“What?”
“Don’t look at that photograph tomorrow. Just enjoy the drive.”
We meandered back to the hotel hand in hand, largely silent. Finn opened the door to guide me through, fingertips resting on my bare back above the black dress’s low V slash, and my skin rippled. He walked me down the corridor to my room, formally, as if I had a father who cared about my curfew glaring at the clock.
“I had a lovely time,” he said, very solemn. “I’ll ring you tomorrow.”
“Boys never call.”
“Men call.”
We lingered inside our fragile bubble of happiness, the kind of happiness that sits on top of melancholy as easily as icing on a cake. I didn’t want to leave it. “I’m no good at this, Finn,” I said at last. A Yank in a black dress plus a Scotsman in a jacket, multiplied by a summer night and a packet of sandwiches, divided by an awkward silence and the fact that the Yank had a pregnant belly—I didn’t know how that equation came out, what it equaled. “What happens now?”
He sounded hoarse. “What happens now is entirely up to you.”
“Oh.” I stood a moment, looking at him, and then I went up on tiptoe. Our lips met, soft as drifting feathers, and I melted into him as his arms circled my waist. We kissed, slow and endless, Finn pressing me soft and yielding between the hard door and his hard chest, and I fumbled blindly behind me for the handle. The door burst open and we spilled through it, kissing and stumbling, my shoes landing on top of his discarded jacket. Finn got a hand loose from my hair and batted the door shut. He picked me up then, holding me in the air for another kiss, and then he made me shriek as he dropped me on the bed from what seemed like a very long height. He stood for a moment looking down at me, and I couldn’t believe I was this nervous. We’d already done this, but not in a bed, not with lights on . . .
He dropped down with a groan, stretching himself, long and luxuriant, over me. “Beds,” he said, dropping slow kisses along my neck, the Scots burr coming thicker, “are a verra big improvement on backseats.”
“I fit just fine in both—” as I tugged at his shirt.
“Because you’re a midget.” He submitted to my tugging, letting me pull his shirt over his head, then flipped me back down, grinning. “Quit rushing! It’s not supposed to be a sprint—”
“Thought you liked fast,” I managed to say. In the light he was lean and brown and beautiful. “You and your five-speed gearboxes . . .”
“Cars should be fast. Beds should be slow.”
I tangled my hands in his hair, feeling my back arch as he dragged the zipper of my dress down inch by inch. “How slow?”
“Verra . . . verra . . . slow . . . ,” he murmured against my lips. “Takes all night, where we’re going.”
“All night?” I hooked my legs around him, looked at the dark eyes so close to mine our lashes brushed. I am falling for you, I thought bemusedly, I am falling so hard. “You’ve got to drive all the way to Grasse tomorrow,” I whispered instead. “What about sleep?”
“Sleep?” His hands twined through my hair so tight it hurt as he growled into my ear. “Quit your blethering.”
CHAPTER 36
EVE
March 1919
It was Eve’s first step back in England since her career as a spy began. Folkestone, where Cameron had stood waving good-bye as Eve sailed to Le Havre. Where he stood now, coat rippling about his knees, waiting for her on the pier.
“Miss Gardiner,” he said when she stepped off the ferry. It had been some months since her release—she’d lived that time in a bathtub, scrubbing obsessively as arrangements were made to bring her back from her temporary lodgings in Louvain to England.
“Captain Cameron,” she answered. “No, it’s Major Cameron now, isn’t it?” Eyeing his new insignia. In addition to his majority was the blue and red ribbon of the DSO on the left breast of his uniform coat. “I’ve missed a few th-th—a few things, being away.”
“I was hoping to bring you back to England sooner.”
Eve shrugged. The women of Siegburg had been released before the Armistice was even signed, let loose from their cells by defeated-looking prison officials, stampeding in a weeping, joyous flood for the trains that would take them home. Eve would have been weeping with joy too, had Lili been arm in arm with her to take that train. After Lili died, it had not mattered in the slightest how fast she could get away from Siegburg.
Cameron’s eyes were going over her now, registering the changes. Eve knew she was still thin as a rack, her hair straw dry from lice treatments and hacked close to her skull. She kept her hands thrust into her pockets so he couldn’t see the misshapen knuckles, but there was nothing she could do to hide her eyes, which never sat still anymore. Eve took in the world in constant darting glances now, looking for danger on all sides. Even here on the open pier, she angled her back against the nearest piling, seeking protection. Eve registered the shock in Cameron’s own steady eyes as he saw how deeply the past few years had marked her.
They hadn’t been kind to him either; deep lines graven about his mouth, broken veins at his forehead, streaks of gray at his temples. I used to love you, Eve thought, but it was a blank thought, almost meaningless. She used to feel a lot of things before Lili died. Now what she mainly felt was grief and rage and guilt, devouring each other like tail-eating serpents. And the never-ending whisper of her blood, saying, Betrayer.
“I thought there would be some three-ring c-c-circus,” Eve said at last, nodding at the empty pier. She had been almost the only person to disembark—Folkestone, now that the war was over, had reverted to a much sleepier place—and there were no aides or military attachés anywhere in sight. “Major Allenton was in touch, k-kept going on about a welcome ceremony.”
Apparently, Evelyn Gardiner was now a heroine. So were many of the other female prisoners—Violette, Eve heard, was feted all over Roubaix when she returned home. Eve would be feted too, if she’d allow it. Which she wouldn’t.
“I talked Allenton out of the public welcome,” Cameron said. “He wanted a few generals to greet you, some newspapermen and so on. A brass band.”
“Fortunate you discouraged him. Though I’d have enjoyed hammering a bloody tuba over his ears.” Eve hitched her satchel over her shoulder, and set off down the pier.
“I thought I’d see you in France.” Cameron fell in beside her. “At Louise de Bettignies’s funeral.”