Get hold of yourself.
It was a late night with René that evening. He built a fire in his chamber against the cold and read à Rebours aloud to Eve, occasionally putting down the book to reenact some of Huysmans’s more depraved passages. Eve was more bored by depravity than titillated by it, but Marguerite was suitably wide-eyed and uncertain, and René seemed pleased. “You’re coming along nicely, pet,” he murmured, running a fingertip around her earlobe. “Perhaps we should retire to the country for a while, like Huysmans’s hero, eh? Somewhere warmer than Limoges where we can enjoy ourselves without all this Teutonic dreariness. Grasse is very pleasant this time of year. The smell of flowers comes on the wind from every direction. I always thought I’d retire in Grasse, once I had my fill of the restaurant business. I have a dilapidated bit of property there already, just aching to be built up into a little jewel of a villa someday . . . Would you like to go to Grasse, Marguerite?”
“Anywhere w-w-w-warm,” Eve shivered.
“You’re always cold these days.” René’s hand slowed, tracing over her skin. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
That came closer to surprising Eve into an unguarded reaction than anything in a long time. She barely managed not to flinch in utter revulsion. “No,” she said, and added a fluttery laugh.
“Mmm. If you were, it wouldn’t be a tragedy, pet.” He spread his hand flat over her stomach, his long fingers spanning from hip bone to hip bone. “I’ve never considered myself especially paternal, but a man reaches a certain age and begins to consider his legacy. Or perhaps I’ve merely become pensive in this dreary weather. Turn over, will you?”
I was right not to tell him, Eve thought even as she began moving under his touch. He might have sent her off like some pampered broodmare, and where would she be now?
It was nearly dawn by the time Eve slipped away. There would be no time to sleep—she quickly wrapped up a false package to give herself something to juggle at the checkpoint, and set out for the station. Lili was late, and Eve was suppressing panic by the time she saw the familiar figure slip down from a carriage. It was a cold foggy morning, and the droplets of moisture seemed to cling to Lili’s straw hat, her smoke blue coat. She looked extraordinarily small, striding through the wisps of mist. “We have a problem,” she said, lowering her voice to a murmur no passerby could overhear. “Only one safe-conduct pass to be had. It gives permission to travel to Tournai, but it’s just for one.”
“You t-take it. I don’t need to come.”
“You do, for a report like this. They’ll insist on questioning the source.”
“I’ll go alone, then—”
“You’ve never worked a checkpoint on your own before. The guards are very edgy these days, and they aren’t used to seeing you come and go as they are me. That hitching tongue could get you looked at. If you get into trouble, I want to be there to talk you out of it.” Lili hesitated, gnawing on her lip. “We can’t just let it wait till next week’s rounds, not something important like this. If we bluff our way through on one safe-conduct pass here, we can easily get another in Tournai to get home.”
Eve eyed the German sentries at the station across the street. They looked wet and sullen. In a mood to be spiteful, perhaps, but also cold and miserable enough to be careless. “I say we do it.”
“So do I. Take the pass, little daisy, and get in line—stay three people ahead, and don’t look back.”
A few quick instructions, then Eve moved across the street, making her way through a group of little boys playing tag around the square despite the cold mist. Eve juggled her package, managing a covert glimpse as Lili grabbed the end of a green scarf as it whisked by, reeling in one of the dashing boys. A whisper in the boy’s ear—a coin in his hand too, though Lili concealed that deftly—and the child bolted off again. Lili moved to join the line, and Eve was suddenly so nervous she could hardly stand. She hammered the fear flat.
The sentry honked his nose in a vast handkerchief, clearly fighting off a cold. Eve kept herself small and deferential, handing over her safe-conduct pass without a murmur. He scanned it and waved her through—her blood leaped and she turned her back to the sentries, pretending to tuck the paper back into her pocketbook, but keeping it folded tight and small between gloved fingers. In a moment the little boy with the green scarf bumped past the Germans—they barely noticed the children, except to swat them out of the way—and ran smack into Eve, knocking himself over and the package from her arms.
“Up you go!” Eve set him back on his feet, brushing the mud off his sleeve, and the folded safe-conduct pass slid invisibly up his cuff. “Be more c-careful,” she admonished, her voice sounding horribly stagy to her own ears as she picked up her package, and the child went careening off again. A sprinted circle round the square—Lili must have told him not to move too directly to his target—and then he was bumping into Lili who seized him by the wrist to administer a scolding. Eve watched through her lashes, and even when looking for it, she couldn’t see Lili slip the pass out of the boy’s sleeve. But she had it five minutes later, when she came to the head of the line.
Eve’s heart beat again like a gong as the German sentry flicked his eyes over the safe-conduct pass. It had no identifying photograph, it was just a piece of paper allowing passage—they all looked alike; surely he wouldn’t notice the same one twice . . . Violent relief pierced her as he honked his nose and waved Lili through.
“See?” Lili whispered under cover of the train’s piercing whistle, coming to join Eve. “They are too stupid. Shove any bit of paper under their nose, and you can always get through!”
Eve laughed a bit too giddily in her relief. “Can you find a j-joke in absolutely everything?”
“So far,” Lili said, airy. “Shall we have time to buy silly hats in Tournai, do you think? I long for pink satin . . .”
Eve was still laughing when it happened. Later she wondered if it was her laughter that drew their eyes, if she was too free and easy. Later she wondered, What could I have done? Later she thought, If only—
A German voice sounded behind them, cutting off Eve’s laughter like a knife. “Your papers, Frauleins.”
Lili turned, blond brows rising. This wasn’t the sneezing sentry, but a young captain with a razor-neat uniform. Beads of mist clung to the brim of his cap, and his face was hard and suspicious. Eve saw the nick in his chin where he’d cut himself shaving, saw that he had very pale lashes, and her tongue turned to stone. If she tried to speak she would not get out a single word before it stuttered like one of those Chauchat machine guns mounding up dead soldiers in the trenches . . .
But Lili spoke, and her voice was easy and impatient. “Papers?” Pointing in annoyance to the sentry. “We’ve already shown them there.”