silver and linen for the first diners, cooks cursing as they prepared their stations. Today Le Lethe was dark, the kitchens shut up. Eve paused, puzzled, then unbuttoned her coat. There was no sign on the door or on the bar to say the restaurant was closed for the evening, and René was too fond of his own profits to ever shut his doors if he did not have to.
A voice floated down the stairs from René’s apartments. “Marguerite, is that you?”
Eve hesitated, tempted to pretend she’d heard nothing and slip back out into the cold. Her nerves were taut with alarm, but she would cause more suspicion now by darting out. “Yes, it’s me,” she called.
“Come up.”
René’s study blazed with light, though the shades were drawn. The fireplace spilled warmth across the patterned Aubusson rug, and the multicolored Tiffany shade threw patterns of sapphire and amethyst onto the green silk wall. René sat reading in his usual chair, a glass of Bordeaux at hand.
“Ah,” he greeted Eve. “There you are, pet.”
Eve permitted herself to look puzzled. “Is the restaurant not to open?”
“Not today.” He marked his book with a strip of embroidered silk and laid it aside. Eve felt a chill, though his smile was pleasant. “I intended it as a surprise for you.”
Run, a quiet voice in Eve’s head told her. “A surprise?” She linked her hands behind her back, touching the doorknob. It turned silently. “Another w-weekend away? You did say you wished to go to G-Grasse . . .”
“No, a different kind of surprise.” René sipped his Bordeaux, unhurried. “One you’re going to give me.”
Eve’s fingers tightened around the doorknob. One yank and she could be gone. “Am I?”
“Yes.” René reached under the cushion on the armrest of his chair, and brought out a pistol. He leveled it at Eve: a Luger nine-millimeter P08, just like her own. At this distance, Eve knew it would drill her between the eyes long before she could wrench the door open.
“Sit down, pet.” René gestured at the chair opposite, and as Eve sat, she saw the tiny scratch on the barrel. She knew that scratch; she buffed it every time she field-stripped her weapon. It wasn’t just a Luger René was holding, it was her Luger. Suddenly Eve remembered that faint whiff of René’s cologne she’d smelled in her room last night, and fear hit like a shrieking freight train.
René Bordelon had searched her room. He had her pistol. Who knew what else he knew?
“Marguerite Le François,” René said as though he were about to start one of his pet discourses on the arts, “tell me who you really are.”
Why is it so hard to b-believe?” Eve was playing up the stammer, letting her hands flutter and tremble, running up every flag of innocence and confusion that she could fly. “It’s my f-father’s pistol. I kept it because I was afraid, the w-w-way the German officers swagger about looking at the local g-girls—”
René’s suspicious eyes bored into her. “You were arrested in the company of a woman who had six different forms of identification. She was undoubtedly a spy, so what were you doing with her?”
“I d-didn’t know her! We began talking at the station, and she’d forgotten her p-p-p—her pass. I offered to let her get by on m-mine.” Eve’s thoughts careened ahead of her tongue, wildly stitching together a defense—any defense—that he might swallow. She’d never imagined he would hear of her arrest. It was all just sheerest blind chance: some German friend of René’s had enthused over Lili’s capture, mentioning in passing the stuttering girl taken along with her. A girl named Marguerite something, released because anyone could see she was innocent.
If only they hadn’t mentioned the name. René would never have known. But they had, and the implications must have crashed on him like a tidal wave because he’d gone at once to her room. The Luger was all he’d found; Eve kept no ciphers or coded messages. But for him it was suspicious enough, so here they sat in opposing chairs.
“You would not be stupid enough to let a stranger use your safe-conduct pass, pet,” he said.
“I d-didn’t see the harm!” Eve tried to let her eyes fill with tears, but she was utterly cried out. She’d wept herself into hysterics yesterday morning for Herr Rotselaer; she’d wept afterward for Lili. Her eyes now were dry as stone, just when she needed them dewy and pathetic. She lowered her eyelids instead. You can get