Alex slept a little on the train, as did Estella he noted with relief. Half an hour before they pulled into Marseilles, he leaned over and whispered in Lena’s ear. Judging by Estella’s sharp glance, he could tell she thought he was whispering sweet nothings and she moved to stand up and walk away but he held out a hand to stop her. Lena simply nodded at what he told her, for which he was grateful.
Then he sat beside Estella and spoke quietly. “If anything happens en route or in Paris,” he said, “get yourself to Lyon or Marseilles. Go to the Vieux Port, or stay close to the cafés. Someone will pick you up.”
She stared at him. Before she could say anything, he opened his traveling case and passed an acetate box to her and one to Lena. It was small, easily fitted into a coat pocket or a purse. He watched as Estella flipped open the lid and rifled through the contents, which he could list by heart: malted milk tablets, Benzedrine tablets, sweets, matches, chocolate, surgical tape, chewing gum, tobacco, a water bottle, Halazone for water purification, needle and thread, soap, fishing line. She held up the razor. “What’s it for?” she asked.
“It’s magnetized,” he said. “You can use it as a compass if you have to. Sorry, they didn’t have anything more feminine.”
Estella shook her head. “Not the razor. What’s the box for?”
He reached across, took the box from her and slid it into her purse.
“It’s an escape box,” he said shortly. Of the best kind, he didn’t say. Made by MI9 for the British air force and their agents. “Don’t put it in your valise. Keep it on you at all times. You can last a couple of days with that. Trade the tobacco if you don’t want to smoke it.”
“Trade the tobacco?” Estella repeated incredulously.
“Estella,” he said sharply. “Just leave it.” He’d tried to choose the best time. On the plane and it would have rattled her. But he knew that no matter when he gave it to her, it would make her ask questions. If only she could be like Lena and hide away her box as if it were a powder compact.
“I’m sorry,” she snapped. “Maybe next time you want to pass me something so out of the ordinary you could give me a little warning.”
And even though she might hate him even more than she already did for what he was about to say, he had to say it. “You have to stop questioning me. Otherwise I’ll have to send you back to Lisbon. I need your help but not at the risk of everything else. Trust that whatever I say and do, it’s for a good reason. It’s your job, for the next week, just to nod and agree with me no matter how much it irritates you. Can you do that?”
He kept his voice tightly controlled but he could still tell that he sounded annoyed. She was the weak spot in this plan. He hated having to act like this with her, like the autocratic intelligence officer he had to be in order to keep everyone alive.
He felt like an utter bastard when she bent her head to hide the flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. “I can,” she said quietly.
“Thank you,” he said, an edge to his voice that sat at the far end of courtesy. “There are no cars in France anymore. We’re catching the train to Paris. I need to stop at the Seamen’s Mission first, then we’ll go.”
“The Seamen’s Mission?” Estella started to ask. Then she closed her mouth and picked up her valise. “Doesn’t matter,” she said.
Once the train stopped, he left to see Peter Caskie at the Seamen’s Mission, one of the many stops a downed airman might make on the long and secret journey across France. He distributed money and tobacco for the couriers, so much tobacco—it had become a more reliable currency than any paper money. He gathered intelligence, made sure nobody on the escape line thought anything was amiss, that no Germans were aware of its existence. He arrived back at Marseilles station just as the train shot steam into the air.
Then began the long trip from Marseille to Paris, which he hoped would take no longer than a day and a half, what with all the checks they’d be subjected to, which made what used to be a simple journey far from smooth. At five in the morning the next day, as the sun began to rise, he moved over to sit beside Estella; Lena had been asleep for hours and he thought she’d be more comfortable if she could lie down on the seat. Even though Estella looked the most exhausted of them all, she was still awake.
He didn’t speak to her, just tilted his head back on the seat and closed his eyes, needing to rest for even ten minutes; that would be enough or else he’d have to start on the benzedrine and he tried to save that for only when absolutely necessary. He awoke with a jolt some time later—night had passed and sunlight was seeping into the sky—feeling something land on his thigh. It was Estella’s upturned hand. She’d fallen asleep and, while oblivious to the world, her body had turned toward his and her arm had shifted.
He stared at her hand, at the nimble fingers that he’d watched caressing paper with a pencil, transforming lines of lead into stunning images, studied the tips of her index finger and thumb, which were marked, he saw now, with tiny wounds—needle marks perhaps—a side effect of the work she did. In sleep, her hand looked tranquil and lovely and he remembered that the French seamstresses were reckoned to have doigts de fée—fairy fingers—and all he wanted to do was to reach out his own hand and link it with hers.
He shook his head; what was the matter with him? He’d never in his life wanted to just hold hands with anyone. But, right now, he knew he’d be completely happy to feel her palm against his, to know that she cared enough about him to hold his hand. Of course, she was only here because he’d persuaded her in the worst possible way. If he did so much as reach out a finger to lightly touch her, she’d snatch her hand away, say something biting and wouldn’t speak to him again for the rest of their time in France.
So it was better just to sit in the carriage of a train on an early morning in France, watching the sun gently lift into the sky. It was better to simply endure the torment of her hand resting on his thigh, knowing that if she was aware of what she was doing, a moment like this would never happen.
After passing through Lyon, Alex slipped out from under Estella’s hand, not daring to pick it up and place it on the seat, just letting it slide away from him as he pulled out the bread and cheese and wine he’d bought in Marseilles. They were about to cross the border and food would help them keep their wits.
“I’m starving,” he heard Estella say as his rustling paper bag woke her.
He passed her bread and water and sat down next to Lena, nodding at the window. “You should take in what you can of France now,” he said to Estella. “It’s different in the Occupied Zone.”
The train ran along the escarpment of the Côte d’Or, the valley of the Saône spread out in front of them, flashing gold off the leaves of the grapevines, reminding him of the dress Estella wore the first night he met her. The river drifted along beside the train, a belt of blue, unraveling gently, and the grapes and the water and the undulations of the country were glorious, one peaceful moment on this whole fraught journey. An idyll, where one could forget the war raging around them.
“Oh,” he heard Estella say as she turned her eyes to the view.
They ate, eyes fixed to the pastoral scene outside, souls feasting on it the way their mouths did on the bread. When he was done, he rested back, legs stretched out before him and Lena smiled at him. He saw, as he always did, the damaged soul lying beneath her eyes and he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a gesture meant to show her that he did care.
He realized Estella was watching, that to her it would look like the action of a lover. And even though, in the deepest part of him, he didn’t want her to think that he and Lena were lovers, he was glad she did because that was another barrier between them. Without such barriers, he knew that he would—if his past was anything to go on—only hurt Estella in the end and he couldn’t bear the thought of doing that.
Eventually he had to turn to business. “I’m supposed to stay at the Ritz,” he said. “But it’s crawling with Germans and I’d rather you two not be so close to the Wehrmacht. I’ll go in and out of the hotel from time to time to keep up appearances but, Estella, I hoped we could use the house in the Marais. I had it chalked outside as a maison habitée months ago, which you have to do if you don’t want the Germans commandeering your home. So it’s safe. You shouldn’t go to your mother’s apartment yet, just in case.” Just in case you get caught helping me steal an agent with a broken leg out of Paris, he didn’t say.
She opened her mouth and he could tell she was about to protest, that he was in for another of their neverending battles. Then she nodded, surprising him. “Whatever you think is best. I don’t want to put Maman in danger.”
It wasn’t until they emerged from the Metro that Estella comprehended what Alex had meant when he said it was different in the Occupied Zone. The Metro had been overstuffed, carrying the kind of wealthy and coutured women who would never, before the war had rid the country of cars and fuel, have deigned to sully themselves on the trains. There were also women who belonged to a breed Estella had never seen before: thin, dresses almost translucent with wear, legs bare, shoulders turned in, heads dropped so low that it was as if they wanted to hide inside themselves. The stink of unclean bodies made it hard to breathe. Estella didn’t ask questions. But when they reached the Rue de Rivoli, she stopped still.
“I know,” she heard Alex whisper. “Just keep moving. Ask me whatever you want when we get to the house but don’t stop on the street.”
So she kept moving, knowing only that when she’d asked Alex if things in Paris were bad, she’d never expected this. A group of German soldiers marched along the Rue des Rosiers in their steel-gray uniforms, bulldogs on leashes racing ahead of them, and Estella watched everyone steer a wide path around them, keeping their eyes down. So many shops had closed and others—the cobbler owned by Monsieur Bousquet, the buttons and trims shop owned by Monsieur Cassin, the tableware shop owned by Monsieur Blum, all Jews—bore a red poster, advising that, by decree of the government, the businesses had been placed in the hands of a non-Jewish administrator.
What of Nannette? What of Marie and all the other women Estella used to work with? What of Maman? Estella was trying so hard to quell the agitation she felt, trying so hard not to think too much of her mother. Because, while she hoped for an embrace and tears and laughter, she feared what she might actually find in their old apartment on the Passage Saint-Paul.
Outside her favorite boulangerie, a long line of people queued, their faces gray, arms hanging thinly from the sleeves of their dresses, all women, hardly a man to be found. Except German soldiers.
As they neared the boulangerie, Estella saw a familiar face. She called out, “Huette!” and ran across the street.
A girl who was too skeletal to be Huette turned, the smile on her face the most substantial thing about her. “Estella! How did you get here?”
Estella embraced her friend, unable to cover the shocked gasp as her arms wrapped over the bony plates of Huette’s back. Huette had always been well proportioned, curved where she should be, but now her skin hung from her, the layer of fat between it and the bone gone. And that same smell from the Metro rose rankly from her friend. “Oh, Huette,” she said again. “What are you doing?” she asked, so glad of the sound of her native tongue back on her lips.
“Queuing for food,” Huette said. “It takes all day. We arrive at five in the morning and stand here for hours. Sometimes we get bread. Rutabaga. Chicory for coffee. The last time I had meat, the cherry trees were in blossom.”
“Rutabaga? But that’s for cows. I have food,” Estella said, remembering the coffee, the chocolate Alex had told her to bring. “Take some.” She opened her valise and searched through the contents, realizing too late that she was making a scene, that the press of bodies from the queue was now around her, that she didn’t have enough for everyone.
Alex snapped her suitcase closed, pulled Estella from the ground and prodded her and Huette away from the crowd, just before a German patrol reached the boulangerie. Lena waited for them on the other side of the street.
Estella knew straightaway that she shouldn’t have done it. But how could she not? How could anyone walk through Paris and see people so cowed, so reduced, and not want to give them everything one had?
“Why did you come back?” Huette asked as Alex marched them away, Lena behind them, far enough away, thank God, that Huette hadn’t noticed her and therefore wouldn’t start quizzing Estella about the likeness between them.
The lie came to her so smoothly that Estella almost couldn’t believe it. “I work for a lawyer.” She indicated Alex. “His French is awful. I’m his translator. He’s American; you know what they’re like with languages.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and was so glad when her friend’s face lit with some of her old spark and Huette giggled.
Estella felt Alex’s fist, clenched at her back since the boulangerie, relax. She even caught the quick flash of a smile as he heard her say that his French was terrible.
“I’ll bring food,” she said to Huette. “Later tonight. Otherwise it looks as if it’ll be stolen right out from under you.”
“Everyone’s hungry,” Huette said sadly. “Except Renée.”
“Why not Renée?”
“She has a German officer. She stays at the Hôtel Meurice most nights. Trading herself for meat. For dresses. For everything you can only get on the black market. Women aren’t given ration tickets for tobacco. It’s amazing what some people will do for a cigarette.” The bitterness in Huette’s tone was harder than a winter frost.
“Why would she do that?”
“It’s the only way to live. The rest of us merely exist. In the winter, people skinned their cats for fur, Estella. Then we ate the cat.”
“No,” Estella whispered. She’d been in New York, crammed into a tiny room, but with enough to eat, clothes to cover her back, heat to keep her warm. “Have you seen my mother?” she asked at last, the words she’d been wanting but fearing to ask since she’d run into Huette.
Huette shook her head. “I used to see her in the queue for food. But not this week. Not last week either. Maybe not since last month. Perhaps she found another boulangerie?” Huette added hopefully.
“Perhaps,” Estella said, unconvinced.
She heard Lena’s heels tapping closer and Alex cleared his throat. “We’re going to be late for our meeting.”
Late? Estella nearly snapped at him. What did it matter in the face of what she now saw? Thin women cycling along, wagons attached to their bikes to make a kind of velo-taxi, a strapping German officer and a giggling woman in the back. Emptiness: empty shops, empty faces, empty streets. Most of all, empty hearts. But she remembered she was there to help Alex find a man who was one of those trying to stop the emptiness, to return France to what it should be.
“I’ll come tonight,” Estella promised Huette. “With coffee and chocolate. What else do you need?”
“Soap,” Huette said hopefully. “Everyone smells.”
“I have soap,” Estella said. “You can have it all.”
“And…” Huette hesitated.
“What?” Estella cried. “Anything.”
“Could we go out somewhere? Like we used to. Pretend that…” Huette’s voice trailed off.
“Of course. We’ll go to La Bonne Chance,” Estella said firmly. “That’s if it’s still open?”
“All the clubs are still open. The Germans, and their women like Renée, have time for fun.” Huette kissed her cheeks then disappeared back into the street, just as Lena caught up to them.
From behind them came the sound of clip-clopping, like a horse. Estella turned to see two women hurrying along, baskets slung on their arms. Their shoes bore wooden soles, not leather. The clopping sound of the wood rang on long after they’d passed, and Estella now saw others similarly shod. But what stood out most were the women’s hats and turbans, exuberantly decorated with all manner of embellishment: fox heads, feathers, flowers, cherries, birds’ nests, ribbons, and lace in extravagant piles.
Alex saw her staring and said, “There’s no leather for shoes, not enough fabric to make new clothes but I guess it doesn’t take much to decorate a hat.”
Estella smiled. How typical of French women to take the one thing they had left and use it to the edge of ostentation, to say that, while their stomachs might be hungry and their bodies worn out, they would show that appearances still mattered; that a flare of their spirit could be found in their hats. The sight made her feel a little better; many were fighting back. She hoped her Maman was too; in fact she hoped Jeanne was responsible for making some of those hats. If all those women could remain resilient in the face of deprivation and fear, then Estella could easily do a simple thing like take Alex into the Village Saint-Paul.
Soon the three of them arrived at the Rue de Sévigné, at the house Estella had last seen on the night she took maps from a dying Monsieur Aumont. In the afternoon light of a summer day, it looked almost beautiful, a grand old Parisian dame whose elegance could still be seen in the long line of her body, in the way she held herself, but whose exterior was showing all the signs of having lived a long and difficult life. She saw the words Alex said he’d chalked on the wall—maison habitée. “Here,” she said to Lena. “Look familiar?”
“My God,” Lena said, shock written all over her normally unshockable face at the sight of the house.
Estella pushed open the carriage gates and led the way into the courtyard. “Whoever built the Gramercy Park house must have been here. It’s a perfect copy.”
“I told you Harry Thaw built the Gramercy Park house,” Lena said.
Estella frowned. Harry Thaw could not have been here. She passed beneath the arched entry, waited to feel the same shiver she always had. But this time she didn’t. This time she felt the house let out a breath, as if it had been waiting and hoping and doubting that she would return, as if it was glad to see her. As if it held something meant for her.
The courtyard garden was as scraggly as ever but the mint smelled like every Parisian summer she’d ever known. Inside the house, Estella ran her hand along the wall as she passed down the hall, just like Lena’s, but without artwork, the paint coming off the walls in clumps of white powder. Alex took her valise from her. “Let’s go,” he said. “The longer we wait, the more I’m worried about…”
“Your man,” Estella finished. “Let’s go then.”
Lena stared up at the staircase; Alex had forbidden Lena to go with them but she seemed not to know what to do with herself. Then Estella realized Lena was waiting for permission from Estella to go upstairs, as if Estella was in charge of the house. Which she supposed she was, if her mother owned it, as the matrice cadastrale suggested. “You can put your things in whatever room you like,” she said to Lena. “You probably know the house better than I do.”
Lena advanced up the stairs and Estella walked back outside with Alex.
“Just act as if you’re showing me the sights,” he said. “I know it’s in the wrong direction, but start with the Place des Vosges, then we’ll make our way across to the Village Saint-Paul. In case anyone’s watching.”
Estella nodded, fear returning and making it hard to speak the minute they were outside and in this unfamiliar, Brutalist version of Paris. All the romance, all sense of it being a place for love and lovers, a place where every stone, every window shutter, every streetlamp held a thousand stories, a place that didn’t just belong to history, but a place that was history itself, had fled along with the French government, hiding out somewhere, waiting.
She put on her brightest voice, as if she really was just a simple tour guide trying to impress her American boss. German women in gray uniforms scurried along the pavement which used to be occupied by women in bright dresses with art portfolios under their arms. “Here is the Place des Vosges,” Estella said. “Built in the seventeenth century, it is the loveliest square in Paris. The Queen’s pavilion is to the north, the King’s pavilion to the south. Victor Hugo once lived here, and, over there, the Paris School of the New York School of Fine and Applied Art once operated. It’s where I trained for a year, before it closed due to the war.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said in a low voice.
“Why would you?” she replied, pressing on with her faux tour of the Marais. “And this is a statue of Louis XIII; it’s not the original. That was decapitated during the revolution.”
“What else is worth seeing?”
“You must see the Church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis.”
Two German soldiers, each on the arm of a girl whose dresses were not at all worn, whose legs shone with silk, whose cheeks were rouged, whose shoes were leather, walked past and nodded at them.
“Which way?” Alex asked Estella in English, his accent deepened to become recognizably American, the confidence he ordinarily carried subtly now dropped over him like a made-to-measure suit. His voice rang loudly, so perfectly the brash American that Estella had to remind herself it was just an act. But it worked.
“Paris is beautiful!” one of the German soldiers cried, nodding at Alex, taking him for the tourist he was pretending to be, his Americanness protecting both him and Estella. “Especially the women,” the other soldier said, leering at Estella, and the girl on his arm gave his hand a slap.
“They’re not bad,” Alex said evenly.
Estella made her feet keep walking, even though her legs felt as flimsy as cotton threads. Once the Germans were well behind she attempted a joke. “Not bad? You’re full of compliments,” she said to Alex, but she heard the slight tremor in her voice.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” he said, grinning down at her. “You’re the epitome of bad. Always asking questions. But you are an excellent tour guide. I would very much like to see the church you mentioned.”
His riposte relaxed her a little and her legs began to function normally and her voice resumed its artificially gay tone. She led the way to the streets near the church and, once there, took the secret entrance into the Village Saint-Paul, the entrance nobody except those entirely familiar with the area even knew existed. She saw a flash of surprise on Alex’s face when the narrow alley led them to a cobblestoned courtyard, surrounded by whitewashed walls that jutted in and out unevenly, creating more courtyards, passages; a twisting, winding maze that none of his spies would have been able to make sense of.
Once part of a convent, the area was now a slum of the worst kind. Both its decrepitude and the difficulty of finding a way in had kept the Germans away but there was less rubbish than she remembered, as if people had suddenly found a use for the old carriage wheels and wooden crates that used to be piled up high along the walls. If the winter had been as cold as Huette had said, she imagined they’d been burned to keep people warm. She shivered a little, despite the warmth of the sun, but kept going to the one old bookstore she remembered among the snarl of workshops, the bookstore she assumed must be the one Alex’s man could see from the apartment he was hiding in.
“That’s it,” she whispered to Alex. The windows were shuttered over; the shop hadn’t been opened in months and they were the only people in the courtyard.
She watched him scan the windows of the surrounding buildings, all the while shaking his head at the dust and dirt and disrepair.
“There’s nothing worth seeing here,” he said with disgust. “I’m going to the American Hospital to finalize those contracts. I don’t need you to translate for me there. You can have the afternoon off.”
He turned around and, at the first corner, said quietly to Estella, “Go on ahead. I know where he is.”
“How?” Estella asked, bewildered that he would, from that cursory scan, have determined which building was the right one.
“A red geranium in one of the windows was pushed to the right-hand side. It means he’s there and it’s safe to go in and get him. I’ll be back later.”
“Can I help?” Estella asked.
“You already have. And please don’t go and see your mother until I’m back. I need to make sure it’s safe.” He gave her the flash of a smile, then doubled back to the bookstore.
Estella left reluctantly, walking back to the Rue de Sévigné, skittish whenever a German soldier passed by. The streets sounded different and she realized she couldn’t hear any birds, that the trilling songs which heralded summer were gone, driven away by what? Starvation? The after effects of the factory bombings?
All along the streets, she could see posters bearing a strapping German soldier looking down at a child, urging Parisians to put their trust in the soldiers, who wanted nothing more than to protect them. She was so glad to see the familiar battered wooden door of the house, and the chasse-roues missing chunks of stone from where carriage wheels had hit them, happy to vanish into the courtyard and feel the house open its arms to her and offer its protection.
She went straight to the kitchen and boiled three pots of water. While she waited for them to heat, she wiped out one of the baths with a set of old drapes that had fallen gracefully to the floor a long time ago. She heard nothing from Lena and thought it likely that, after their long journey, she would be asleep. She carried each pot carefully up to the bath, added cold water from the tap, then sank down into it.
Don’t go and see your mother. She would do as she’d been asked, even though the effort not to walk to the Passage Saint-Paul was tremendous. Instead, she scrubbed her hair clean, then brushed out every knot and tangle she’d accumulated over the last four days, wishing it was as easy to brush out the knots and tangles that had twisted their way into her life.
In her valise, Estella found the gold dress she’d hidden at the bottom. Before she went to see her mother tomorrow, or whenever Alex said she could go, before her life changed irrevocably by hearing whatever it was her mother would or wouldn’t say, she would take Huette out to enjoy one Paris night. She couldn’t bear to sit in the house and do nothing but think of the inevitable meeting between herself, Jeanne, and Lena when she suspected she might discover a truth that would hurt her more than anything ever had.
She walked along the hall until she reached the last room facing the street. She remembered, from when she was younger, before she had access to the music rooms at school, her mother would bring her here to the house, to this room, which had once held a piano. Estella would practice her scales and Jeanne would listen, smiling only when Estella looked at her, mouth pressed tightly closed and hands clenched into fists whenever she thought Estella was concentrating on the instrument.
Estella pushed open the door now and gave an exclamation of delight. The piano was still there. And because she missed her mother terribly, because her city was critically wounded, because Huette was a shrunken version of herself, because the Jewish Marais no longer existed, because she’d just escorted a spy across Paris to retrieve another spy—an act she now understood, after feeling the intense fear curled inside every Parisian on the streets, could have been fatal if she’d been caught—she sat down at the piano and began to play a song her mother had always liked.
It was Ella Fitzgerald’s “The Nearness of You” and it came to Estella’s fingers more slowly and deliberately than she’d ever played it before, somehow fitting for a Paris night where sadness rather than light pooled beneath the covered streetlamps. As she sang the words—about the delight of simply being near someone you loved—she heard the door open, felt someone sit beside her on the piano stool and pick out the accompaniment to the song.
Alex’s hands moved expertly over the keys beside hers and she could sense him next to her, back tall and straight, arms relaxed, sleeves rolled up, a natural pianist and then, quietly, too quietly for such a voice, he sang too. His voice, perfectly suited to the song, cast around her like an enchantment.
When they reached the end, neither moved; both stared at the piano, their hands resting atop the keys, hearing the gentle echo of their voices ring steadily through the room.
“You play well together.” Lena’s voice broke into the room like a cymbal accidentally struck mid-lullaby.
Estella jumped and she saw Alex’s hands tense on the piano.
“I’m going out,” Estella said, standing and moving away from the piano stool, crossing under the chandelier which spot-lit her gold dress like a single window in the city with its blackout curtain ripped off.
“Where are you going in that?” Alex asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Estella retorted.
“That came out entirely wrong.” He held up his hand. “It’s just that going out at night in Paris isn’t as safe as it used to be.”
“I want to see Huette. I can buy her a meal. I’m going to take her to Montmartre, to a jazz club we used to go to, so she can feel better about everything. She can stop thinking about lining up for food. And I can stop thinking about how much I want to see my mother. About the fact that, the minute I see her, everything changes. I’d like, for a few more hours, to have nothing change.” The last sentence came out before she could stop it. She closed her mouth before she said any more.
“Lena and I will come too,” Alex said.
“I don’t need babysitters.” She was speaking abruptly, she knew, in an attempt to relocate her defenses.
“I know that. But perhaps I’ve never been to a jazz club in Montmartre.”
“I doubt that.”
Alex smiled wryly. “Okay, I can’t get away with that but I’m not offering myself as your babysitter either.”
“All right.” Estella acquiesced, and then the words tumbled out. “When can I see Maman?”
“Tomorrow I hope.”
“If I’d had a choice, I would have put off the moment everything changed too.” With that, Lena turned around and walked out.
Estella looked uncertainly at Alex. “Does that mean she’s coming?”
“Give me a minute to get changed. Then I’ll check.”
He waited, seemingly expectantly, until Estella asked, “Are you going to get changed?”
“I thought you’d prefer me to wait till you’d gone but if you insist on staying. You’re in my room,” he said.
“Oh!” Estella hurried out, face bright red with embarrassment.
He appeared downstairs five minutes later, looking more handsome than a man had a right to be, especially when they’d been traveling rough for so long. Estella hadn’t bothered to do more than put on her dress, rub powder over her nose, touch color onto her lips, and flick mascara over her lashes and now she felt she should have made more of an effort. But Lena would be the one on his arm; she’d simply be following along behind.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Where’s Lena?”
“She’s going to catch up on sleep.”
“You can stay here with her.”
“I know I can.”
He didn’t go back up the stairs.
“You’re still coming with me?” she asked.
“Unless I’m cramping your style?” he replied impatiently. “Are we going to stand here and discuss this all night?”
Estella walked out into the courtyard, mint and jasmine potent on the air, the gentle warmth of a Paris summer night sliding like silk over her skin.
“Where exactly are we going?” he asked as he caught up to her. “Bricktop’s? It’ll be full of Germans.”
“Of course you’ve been there. Definitely not Bricktop’s. Somewhere decidedly cheaper.” She smiled, remembering all the nights she and Huette used to spend out dancing and laughing, more sure than ever that Huette needed this chance to revive her spirits so she could resume the struggle again in the morning. “But a lot more fun.”