. “I’ve been three, four times this year.”
Eve fought down a sudden surge of homesickness for Folkestone, its sandy English beaches and boarded English piers and Captain Cameron’s English tweeds and warm eyes. Eyes that actually blinked on occasion, and didn’t make her skin crawl like sharp French eyes . . . Eve gave a shake of her head, dismissing the stab of jealousy that Lili had seen Cameron more recently than she. “If you’re traveling to England tomorrow, you take the bed.” They had an established routine now when Lili needed to rest in Lille: she was Eve’s friend, a sewing maid come to visit, staying overnight rather than violating curfew. They’d run this act past two German inspections, and seeing Lili melt into Marie who was even dimmer than the corn-blond Christine was truly fascinating.
“I won’t argue.” Lili dropped the folded pile of her shirtwaist and skirt and flopped down, telling some story of how she crossed over into Lille this morning. “I had a report from a source in Lens tucked into the pages of a magazine—would you believe I dropped it coming off the train?” A decidedly wicked laugh as she shook her fair hair down. “A German soldier retrieved it for me, bless him.”
Eve smiled, making herself a pallet of blankets next to the narrow bed, but the smile was an effort. She hadn’t been smiling very much since last night, and Lili, in the middle of another story, seemed to notice.
“All right, what’s wrong with you?”
Eve looked at the leader of the Alice Network. In her old nightdress, Lili appeared far younger than her thirty-five years, her blond hair bushy and wild like that of a little girl who had been playing rough all day. But her eyes were old and knowing, and the sharp edges of her cheekbones pressed against her paper-thin skin. Don’t burden her, Eve thought with a pang that hit straight under the breastbone. She suddenly understood Violette’s grim protectiveness, because now Eve felt it too. Lili carried so much, and she made the burden look light—but it was wearing her thin as a blade.
“Merde,” Lili said in exasperation. “Out with it!”
“It’s not important—”
“Let me be the judge of that. You’re no good to me if you crack up.”