“The Scarlet Pimpernel. An inspiration, perhaps?”
“My dear madame, I have just told you I’m not an Englishman.”
She lifted the book and thumbed the pages. “A master of disguise and forgery, spiriting the persecuted out of Paris. I can’t imagine any resemblance.”
He reached out and pulled the book from her hands. “It’s a good story, that’s all.”
“It was my favorite, when I was a girl. When I was thirteen or fourteen, when I had all these romantic ideas.”
“Like honor?”
“Yes, honor. Among others. But we have business to discuss, I believe.”
Legrand sat up, knocked the ash from his pipe, and set it to one side. “True. The first thing, we must have a name for you.”
“You already know my name.”
“I mean a code, a secret name, so your identity isn’t compromised if some Gestapo squad should knock on my door one night and beg for a cigarette.”
“Is that likely?”
“I imagine you know the odds, more or less.”
He said it carelessly, but his eyes were serious, and his expression didn’t move. Daisy’s palms were damp. She had the feeling she was plunging off a cliff somehow, that she had closed her eyes and taken some giant, terrible leap without pausing to see what lay beneath, and now it was too late. Too late. Yes, she knew the odds. Of course she knew the odds. The odds were that she would likely die. She was going to die for this thing she was doing, let’s admit it, this cause that was so futile and so fraught, this defiance of the German occupation of France. Possibly her children, too, unless Pierre could protect them. And yet the blood pulsing through her veins right now, the keen perception of every detail around her, it wasn’t exactly terror, was it? It was something else. It was like coming to life. She glanced back down at the book and saw herself again, her young self, a ripening girl, all the new thoughts and emotions galloping down her limbs, all the romantic possibility, the possibility for life. And the real reason she had adored the book, which was not for the sake of the dashing Sir Percy, much as she longed for such a hero at that age, in her world made of nothing but school and home, and home being that strange, glamorous zoo of peculiar creatures known as the Ritz. She loved the book because of Marguerite St. Just. Brave, clever, irresistible French wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The toast of Paris. Marguerite, the French word for daisy.
“La Fleur,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“My code name is La Fleur.”
They went to work. Monsieur Legrand showed her the papers he had forged, the identity cards and the laissez-passers for a pair of Allied pilots downed over Belgium last month and now hidden in a safe house on rue de Bretagne. Daisy picked up the card belonging to one of them—new name Jean-Paul Bisset—and examined it closely. “But it’s perfect,” she said in amazement.
“Of course it is.”
She looked up. “How did you do this? How did you find such a talent?”
“My mother’s an artist. She taught me to draw and paint when I was young. And the first thing you do, when you’re learning to draw and paint, you copy the works of great artists.”
“Well, it’s remarkable.” She looked at his chin, which of course contained a small, perfect cleft, and thought, You’re remarkable.
He waved his hand and rose from the chair to take a pair of books from a nearby shelf. Daisy strained to read the titles, but his hands moved too quickly. He opened the front cover and peeled back the paper that lined it. The gold ring caught the light from the lamp at the corner of the table.
“Now look,” he said. “We tuck the papers inside the false lining of these books, here. Lay them flat, one for each cover. You see? Then just a touch of binder’s glue to hold it back down again.”
He took the pot of glue and unscrewed the lid and dipped in a brush. Daisy stared at his wrist as he dotted the edges of the lining paper and smoothed it back down again, on top of the papers, so delicate and flawless you couldn’t see the ridges at all.
“Now you try it,” he said.
“I—I can’t possibly. Not as well as that.”
“Just try. There may come a time when you’re the only one to do it.”
Daisy took a book from the stack, and one of the identity cards. Legrand had already unstuck the lining, so it peeled back easily. Daisy asked how he did it.
“Steam,” he said. “Steam and a very slim knife.”
Daisy laid the papers flat, brushed the glue, pressed the thick lining paper back against the front cover. It wasn’t bad; she had used a little too much glue, but the edges were straight, the lump of the additional paper only remarkable if you knew where to look. If you were expecting it there. Legrand leaned over to inspect her handiwork.
“Very good,” he said. “A natural.”
His hair was luxurious, right next to her face. She smelled the pipe tobacco, and maybe soap. She couldn’t remember the last time she had sat so close to a man who was not her husband. Certainly not alone, in this small room with its tiny window and its cozy lamplight and the stairs in the corner that spiraled up—so he said, when they first entered, with a wave of his hand—to his bedroom, such as it was. The room was lined with shelves, which were stuffed with books, muffling the sounds of the bookseller and Philippe and their customers on the other side of the wall. On the table in the middle rested the tools of his trade—the pens, the ink, the magnifying lens, the tiny chisels and knives and brushes of all shapes. They sat so close, his knee brushed hers.
She sat back a little. “So now what?”
“Now we let the glue dry, of course.”
“How long will that take?”
“Generally I prefer to let them dry overnight—”
“Overnight! I can’t stay overnight!”
“Hush, hush.” He laid a finger over his smiling mouth. “I am deeply sorry to tell you that we don’t have the luxury of time, in this case. So we shall have to make do with half an hour only.”
“Will that be enough?”
“It will have to be.” Legrand laid the books open, underneath the lamp. “There. That should help. Wine?”
“Wine? You have wine in this place?”
“But of course. I am a Frenchman, aren’t I?”
Monsieur Legrand produced a bottle of Burgundy and a pair of glasses from a cabinet in the corner. The wine was superb. This in itself did not surprise Daisy—Monsieur Legrand was the kind of man who drank good wine, even in wartime—but she was surprised to find herself enjoying it. They talked about books, a subject that was safe but also intimate. It turned out that Legrand’s father was a writer. Nothing Daisy would have read, he added quickly.
“Because these books are English, perhaps?” she said, in English.
He replied in French. “Because they are to do with men and spies, and not, I think, the kinds of subjects that would interest you. At least before now, eh?”
“What do you think interests me?”
He sucked on his pipe for a moment or two, examining her. “Not Flaubert, thank God. Perhaps Shakespeare. But in English, or translation?”
“Both.”