In the mirror, she saw her mother press her eyes tightly shut, letting out a breath. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The clothes,” her mother said, a little too quickly. “Relax, relax, don’t try to get up. You look dead on your feet, my poor girl. Marie! Make up Miss Aurélie’s bed. Would you like me to ring for anything? Chocolate? Coffee?”
Luxuries. They hadn’t had coffee at Courcelles since the fall; chocolate had been an unknown quantity. It made Aurélie think of Max, delivering chocolate on Christmas Eve to the children of the village.
Aurélie turned in the chair to face her mother, away from her own unfamiliar face. “I scarcely know what those are anymore. We had strict rationing at Courcelles. The Germans took anything edible for themselves.”
Her mother’s hands rested briefly on her shoulders. “That must be why you’re all skin and bone. My poor girl. I’ll have Marie make up a tisane for you. Something strengthening. Let’s get you out of those hideous clothes and into one of your own nightdresses. Marie!”
Aurélie’s hands clamped down on her bulky skirt. “There are messages for you. In the seams of my petticoat. From my father. They shot the pigeons. I’d forgot . . .”
“There’s no rush.” Her mother stopped her as she started to wiggle frantically out of her petticoat, trying to get to the messages. “I’ll read them in a bit. After I get you settled. You need your rest.”
It had been different when she was traveling, suspended between worlds, but now that she was here, it all seemed real again, the flames, the clamor. There were no more pigeons. But somehow . . . she had to know what had happened. She had to let them know she was safe.
Her mother had Aurélie’s dirty petticoat draped over her arm. “I’ll just tell Marie to run your bath.”
“Wait.” Aurélie put a hand on her mother’s arm. She’d forgotten how fine-boned she was, how small, how Aurélie felt like a giantess beside her. “Is there any way to get a message to Courcelles? To my father?”
Her mother said nothing, but Aurélie could see her knuckles go white against the coarse cloth. “Shortly. Later.”
“What is it?” Fear gripped Aurélie. This wasn’t like her mother. Not at all. “Do you have news from Courcelles?”
Her mother looked at her, and, beneath her carefully applied makeup, her face was that of a much older woman. “Courcelles is gone. It burned.” Tentatively, she reached out a finger and touched Aurélie’s cheek, as if testing that she was real. “I was told you had burned with it.”
“M—someone got me out.”
Go, Max had said, and she had gone, running to the chapel to grab her carpetbag, barely stopping, even with the roar of the fire behind her, running, running. He would get her father out, Max had said, and she had believed him, because he said it with such assurance, because he loved her.
Aurélie didn’t remember sitting again, but she was. Her knees must have folded. She looked anxiously up at her mother. “My father?”
“I’m sorry.” Her mother put her arms around Aurélie, drew Aurélie’s head to her breast. Aurélie couldn’t remember the last time they had embraced like this, the last time she had let her mother hold her. “I would have let you rest at least before telling you.”
“He’s gone?” It seemed impossible. Her father, the warrior. The autocrat.
“In the fire.” She felt her mother lean against her for a moment, felt the force of her mother’s own sorrow, before her mother straightened, automatically setting her hair and dress to rights. “You understand, we have no real news from the occupied territory. It’s all rumor—but I have friends.”
Oh yes. Her mother always had friends. And her friends were generally to be believed.
Aurélie drew in a deep breath, her chest tight. “I shouldn’t have gone. I should have stayed with him.”
“And died, too?” She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother look so fierce. Regaining her urbane mask, her mother said, “For what it’s worth, there were German officers gone, too. Several of them. Your father would have considered that worth the sacrifice, I imagine. He always wanted to die in battle rather than in someone’s bed.”
German officers gone. Max.
Aurélie’s gorge rose. “Oh no.”
Her mother mistook her expression. “Darling, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t making light of it. We all have different ways of mourning, I suppose. And I do mourn your father.”
“You are right. He would be proud,” said Aurélie numbly. “How many German officers died with him?”
“Several. I don’t believe there was anyone left to take charge. I heard all was chaos. That was why they thought—they thought you had died, too.”
“I didn’t,” said Aurélie flatly. No. She had run away. To keep the talisman safe.
The talisman that would never have been there if she hadn’t brought it. The talisman that had cost her father and her lover their lives. She had cost them their lives.
“My father sent me away. With this.” Fumbling in her chemise, beneath the multiple layers of clothes bundled about her, she drew out the talisman, drawing the chain up over her head. She had removed it from her hair and returned it to her neck once she had crossed into France.
“The talisman.” Her mother took it from her, holding it delicately by the chain, the relic swaying gently, still warm from Aurélie’s skin, like a living thing, winking at her in the electric light. “You scared me half to death when you ran away with that, you know. I was afraid you meant to go into battle with it, as your father had. I was so relieved when your father told me you’d come to Courcelles.”
“I know. He told me. I found one of your messages.” All of that seemed so far away now. “I hadn’t realized you were on corresponding terms.”
“When it mattered.” The carefully painted line of her mother’s lip rouge trembled, just a bit. “He was very proud of you.”
Aurélie lifted her hands to her temples, as though she could hold in the memories, the pain. “I did so little.”
“That’s not what your father said. He said you were a symbol of hope—and an excellent distraction.”
She had been so upset by that, being a distraction. She had been so angry at her father. But now she would give anything to go back, to have him alive again. And Max . . . Max, who had betrayed everything, had killed his own superior for her. Max, who was meant to be playing on the banks of a lake with a brood of children with silver-gilt hair, not killed in a château in France. He would never even have been there but for her.
Max, who had once come to her mother’s salon with daisies in his buttonhole. She wanted to close her eyes and turn back time, here, in her old room. She wanted to make them all whole again.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t change any of it. And it hurt, it hurt so terribly much.
“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” Aurélie pressed her hands over her mouth, but the sobs escaped anyway, not pretty, graceful tears, but horrible, ugly gulping sobs, torn from her gut, ripping her insides out. “If I’d never gone . . . if I’d never brought the talisman . . . I should have stayed with him. Why didn’t I stay with him?”