her hand. He took it, and the old revulsion swamped her at his familiar long-fingered grip. She wanted to fling his hand away and flee like a coward, keening her old terror and agony.
Too late. He was here; so was she. And Evelyn Gardiner was done running.
She squeezed his hand hard, and saw his face change as he felt the deformities covered by her glove. She leaned forward so only he could hear her voice. The words came low, calm, perfectly even.
“Perhaps you’ll recognize the name Marguerite Le François, René Bordelon. Or should I say, Evelyn Gardiner?”
The restaurant was suddenly making a great fuss. They had a happy reunion under their roof—waiters beamed and the maître d’ offered the best table in the house. And in the middle of all the hubbub, Eve and René held each other in a gaze like an exchange of swords.
Finally, the bastard dropped her hand and gestured toward the table the waiters were so cheerfully preparing. “Shall we?”
Eve managed to incline her head. She turned, wondering how she was able to walk without stumbling. Charlie came to her side like a knight’s squire, her face white as she took Eve’s elbow. That fierce little hand was wonderfully steadying. “Eve,” she murmured, eyes darting at the man behind them. “What can I do?”
“Keep out of the way,” Eve managed to mutter back. This dueling ground was no place for Charlie St. Clair; René would swat her as casually as he had swatted and maimed so many others in passing. Eve would claw him to pieces before she allowed him to hurt anyone else she cared for.
Claw him to pieces? her mind sneered. You can barely look him in the eye. But she shoved that aside along with her terror and sat down opposite him, an expanse of snowy linen stretching between them. Charlie perched on a chair at Eve’s side, uncharacteristically mute. The waiters were well trained, hovering out of earshot to give this happy reunion its privacy.
René leaned back and steepled his fingertips. Eve had a sick flash, seeing those fingers curled around a blood-stained bust of Baudelaire—seeing them trace her naked breasts in bed.
“Well,” he said softly in French. “Marguerite.”
Her pulse nearly stopped, hearing that name from his lips. But her old coolness came back with her old identity, sweeping over her in a wave. Her blood beat slow and cold, and for the first time since she turned to find him standing in the restaurant entryway she looked at the poisonous old man with some semblance of calm.
“René Gautier,” she replied. “After Théophile Gautier, I p-presume? The poet to whom Baudelaire dedicated The Flowers of Evil? In Limoges you were du Malassis after Baudelaire’s publisher, so I see you still haven’t found another poet.”
René shrugged as casually as though this were any ordinary dinner conversation. “Why not stay with the best once one has found it?”
“A fancy way of saying you have a stagnant mind.”
A waiter gushed up and presented a bottle of champagne. “Since it is a reunion worthy of celebration, monsieur?”
“It is at that,” René murmured. “Why not?”
“I could use a drink,” Eve agreed. A whiskey the size of a bucket would have been better, but she’d take champagne. She knotted her hands into fists in her lap, realizing—as the champagne cork popped and René twitched—that he was not as cool inside as he pretended. Good.
In unison they reached for their glasses as the waiter retreated. No one suggested a toast. “So many lines on that face,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself all these years?”
“Living hard. I don’t need to ask what you’ve been doing. Pretty much what you were doing the last time we met: living well, aiding Germans, getting your countrymen shot. Though now you’re not opposed to doing the shooting yourself. Lost your squeamishness in your old age?”
“It’s thanks to you I lost my squeamishness, pet.”
The word ran over her skin like a rat. “I was never your pet.”
“Does Judas suit you better?”
That hit hard, but Eve managed—barely—not to flinch. “About as well as dupe suits you.”
He gave a tight smile. As Eve watched him lounging in his expensive suit, his long nose appreciating the fizz of his perfectly chilled champagne, fury began to build. So many had died—Lili in her squalid prison, Charlie’s cousin and her baby in a hail of bullets, a young sous-chef with a pocket full of stolen silver—and this man had spent those years doing what? Drinking champagne