“It’s just the kind of trouble I used to get into, when I was a boy,” said Legrand. He looked at Daisy and winked. “The bane of my mother’s nerves, I was.”
Daisy buried her nose in Olivier’s hair and inhaled his sweet, little-boy scent. But he was already pulling away, wanting to run down the gravel toward some new mischief. Daisy got to her feet and went after him, glad for the distraction. Otherwise she would have agonized over the way her son had narrowly escaped disaster at the exact instant she had invited Legrand to visit her apartment, knowing her husband would be away.
Legrand returned to the bookshop and Daisy continued to the Ritz, where she and the children were to have lunch with Grandmère in her suite. By the time she got the children through the rue Cambon entrance (they still couldn’t quite understand why they weren’t allowed to enter through the front and chose this instance to complain about it) and then up the stairs and down the various corridors, the waiters had already delivered the meal under shining silver domes. Grandmère sat at the dining table, drinking her wine and laughing with a companion, who rose and straightened his jacket as a hot, frazzled Daisy bustled the children into the room.
“Madame Villon,” he said politely, but he was looking at Madeleine and Olivier, who spilled across the carpet toward their great-grandmother.
“Lieutenant colonel!”
Max von Sternburg wasn’t wearing his uniform, because German officers weren’t supposed to do so on the civilian side of the Ritz. Still he managed to look impressive in his double-breasted suit and gleaming silver-gold hair, his stern features and the shiny, rippling scar that disfigured the side of his face. He waited for the children to tumble past before he stepped toward Daisy and took her hand.
“It’s a great pleasure to see you again,” he said gravely.
“Is it? You don’t look especially pleased.”
That made him smile a little, at least from one side of his mouth. “But I assure you, I have looked forward to seeing you again for some weeks. Since that enchanting dinner party in May, in fact, I have thought of little else.”
He held on to her hand as he said this and led her forward to the dining table, where Grandmère embraced the children and brushed the Tuileries dust from their clothes. She looked up as Max settled Daisy into a chair, and her eyebrows shot skyward in no small bemusement.
“Enchanting? I’m afraid your memory must be showing its age,” said Daisy.
Grandmère, who had just lifted her wineglass to her lips, sputtered into the Bordeaux.
“Perhaps I misspoke a little,” replied Von Sternburg. “It was not the party itself that was enchanting, but its hostess.”
Now Grandmère recovered herself and sat back in her chair, revolving the wine in its glass. She looked from Daisy to Von Sternburg, who circled the table, pulling out chairs for Madeleine and Olivier, whom he seated with the same grave courtesy he showed their mother. “I’m sorry I missed all the fun,” Grandmère said.
“There wasn’t any fun, don’t worry,” said Daisy. “I spilled my wine, and Pierre . . .” She was going to say that Pierre had insulted her in front of all the guests, but she remembered the children just in time and checked herself.
“And Monsieur Villon did his best to entertain his friends,” Von Sternburg finished for her. “May I offer you wine, madame?”
Daisy pushed her wineglass forward a few centimeters. “Please. I’ll do my best not to spill it.”
Again Grandmère started and looked back and forth between them, but Von Sternburg seemed not to notice anything out of the ordinary. He returned to his seat and politely answered some question Olivier posed to him. Grandmère, recovering her composure, drank some more wine and said to Daisy, “I’m sorry to have surprised you with our guest. Herr von Sternburg found me in the lobby this morning and reminded me of a previous acquaintance.”
“A previous acquaintance?”
“I used to visit your grandmother’s salon here, before the war,” said Von Sternburg. “The previous war, I mean. Of course, that was in her old suite. Not the war, of course, but the salon.”
“And I told him that I remember him well,” said Grandmère.
“Which was not true at all,” Von Sternburg said, “but terribly polite of her. I didn’t speak much, I must admit. I was only there to observe.”
“Observe what, I wonder?”
Von Sternburg shrugged. “I was a young man in Paris at an interesting time. There was so much to fascinate me. But then my sister died, and I returned home to Germany. I doubt anyone noticed my absence.”
“And now here you are,” said Daisy. “Returned in triumph. The great Teutonic conqueror. It must be so satisfying for you.”
“Immensely satisfying, but not—I suspect—for the reasons you think.” He was looking at Madeleine as he said this, frowning a little. He twiddled the stem of his wineglass between his thumb and forefinger and said, “I have a little confession to make.”
“Oh?” said Grandmère. “The interesting kind, I hope.”
He turned to her and smiled, but it was not an especially happy smile. “Interesting to me, at least. Did you know I was billeted at the Château de Courcelles at the beginning of the last war?”
Daisy made a little gasp. Grandmère narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t believe I did. You must have known my daughter, then.”
“I knew her well. Who could not admire the fine spirit of the Demoiselle de Courcelles?”
“Who, indeed?” Grandmère said softly. She tilted her head. “I certainly hope you were not still there during the terrible fire.”
“A night I have spent years trying to forget.”
“How dreadful. But surely this is not how you acquired that unfortunate cicatrice?” Grandmère motioned to the side of her own face.
“It is.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. You must have been very badly injured. Such wounds are dangerous, I understand, and difficult to heal.”
He shrugged. “At first, the doctors thought I might not live. I wanted very much to survive, however, and proved them wrong. But I learned there are scars one bears on the inside rather than the outside, and sometimes these are the most painful of all. The slowest to heal, at any rate.”
Von Sternburg was not smiling now. He hadn’t touched his wine, either, at least since Daisy had entered the room. Just washed it around the sides of his glass. Madeleine and Olivier, utterly awed by his presence, sat on either side of Daisy and ate their sandwiches quietly, round eyed, watching the volleys back and forth as one might watch a tennis match.
“It is all a matter of perspective, of course,” said Grandmère. “Some would say that the occupiers get what they deserve. That these scars you speak of—”
“I beg your pardon,” Daisy broke in. “Do you mean to say that you knew my mother? That you occupied her château?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“And you said nothing to me of this before?”
“I told you I had heard of her. But it took me a little by surprise, you see, when your husband announced this connection at the dinner party. And I did not wish to discompose you in public with my importunate questions.”