“Make me forget,” Eve whispered. “Make me forget, Cameron—” And he broke. He broke like a wall collapsing, pulling Eve against him with a stifled groan, and then they were drinking each other down, openmouthed and frantic. Eve pulled him to the bed before he could come to his senses, slipping the shirt from his shoulders. This was underhanded and wrong; she knew that. She didn’t start this out of passion, but because she meant to stop him from blocking her return to Lille. But that didn’t mean passion wasn’t there alongside the calculation, because truth was what made the best lies real. And the truth was that Eve had wanted Cameron for a very long time, since he looked at a stuttering file girl and saw a spy.
“Christ, Eve,” he said with agony in his eyes as he peeled her shirtwaist and chemise away and saw the bruises marking her bare arms from where the German guards had seized her. “Those filthy brutes—” He kissed each bruise, his hands spanning her ribs. “You’re too thin,” he breathed between kisses. “You poor brave girl—”
Eve pressed up to meet him, twining her legs through his, pulling him deep. She could probably fool him into thinking he was her first—she probably should fool him, act shy and awkward. It would be the wise thing, but she could not stand to act out another lie, not here. She didn’t act for René when it was his cool-skinned marble weight moving over her, and she wouldn’t act now when the man in her arms was freckle-shouldered and lanky, with a voice like a mist from Scotland, a man who actually closed his eyes when he kissed her. She wrapped herself around him, closing her own eyes and losing herself, and when it was done she found herself weeping silently in his arms.
“I know,” he said in a quiet voice, fingers stroking through her loose hair. “Believe me, Eve—I know. I’ve seen people I cared for captured too.”
She looked up at him, letting the tears fall. “Who?”
“A boy named Léon Trulin, one of my recruits. Not even nineteen . . . Arrested a few weeks ago. And there have been others.” Cameron passed a hand slowly through his gray-salted hair. “I never get used to it. This is a filthy business.”
It was a filthy business, and Eve was going right back to it, but hopefully she could distract him from that for a few hours yet. She turned in his arms, so close that her damp lashes brushed his cheek. “Is there tea?” she asked earnestly. “All I’ve had for months is boiled walnut leaves.”
He smiled, and it made years fall away from him. Soon he’d be guilt-torn and conscience-struck, Eve knew, lashing himself for taking advantage of his subordinate’s innocence and his wife’s absence, but for the moment he was content. “Yes,” he said with another smile. “Tea, and real sugar to put in it.”
She groaned, almost pushing him out of bed. “Then make some!”
He pulled on his trousers and slipped out, bare feet slapping the floorboards. So different from the way it usually was after bed: René’s cigarettes, his brocade robe, his pillow talk that Eve was busy parsing and filing . . . She didn’t want to think about René here, so she took the tea mug Cameron offered on returning and sipped, letting out a moan. “I could d-d-die right here.”
Part of her wished for that. Die now, sitting up in bed, her back against Cameron’s chest, and she wouldn’t have to think about Lille or the job that still waited, crouching implacable as a troll under a bridge. She turned the thought aside, but Cameron seemed to catch it.
“What are you thinking?” He pressed a lock of hair back behind her ear.
“Nothing.” Eve sipped her tea again.
Cameron hesitated, his hand stilling against her neck. “Eve . . . Who is he?”
Eve didn’t pretend not to understand. She had been a very innocent girl when he sent her to Lille, not the same girl who coiled herself so fiercely around him between these sheets. “He’s no one,” she said matter-of-factly. “Just someone who drops useful information over a p-pillow.”
Cameron said almost inaudibly, “Bordelon?”
A nod. She didn’t quite dare look up at him, but her heart lodged in her throat. He would have read the reports on René, who and what he was. If Cameron recoiled from her . . .
Well, it hardly mattered. She still had a job to do.
“You don’t have to go to him anymore.” Cameron set his tea mug down and folded both arms tight around her. “I’ll be taking you to Folkestone tomorrow morning. You don’t ever have to see him again.”
Clearly he assumed that since she had stopped arguing, she’d agreed to beg out of her orders to return to Lille. For a moment Eve surrendered to that temptation. Go home, back to safety, England. Back to tea.
Then she sighed and let it go, putting aside her own mug and turning to rest her cheek against Cameron’s shoulder. He made some noise about getting up, but she pulled him down into the sheets. They made love one more time, tender and slow, Eve stifling her cries in his shoulder, and afterward Cameron dropped into exhausted sleep. Eve waited until his breathing settled into a deep rhythm, then slipped noiselessly out of bed and into her clothes. She looked at him for a moment, and wondered with a wrench if he would ever forgive her for this. Maybe he shouldn’t, she thought. He can’t afford to love me. Though she certainly loved him. She smoothed his sandy hair off his forehead, which was lined even in sleep as though he worried through his dreams, and then she headed downstairs.
Major Allenton smirked as she entered the makeshift file room. He undoubtedly suspected what had happened upstairs. Eve didn’t care. He was already committed to sending her back, whore or not. “I’ll need a pass,” she said without preamble. “I’m ready to catch the train back to Lille.”
That surprised him. “I thought Cameron might be trying to talk you out of obeying that order. He can be sneaky that way. It happens, you know, when military men mess about too long in a dirty business like spying. They get underhanded.”
Real dislike flickered across his face. After having to parse René’s minuscule facial expressions, watching the major’s thoughts work their way across his features was like watching a dog lumber around a city block on the end of a leash. Eve gave the leash just the tug it needed, dropping her lashes in doe-eyed obedience.
“You outrank Captain Cameron, sir. Of course I obey your orders. You want me to return, and I w-w-will.”
“You really are keen as mustard, aren’t you.” Pleased, the major reached for a pen. The weedy clerk had gone home; it was almost nightfall. The cheap lamps showed up all the places where the wallpaper was fading. “I can see why Cameron’s . . . fond of you.” His eyes roved over her again. “He’s been climbing the walls worrying over the network gels, but it’s really you he obsesses about.”
That gave Eve a lonely pang of pleasure, mixed with guilt because she was about to make him worry all over again. “My p-pass, sir?” she prompted, aware that time was ticking. Cameron might be a light sleeper—if he woke up from his doze and came downstairs now, there would be another round of arguing. Far better if he woke and simply found her gone.
The major started making out a safe-conduct pass. “I’ll wager Cameron’s probably never told you what his code name is.” Eve suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at his air of cozy confidentiality. Thank God Allenton wasn’t in the field, because getting information out of him would be like plucking candy from an infant. You really are an idiot, Eve wanted to say, but she gave the answer he wanted. “No, what is Cameron’s code name?”
Allenton smirked, handing over her safe-conduct pass. “‘Evelyn.’”
CHAPTER 27
CHARLIE
May 1947