“Rid-what?”
Max chuckled. “Rydzyna. There was a castle there held by my ancestors long, long ago.”
“Back when they went on Crusade with my ancestors,” said Aurélie drowsily. She tried to stifle a yawn and failed. Being ruined was exhilarating and exhausting.
“Most likely,” said Max, and she felt the press of his lips against her hair. “But we hadn’t the luck you’ve had with your castle. Ours was destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War and built up again after. It’s more a manor house than a castle.”
“You mean it’s not drafty and riddled with mice?” said Aurélie. “I’m not sure if I can lower myself to that sort of modern convenience.”
After a brief tussle, Max said, “I can’t answer for the mice, but we do have close stoves in most of the major rooms, which take care of the drafts rather nicely. The house sits on a lake—a manmade one, I’m afraid. My ancestor thought it would be rather nice to live on an island, so he made one for himself.”
“I understand the impulse.” An island sounded quite perfect at the moment, an island where one could love and be true, without the conflicting demands of affection and honor. Where no one would trouble them, or catalogue the number of coffee grinders, or threaten them with artillery and treason. “Would we live on your island, then?”
“If you would like it. I should like it—if you would like it.”
“I think I should like it,” said Aurélie gravely. “Very much. We could have little boats for the children.”
“And for the dogs?”
Aurélie gave him a withering look, which was rather wasted in the darkness. “Not for the dogs. They can swim.”
“So shall our children,” said Max easily. “I will teach them.”
“You can swim?” said Aurélie, trying to ignore both the casual reference to their children and the image of Max stripped down to his skivvies in a sunlit stream.
“Of course. One doesn’t live on an island without learning to swim. I’m not sure how old I was when I first fell into the lake. Or if I fell or was tossed.” He touched a finger to Aurélie’s cheek. “Shall I teach you to swim? The lake is particularly lovely in the summer twilight.”
“Do you promise not to toss me?” Too late, Aurélie realized the double entendre. “I didn’t mean—er. Tell me more about your home.”
“Our home.” Max leaned back against the pillows, bringing her with him. “There are formal gardens—my grandmother saw to those—but what I like best are the wildflowers. Fields and fields of wildflowers. The land is very flat and rather damp, and in the spring, when all is blooming . . .”
Aurélie frowned at his chin. “How could you bear to be in Paris when you had that waiting for you?”
“You were in Paris,” said Max simply.
When they could speak again, Aurélie said unsteadily, “I’m not clever like you, you know. I’m not cultured or well-read. I can’t debate philosophy in three languages—or even one.”
“But you can outshoot me. Didn’t you tell me so?” When Aurélie didn’t smile, Max turned so that they were lying on their sides, on a level, looking directly at each other, his fingers twined through hers. “I don’t love you for any of those things, you know. Not because you can outrace me or outshoot me, or doubtless outfence me, too. You are . . .”
“Yes?”
“You are you,” he said to her, as she had said to him what felt a very long time ago. “You are remarkable just as you are. There is no one else in the world like you and there is no one else for me. And I don’t care if you’ve read Plato or Kant or last week’s Paris-Midi.”
“I haven’t got last week’s Paris-Midi. Or last month’s. And half the time I didn’t bother to read it, anyway.”
“You see?” said Max, and she could hear the tenderness in his voice. “You are the most honest person I know. The most honest and the most honorable.”
Except when she wasn’t.
She could feel the talisman between them, as if it were there. She had lied to him about the talisman; she had lied to him about everything. Except what had happened between them in this bed. That much was true.
“But I’m not.” Aurélie drew back a bit, determined to disabuse him. “I was meant to beguile you, you know. To rifle your conversation for spare bits of intelligence.”
“It’s just as well I haven’t any, then,” said Max, but when she didn’t smile at it, he drew her closer. “My heart, don’t you think I know? You were never subtle about it.”
“I wasn’t?” Aurélie wasn’t sure whether she ought to be offended.
Max affected a falsetto. “‘Goodness, it’s cold for November, isn’t it, and by the way, have you heard anything about an offensive?’”
Aurélie pushed against his chest with both hands. “I never sounded like that.”
“I paraphrased,” said Max, unabashed, and Aurélie wrinkled her nose at him, even though she wasn’t quite sure he could see it in the darkness. His voice changed, grew serious. “I have heard one thing, though.”
“Are you really sure you should be telling me? I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“You really aren’t very good at being a spy, are you?” said Max tenderly.
“No,” Aurélie agreed glumly. “I’d make a much better general.”
“So you should. I shouldn’t want to stand against you. But this isn’t like that. Everyone will know soon enough.”
“What?” There was something about his tone that made her very nervous.
Max stared up at the ceiling, choosing his words carefully. “The High Command has decided there are too many mouths to feed in the occupied territories. They have decided to allow a select number of people to leave. Women and children and men too old to till the fields,” he specified.
“Leave for where?” Too many people had already been sent to work camps in Germany.
“To France—the other parts of France, that is. The convoy will travel first to Switzerland, and from there, back into France. They mean not to tell anyone until a few days before, so that people won’t have much time to prepare. The first convoy will leave in June.” There was a moment of silence, before Max said, “I should like you to be in it.”
Aurélie sat up, accidentally elbowing him in the chest. “Me?”
Max looked at her gravely. “You. I would feel better knowing that you were safely in Paris.”
Aurélie pleated the sheet with her fingers, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “But . . . what about my people?”
“They have your father to look after them. Isn’t that what you said?”
Yes, when he wasn’t risking his own skin playing with pigeons. Aurélie shoved her tousled hair away from her face. “But Hoffmeister would never let me go.”
“No. But if you were to acquire forged papers, you could be gone before he realized. You would have to cover your hair. You’re too recognizable as you are. But it could be done.”
Aurélie stared at the outlines of his face, wishing she dared light the lamp. “You’ve thought of this before.”
“As soon as I heard about the evacuations.” They were only centimeters apart, but Max suddenly felt very far away. Quietly, he said, “If you go, I’ll go.”
Aurélie bristled. “That’s not fair. You can’t tie your survival to my desertion!”
“Aren’t you asking me to do the same? To desert to save myself?”
He didn’t need to sound so damnably reasonable. “I’m not telling you to desert! Only to get yourself reassigned.”
“And is that not the same as what I ask of you?” Max took her limp hands in his, chafing them gently to warm them. “Aurélie, I don’t know what plots and intrigues you’ve embroiled yourself in. I don’t want to know. All I ask is that you conduct them from Paris, not here.”
Paris. She had run from Paris, had come all this way, through horrors unspeakable. And what had she done? Fallen in love with a German. And served as a symbol for her people.
There was that. And the food she had brought, while little, had been sorely needed. She was needed.
“And if I were to refuse?” Aurélie’s voice cracked on the words.
Max didn’t hesitate. “Then I stay here with you.”
Aurélie frowned at him. “Is that a threat?”
“Not a threat. A promise. We protect each other, you and I.”
“Even though we’re on opposite sides?” Without meaning to, Aurélie found herself leaning into his warmth, resting her head against his shoulder. Max’s arm curled around her, supporting her, warming her. In a small voice, she said, “I wish we were on your island.”
Max’s sigh ruffled her hair. “So do I. So do I.” He nuzzled the top of her head. “But soon. Soon. I mean it, you know. I don’t care what the rest of the war brings, I don’t care who wins or loses, so long as we can be together after.”
Aurélie rubbed her head against his shoulder. “That’s treason, you know.”
“Would I prefer that my country win? Certainly. But after this . . . ah well. There are monsters anywhere. Aren’t there?” He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself. “We’ll need papers for you.”
Reluctantly, Aurélie said, “I know someone who might be able to acquire them.”
He didn’t ask who or how. It was, Aurélie realized, safer for them both that he not know. They were skirting the edges of dishonor. “Good. When you have them, tell me what name you will be going under. I will add it to the list.”
“I don’t recall agreeing to go.” Had she? She was beginning to suspect that Max’s unassuming ways hid a very strong will. He would never force her, not in anything, that she knew for sure. But, somehow, he had a way of winning an argument.
“Think about it. Please?”
“I’ll think about it.” Aurélie turned toward him without thinking, her bare breasts brushing against his chest. “I’ll think about going.”
“But please.” Max made a strangled sound deep in his throat, half groan, half chuckle. In the darkness, his lips found hers. “Don’t go yet.”
A loud noise woke her, reverberating through her ears. Aurélie’s first thought was that Suzanne had dropped a pot down below in the kitchen, and she tried to bury her head back under her pillow. But the pillow was thinner than hers, the sheets coarser, and when she rolled over, she nearly fell off the edge of the bed.
Aurélie sat up abruptly, realizing she was also not wearing any clothes, and remembering, in vivid detail, why.
Clutching the blanket to her chest with one hand, she wiped the sleep out of her eyes with the other. “Was that—”
“A pistol.” Max was already in his uniform trousers, pulling the braces up over his shoulders. “Is there a way you can leave without being seen?”
“Through the storerooms.” That was enough to wake her up with a vengeance. Aurélie began feeling around for her discarded garments, which appeared to have migrated to all the corners of the room.
Shrugging into his coat, Max said, “I’ll go see what’s happened out there. You wait a few minutes and then go the other way.”
“All right,” said Aurélie, feeling blowsy and bleary. She struggled to reach the buttons at the back of her dress.
With swift efficiency, Max did them up for her. And then, to her surprise, he knelt before her. Possessing himself of both her hands, he pressed a kiss to each. “Soon,” he said. “Soon, we will be together properly.”
“On your island on the lake,” murmured Aurélie, looking down at his shining golden head. Her chest felt tight.
There was shouting outside and the sound of booted feet. Max gave her hands one last, firm squeeze. “Soon.” He pressed a hard kiss to her lips. “Soon.”
And he snatched up his hat and was gone.
Aurélie hastily pinned up her hair with whatever pins she could glean from the worn boards of the floor, wrinkled her nose at herself in Max’s scrap of a shaving mirror—did she look as though she’d been thoroughly tumbled?—and hurried down the stairs, taking the long route back through the storerooms to the kitchen of the new wing, from which she hurried across the courtyard as though she had only just been roused from bed. From her own bed.
There was a confusion of people in the courtyard, but at the center of it, Aurélie could make out a cluster of German uniforms: Hoffmeister, flanked by Dreier on one side and Kraus’s flaming red head on the other. Across from them stood her father. They were all staring at something on the ground.
Aurélie pushed and wiggled her way through, elbowing Suzanne and stepping on Victor’s foot.
“Pardon me, excuse me. . . . What’s this?” She arrived breathless at her father’s side.
“What do you think it is, mademoiselle?” clipped Hoffmeister, and Aurélie finally looked down and saw what they had all been staring at.
A pigeon.
A dead pigeon, lying in a welter of blood-stained feathers.
“It’s a bird,” she said dumbly.
Behind Hoffmeister, she could see Max, looking so very official and German again in his uniform and cap.
“Not just any bird. A pigeon. Well?” Hoffmeister demanded, so suddenly and so loudly that everyone jumped. “Whose is this? Who was keeping this pigeon?”
No one spoke.
Hoffmeister’s face was white with fury—but also a strange, furtive satisfaction. “I will find out. I don’t care who you are, or what you think you are, I will find out, and the miscreant will be shot.”
The count’s hand tightened on his wolfhound’s collar as Clovis snarled at Hoffmeister.
“Have you considered that it might have been passing through?” He sounded thoroughly bored, but Aurélie could see how white his knuckles were against Clovis’s graying fur.
Hoffmeister raised his pistol, training it on Aurélie’s father. “You do know,” the major said, in a dangerously conversational tone, “that to keep a pigeon is death.”
“There was a time,” said the count blandly, rubbing the area between Clovis’s ears, “when to keep a pigeon was dinner.”
“You will not joke about this. You are lord here? Good. Then you take responsibility for your people. Any pigeons I find are your pigeons.”
Max put a hand on Hoffmeister’s arm. “Sir, with respect . . .”
“Enough! You want your—what do you call it?—your noblesse oblige? You take the consequences. If I find another pigeon, Monsieur le Comte, it does not matter where or how I find it. You will die for it. Do you not think I mean it?”
The only response was the shuffling of feet in the courtyard, the lowering of eyes.
Hoffmeister’s lips pressed tightly together. His gun was pointing at Aurélie’s father still, shaking slightly with the force of his rage.
“This,” he said tightly, “this will be your fate if I find another one of these cursed birds.”
He lowered the gun and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the report hammered against Aurélie’s ears, broken by an agonized yelp that turned into a low howl.
“Clovis!” He was lying on the flagstones; there was blood on his fur. Aurélie flung herself down beside him, her hands moving desperately over his coat, trying to find the wound. “Clovis, Clovis.”
At her voice, the old wolfhound struggled to rise, but his legs folded beneath him. His tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“Clovis!” Aurélie frantically shrugged out of her shawl, wadding the material against Clovis’s side to stanch the blood.
“It’s no use,” said her father, his voice tight. “There’s no saving him.”
“Remember that.” The major was standing above them, and it was all Aurélie could do not to snarl at him, not to wrench that wretched pistol from his hand and bludgeon him with it. “Remember. Next time I shoot your daughter, perhaps. Your dog, your daughter . . . and then you. Do not give me cause.”
He turned without waiting for a response and marched away, his sycophants falling into place behind him. Max cast one lon
g, concerned look over his shoulder at Aurélie. Through the fog of her tears, she vaguely saw him raise his brows at her and cock his head.
Leave, he was saying. Leave.
A hand grasped her arm, a hand considerably more twisted than she remembered, with brown splotches on it. “Come away.” Her father drew her to her feet and stood for a moment, beside her, looking down at his old companion. Gruffly, he said, “He was old. He had a good life.”
“You can’t mean that.”
Her father looked down at her and Aurélie saw that he wasn’t calm at all; he was stiff with rage. He began walking rapidly toward the new wing. “Would I prefer to thrash that canaille until he is nothing more than pulp? Certainly. But now is not the time.”
“He means to kill us all.” Aurélie grabbed his arm, pulling him into the relative shelter of the kitchen garden. In a low voice, she said, “You can’t do anything more with the pigeons. If he finds another—”
“How, pray, am I meant to send messages to Paris? Donkey and cart?”
“Send them by me.” She hadn’t thought it until she said it, but there it was, fully formed. “There is to be a civilian evacuation next month. Send the messages with me.”
Her father looked at her assessingly. “Where did you hear this? From your lieutenant?”
“Yes,” said Aurélie shortly.
Her father plucked a spear of last year’s lavender, still winter gray. He rubbed it between his fingers. “He wants you to go.”
“He wants me safe.”
Her father tossed the mangled lavender aside. “Maybe he wants you out of the way.”
Did he? For a moment, Aurélie wondered. But then she remembered Max kneeling before her, his head bowed. Soon. If he wanted her out of the way, it was for her own safety—and his, she reminded herself. If she went, he went.
But she wasn’t going to tell her father that.
There was so much she couldn’t tell, not to Max, not to her father.
Aurélie shrugged, looking away. “Does it matter, if it serves our purpose?”
“That depends on the our,” said her father. He was standing very straight, as though back in the military. “You ask me to work with a German.”
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 33
