I reached behind me and hoisted myself up to sit on the Lagonda’s long hood. It put me almost level with Finn when he turned to face me, as I leaned forward to fit my mouth carefully, gently, against his. His lips were soft and his jaw rough, just like the first time I’d tried to kiss him. Just like the first time, his hands rose to my waist—but this time I broke off the kiss before he could move back. I didn’t think I could stand it if he pushed me away again.
But he didn’t. He lowered his head back to mine, catching my lips and lingering. His hands were big and warm on either side of my waist, pulling me closer against him on the edge of the Lagonda’s hood. I let my hands slide into his rumpled hair where they’d been aching to go, and his hands slipped under the edge of my new striped jersey. He didn’t go lunging upward from there, just ran the backs of his fingers very slowly up and down the bare sides of my waist as we kissed. I was trembling all over by the time we pulled apart.
“I got engine grease on you,” he said, looking down at his oil-stained hands. “Sorry, lass.”
“It’ll wash off,” I managed to say. I didn’t want to wash him off me, his smell or his taste or his engine grease. I wanted to keep kissing him, but it was an open street and the misty drizzle was going to be rain soon, so I slid down from the car and we turned and wandered back into the hotel. Come up to my room, I wanted to say, come up with me—but the night porter was giving us one of those very French looks, an impassive expression over knowing eyes. “Bon soir, Monsieur Kilgore,” he greeted Finn, eyes flicking to the hotel register where we’d signed in. “Madame McGowan.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered as I thumped back into my solitary room. “I have not only ruined Miss Charlie St. Clair’s reputation, I have officially ruined Mrs. Donald McGowan’s.” My Donald would have been shocked.
CHAPTER 20
EVE
July 1915
René’s gift, offered with a flourish shortly after Eve returned from her journey, was a silk robe. Rose red, fine enough to slip through a ring—but not new. It smelled vaguely of a woman’s perfume, some woman who undoubtedly saw it seized in a requisition raid, and now it had ended up on Eve’s back.
She imagined the kaiser’s train blowing to bits, let it give her pleasure, let that pleasure show on her face as she rubbed her cheek against the silk. “Thank you, m-monsieur.”
“It suits you.” He leaned back, clearly pleased that she was now suitably outfitted for her surroundings. Eve found herself darkly amused by his aesthetic relief. They were in his opulent study; he wore one of his beautiful dressing gowns, as he usually did while waiting for Eve to finish bathing away any possible food smells from a long night’s shift. Now that she had come out in a silk robe rather than a towel or her black work dress, she was no longer an eyesore.
“I’ve a mind to take you away somewhere.” He unstoppered his decanter of elderflower liqueur, pouring the usual modest measure for himself, and the generous one that would make Marguerite’s head spin. “I dislike hurried nighttime trysts. I have been planning a short journey to Limoges soon. I may take you with me.”
Eve sipped. “Why Limoges?”
“Lille is dreary.” He made a face. “It will be pleasant to walk down a street that does not have a German name. And I am thinking of opening a second restaurant. Limoges may prove to be the place. I will take a weekend to inspect suitable locations.”
A weekend with René Bordelon. It wasn’t the thought of the nights that made Eve shudder, it was the days. Long suppers, cups of tea, afternoon walks at his side, having to sift every word and guard every reaction. She would be exhausted long before she got to the linen sheets, and what happened between them.
Half a chess game and two glasses of fragrant elderflower fire later, they retired to the bedroom. A suitable interval after things were concluded there, Eve slipped back into her work dress and prepared to go home. Watching her dress, René gave a small tsk. “This rushing out before the sheets grow cold,” he said. “Most uncivilized.”
“I don’t w-want there to be talk, monsieur.” Not to mention the fact that Eve didn’t dare doze off in his presence. What if she muttered German or English in her sleep, or something else she couldn’t explain away? It didn’t bear thinking about. If you spend the night with him in Limoges, you will have to think about it. “There will be gossip in town if I don’t go home at nights,” she said, sliding into her stockings. “The b-baker pisses in the dough he uses to bake for the women who . . . go with the Germans.”
René looked amused. “I am not a German, my dear.”
You’re worse. A French Judas who betrayed his own for profit—Germans were hated in Lille, but men like René Bordelon were loathed with an even brighter passion. When the Germans lose this war, you will be the first strung up from a lamppost. “I’ll still be s-scorned,” Eve hedged. “Threatened.”
A shrug. “If anyone threatens you, give me their names. They will be reported to the Germans and find themselves with a ruinous fine or jail time, perhaps worse. The Kommandant would oblige me, being eager to reduce discord among the civilians.”
The thought that someone might be hauled to a cell or fined to the point of starvation on his whisper did not seem to trouble René in the slightest. Eve had overheard him several times passing names to German officers over the dinner brandy: people who displeased him, who hoarded requisitioned supplies, who spoke out against the invaders. But to hear the suggestion tossed out as casually as this . . . She studied his expression wonderingly. It really did not stir his conscience at all.
“Are you really still so shy, my pet?” He tilted his head. “Too shy to let people know you are now mine?”
“I just don’t want b-bread with piss in it,” Eve whispered, as if in an agony of embarrassment. Really, it was horror.
René looked as though hovering between a chuckle or a frown at her honesty. To Eve’s relief, he decided on a chuckle. “Eventually, Marguerite, I’ll teach you to be indifferent to what people think. It’s very freeing, to care for no one’s opinion but your own.” He looked urbane even when naked, his flesh pale and smooth against the linens. “Limoges soon—I’ll take you with me. You may concoct some story for the staff about an aunt taken ill, if you wish. I shall be publicly displeased with you.”
“Thank you, monsieur.” But Eve had no intention of going with him to Limoges. In two more days, if all went well, the kaiser would be dead and the world would be remade.