“Rainy days at the Louvre,” Max said softly. “Cakes at Angelina.”
“You left. You left after that. I looked for you at my mother’s salon . . . to return your umbrella,” she added hastily. “But you never came back.”
“No.” He looked down at his hands. “I was called back to Berlin.”
“And it was only an umbrella.” Aurélie rather wished she hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t sure why she had. But it was Christmas Eve and the shelling had stopped and everything was strange and edged with ice. “Not the least bit important. One can find a new umbrella anywhere.”
“Not anywhere. There are some umbrellas—there are some umbrellas that matter more than others.” Max leaned forward, his eyes pale in the moonlight. “I ought to have written . . . I meant to write . . . I would have written . . . but it was too hard. It was my sister, you see. Elisabeth . . .”
“You mentioned her.” At the Louvre. He had shown Aurélie the picture he kept in his watch.
“She was the heart of our family, our good angel. For the longest time, it was only me. My mother—she lost child after child. I wasn’t meant to know, you understand. But . . .”
“Nursemaids talk,” Aurélie provided for him. She knew it well. It was how she had learned of the peculiarities of her own position, that “Uncle Hercule,” who lived in the suite with them, was, in fact, her father’s cousin and her mother’s lover.
“Yes,” said Max gratefully. “And when Elisabeth was born . . . she was such a little thing, so delicate. They’d had the mourning bands ready, but she lived. She lived and everything was bright again. My mother had headaches; she had kept the curtains drawn and I was meant to be quiet and not disturb her, but once Elisabeth arrived, it didn’t matter anymore. Suddenly, everything was light and we could run and laugh as much as we liked and there were flowers in all the rooms. I was nine already when Elisabeth was born. But it was like living in a whole new house, as though my life started again with Elisabeth. Does that sound strange?”
“No,” said Aurélie. There had been a life before the Ritz, she knew. She could still vaguely remember the slamming doors, her mother’s raised voice, the flat of her father’s palm against a tabletop, making her jump. Her life, her life as she knew it, had begun when she was four years old, when her mother had taken up permanent residence at the Ritz. “Did she . . . is she—”
“It was a chill,” said Max. “Just a chill. All of our science, all of our advances in medicine, and not one doctor could save her. I was in time to see her. But just.”
“I’m sorry,” said Aurélie. Without thinking, she put her hand on his, squeezing hard. “I’m so sorry.”
“That was why I left, you see. Why I left and didn’t come back. My mother . . . she was in a bad way.” He shifted to face her, turning his hand so that they were palm to palm, his hand holding hers. “That’s what I don’t understand, about any of this. There is so much misery we cannot prevent. Why do we go out of our way to cause more?”
“I don’t know.” Aurélie ran her tongue along her dry lips. “I was never philosophical.”
“No,” said Max, lifting his eyes from her lips. “You only put us all in our places with a few well-chosen words.”
“I didn’t,” Aurélie protested. She pulled back, looking at his face, his familiar, careworn face. “Did I?”
“It was beautiful to behold.” His voice was so low she could hardly hear. “You were beautiful to behold.”
“Were?” Aurélie asked hoarsely. This was folly, she knew. Worse than folly. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. Not when he was looking at her like that. No one, not even Jean-Marie with his clumsy affection, had ever looked at her like that before.
“Are.” The word was torn from his throat. Aurélie wasn’t sure how it had happened, but both her hands were in his, their knees bumping together. “I wish—I wish we were anywhere but where we are. I wish I had come back to Paris.”
“For your umbrella?”
“It was never about the umbrella.” His eyes were very pale in the moonlight.
“That’s good,” Aurélie said unevenly. “Because I think one of my mother’s friends filched it.”
Max’s hands tightened on hers. “I hate this. I hate what we’ve done here. I hate the cruelty, the waste of it. But, most of all, I hate being here, with you, knowing that to you I must always be the enemy.”
Never mind that it was exactly what she’d been thinking not an hour ago. “You’re not my enemy.”
“Aren’t I?”
“I don’t know.” It should have been simple. It should have been easy. Aurélie glowered at him. “It’s your own blasted fault. If you’d just be like the rest of them, it wouldn’t be so hard to remember that I’m meant to hate you.”
“I’m sorry.” He smiled crookedly at her, that wry, rueful smile that was so his own. “I’ll try harder to be hateful if you like.”
“Don’t,” said Aurélie fiercely, and kissed him.
Chapter Fifteen
Daisy
Avenue Marceau
Paris, France
July 1942
The kiss shocked her. Pierre had long ago fallen out of the habit of kissing Daisy when he left for work. Or when he returned. Or at any time at all, really, except at the specific moment when he required sex.
At one time—again, long ago—Daisy had missed that small gesture of affection and what it meant. Then she became used to its absence, as human beings do, and stopped even caring that he didn’t offer it. Now?
Now she was busy! She was getting the children ready for school, the last day of the term, making sure they ate their breakfast and packed their little gifts for the teachers in their satchels. (Not little gifts at all, actually—Daisy had secured some coffee, real coffee beans, which she wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with ribbon. The teachers would be so delighted!) She was giving instructions to Justine, who now came daily, and checking the larder for the day’s shopping, and checking the clock, because every minute counted. As she raced about the apartment in the sticky July heat, as she performed all the myriad small chores that made up her mornings, she was thinking about kisses, all right. Just not from her husband.
“Where’s my hat?” Pierre had thundered from the hallway, the grand foyer of the gigantic new apartment on avenue Marceau, into which they had moved six weeks ago when Pierre took up his new position in the Jewish Affairs Bureau. Pierre loved hearing his voice echo from the soaring ceilings and the plasterwork. Daisy hated it. Daisy had put Olivier’s satchel back on the kitchen floor and hurried out to find the hat, which had fallen off the commode and behind the umbrella stand. She brushed off a speck or two of dust and handed it to him.
“Here you are, dear.”
She’d fully expected him to rage and grumble and storm out the door, smashing the hat down as he went, but he didn’t. Instead he said—yes, it’s true!—he said, Thank you, Daisy, and placed the hat on his head. He’d inspected himself in the oval mirror, nodded with satisfaction, and just as Daisy had turned to hurry back down the hallway, he reached for her shoulders and kissed her. On the lips!