“I am, aren’t I?” Somehow, over the course of this week, money matters had matter-of-factly become my domain, even if I was the youngest one here. Finn and Eve automatically looked to me to haggle with hotel clerks over room rates; receipts were passed promptly to my hands for proper calculation; spare coins and cash came to me to be organized since my traveling companions would otherwise let everything float loose in a mess of pocket change and pencil stubs. “Honestly, you two,” I scolded as I scribbled on the bill for the drinks. “Eve up to her neck in espionage skills and you able to keep that car running on spit and baling wire, Finn, and neither of you can calculate a tip without ten minutes’ figuring and a scratch pad.”
“Easier if we just let you do it,” Finn said. “Wee little adding machine, you are.”
I grinned again, remembering the London banker who thought me too young and stupid to manage my own money. Here I was managing money for three. It made me wonder what else I could manage.
I turned my false wedding ring around my finger, imagining myself sitting behind a well-organized till, dish towel tucked into my narrow trousers, hair chopped smartly at the chin. I imagined Rose with her blond curls and chic black dress, presiding with me as French jazz played and two babies crowed—not just Little Problems but Growing Problems with fat little feet, gabbling in both French and English . . .
I imagined Mrs. Donald McGowan and Madame étienne Fournier, both of them doing fine. Just fine.
CHAPTER 18
EVE
July 1915
Eve had never seen Lili so exasperated. “Focus, little daisy! Your mind is a thousand miles away.”
“I’ll f-focus,” Eve promised, but all she could think was, I’m sore.
Not very sore. René Bordelon had taken some care not to hurt her. Not overwhelming care—just as much as didn’t interfere with his own enjoyment—but care, yes. There had been a little blood, but not a great deal of pain. That will be all, Eve thought when she was permitted to dress and go home. One more night working, then the morning train with Lili to Brussels and Captain Cameron, the report on the kaiser’s visit to Lille. She would not have to think about René until after that.
But he kept her the next night too, after her shift was done, which had shocked her. “I know I should give you more time to heal,” he said with his faint smile. “But you are very tempting. Do you mind?”
“No,” Eve said, because what else could she say? So there was a second time, and she rose from bed afterward and dressed as René watched her.
“I look forward to your return,” he’d said. Sitting up in bed, extraordinarily long fingers pleating the sheet about one knee.
“As d-d-d—As do I,” Eve replied, keeping an eye upon the clock, ticking toward four in the morning. She was scheduled to meet Lili at Lille Station in less than four hours. “But I’m afraid I m-must go. Thank you”—never forget the gratitude—“for the day off f-f-from work, monsieur.”
He didn’t ask her to call him René, even though he’d taken full possession of her name. He just smiled as she shrugged into her coat. “How little you ever really say, Marguerite. Most women are such cackling hens. ‘Silent one, I love you all the more because you run from me . . .’”
Eve didn’t have to ask the poet. Baudelaire, she thought. It’s always bloody Baudelaire. And not four hours later she had gone to meet Lili, not composed and cautious and focused on the task ahead, but short of sleep and smelling like René Bordelon.
And sore.
Eve was careful not to let that show in her walk as they hurried to the train station. Lili would have to know at some point, but not now when she was focused on getting them through a border crossing. And Captain Cameron would not know at all. Eve Gardiner was not trading her virginity for a trip back to England away from the fight. She was going back to René’s bed because even after just two nights, she already knew that he liked to talk over a pillow. There was the bit he’d let slip about the German flier Max von Immelmann; there were a few more details on the kaiser’s upcoming visit. Oh yes, René talked in bed, and Eve intended to listen. As for the rest . . . Well, she would get used to it, that was all.
“Not good,” Lili muttered, and Eve realized she’d gone into a daze again. Focus, she snapped to herself, and saw what worried Lili. The station platform swarmed with German officers, German soldiers, German officials. Eve’s gloved palms began to sweat.
“Has someone been taken?” she murmured inaudibly. The great fear in the Alice Network was that one of Lili’s sources would be arrested, made to tell what they knew. They were all careful to know as little as possible, but—
“No,” Lili murmured back, craning discreetly through the shuffle of uniforms. “It’s some stuffed shirt of a general getting a grand welcome. Of all the days . . .”
They pressed their way toward the sentry checking tickets and identity cards, but the crush was fierce, and the train already there, chuffing like a horse impatient to be off, and the sentries were meticulous with so much high brass on the platform. “Let me do the talking,” Lili said. She was Vivienne the cheese seller today, with a straw boater and a high-throated blouse of worn lace, and the story was prepared: she would address the guards while Eve had an armload of packages ready to juggle and drop so they were more inclined to be impatiently waved through. But eyes were lingering fiercely on anyone not in a German uniform, and the lines inched along. We cannot miss that train, Eve thought, gnawing her lip until Lili got to the front of the line. She was just reaching for her identity cards when a German-accented voice called out in French.
“Mademoiselle de Bettignies! Can that be you?”
Eve saw the German first, over Lili’s shoulder—mustached, perhaps forty-five, his hair combed to a point on his forehead. He glittered gold and rank: heavy epaulettes, a double row of medals, and Eve recognized him: Rupprecht, crown prince of Bavaria, Generalloberst of the Sixth Army and one of the best generals the Fritzes had. He had visited Lille three weeks ago, Eve remembered with frozen clarity, and dined at Le Lethe where he complimented both René Bordelon’s tarte Alsacienne and the German airfield’s new Fokker Eindecker aircraft. Eve, pouring his brandy, had stored away his comments about the Fokker.
And now here he was, bearing down on them both in a crowd of German aides, his hand falling on Lili’s shoulder as he exclaimed, “Louise de Bettignies, it is you!”
For an instant Lili still faced away from him, her hand half out of her handbag with the identity cards of Vivienne the cheese seller—and Eve saw her eyes go blank. Only for a split second, and then Lili swept Vivienne’s cards back into the bag like a gambler flicking away a losing hand. Her shoulders straightened as she turned, her smile dialed from Vivienne’s eager-to-please smirk up to something far more brilliant, and she dropped a curtsy Eve was fast to imitate. “Your Royal Highness! You know very well how to flatter a lady, knowing her only from the back of her neck under an exceedingly unattractive hat!”