The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester (22)

But the streets held still more horror. The day hadn’t yet taken hold, but the Germans had. As Estella and Alex stood in the main doorway of the church, peering out, Estella saw the French police, which was the worst thing of all—that her own people could do this to their fellow citizens—behaving like brutes. Hundreds of men, no thousands of men, were driven along by the police like animals, toward waiting busses. Few protested. The men of Paris were too cowed, too afraid. They walked with their heads down, in case the act of looking up was deemed a betrayal and thus punishable with violence. Red streaks of dawn fell across their faces like fresh wounds, or the unhealed scars of old ones.

Alex tried to keep his body between Estella and the doorway so she couldn’t see but it was impossible to obscure so many men. “What’s happening?” she asked in a shocked whisper.

“They’re Jewish,” he replied in a low voice. “It’s another round-up.”

“Where are they taking them?”

Alex’s voice was so low she could barely hear it. “Drancy,” he said.

“Drancy?” she asked.

“An internment camp.”

A camp. A place Alex had said was worse than death. But there were too many for that surely? She looked up at Alex and he caught the question in her eye.

“I’m doing everything I can. But not right now,” he said. “I’m not risking your life as well as…”

As well as Lena’s.

“It’s a hellish thing to admit but the confusion will help us get away,” he said grimly. “You have to do everything I ask though. No questions. None.”

The first time he’d told her that, she’d thought he was stony. But now he was darker and colder than the Seine in winter. If she didn’t know him, she would have been terrified of him, transformed into the man who’d knifed another in an attempt to save Lena. She nodded.

They hurried along, winding through side streets and gardens and courtyards. He stopped at a bar and had a heated conversation with a man with a limp, who Estella recognized as someone he’d spoken to at the club and also in Marseilles.

When he rejoined Estella, he said, “The Rue de Sévigné is still safe. We can go back there.”

Not long after, they pushed through the gates into the courtyard, then into the house. Alex disappeared up the stairs and closed the door to his room without another word. What was there left to say?

Estella climbed back onto the roof where she’d lain with Lena just a few hours before. She pulled her mother’s drawing of the two babies out of her pocket and ran her hands over the pencil lines, thinking of Lena. A sister she wouldn’t have known had she stayed in Paris, had the war not happened. A sister Estella suddenly missed more than her own mother because at least with her mother she had memories. With Lena all she had were possibilities that had been suddenly and savagely snatched away.

The only consolation was that the drawing meant Jeanne really was her mother, and Lena’s. But it didn’t solve the mystery of who her father was, nor why her mother had taken one baby with her, and left the other in America with the Thaw family. A wind blew up, almost tipping the box over and, as Estella went to rescue it, she realized there was one more thing inside. A photograph. She picked it up.

It was a photograph of her mother smiling beside a man who looked like a younger version of Harry Thaw. Estella froze. Then white-hot fury seared through her. She ripped the photograph and hurled the pieces into the street below.

Then she lay down and the tears came again, tears for Lena, tears for what she’d just seen in the photograph. Her mother had known Harry Thaw. She shut her eyes against that thought but behind her closed lids all she could see was Lena’s lifeless face, and the look in her eyes when she and Estella had discovered that they really were sisters.

She must have fallen asleep after that because she awoke blinking, a midday sun beating down on her, burning her face. She put up a hand to ward it off, then she stood up and, as she did, the memory of the night before caused her to stumble. She needed to eat. To drink some water. Her stomach hurt with nausea and loss.

She climbed back down to the hall. A noise made her stiffen. The sound of someone being sick. A groan. Low voices. She stepped over to Alex’s door and listened. She heard the sounds again. She put her hand on the door and turned the handle, furious.

Inside, the room was so dark after the sunlight on the roof that she couldn’t see. She blinked a few times and heard Alex’s voice mumble, “Ask her to leave, Peter.”

A man materialized by her side, the man with the limp. Before she knew what was happening, he’d ushered her out and closed the door.

“Drunk away his sorrows, has he?” Estella asked sarcastically. What other reason could there be for the noises she’d heard than that Alex had gotten himself deeply and extraordinarily drunk? How like him, while she’d been mourning Lena, to go out and submerge himself in whiskey.

Peter didn’t answer.

“Is this how he recovers himself the morning after a disaster?” she prodded again and this time she got what she wanted. A fight.

Peter took her by the arm and marched her down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“You don’t know the first thing about him,” Peter said, scorn drenching each word. “Alex Montrose is the best man I’ve worked with. I’ve been with him for five years and he’d lay down his own life for any of his men.”

“After he’s written himself off with whiskey so he can pretend nothing has happened you mean?”

“I don’t know what happened last night but you’re responsible for it.” Peter spat the words at her like bullets. “You went to your mother’s apartment when he told you not to. You led him smack bang into a trap that your mother had been smart enough to run from. You mightn’t have noticed but a war is about people’s lives.”

“My sister died for this goddamned war,” Estella blazed, “so I know very well it’s about lives.”

“It’s about thinking of other people besides yourself.” Peter stepped closer to her, and Estella stiffened, wanting to move away, hating this man for making her feel weak and vulnerable.

“He’ll kill me for telling you but I’m going to so that you take that look off your face, as if everything you’ve done was innocent and he’s the only one in the wrong,” Peter raged on. “He went back this morning for Lena’s body. He buried her in the garden outside. He sent out three men who should be doing something more important to find word of your mother. Only then did he let the fucking vertigo that’s plagued him since he dropped out of a plane with a broken parachute and almost died, the vertigo that raises its ugly head when he’s had more to deal with than he ought, ride over him.”

He paused for a moment but the tongue-lashing wasn’t over. “Think about it,” Peter continued. “How much has he slept since you arrived in France? Who got you from Lisbon to Paris? Who got an agent with a broken leg over to the American Hospital in broad daylight and got him fixed up enough so he could be on an escape line, all within twenty-four hours of Alex being in Paris. It didn’t just happen, Estella. It happened because he made it happen. He kept lookouts posted and gathered intelligence and found the safest way and the whole time he was passing on messages to the French resistance and you just thought you were all here for a holiday. And now he’s upstairs so sick he can’t move off the bed and it’ll last until tomorrow night at least and he won’t even be able to stand up because the room is spinning so much it’ll swing right up and hit him in the head. But if you’d prefer to think of him as a selfish drunk, then go right ahead.”

Sick? Alex couldn’t be sick. He was invulnerable, unassailable. But Peter didn’t look or sound as if he was joking. Estella tried to speak. She was unable to.

Peter walked over to the stove, boiled the kettle, made a cup of coffee, filled a glass with water and went to take them up the stairs. All the while, his words reeled through Estella’s head as if she were the one with vertigo.

She hadn’t thought of anyone but herself. She’d gone to her mother’s when Alex had told her she shouldn’t. Once there, she’d mindlessly gone upstairs as the concierge had suggested, never once considering the possibility that it was a trap, a trap that she’d led Alex and Lena right into. She’d let Lena send her out the window first. She’d spent the last year loathing Alex just because he’d been there when Monsieur Aumont had died and her life changed forever. And because he’d brought Lena into her life. But she couldn’t dislike Alex for that, not anymore.

“Wait!” she called.

Peter stopped.

“You’re right,” she said starkly. “You have better things to do. Like stop a war from going too far. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. He’ll hate it but he doesn’t have a choice.”

He stared at her and she didn’t think he’d relent. But she stared straight back, not giving in.

“Just get him through it,” Peter said eventually. “Make sure he doesn’t move. Make him drink water. He’ll be sick but distract him, make him keep it down. Do not let him sit up or stand up before he’s ready. You’ll be able to tell; look at his eyes. They’ll be flickering if the vertigo’s still there.”

“Right,” Estella said. “Give me that.” She took the water and coffee from Peter. “He said we’re safe here. Is that true?”

“Yes. Your former concierge was watching your mother. Alex knew it, and he went to the club with you to keep you away from her apartment. But I’m certain nobody has connected this house with your mother.”

He went to the club with you to keep you away from her apartment. Again, she’d been wrong. Again she’d been selfish. But for Estella’s actions, Lena’s death could have been prevented. She’d all but killed her own sister.

Of course Alex tried to protest, as much as he was able. But Estella ignored him.

Alex cursed Peter and lay on the bed fuming, furious at Peter for letting her into the room, furious at Estella and, most of all, furious at himself. That he’d spent his whole life eliminating weaknesses and his goddamned body threw up one that he couldn’t control. He knew he was lucky; that his insistence on being an operative on the ground brought with it physical risks and he’d gone for a long time without anything too bothersome happening. But just when he thought he’d recovered from the broken parachute and subsequent too-fast collision with the ground earlier in the year, he’d discovered this legacy of vertigo, which he couldn’t control or predict. All he could do was lie on his back on the bed and watch Estella, through half-open eyes, as she busied herself with water and coffee.

He’d tried to sit the moment she walked into the room, which was a huge mistake. The floor came up to wallop him in the face and the nausea flooded him. He was sick into a basin right in front of her, unable to even take the basin to the bathroom and wash it out. He saw her do it and he cringed, wasting energy telling her not to, asking her to leave, demanding that she leave.

“I don’t need a nurse,” he’d barked once he’d recovered enough to speak.

“I can see that,” she said sarcastically.

“I don’t need you,” he’d insisted, which of course wasn’t true either.

“I know that but I’m all you’ve got.” She sat down on the piano stool and folded her arms.

Alex tried to stay awake but it was too hard and he soon dozed off. He woke later to find her leaning over the bed, water glass ready. He shuffled his head up the pillow the smallest amount, just enough to allow him to drink, and even that slight movement nearly undid him. She lay a cold cloth on his forehead while he fought back the nausea, grateful for the damp cloth soothing away the clamminess of his skin, calming the nausea at last.

The trouble with lying in a bed so still and silent was that he had too much time to think. He thought of Lena, of Estella, of what had happened. Of how Lena’s death was his fault. Of how he’d broken his vow never to do anything that involved his heart, which he’d thought was safely preserved in cynicism, hiding away behind meaningless affairs with willing women, always moving on after one encounter because it was the only way to not drag anyone else into the ruin he called his life.

The first time he’d followed his heart was back when he was fifteen and he’d made a stupid and dangerous plan to get his mother out of Hong Kong, behind his father’s back. But his father had discovered the ruse—he’d been told by someone Alex had trusted to help him—and Alex and his mother had been forced back to the house. His father had beaten Alex to within an inch of his life—his father was always very careful to go just far enough that he wouldn’t die. He’d been in the hospital for over a week, with more broken bones than he cared to remember.

But his mother—he almost couldn’t bear to think of it. His father had beaten his mother to within an inch of her life too and he’d told everyone they were set upon by street thugs, which was an entirely believable story in Hong Kong. His mother had spent a month in the hospital. That was when he’d decided to kill his father.

But his father had thought of that. He told Alex, “If you kill me, then your mother will die too. I’ve left instructions with friends to make sure she dies a painful, prolonged death if anything ever happens to me.”

So he had to keep his father alive in order to keep his mother alive. He had to do what he was told and never let his heart rule his head again because the price of doing it once had nearly cost his mother her life. Just like the price of yesterday’s fracas had been Lena’s life.

He must have sworn aloud because his eyes flew open at the movement of someone, Estella, touching his arm ever so lightly.

“Alex, you’re dreaming,” she said gently.

He shook his head, forgetting that shaking his head was like hurling himself onto a violent and relentless carousel. He winced and tried to breathe normally, prayed that he wouldn’t be sick in front of her again, that he could at least keep hold of a scrap of dignity.

“Have some more water,” she said. “Here.” She put the cloth on his forehead again and it was so cold he realized he was sweating, that he’d been dreaming, that he’d probably said things in his sleep that he didn’t want her to hear.

This time, when he lifted his head to drink the water, the room still spun wildly, but it settled more quickly. “Thank you,” he said, knowing he could at least be gracious despite the fact that he wanted her to leave.

And then she did something that he both wanted and didn’t want. She walked around the bed and sat on the other side, leaning her back against the wall, a respectable distance away from him but still beside him on a bed. “I think you can leave me alone now,” he said, trying to ask nicely rather than demanding as he’d done before. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yes, you look as if you’re ready to shepherd me single-handedly from one side of France to the other all over again.”

“Just France?” he replied, more weakly than he would have liked, hoping banter would convince her he was feeling better, even though he wasn’t. “I think I’m ready to tackle flying one of those ships across the Atlantic.”

She grinned. “Can you fly?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you can’t do?”

It was a teasing question but all he could think was, yes, there was a long list of things he couldn’t do: he couldn’t bring Lena back from the dead. He couldn’t make everything better for Lena the way he’d wanted to, in some kind of strange apology to his mother for not being able to make her last years happy ones. And he couldn’t reach out and touch Estella, not because the vertigo was stopping him, but because it would be the most dangerous act of all.

“Will you talk to me about Lena?” she asked.

“Talking is probably the only thing I’m capable of right now,” he admitted.

He wriggled a little and she leaned over, propping his pillow slightly. He felt the room tilt as he raised himself the smallest amount, suddenly aware that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He wished he could ask her to pass him one but he wouldn’t be able to put it on by himself and there was no way he was going to ask her to help him with that.

What do you want to know about her? he supposed he should ask. But he didn’t want to confine Lena to a series of questions and answers.

“I met Lena at a party in July 1940. I was on leave for a week and I always go to New York when I’m on leave. We were at a masked ball. I noticed her hair. I asked an acquaintance about her and he laughed and said that he was surprised I hadn’t met Lena before. That her notoriety meant she was always at the best parties, invited as an amusement because she was easy.” He winced. “Sorry, I should be sanitizing this.”

Estella shook her head. “Tell me exactly as it was. I’ll know if you change anything; you have a habit of scratching your left little finger when you lie.”

He laughed, then blanched because even that was still too much. “I didn’t know. I’ll have to stop.”

“Keep going,” she said, wriggling down to lie her head against a pillow and resting her hands on her stomach.

“Lena had quite a reputation, almost as bad as mine,” he confessed. “I asked her to dance because she had hair I thought I’d seen once before. We danced together but we didn’t really speak and at the end she kissed me. And…” He realized he’d moved his right hand on top of his left and was about to scratch the back of his little finger.

“You slept with her,” Estella supplied. “You can skip that part.”

“Thanks,” he said wryly. Then he hesitated. “It wasn’t what I thought it would be. She was…cold. For her, it was an act of the mind only.”

“Because that’s the way it normally is for you.” Estella again filled in the blanks he didn’t know how to explain. “Like I said, I don’t need the details.”

How to explain what he wanted her to understand without seeming as if he was bragging about his sexual prowess? “I just meant that I empathized; she thought she was ruined, not meant for the joys of life. She was doing it to forget. But her hair had reminded me of a magnificent woman who’d stormed into a theater at the Palais-Royal as brazenly as if she’d been spying for half her life and who’d delivered me papers with more flair than I’d ever seen in any of my counterparts.” He stopped; he’d said too much.

“Surely you didn’t dance with Lena because you thought she was me?” Estella asked, slowly. “You must have women in every port around the world; I don’t believe I could have made such an impression on you.”

You did. Instead he continued. “I knew after that first night that she couldn’t have been you because the woman at the theater was so full of life; she hadn’t had it crushed out of her the way Lena had.”

Estella squeezed her eyes shut. “She all but told me that he raped her.”

“Over and over. You’ve read Evelyn’s memoir. He’s a sadist. He locked Evelyn Nesbit up for two weeks and raped her too.”

“I keep thinking that if Lena had been raised by my mother, none of this would have happened to her. That I’m the lucky one. It should have been me going out the window last. I should have given Lena a chance to live, just like, from birth, she’d given me that same chance.”

“You’re not responsible.”

“And you haven’t been lying here beating yourself up over it? Haven’t been blaming yourself?”

He didn’t answer because he couldn’t, not truthfully.

“All I know for sure is that none of it was Lena’s fault,” Estella said quietly and he heard her voice catch.

He couldn’t help it; he reached out and took her hand in his, holding it very gently so she could easily slip away if she wanted to but she let him and it was almost unbearable, to feel the touch of her skin on his. He lay with his eyes closed, thankful that he could blame his inability to speak on illness.

“Lena and I weren’t lovers,” he said abruptly, needing her to know that now. “I was never with her again, not after that first time. I cared about her though; nobody else did. So we became odd escorts for one another. If I was in Manhattan, we’d go to parties together because then neither of us would…” Feel the need to go home with strangers. He cut the words off. “I wanted her to find some sort of peace. A peace I could never give my mother. I know I pushed you to get to know her but I thought if anyone could make her happy, you could. It was stupid of me to even think that bringing the two of you together could make any kind of reparations for my mother.”

“I didn’t know,” Estella said in a low voice. “I thought you and she were…an item.”

“We weren’t.” Because she wasn’t the woman who’d sailed into a theater and stunned him, the woman who took his breath away by just being near him. A woman who’d grown up with love, not with hatred; he’d seen the evidence of it in her mother’s apartment, which was poor in material things, but there were mementos of Estella everywhere, testifying to a deep-held adoration of mother for daughter.

He shifted a little in the bed, hoping to turn the conversation and it did, but not in a way that was any better. As he moved, the medallion engraved with three witches riding a broomstick that he wore on a silver chain around his neck caught the candle flame, sending out a sharp glint of light.

“What is it?” Estella asked. Her hand reached out to touch the pendant, her finger grazing the skin of his chest in a movement so exquisite he could do nothing other than hold his breath.

When he thought he could speak, he said, “Three witches. The Road to En-Dor. Rudyard Kipling?”

Estella shook her head.

So he quoted:

“It’s a story about a witch who sees the future,” he continued, “but who comforts those before they step out into danger. The Road to En-Dor was the name of a book written about one of the greatest escapes by a soldier in the Great War. So the witches are the insignia of my unit now. They keep all of us safe.”

Estella didn’t say anything, just returned the pendant to his chest, her finger again brushing his skin. “I’m glad you have something to keep you safe,” she said.

Neither of them spoke after that. He was tired now, which always happened just before his head righted itself. He could feel himself drifting away into sleep and the last thing he thought before he went under was that if he died right now, he’d die happier than he’d ever been, knowing that a woman as extraordinary as Estella was lying on a bed beside him while he slept.