“Anyway,” Lili concluded. “That’s Louise de Bettignies. But she isn’t really me, anymore. I’ve become Lili instead, and I like her far better.”
“I can understand why.” Louise de Bettignies sounded rather grand and a little silly, a woman with a lace bertha and no skills besides pretty handwriting. It didn’t match frail little Lili at all, with her darting gaze and her false-bottomed bag lined with half the secrets of the German army. “I’ll never let it slip, Lili. Not to anyone.”
A smile. “I trust you, little daisy.”
Eve smiled back, the trust warming her to her bones.
“Merde,” Lili sighed again. “This goddamned train, will it ever get here?” And they never mentioned it again.
The train ride was dismal but short, the excitement of their encounter with the general slowly fading to leave Eve with her brooding thoughts of René and last night. Eve didn’t bother to track the streets they traversed on the way to the meeting point. She had no desire to be able to identify this house with the faded blue door where they were quickly ushered inside.
Lili had gone into Uncle Edward’s study first. Eve waited in the sitting room outside, watched by a weedy young lieutenant. Lili came out, dropped a wink. “In you go. I’m going to hunt down some brandy.” She leaned close, speaking in Eve’s ear so the lieutenant couldn’t overhear. “Our dear uncle seems quite eager to see you. Perhaps more than just professionally eager—”
“Lili!” Eve hissed, looking at the lieutenant.
“If you catch our good captain with his clothes off or his guard down, ask why he took that prison sentence for his dreary wife,” Lili whispered as a parting shot. “I’m dying to know!” Eve entered her questioning session with burning ears.
“Miss Gardiner.” Captain Cameron rose, and Eve stopped short. She didn’t know if it was the sound of her own name, which she hadn’t heard for what seemed like forever, or if it was the sight of him. I forgot what you looked like. She’d thought she remembered him very well: the thin English face, the sandy hair, the tapered hands. But she’d forgotten the little things, like the way he crossed his trousered legs loosely at the knee as he reseated himself, the way he interlaced those lean hands and smiled clear to the corners of his eyes. “Do sit down,” he prompted, and Eve realized she was still standing in the doorway. She sat in the straight-backed chair across the table from him, taking time to settle her skirts.
“It is good to see you, Miss Gardiner.” He smiled again, and Eve had a flash to their first conversation in the boardinghouse parlor. Could it really be only two months ago? What a great deal could happen in two months. Like a pair of cool French hands exploring the sides of her ribs last night, the soft hollows of her elbows and wrists, the insides of her thighs, no, she was not going to think about that. Not here.
Cameron looked at her over his tented fingertips, and a line appeared between his brows. “Are you well? You look . . .”
“Thinner? We d-don’t eat much in Lille.”
“More than that.” That trace of a Scottish lilt in his voice; she’d forgotten that as well. “How are you coping, Miss Gardiner?”
Spiderlike fingers unhurriedly tracing her earlobes. “Very well.”
“Are you certain?”
Narrow lips tracing the cup of her navel, the spaces between her fingers. “I do w-w-w—I do what is necessary.”
“It is part of my job to evaluate our people, not just take their information.” That line between Captain Cameron’s eyes hadn’t gone away. “Your work has been superb. Alice Dubois—what?”
“Nothing, Captain. I call her Lili. The day we m-met, she said ‘Alice Dubois’ sounded like a skinny schoolmistress with a face like a b-b-bin.”
He laughed. “Yes, she would. She was unstinting in her praise for you, just now. You’ve done top-class work, but”—his eyes penetrated—“the toll of that can be high.”
“Not for me.” Kisses with open eyes still staring, staring, staring. Eve met Cameron’s gaze, making sure her hands didn’t clench in her lap. “I was m-made for this.”
Captain Cameron still stared, taking in every detail of Eve’s face. He wasn’t in uniform, just an old suit with the jacket thrown over the chair and shirtsleeves rolled to show lean wrists—but as much as he looked like a university professor, it would be dangerous to forget that he was an interrogator. He could slip information out of you before you even knew it was passing your lips.
So Eve gave a cheerful smile, the good-sport girl who keeps a stiff upper lip through everything. “I thought we were here to talk about the k-k-k”—a fist against her knee, to release the word—“the kaiser’s visit, Captain?”
“Yours were the first set of ears to hear of it. Tell me, from the beginning.”
Eve relayed the details again, crisp and concise. He listened, taking notes. He blinked now and then. So nice to see a man who could blink.
He sat back, surveying his notes. “Anything else?”
“The kaiser’s arrival time has just changed—he’ll be an hour later than planned.”
“That’s new. Where did you hear it?”
“W-waiting tables.” From René, after he finished but before he pulled out of me. He likes to stay there awhile, until his sweat cools, so he’ll just begin . . . chatting.
Captain Cameron caught something in her eyes. “What is it, Miss Gardiner?”
How Eve liked hearing her own name again, especially from his lips. She liked it so much, she knew it wasn’t a good idea. “You had better keep calling me M-Marguerite Le Fran?ois,” she said. “Safer.”
“Very well.” The questions about the kaiser’s visit continued—Captain Cameron examined it from all angles, isolating every detail Eve could offer. He extracted one or two things she hadn’t thought of, and seemed pleased. “That should do it,” he said, rising. “You have been a very great help.”
“Thank you.” Eve rose. “Tell the RFC not to miss. Tell them to b-bomb that train to shards.”
Her intensity kindled an answering fire in his gaze. “Agreed.”
As she turned for the door she heard his voice again with its faint Scottish lilt. “Be careful.”
“I am careful.” She set her hand to the doorknob.
“Are you? Lili worries. She worries for all her contacts, since she’s a bit of a mother hen. But she says you’re walking a very tight wire.”
René’s lean weight coming down in the dark. “As you say, she’s a mother hen.”
His voice came closer. “Eve—”
“Don’t call me that.” She whirled around, advancing until they stood nose to nose. “It’s not my name anymore. I’m Marguerite Le Fran?ois. You made me into Marguerite Le Fran?ois. I’m not going to be Eve again until this war is over or until I am dead. Do you hear me?”
“There’s no need for anyone to die. Be careful—”