The girls had given it to her. A long time ago, for Mother’s Day. Their entwined initials had been inlaid in gold in the stone’s center. On the day they’d given it to her, her oldest watching her open the gift with her big eyes and solemn face, her youngest with her radiant smile, she’d been touched to her core, hugging and kissing them both and promising faithfully to wear it every single day.
She had, until the Nazis had stripped it from her.
Lost. All lost. The girls, Paul, everything.
“I see this means something to you.” He watched her closely. She fought to lock down her memories, her heart. He would use them against her, she knew.
“E and G.” His tone was musing as he examined the stone. Hearing those cherished initials in his foul voice made her want to throw up. If she’d had anything inside her at all, she would have. “Whoever they are, they must be dear to you.”
To close her eyes or look away would reveal too much. She stared back, her face as blank as she could keep it.
“So here is your choice.” He pulled a wallet from his pocket, tucked the pendant inside. “You may tell me what I want to know, and thus avoid being tortured. As a reward, I might even let you live. Or you may be stubborn, which will merely be tedious for me, because it forces me to extract the information I require from you in ways you will, I am afraid, find most distressing. And then, having told all, you will be executed. A sad end, and so unnecessary. I urge you strongly to consider before you commit to such a course.”
He started to turn away, stopped and turned back.
“One more thing. Your husband is dead, I am aware, but you have two daughters, do you not? Yes, my information is quite good. I am guessing—E and G.” He smiled at her, a wide, good-humored smile that brought deep dimples to life in his cheeks. “I have given orders to have Mademoiselles E and G found, and brought here and subjected to the same fate you yourself select. So choose wisely, madame.”
He walked to the door, opened it, then looked over his shoulder at her and said, “Someone will come in soon to take care of you. You must not think we neglect the health of our guests. We will restore yours to the point where you can answer, and then we will talk again, you and I.”
Lillian felt cold to her bones as he left.
I’ve done wrong. Much wrong, and I will be judged for it. But I meant it for the best. All of it. Please, please, watch over the girls and keep them safe.
Closing her eyes, she prayed for death.
Chapter Twenty-One
Heart racing, Genevieve strode out of the Ritz the next morning toward where a group of soldiers gathered around a wheeled vendor’s cart, one of several that had been set up in front of the Vendôme Column. Behind her, the hotel was hopping: the legendary bar was closed until afternoon, but the dining rooms were crowded with high-level German officers breakfasting with the rich and well connected. The smell of coffee and the clink of cutlery on fine china filled the air.
Outside, the day held the promise of warmth to come, but at the moment frost still sparkled on the potted topiaries on either side of the entrance and glimmered on the tops of the ornate black streetlights. Backlit by the morning sun, the towering blue-green obelisk cast a shadow across the cobblestones in the way of a pointer on a sundial. It ended almost at her feet as she moved quickly past the vehicles puffing out malodorous exhaust near the hotel’s front door. Despite the bustle of activity in the square—the pedestrians, the bicycles, the flower and basket and toy vendors—all her attention centered on the woman behind that one particular cart.
Can it be...?
It was not quite 9:00 a.m., not long before Otto would pick her up and take her to La Fleur Rouge, where she was scheduled to rehearse and also hopefully see Max. She’d been up for hours. The curfew lifted at 5:00 a.m. Shortly after that she’d flagged down a bicycle taxi and gone to La Fleur Rouge on her own to find him. He was not there, which left her both frustrated and speculating, not for the first time, about what exactly he did and where exactly he went after she retired to her hotel for the night. Leaving a note—I need to see you NOW—on the table where he couldn’t miss it, she’d returned to the Ritz only to find Berthe up and worried about her whereabouts.
She was alone now as she followed the shadow’s path. Berthe had gone down to the Ritz’s cellar, site of what had to be the most opulent air-raid shelter in Paris, to retrieve some belongings left behind the previous night. They’d been escorted to the cellar by a bellhop bearing gas masks as soon as they’d arrived at the hotel. At the beginning of the war, the roar of bombers overhead and the subsequent explosions as the bombs rained down had sent them scuttling into shelters in whatever city they found themselves like mice hiding from a posse of starving cats. The specter of a deadly cloud of gas being released by the aeroplanes had been terrifying enough that they’d all carried gas masks with them everywhere they went. After years of such fears and attacks, the shrieking sirens and the descent into shelters had become old hat. Last night’s bombers had been Mosquitoes—she could recognize most of the different aeroplanes by sound now—almost certainly targeting something not in Paris’s center, like factories on the outskirts of the city or transportation hubs or railroad lines in the outlying areas. Champagne and caviar had been passed around the shelter by the Ritz’s attentive staff, the gas masks had been used as pillows by the especially sleepy, or inebriated, and the atmosphere in the cellar as they waited for the all clear had been almost that of a party. By the time the sirens had stopped and they were allowed to go to their suite, they’d both been too exhausted (and too loaded on champagne) to account for such items as, say, Berthe’s hat or her own shoes. Then she’d stayed awake as long as she could keep her eyes open hoping Max would show up, which he hadn’t.
Upon her return to the hotel this morning, she’d been headachy and short with Berthe and cross with the absent Max and jittery with anxiety about her mother—until she’d carried her cup of coffee over to the window and looked out.
I think it is...
It was difficult to be certain of details at such a distance, of course, but there was something tantalizingly familiar about the deft movements of the woman behind the cart. Genevieve had spotted her from the window almost at once and felt her breath catch. Snatching up her coat and hat, she’d all but run from the hotel. Now, as she drew close enough to hear her speak, her last doubt vanished.
Emmy.
She hadn’t heard her sister’s voice in seven years, but she recognized it instantly. Though she’d been hoping to find Emmy here, praying to find Emmy here, still the reality of it shook her. Her heart beat faster. A pit yawned in her stomach. For a moment, listening, it felt as if she were being spun back through time.
Come on, bébé: Emmy always on time for dinner, for lessons, for everything, impatient when her junior caused them to be late. Slow down, you: Emmy yanking on her dress to pull her back when she bolted eagerly toward something exciting, like, say, company in the parlor or ice cream. Emmy elbowing her in the ribs when they played duets on the piano and she pounded the keys too fast. Emmy, cantering gracefully, yelling after her when she kicked her pony into a headlong gallop and took the lead as they rode down the precarious path toward the beach. You’re too little, Genny: Emmy doing everything—learning to play the piano, going to dances, falling in love—first.
Although the joke in the family had always been that Emmy might do everything first, but Genny always did it with the most determination.
“—quite sure you won’t regret it.” Emmy spoke gaily to one of the soldiers as she handed over something wrapped in a bit of cloth and accepted some coins in exchange. “My grandmother’s tarts are legendary.”
Emmy had always resembled their father rather than their mother, with a square-jawed, high-cheekboned face that was serenely lovely in repose and blossomed into true beauty when she smiled. Her nose was narrow and straight, her mouth and chin det
ermined, her skin tone tawny, her thick hair a soft caramel shade. She was the taller of the two of them, with larger bones and a fuller figure that had, once upon a time, incited a skinny little sister’s envy.
“Fresh from Grand-mère’s oven this morning,” Emmy promised the next soldier in line, who asked when the tarts had been made.
Today, in a faded floral scarf and a loose brown coat that in no way resembled anything Genevieve had ever seen her always chic sister wear, Emmy looked entirely different from the vibrant girl of her memory. Her skin had lost its sun-kissed golden tone and was now on the waxy side of pale. She was thinner, a great deal thinner, bone thin as a matter of fact, which made her cheek and jaw bones seem more prominent and her nose sharper. She was still, as she had always been, more than merely pretty, but she looked—worn, somehow, underlining that the years since they’d last seen each other had not been good ones. Until she smiled.
That same incandescent smile.
Genevieve felt a twinge somewhere in the region of her heart.
“Molasses or squab?” Emmy asked the next soldier in line. Squab was a fancy word for pigeon. With food so scarce, there were hardly any of the homely birds left in the city. Vendôme Place itself, once home to hundreds of pigeons, was bereft of them. They’d all found their way into the cooking pots of the starving populace, usually to emerge under such noms de guerre as chicken, or duck, or squab.
“Molasses,” the soldier replied. Of course, as a German, he would have access to plenty of meat.
Hovering behind the group of soldiers, Genevieve wasted a moment wondering where Emmy had gotten the tarts. It was almost a certainty that she hadn’t made them. Unless she’d changed out of all recognition, her baking skills were nonexistent. In any case, the ingredients would have required either a sizable investment in black market goods or weeks of accumulated coupons. The scarcity of sweets made the molasses tarts in particular prizes worthy of their price. Only about one-third of Paris’s bakeries were operating now, because there were simply not enough supplies of flour, oil and sugar, or fuel, to enable them to do so. With an unexpected flicker of wry amusement, she pondered the existence of a special SOE bakery turning out treats as props. Maybe baking tarts was what had occupied Max all night.
The soldier stepped back, bit into the tart and made noises indicative of his extreme approval while waving the soldier behind him forward.
“Mademoiselle Dumont!” One of the waiting soldiers became aware of her standing behind them, nudged his companions, murmured to them urgently, “It’s the Black Swan!” Ogling, they all stepped back to clear a path. Discovered, she smiled and greeted them. If she’d thought about it, she would have at least grabbed Berthe’s scarf to conceal her hair and partially hide her face, but upon spotting the woman behind the cart, she’d been so fixated on getting to her that it hadn’t even occurred to her. She looked like Genevieve Dumont in the elegant trench coat she’d snatched out of the closet and thrown on over trousers and a blouse, with only the brim of a jaunty fedora to provide coverage for her face and hair.
Under the soldiers’ close regard there was no more opportunity for clandestine observation. Stepping up to the cart, she found herself meeting her sister’s narrowing eyes.
Like her own, like their mother’s, they were a bright, clear aquamarine.
It instantly felt as if no time at all had gone by. A million scenes from their shared childhood passed between them in that single charged look. And then the final ones, the sequence of events that had led to the shattering of their family, rose up like a whole graveyard’s worth of wraiths and the spontaneous surge of recognition and reunion arcing between them turned into something dark and cold and distant instead.
He’s a terrible person! You can’t go with him, Em! She could still hear the voice of her sixteen-year-old self in her head, shaking with urgency.
They were in a private parlor at the opulent Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz, on the Côte Basque. It was early in the morning, and the three of them, Lillian, Emmy, and her, were alone for the first time in days. Genevra had just burst through the closed French doors, desperate to find her mother and sister in a hotel crammed with guests. As they’d turned to look at her, frowning disapprovingly at her less than decorous entrance, at the clothes she’d hastily pulled on, at her tumbled hair, she’d blurted out what she’d hunted them down to say, afraid to wait even another minute in case she lost her nerve.
There was a moment of surprised silence.
“What are you talking about?” Lillian asked.
“Alain. He’s—he’s—Emmy shouldn’t be with him.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“She can’t—he—”
“Have you lost your mind?” Interrupting, Emmy fixed her sister with a glare. “Wasn’t it just last week that you said he was perfect for me and I was so lucky to have found him? Or was that somebody else talking?”
“That was before. You don’t know what he’s done!” Genevra’s voice shook. She was thin and coltish in loose trousers and a knit top, with an unkempt tangle of black curls and uncharacteristic dark smudges beneath her eyes from a nearly sleepless, life-changing, magic-filled and trauma-roiled night.
The previous evening Emmy had become a married woman, Madame Emmanuelle Giroud. The last few weeks had been hectic with all the excitement and drama of preparing for her wedding. While in better times the celebration of the marriage of the baron and baroness’s elder daughter to Alain Giroud, the twenty-five-year-old only son of the wealthy and well-connected wine broker who sold Rocheford’s award-winning vintages to the world, would have been held at Rocheford, the economic crash and its aftermath had left the house bereft of most of its furniture and all of its staff and the grounds neglected. Lillian had been beside herself as she had tried to contrive a wedding for her eldest daughter that would not shame them nor expose their penury to the bridegroom’s family, their friends or what remained of the fashionable world. A solution had been found: the Hôtel du Palais was owned by an old friend of the family, who had agreed to a much reduced price and to accept future supplies of wine as payment. Everything had gone off beautifully. The guests the hotel was full of had stayed the night, and the celebration had stretched into the early morning hours. This morning even the indefatigable Lillian looked tired. Only Emmy didn’t. Radiant with happiness, Emmy looked beautiful in her aqua traveling dress with her dark gold hair cropped short and curled so it framed her face in shining waves. She was moments away from leaving on her honeymoon with her new husband, who was outside supervising as their bags were loaded into the car. Genevra had seen him, tall and blond and extraordinarily handsome, through an upstairs window as she searched for her mother and sister, and had instantly become both furious on her sister’s behalf and sick to her stomach upon catching sight of him.
“So, then, tell me! What has he done?” Emmy’s question was sharp with challenge.
“Last night—after the wedding—he—he—screwed Madeline Fabron.” Her voice dropped to a mindful-of-the-guests hush as she blurted it out. Madeline Fabron was the twenty-something second wife of the septuagenarian industrialist Georges Fabron, a contemporary and close friend of Alain’s father.
“Genevra. That word! Do you even know what you’re saying?” Regal in her cream lace sheath, Lillian shook her head at her, scandalized.
“He did not!” Emmy’s furious denial came fast. She knew her sister knew exactly what the word meant—and what she was saying.
“He did too! He did.”
“Liar!”
“Girls!”
“I’m not the only one who saw them! Phillippe did, too. We were...” She broke off as a rush of emotions—joy, disbelief, embarrassment, shyness, along with so many others that she couldn’t even put a name to them—threatened to tie her tongue. The thought that Phillippe Cheviot, their longtime friend and neighbor who’d been wild about Emmy
for ages, was now, officially, as of last night, wild about her instead, brought a rush of warmth with it. Hugging the knowledge close, she tucked it out of the way for the present and plunged on. “We were walking up from the beach when we saw them. They were together in the gazebo. On your wedding night! You can’t stay married to him, Em—”
“You’re lying.”
“Ask Phillippe if you don’t believe me.”
Emmy made a scornful sound. “Phillippe would say anything to break up Alain and me.”
“He would not!” Although Emmy’s words sent a shiver of disquiet through her. Hours after the wedding, when she’d come across Phillippe on the beach in front of the hotel, he’d been sitting all alone in the dark with his back against a rock, his thin face turned up to the moon, his finely chiseled features distorted as he wept. The tracks of his tears had silvered his cheeks. Heart aching for him, she’d dropped down beside him to comfort him, and...and...
“And you’d say anything to get in good with Phillippe. We all know you’ve been mooning after him for ages. What, did he pretend to see something and tell you so you’d come in here to make trouble? Well, it’s not going to work.”
“Phillippe did not send me. I saw with my own eyes—”
“Liar.”
“Girls, stop this.” Lillian put an arm around Emmy’s shoulders. The two of them stood together, facing her. Emmy’s eyes were bright with anger. Lillian’s were dark with concern. “Genevra, you must be mistaken in what you thought you saw. Surely—”
“I’m not mistaken. He was on top of her, screwing her. I know what that looks like, believe me.”
“Genevra!”
Emmy clenched her fists. “Alain never went downstairs again, never left me for the rest of the night after we went upstairs together. Not for one minute, do you hear? He was never anywhere near that gazebo, never anywhere near Madeline Fabron.”
The Black Swan of Paris Page 20
