Aurélie refused to be cowed. She lifted her chin in approved style, taking advantage of her height to look down her nose at him. “I gave only what was mine.”
The major was not impressed. “You do not seem to understand, Mademoiselle de Courcelles. There is nothing that is yours. Nothing.”
He smiled at her, a narrow, thin-lipped smile. That smile made Aurélie suddenly very nervous.
“This room. This room is required. You will no longer occupy it. I find my current chambers inconvenient. This will do better.” He raised a hand, and Dreier obediently scuttled forward. “Lieutenant. Help Mademoiselle de Courcelles with her things.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dreier, and before Aurélie could say anything, before she could move, he turned and wrenched open the window, dropping an armload of her most intimate garments into the courtyard below.
“I—” Aurélie would have stepped forward, but Hoffmeister was between her and the lieutenant. Dreier gathered up an armload of her dresses.
“A moment.” Hoffmeister arrested his subordinate with a gesture. “Leave us.”
Us, as though he were the Sun King, throned in state.
“This is unworthy of civilized men,” said Aurélie, doing her best to keep her tone level.
“This is war, Mademoiselle de Courcelles. I do not know what chivalric tales your deluded parent has fed you, but there are no knights—and very few ladies. I have an exchange to propose to you.”
“My honor or my life?” Aurélie felt she would make a better account of herself if she could stop her arms from clutching around her chest. Deliberately, she unclenched them and lowered them to her sides.
Hoffmeister looked almost amused. “What would I want with either? I have no desire to make a martyr of you. As for the other—no. No. There is a relic. A . . . talisman, I believe you call it.”
“A talisman,” Aurélie repeated dumbly. “The talisman?”
Hoffmeister suppressed his irritation at the idiocy of the conquered. Speaking slowly and clearly, in atrocious French, he said, “Give me the talisman and you may keep your accommodations. And I will turn a blind eye to your activities in the village.”
“Do you truly believe I would trade my patrimony for silk wall hangings?” She had never liked those wall hangings. They had been chosen by her father’s mother, whom Aurélie suspected might have been color-blind. Either that, or she had exceedingly dreadful taste in drapes. “I wouldn’t, even if the talisman were here, which it isn’t.”
“I could have you shot for stealing.”
There was a time when it had seemed rather romantic to be martyred for France. Now that the moment was here, Aurélie discovered that she strongly preferred not to be shot.
“I can summon fifty men—including your own subordinates—who can vouch that you advised me to share my own rations with my people.” Aurélie struggled to show a brave front, the front her people would expect. “If you want to shoot me, shoot me. Make a martyr of me. Let the world know that the Demoiselle de Courcelles died for France.”
Died for a few eggs and half a chicken, which wasn’t nearly so impressive, but still.
“Is this talisman so important, then?” Hoffmeister seemed to think he had stumbled on something; she could see his eyes light the way they did when he thought he’d discovered an accounting anomaly.
“The talisman,” said Aurélie, “is in Paris.”
“Is it?”
There was no way he could know. No one had seen it beneath her shirtwaist, that day she arrived; no one had seen her hide it. Unless . . . The thought made her cold.
They liked to pretend that no one would betray them to the conqueror, but people did. All the time. Sometimes for as little as a bag of coffee beans, a block of chocolate.
“If you rediscover it, you will come to me.” Hoffmeister paused for a moment, surveying the wreck of her room. “In the meantime, since you find the kitchens of such interest, I suggest you find lodging there.”
He took up the dresses Dreier had abandoned and dropped them, casually, out the window. Then he stood there, looking at her.
“Yes?” said Aurélie, her nerves on the verge of fraying. She just wanted him to go, to go and leave her be.
He gestured with a parody of courtesy, indicating that she was to go. “This room, mademoiselle. It is no longer yours.”
“Oh.” The color flared in Aurélie’s cheeks. Somehow, the reality of it hadn’t quite hit her. She turned and exited, avoiding Hoffmeister’s eyes.
It was just a room. Just a room with very ugly wall hangings. But it was her bolt-hole, her hideaway, and she felt strangely naked without it.
She truly would be naked if she didn’t collect her clothes from the courtyard. There was no spare cloth to make anything new.
In a daze, Aurélie went down the familiar stairs. Or was she meant to be using the back stairs now, as befitted her new station? Would Hoffmeister outfit her in an apron and cap and have her serve at table? Or was she to sleep in rags at the hearth like Cinderella in the old tale?
None of it mattered, she knew that. Clothes were merely coverings for the body; a bed was a bed was a bed.
But she was shaking all the same.
Her belongings were scattered all over the courtyard. A pair of camiknickers was hanging, like a schoolboy’s prank, off the arm of the cherub that adorned the Italianate fountain. Aurélie made her way around the courtyard, gathering her belongings one by one, like a peasant foraging for firewood. A chemise here, a shirtwaist there, all so sad and crumpled, such pitiful little pieces of a life, useless embroidery on her underthings, beading on her evening frocks. What good did any of that do her now? She would do better to dress in wool as the country people did.
Her favorite dress, the one with the large flower embroidered on the bodice, had landed square in a mud puddle, the delicate fabric dark with dirt.
Aurélie knelt and lifted it from the mud. No amount of washing would bleach the stain of the clay of Picardy out of that silk. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t. What use had she for evening dresses now? But she caught herself clutching the crumpled silk to her chest, hunching over it as the sobs caught in the back of her throat.
“Mademoiselle?” Someone cleared his throat. “Mademoiselle de Courcelles?”
Aurélie turned her face away, a blind instinct born of shame. She couldn’t let him see her this way. She couldn’t let anyone see her this way. But particularly not Lieutenant von Sternburg. Not he.
His shadow fell across the clothes; she saw the tips of his uniform boots as he crouched down beside her. Their polish seemed like an affront. “What happened here?”
“Why? Do you want to catalog it? Write the items down in a ledger? So many soiled skirts? One ruined evening gown?” It might have sounded more impressive if her voice hadn’t cracked.
“I had thought,” he said gently, “to render assistance.”
She couldn’t bear his pity. “To whom? Would you like to dance what’s left into the dirt?” She wasn’t being politic. Aurélie rubbed the back of her hand against her eyes. It was, she belatedly realized, streaked with mud. Which was probably all over her face. Turning away, Aurélie said woodenly, “Forgive me. I don’t know what I’m saying.”