more time, tender and slow, Eve stifling her cries in his shoulder, and afterward Cameron dropped into exhausted sleep. Eve waited until his breathing settled into a deep rhythm, then slipped noiselessly out of bed and into her clothes. She looked at him for a moment, and wondered with a wrench if he would ever forgive her for this. Maybe he shouldn’t, she thought. He can’t afford to love me. Though she certainly loved him. She smoothed his sandy hair off his forehead, which was lined even in sleep as though he worried through his dreams, and then she headed downstairs.
Major Allenton smirked as she entered the makeshift file room. He undoubtedly suspected what had happened upstairs. Eve didn’t care. He was already committed to sending her back, whore or not. “I’ll need a pass,” she said without preamble. “I’m ready to catch the train back to Lille.”
That surprised him. “I thought Cameron might be trying to talk you out of obeying that order. He can be sneaky that way. It happens, you know, when military men mess about too long in a dirty business like spying. They get underhanded.”
Real dislike flickered across his face. After having to parse René’s minuscule facial expressions, watching the major’s thoughts work their way across his features was like watching a dog lumber around a city block on the end of a leash. Eve gave the leash just the tug it needed, dropping her lashes in doe-eyed obedience.
“You outrank Captain Cameron, sir. Of course I obey your orders. You want me to return, and I w-w-will.”
“You really are keen as mustard, aren’t you.” Pleased, the major reached for a pen. The weedy clerk had gone home; it was almost nightfall. The cheap lamps showed up all the places where the wallpaper was fading. “I can see why Cameron’s . . . fond of you.” His eyes roved over her again. “He’s been climbing the walls worrying over the network gels, but it’s really you he obsesses about.”
That gave Eve a lonely pang of pleasure, mixed with guilt because she was about to make him worry all over again. “My p-pass, sir?” she prompted, aware that time was ticking. Cameron might be a light sleeper—if he woke up from his doze and came downstairs now, there would be another round of arguing. Far better if he woke and simply found her gone.
The major started making out a safe-conduct pass. “I’ll wager Cameron’s probably never told you what his code name is.” Eve suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at his air of cozy confidentiality. Thank God Allenton wasn’t in the field, because getting information out of him would be like plucking candy from an infant. You really are an idiot, Eve wanted to say, but she gave the answer he wanted. “No, what is Cameron’s code name?”
Allenton smirked, handing over her safe-conduct pass. “‘Evelyn.’”
CHAPTER 27
CHARLIE
May 1947
Another night falling, the second since I’d found out Rose was dead. I still feared what I’d see in my dreams, but I didn’t want to drink myself into oblivion again. My head had only just stopped throbbing.
I should already have been downstairs meeting Eve and Finn for dinner, but I was ransacking my clothes for something clean. I hadn’t washed anything out after Oradour-sur-Glane, and all I had left was the black dress I’d bargained out of that little Parisian saleswoman. It was straight, angled, severe, geometric, high at the neck and slashing very low in the back, clinging to all my straight lines instead of trying to disguise them. “Très chic,” I could hear Rose laugh, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut because she’d said the same thing at seven years old, when we got into her mother’s closet and started trying on her evening gowns. Rose with Schiaparelli sequins slithering off the shoulders of her middy blouse, trailing yards of black taffeta hem and giggling, “Très chic!” as I tottered around in a pair of satin evening pumps far too big for me.
I blinked the memory away, looking at the wavery mirror in my hotel room. Rose would have liked the black dress, I thought, and went downstairs.
Eve and Finn and I had been taking our meals at the café next door: small, cozy, very French with red awnings and tables with striped cloths. Someone was turning on the radio, and it was Edith Piaf. Of course it was. Les trois cloches, “The Three Bells,” and I wondered if the church bells had rung over