Her father was already at table, impeccably turned out in evening dress, his Order Grand Croix proudly pinned to his breast. He had been seated, in an unsubtle form of insult, at the far left of the long table, not at the major’s right hand, as his position would have commanded. There were only seven places set at the table, all facing out, so the assembled local dignitaries might see their conquerors eat as they stood hungry. All were filled but for one.
Aurélie lifted her skirts and entered the room. The mayors fell quiet as she approached. Aurélie could feel the torchlight striking off the diamonds in her hair and at her breast.
“The Demoiselle de Courcelles,” announced Victor, pronouncing the words with relish, as though she were their talisman, a relic made real.
The lieutenant rose. The major didn’t.
“Major. Lieutenant.” Aurélie inclined her head with what she hoped was elegant condescension but felt more like a tic of the neck.
The major didn’t bother to respond. He was staring at the servants, who had begun circling among the local dignitaries, offering platters of bread and mugs of the local beer.
“Who told them to feed those men?”
“I did.” Aurélie’s voice carried through the hall. These weren’t her people, not most of them; they came from other villages, held by other families, some old, some new, but, now, in this moment, local rivalries were forgotten, extinguished. She stood for them and for France. “Those men had a long and weary walk and will have another before they see their beds.”
The major pressed both palms on the table, half rising from his seat. “I did not authorize this.”
“No,” said Aurélie, holding herself straight and tall in the light of the torches. “I did. It was my beer and bread to give.”
“Not anymore.” The major turned his ire on Lieutenant von Sternburg, who had moved to pull out Aurélie’s chair. “What do you think you’re doing? Stop. Who said she has leave to dine with us?”
The empty chair did. It had been clearly left for her. The confusion on Von Sternburg’s face told her all she needed to know. This, Aurélie realized, was reprisal. Instant and petty reprisal for having the gall to bring bread to hungry men.
Von Sternburg opened his mouth to intercede, but Aurélie forestalled him. “Is this to be one of those dinners?” she asked, keeping her voice worldly and just a little condescending, in her very best imitation of her mother. Never mind that she was shaking with rage underneath. “In that case, I shall take a tray in my room. I shall leave you gentlemen to your claret and your hunting stories.”
“I don’t think so.” Slowly, Major Hoffmeister lowered himself back into his seat and there was something in his face that made the skin on Aurélie’s arms prickle beneath her long evening gloves. “If you are so concerned that everyone be fed, you may see that we are served. You! Boy!” He snapped his fingers at Victor, who was standing, horrified, clutching a carafe of wine. “Give that to Mademoiselle de Courcelles. She will wait at table tonight. We will have our supper from her own fair hands.”
The men below stopped and stared, bread and beer mugs frozen suspended, mouths open. Aurélie hoped she wasn’t gaping as they were. She saw Victor’s hands tighten on the handle of the carafe and feared that he meant to empty it over the head of the major. She reached, instinctively, for it, to stop him. Victor yanked it back, away from her—and another pair of hands settled around the base, removing it gently but firmly from Victor’s grasp and presenting it to her.
“It was the tradition,” said Lieutenant von Sternburg, his voice pitched to carry, “in the medieval period, for the daughters of the house to pour wine for the family’s guests. It was seen as no diminution of honor.”
She couldn’t seem to stop staring at his hands, those graceful musician’s hands, against the cut crystal of the carafe. He wore a signet ring on one finger, a coat of arms worn to near invisibility.
“My lady,” said Von Sternburg, and the use of the title felt less a formality and more a declaration. “My lady, will you do us the honor?”
A diplomat, her father had called him. He had broken the tension, saved her pride—and she resented it bitterly. To refuse now would seem less like honor and more like temper.
“Never say that a daughter of the house of Courcelles was remiss in seeing to the comfort of her guests.” Aurélie snatched the carafe from him with more energy than grace. Red droplets fell, marring the fine fabric of her gown. She held the carafe high. “Wine, lieutenant?”
“The major will not like it. You ought to have served him first,” he murmured, as she leaned over his shoulder.
“Would you lecture me on manners, as well as history?”
He coughed as the tulle of her sleeve brushed his cheek in passing. In the light of the torches, his skin seemed absurdly fair, highlighted with a sprinkling of fine gold hair along his chin. “It is true, what I said. Your ancestresses would have done the same for their guests.”
“Yes, I know,” retorted Aurélie as she splashed wine into his glass, one of the precious Venetian glass goblets an ancestor had hauled home from a tour of Italy, along with a mezzo-soprano and a rather lovely triptych supposedly painted by Titian. “They also bathed them. Am I meant to take a sponge to your back?”
He glanced sharply up at her, his gaze catching hers, so that she was caught, practically nose to nose, close enough that she could see the little glimmers of light reflected in his eyes and smell soap on his skin.
“I would demand no service of you that you do not care to give.”
She was staring. She was staring and wine was dripping onto the tablecloth. Aurélie jerked upright, snatching the carafe away. “Fine words, lieutenant—from an uninvited guest.”
“Mademoiselle de Courcelles. Our glasses are empty.” Major Hoffmeister waggled his glass in the air. In an aside, to the man he called Kraus, he said, “No tavern would hire a girl so slow.”
He was, she knew, deliberately baiting them—no, baiting her father. She could see him look at her father as he said it, waiting for him to react.
They said, in Le Catelet, the major had shot men out of hand, for doing no more than object.
“Wine, major?” In the dining room—the proper dining room—there was a painting, a lush Renaissance affair, all burgeoning grapes and equally burgeoning breasts, of Judith seducing Holofernes, the conquering general who had enslaved her people, pouring wine into his goblet as he ogled her cleavage.
The major didn’t ogle. He didn’t even acknowledge. He let Aurélie fill his glass as though she were a servant and then stood, clanking a spoon against his glass.
He did not, she noticed, drink.
“You have all been summoned here to receive instruction,” he said, without preamble. “I am Etappen Kommandant Major Hoffmeister. This region is under my control. You will report here every day at precisely seven in the morning for orders.”
One man was unwise enough to speak up. “Every morning? It is an hour’s walk from Villeret!”
The man at Hoffmeister’s left, the tall man with the crown of red hair, called out, “Then you had best start early!”