The general kissed Lili’s hand, his stars and medals flashing. “You need no stack of silk roses to dazzle, mademoiselle.”
Lili (Louise?) dimpled at him, and even in the midst of dizzying shock, Eve marveled at how completely the leader of the Alice Network had altered herself. Her smile was now a flash of confidence, her chin had a proud angle, and with a tip of a finger her dismal boater sank over one eye at a dashing angle just like any of those cartwheel-size mounds of gauze she’d left in train compartments all over France. Her voice was liquid-pure French aristocrat—down-on-her-luck aristocrat, perhaps, but the court drawl was unmistakable as she said, “Such is always my luck. I meet the crown prince of Bavaria in last year’s lace!” A flick for her old blouse. “Princess Elvira would never let me forget it.”
“My cousin was always very fond of you. Remember that game of chess we played in her drawing room in Holleschau, the night of—”
“Yes! And you won. Encircled my knights from behind and pried my king out of his castle. I should not be surprised you command the Sixth Army now, Your Royal Highness . . .”
More chatter. No one had glanced at Eve, not the general nor his aides nor Lili. Eve clutched her armload of packages and shifted behind Lili like a maid. In a drab hat of her own, with none of Lili’s sparkle, she undoubtedly resembled a servant. The train, she saw with a shiver of fear, was leaving.
“What are you doing in Lille, Mademoiselle de Bettignies?” the general asked, oblivious to the train or his hovering aides. Laugh lines grew at the corners of his eyes, and his smile was avuncular. If he weren’t one of the best leaders at the kaiser’s disposal, Eve would probably have liked him. “Such a dreary place!”
You made it dreary, Eve thought, and any possibility of liking disappeared.
“On my way into Belgium to see my brother. If I can even get across the border now, mon Dieu, my train has gone . . .” Lili made a comic face of despair, a tragic columbine clown, and the general immediately snapped for one of his hovering aides.
“A car for Mademoiselle de Bettignies and her maid. You will be escorted across by my own driver.”
“If mademoiselle has her identity cards,” the aide said, and Eve froze. The only cards Lili had were for an imaginary cheese seller named Vivienne, and if she was caught with them while claiming to be someone else—
But Lili stood laughing, perfectly at ease as she rummaged through her handbag. “I have them somewhere—” Upending a handkerchief, a few keys, a scatter of hairpins. “Marguerite, do you have my papers?”
Eve knew what to do then: begin laboriously opening every package in her arms, shaking her head like a slow-witted country girl, all as the general looked on amused and his aides shifted from foot to foot. “Your Royal Highness,” one murmured, “the Kommandant awaits . . .”
“No need for papers, I know Mademoiselle de Bettignies perfectly well.” The general looked sad as he kissed her hand. “From more peaceful days.”
“Happier days,” Lili agreed, and when the car pulled up before the station, the general handed her in himself. Eve, scarcely knowing what to think, scrambled in behind her, still juggling packages. The car’s seats were richly cushioned; the smell of expensive leather overlaid motor oil. Lili fluttered her handkerchief out the window at the general, and then the doors shut and they were gliding away. In much greater luxury than a cramped train car.
Lili didn’t speak. Her eyes touched on the driver, and then she made a fussy comment or two about the heat like any aristocratic lady traveling in summer. The questions rising in Eve’s throat were choking her, but she looked at her lap as a lady’s maid should. The car remained silent as they crossed into Belgium. In the car of a general—and a crown prince, no less—they were waved straight through the checkpoints. Though the driver offered to take them to their destination, Lili refused with a charming smile and asked to be dropped at the nearest train station. A much smaller place than the station in Lille, just a platform with a few benches.
“Merde,” she said as they watched the gleaming car disappear back up the road. “I wouldn’t mind a ride all the way to Brussels—mon Dieu, I’m sick of trains!—but leading a German general’s aide to Uncle Edward’s doorstep would probably be frowned upon, no?”
Eve was silent. She didn’t even know where to begin. The platform was hot and dusty; they were alone except for an old woman dozing on the other side, well out of earshot.
Lili dropped onto the nearest bench, setting her valise beside her. “So, little daisy,” she said matter-of-factly. “Are you going to accuse me of being a German spy, just because the general of the Sixth Army happens to know me by sight?”
“No.” That had flashed briefly across Eve’s mind at the general’s first smile, she felt ashamed to admit, but now she shook her head. If she knew nothing else, she knew that Lili was no double agent.
“Well, now you know my real name.” Lili smiled, tugging off her gloves. “Very few in the network do. Just Violette and Uncle Edward.”
Violette, loyal lieutenant that she was, would kill Eve slowly if she ever endangered their leader by revealing her identity. Eve accepted the secret, turning it over. “Louise de Bettignies. Who is she, then?”
“The daughter of minor French nobility, who really should have been an actress, given how much she adores putting on new identities.” Lili took out a handkerchief, blotting her forehead in the morning heat. “But the daughters of minor French nobility do not become actresses, my dear.”
“What do they d-do, then?”
“When they come from families as poor as church mice? Become governesses for the children of lecherous Italian lords and Polish counts and Austrian princesses.” Louise shuddered. “Bullets, let me tell you, are quite preferable to pounding French verbs into a lot of snobbish little heirs to crumbling castles and defunct coats of arms.”
Eve felt her way, cautious but ravenously curious. “And how did Louise de Bettignies come to know the crown prince of Bavaria? Teaching his children?”
“Those of his cousin, Princess Elvira. Bitch. Face like a potato, temper like a prison wardess. Her lock-jawed children were dumb as paint and thought they owned the earth. My training turned out to be useful; governesses get plenty of practice lurking and eavesdropping. But still—” A sigh. “It was so dull. I’d tell myself that at least I wasn’t hauling coal in a mine shaft or working eighteen hours in a laundry getting my fingers crushed by mangles. But I was so tired of it all, it was coming down to a choice: heave myself under a train like Anna Karenina, or become a nun. I did think rather seriously about a nunnery, but really, I’m far too frivolous.”
The drone of summer insects rose all around them; the heat baked down and the old woman across the tracks snored on her bench.