over the sink again. “Any dreams?” he asked quietly.
“No.” I straightened, wiping my mouth and reaching for the water glass, not quite meeting his eyes. “You?”
He shook his head. We couldn’t either of us look at the other as we set about washing up. We were like a couple of unhealed stumps trying not to bump into each other, raw and hurting, and I couldn’t turn my head without a jolt of pain. Rose, I thought, and there was another jolt of pain, dull and profoundly shocking. It hadn’t been a nightmare. I had slept, I had woken, and it was real. There hadn’t been any nightmares, just true horrors. My eyes burned, but I didn’t have any more tears.
Just a vast, looming question.
We got ourselves washed and tidied, and Finn brought cups of black coffee wheedled from the proprietor. My roiling stomach grudgingly accepted the coffee, and soon we were back in the car, Finn turning mutely for Limoges. I sat there in my wrinkled day-old clothes, rubbing at my splitting temples, pondering the question now staring me in the face.
What now, Charlie St. Clair?
What now?
It was a quiet drive back. I found myself staring at the city’s summertime loveliness as though it were a stage set: the weeping willows over the river, the half-timbered houses, and the beautiful Roman bridge Rose would have seen when she served drinks at Le Lethe. I had no reason to be in this city any longer—and yet, no destination to make me leave it.
“Wonder if Gardiner’s in,” Finn said. The first words he’d spoken since asking me if I’d dreamed.
I looked at him blankly. “In from where?”
“Her meeting with that English officer from Bordeaux,” Finn said. “Remember?”
I’d forgotten. “Wasn’t that yesterday?”
“Maybe it was.” We hadn’t exactly planned on staying the night in the countryside. What now? The question still echoed. What now?
Finn parked the Lagonda and we trailed inside. The auberge’s entryway had been freshly polished; I smelled beeswax over the fresh flowers on the desk. Roses, pink roses the color of Rose’s cheeks, and my head throbbed sickly. An irritable clerk sat behind the desk, and in front of her was the kind of Englishman who thinks that if he speaks loudly enough, foreigners will automatically understand him.
“Oui, monsieur,” the clerk said, with the air of someone who had said it before. “Elle est ici, mais elle ne veut pas vous voir.”
“English, anglais? Anyone?” The man looked around: tall with a graying mustache, perhaps in his midfifties, carrying a gut before him like a badge of honor. A civilian suit, but the bearing of the man inside it was aggressively soldierly.
Finn and I looked at each other, and then Finn stepped forward. “I’m Miss Gardiner’s driver.”
“Good, good.” The man gave an up-and-down glance of disapproval at Finn’s slovenly appearance, but his tone was cordial enough. “Tell Miss Gardiner I’m here, please. She’ll see me.”
“She won’t,” Finn said.
The man stared, mustache bristling. “Of course she will! I saw her at dinner just last bloody night, we were perfectly cordial—”
Finn shrugged. “She evidently doesn’t want to see you now.”
“See here—”
“You don’t pay my wages. She does.”
The French clerk rolled her eyes behind the Englishman’s back. I stepped forward, curiosity making its way through my fog of grief. “Sir—you wouldn’t happen to be Captain Cameron?” He didn’t match the image I’d been building of Cameron, but what other English officer would come running from Bordeaux on Eve’s call?
“Cameron? That sad old fraud?” The visitor gave a snort, contemptuous. “I’m Major George Allenton, and I’m wasting valuable time here, so you scamper up those stairs, girl, and tell Miss Gardiner I’m here.”
“No.” It sounded like insolence, but it was just exhaustion. Quite honestly I didn’t see why I should stir a finger for anyone this rude. I was glad he wasn’t Captain Cameron. I’d liked Eve’s stories of him.
The major looked at me, face reddening, and he opened his mouth as if to argue, but all at once he deflated. “Fine,” he said, fumbling in his pocket. “You tell that sour skinny old maid the War Office owes her no more favors, regardless of what she’s done for us in the past.” He slapped a flat black case into my hand. “And she can throw these down the loo if she likes, but I’m done keeping them for her.”
“When did you know her?” Finn asked as the major clapped his hat to his head.