Aurélie’s lips pressed tightly together. “Maybe not his methods, but you’re not going to quibble with the ends, are you?”
“Do you mean do I want my country to win this ridiculous war? Of course. I would be a traitor to think otherwise. But do I want it to go on a second longer than it need? And destroy so much of beauty and goodness and . . . never mind.” Von Sternburg gave his head a shake, looking distinctly bemused. “Do you know, you’re still holding that carafe?”
“Yes. I think it might be permanently attached to my palms,” said Aurélie tartly. It was all very well for him to go on about truth and beauty, as if nothing had changed, as if he were still the man she had known in Paris. He wasn’t the one who smelled like a vineyard. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m meant to be filling it with wine so I can go back to my oh-so-honorable duties to my guests.”
She turned on her heel, but Von Sternburg forestalled her. “Mademoiselle de Courcelles.”
His fingers barely brushed her arm, but the touch made her stop short, trembling. With rage. Only with rage.
“What?” she demanded. “What?”
He rescued the carafe from her before she could drop it. “Please. Don’t look at me like that. I only wanted to tell you—Hoffmeister may be a bully, but he’s not a fool. Don’t underestimate him. Don’t taunt him.”
“You needn’t worry on my account. I’ll be the perfect picture of silent womanhood.”
“Because that will madden him the most?” She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that, like he knew her. Like he cared. “I shouldn’t want to see you made a martyr. We shouldn’t be here long. A week. A month at most. All I want is to keep you safe.”
Here was a snare straight from the Devil. She could almost feel herself weakening in the face of his earnestness, that kindness that was so much a part of who he was, a man who surrendered his umbrella that others might stay dry.
A conqueror. Conquerors weren’t kind.
“And what of my people? Will you keep them safe, too, or does the offer extend only to me?”
“I want only to protect you,” he said softly.
“What price that protection?” Gathering the shreds of her dignity about her, Aurélie said grandly, “No thank you, Lieutenant von Sternburg. I can take care of myself—and my people, too.”
She was about to depart, when Von Sternburg said, “That being said, haven’t you forgot something?”
“What?” Aurélie wrapped her arms around her chest. Her dress was clinging damply to her in what she feared were rather revealing places. “That you are the conqueror? That we are here only on your sufferance? That your grandfather was kind to my father once?”
“Er, no.” Von Sternburg held up a rather grimy piece of cut crystal. “Haven’t you forgot your carafe?”
Chapter Nine
Daisy
The Hôtel Ritz
Paris, France
May 1942
The decanter in Grandmère’s suite at the Ritz was made of heavy cut crystal, centuries old. The Ritz staff cleaned it daily so that dust should not accumulate in its ridges. As a child, Daisy had assumed her grandmother had smuggled it out of the collections of the Château de Courcelles, but it turned out Grandmère had bought the decanter in Paris shortly after she first moved there, along with the rest of the suite’s contents. She’d wanted to start fresh, she said, and, anyway, the comte raised such a fuss over every little object, as if everything inside that damned château was a holy relic of one kind or another.
Daisy pulled out the stopper and splashed a few ounces into a snifter. Behind her, Grandmère scribbled furiously.
“That’s all? You’ve got the names right? You haven’t forgotten someone?”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” said Daisy.
“And Pierre. He thought this meeting was a great success?”
“Yes. He said something afterward about moving up in the world. A grand new apartment.”
Grandmère made a noise. “A grand new apartment. And we all know where those come from. Another Jewish family stripped of everything on one pretext or another and sent east to the camps.”
“Well, I would never live in someone else’s apartment like that. It’s grotesque.”
“You think not? What else are you to do, if Pierre moves up in the world by his own low cunning?”
Daisy stared at her face in the mirror above the liquor cabinet. Her skin looked pallid, her eyes unnaturally bright. She watched herself draw a long sip of cognac—almost too long to be called a sip at all, really—and noticed Grandmère’s reflection in the distance, on the sofa, watching Daisy watch herself drink cognac.
“My dear,” said Grandmère. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you haven’t poured yourself a glass of spirits since that day you discovered you were expecting Olivier.”
Daisy set down the snifter and turned to face Grandmère. “Last night. There was another guest at the last minute.”
Grandmère made a noise of exasperation and picked up her notepad and her fountain pen from the sofa table. “Why didn’t you mention him, then?”
“Because I don’t think he had anything to do with what they were discussing. He invited himself. It was a surprise to Pierre, I think.”
“A good surprise?”
“Yes. He’s an important man, a lieutenant colonel. But he wasn’t one of them, I thought. He wasn’t part of their circle. He didn’t stay when the rest of them retired to the study.”
“He left early?”
“Yes. Just had dinner and coffee and left.”
“That’s strange.” Grandmère frowned and tapped the end of the fountain pen against her chin. “His name?”
Daisy turned back to the decanter, poured a little more cognac, and returned to the sofa to sit across from her grandmother’s sharp eyes. Today Grandmère wore a magnificent blue silk kaftan and enormous earrings that dangled like chandeliers over her narrow shoulders, giving you an impression of extravagant frivolity that ended at the three giant, somber furrows across her forehead. “Von Sternburg,” Daisy said. “Lieutenant Colonel Max von Sternburg.”
“Max von Sternburg.” Tap, tap went the fountain pen against Grandmère’s chin. “Yes. Arrived here recently from some field command in the east, didn’t he?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Of course I’ve heard of him. He’s next in line for commandant of Paris. Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“Apparently not.”
“I’m told Berlin thinks highly of him. His loyalty to Germany is unimpeachable.” Grandmère said this with such conspicuous irony, Daisy lifted her eyebrows and sat back against the sofa. The scent of pipe smoke wafted past her nose.
“Has your poet friend been to visit?” she said. “Monsieur Lebeouf?”
“Legrand. What makes you say that?”