I pulled it out, planning on rewrapping it in one of the other scarves and returning it to the drawer, then stopped. Everything stopped. My breathing, the world. The earth’s rotation. It all seemed to stop. My eyesight went all fuzzy and then straightened again. I sat down on the bed, unsure of the stability of my own two legs. I must have said something or called out because Drew raced into the bedroom. He wore a look of surprise, as if he already knew.
I held out the gold ring. Kit’s ring. The one with the two swans engraved on the top. The ring that had been passed down by his father, Robert. The ring that wouldn’t be going to Robin because Kit had lost it in France. Or perhaps in the German prison camp. I didn’t know because we never discussed it. I had been afraid to bring back unpleasant memories for Kit, more fuel for his nightmares.
“Was this Kit’s?” Drew asked, the ring looking small and lost in his large palm.
I nodded. “I just can’t figure out why it was in Margot’s drawer. It was wrapped in a silk scarf as if it were being kept safe.”
As if in answer, he gave me a frame from his other hand, the photograph explaining his expression when he’d rushed into the room. “I was looking for Margot’s bottle of perfume that Precious said would be in the side table drawer. I found this inside, facedown. I wondered why it was hidden in the drawer until I turned it over.”
I stared at the familiar faces of the two children we’d seen in the photograph in Pierre Villon’s apartment. The photograph of his two children, an older girl and a younger boy. Daisy’s children. In this photograph, the girl—Madeleine, Pierre had said—held the hand of a younger girl with long hair, lighter than her sister’s, held back with an enormous bow. Her face was turned from the camera, her other hand reaching for someone we couldn’t see.
“I don’t understand . . . ,” I began. Or maybe I did and didn’t want to.
Drew handed me the signet ring and began putting the piles of clothing and the framed photograph into a small valise. “Come on,” he prompted gently. “Let’s get to the hospital before it’s too late.”
I slipped the ring on my finger, feeling how loose and heavy it was. How cold. Or maybe that was just me as my teeth had begun to chatter. I smelled the overwhelming scent of the daisies as Drew and I left the room, the door shutting behind us like a little slap.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aurélie
The Château de Courcelles
Picardy, France
June 1915
Once she went through that door, it would be for the very last time.
Aurélie was dressed. A carpetbag held her few meager belongings. They needed to be meager to be convincing, so people would believe that she wasn’t Aurélie de Courcelles, of ancient lineage and American fortune, but Jeanne Deschamps, of no fortune whatsoever.
“The train will be waiting,” said Max. “It’s a long walk to Le Catelet.”
He was dressed as well, the rumpled bed the only testament to their last night together.
So many nights together.
They had been discreet at first, but as the time for parting grew nearer, Aurélie had grown reckless, scarcely waiting for the sounds of activity from the kitchen below to fade before she crept out, along the familiar route through the storerooms, to Max’s lonely tower. Once, she had had to hide beneath the bed when Kraus had come barging up early one morning with a message from Hoffmeister. She wasn’t sure if her father and the others had guessed, if they were keeping silent out of kindness, or because they thought she was buying Max’s compliance in age-old fashion.
She didn’t really care. She should care, she knew, but she didn’t.
Aurélie jammed a hat down onto her head. Under it, her hair had been dyed a deep brown with the crushed hulls of black walnuts. Suzanne had assured her the color would last a month, at least, possibly two. Long enough, certainly, to see her to Paris, no matter what detours the convoy took.
Aurélie went up to Max for what might well be the last time, wrapping her arms around his waist, feeling the strangeness of it all, the familiar made foreign again with the knowledge that she was leaving, that it was over. “You will leave as soon as I’m gone?”
“I’ve already put in my request for a transfer to active duty.”
She knew what had happened to his requests in the past. Aurélie looked up into his face, her palms against his chest. “But the telegrams—”
Max dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I sent the messages from Le Catelet. I saw them transmitted. If anything happens to me, there will be questions. And consequences.”
A cold fear clutched Aurélie. “Yes, but what use will that be to you or me or anyone if you’re dead?”
Max rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “I have no intention of dying.”
“I don’t think intent is what matters.” Even entombed in Courcelles they had heard garbled reports from the front, from the haggard troops of German soldiers that had passed through. “The front. I’m not sure if that’s worse.”
“At least it would be an honest death.” Seeing the look on her face, Max quickly said, “But men survive the front. Or maybe they’ll second me to the service of my uncle in Berlin. Be of good cheer. How could I die when I have you to come home to?”
Yes, but those other men who had died had people, too. Wives, children, mothers, sisters. It was a terrifying thought. Once, not so very long ago, she had thought it a grand thing to die for one’s country. She had sent Jean-Marie off to war without a qualm, full of platitudes about honor and glory. But now, now that it was Max, it was a different matter entirely. She wanted to lock him up and keep him safe. Let those other men fight and die so long as Max was spared her.
Aurélie was quite horrified by how fierce she felt about it, how quickly her scruples dissolved when it came to Max and his safety.
She clutched his suspenders beneath his jacket. “Don’t go doing anything heroic.”
“Would you promise the same?” Max gave a lopsided smile, so full of tenderness that Aurélie felt as though she couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t think so.”
There was nothing to do but to kiss him, long and hard, and then wrap her arms around him, trying to memorize the moment, the scratch of the wool of his uniform jacket against her cheek, the feel of his skin through his shirt.
Max squeezed her hard one last time before murmuring, “You should be going. The train will not wait.”
Reluctantly, Aurélie disentangled herself. “I need to say goodbye to my father. And I must stop by the chapel—to say a prayer to Saint Jeanne. She has always guarded my house.”
Max gave his head a little shake. “I never believed in such things before. But I would believe in anything that will see you safe to Paris. I will even pray to your saint with you, if it might help.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Aurélie hastily. “You’re not a daughter of Courcelles, so . . .”
“I understand,” he said, and she was very glad that he didn’t, not really. She was protecting him, she told herself. The less he knew about the talisman, the safer he was. But she still felt soiled somehow.