“Until Paris,” she said softly.
He leaned forward and kissed her, one last time. “I’ll come for you at the Ritz.”
Her father was waiting for her inside the chapel, as they had arranged. He thrust a pile of unattractive brown fabric at her.
“Suzanne made you a flannel petticoat,” he said gruffly. “To keep you warm on the journey. It gets cold at night still.”
“Please thank Suzanne for me.” Her father turned his back as she stepped into the garment, pulling it up and tying the tapes beneath her skirt. In the hem and seams were sewn messages, rolled thin. A coat or a cloak might be taken, but a petticoat, next to her skin, should defy examination. Especially if she wore it from here to Paris without taking it off. She expected it would probably stand by itself at the end of the journey. “Will you tell her goodbye for me? To all of them? Let them know I’m not deserting them?”
“Once you’re safely away.”
“I’ve told Suzanne to tell everyone that I’m confined to my room with female trouble.” In fact, she hadn’t been troubled by female trouble, not for the last month. Fear could stop one’s courses, they said, and Aurélie certainly had fears enough.
Her father, who had once made his way through the boudoirs of the courtesans of Paris, winced, his aristocratic features twisting into an expression of distaste. “You couldn’t have feigned an ague?”
“They might wonder why a doctor hadn’t been called. And you see?” Aurélie nodded at her father. “This is exactly why it’s perfect. They won’t inquire too closely. It should buy me two days, at least.”
“By which time, the train will be well away.”
“I don’t know how long it will take.” In normal times, it was a journey of three or four hours from Courcelles to Paris. Faster if one went by car. Longer if one took the slow train. But Max had warned her the convoy would be diverted first to Germany, where they would be searched and detained, possibly as little as a day, possibly as long as a month, before being sent on first to Switzerland and then, finally, into France and freedom. “Make my excuses for me as long as you can. The longer it takes for anyone to inquire the better. I’ve left a letter for you all on my bed saying that I’m taking my chances with the woods, making my way to Paris on foot. Be sure to bring that to the major when you find it—or make sure he’s with you when you break into my room. Hopefully, they should be so busy searching the woods they’ll never think of the convoy.”
Her father looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “You sound just like your mother.”
Aurélie grimaced. “American?”
“Assured.” Her father turned away, letting his hand rest on the long-dead countess’s pet dog. “It is not such a bad thing. And if I have made you feel that it was—that to be your mother’s daughter was to be a lesser thing—that was my fault and none of your doing.”
He did not, Aurélie noticed, deny that he had done so.
“I was angry. I was angry at the fates, at myself, at your mother. When I met your mother, I thought she was the answer to all my troubles. All that money and a quiet little mouse of a wife who would bear heirs for Courcelles without giving me any bother. But then your mother . . . She wasn’t a mouse. And I was a fool. Instead of appreciating her for what she had become, I drove her into the arms of my cousin.” Aurélie must have made some sound, because her father looked at her, his expression wry. “Oh yes, I knew about Hercule. Everyone did. It was too late by then. And you—you were hers. With that hair.”
“I have your brows. Everyone says.” She had tried so long and so hard to win her father’s approval, to convince him she was his, his more than her mother’s. And it had never been in her power. It was all a drama that had played out before she was even born.
Her father shrugged that away. “Oh, I never doubted you were mine. Your mother wouldn’t have played me false if I hadn’t goaded her into it. In her own way, she is a woman of honor.” From her father, that was a great concession. “She raised you to be a woman of honor.”
Aurélie’s throat felt raw. “I have always wanted nothing more than to be a credit to the name of Courcelles.”
It struck her only now that perhaps she might have wanted something more: her father’s love instead of his approval. Or that love might not have to be earned but might be given freely, as of right.
“You are. You will be.” Her father didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. “The title will die with me, but the house of Courcelles will live on, through you.”
Once, that sentiment would have filled her with exultation. Now, Aurélie found it hard to muster the requisite enthusiasm. Was she nothing but a womb? A sacred vessel? Like her mother, meant to bear heirs and pay the bills.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I shall try to live up to your faith in me.”
To her surprise, her father reached out and pulled her into his arms, as he had never done, not even when she was very tiny. “My child. My little girl. Take care.” And then, before she had time to lean into his embrace, her father set her upright again, saying briskly, “Now say your prayers and I shall see you on your way.”
“Yes, Papa.” She slipped into the childish address without thinking of it, and saw, before she knelt on the flagstones, her father press his eyes shut, as though in pain.
She knelt, not at the altar, but by the tomb of her ancestress, feeling around the base, into the hidden spot. It was there, where she’d left it, wrapped in a kerchief.
“I have not seen that in many years,” said her father, in a low voice. “Not since your mother—”
“Tarted it up?” Even in the gray dawn light, the jewels were staggering, a ruby as large as Aurélie’s thumbnail, diamonds the size of daisies. But it was the curved crystal in the middle that her father was staring at, the crystal that held the tiny scrap of five-hundred-year-old fabric stained with the blood of the saint.
“Is that—it is!” They both turned as an unwieldy figure came barreling into the chapel. Lieutenant Dreier fumbled for his pistol, pointing it at Aurélie. “You! Stay where you are! Schmidt! Weide! To me!”
“I don’t know what you think you’re—”
“Hush!” Lieutenant Dreier’s voice was high with excitement. His hand was shaking so that Aurélie was half afraid the gun would go off. “Not another word out of you or I’ll shoot! Men, seize that woman!”
“That woman is a noblewoman of France.” Aurélie’s father’s cold authority checked Dreier slightly, but the sight of gold and diamonds sufficiently overcame any scruples.
Dreier snatched the talisman from Aurélie, shoving it into his inner pocket before the soldiers could see it. “That woman is a prisoner. Take her to the major! Him, too,” he said as an afterthought, pointing at Aurélie’s father. “They’ve both been . . . engaging in crimes against the state.”
With Dreier’s pistol in her back, her arms wrenched behind her, Aurélie couldn’t even look at her father. To have come so close for this . . .