René Bordelon turned back toward the stairs that led to his private apartments. “Come.”
Back into that obscenity of a study, the windows curtained to shut out the wartime grimness of Lille and the lamps lit with such a lavish waste of paraffin during the daytime that it was a slap in the face. Eve came to stand before the soft leather chair where she won this job not quite a week ago, and stilled herself like an animal in the brush waiting for a hunter to pass. What does he know? What can he know?
He knows nothing, she told herself. Because Marguerite Le François knows nothing.
He sat, steepling those very long fingers and regarding her, unblinking. Eve held on to her expression of puzzled innocence. “Is t-there some trouble with my work, m-m-monsieur?” she asked at last when it became clear he was waiting for her to break the silence.
“On the contrary,” he responded. “Your work is excellent. You do not have to be told twice how a thing is done, and you have a certain natural grace. The other girl clods. I have decided to replace her.”
So why am I the one being scrutinized? Eve wondered even as chagrin panged her for broad-hipped Amélie with her two children at home.
“You have pleased me very much, except in one thing.” He still hadn’t blinked. “I believe you may have lied to me about where you are from.”
No, Eve thought. He couldn’t possibly suspect she was half English. Her French was perfect.
“Where did you say you were from?”
He knows.
He knows nothing.
“Roubaix,” Eve said. “I have my p-papers here.” She offered her identity cards, grateful to give her hands and eyes something to do besides meet that unmoving stare.
“I know what your papers say.” He didn’t look at the cards. “They say that Marguerite Duval Le François is from Roubaix. But you are not.”
She schooled her face. “Yes, I am.”
“Lie.”
That rocked her. Eve hadn’t been caught in a lie in a very long time. Perhaps he read her surprise, veiled as it was, because he gave a smile completely lacking in warmth.
“I told you I was good at this, mademoiselle. You wish to know how I caught you? You do not speak the French of this region. Your French hails from Lorraine, unless I miss my guess. I travel there frequently to buy wines for my restaurant cellars, and I know the local accent as well as I do the local vintages. So—why do your papers say Roubaix when your vowels say, perhaps, Tomblaine?”
What a good ear he had. Tomblaine was just across the river from Nancy where Eve grew up. She hesitated, Captain Cameron’s voice coming into her mind, low and calm with its faint hint of Scotland. It is best, when forced to lie, to tell as much of the truth as possible. Words from her training, one of those afternoons when he’d taken her to the lonely beach to shoot bottles.
René Bordelon sat waiting for truth.
“Nancy,” Eve whispered. “That is w-where I was b-b-b-b—”
“Born?”
“Yes, m-m-m-m—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Then why lie?”
A true answer backed by a false reason—Eve hoped it would be convincing, because she couldn’t think of anything else. “Nancy is close to G-G-G-Germany,” she rushed to say, as though embarrassed. “Everyone in France thinks we’re t-t-t-t-traitors, siding with the Germans. Coming to L-L-Lille, I knew I’d be hated if . . . I knew I wouldn’t find w-w-ork. I wouldn’t eat. So I l-l-l—so I lied.”
“Where did you get false papers?”
“I d-didn’t. I just p-p-paid the clerk to put down a different town. He was sorry for m-me.”
Her employer leaned back, fingertips tapping. “Tell me about Nancy.”
Eve was glad she hadn’t tried to lie again, give him some different town. Nancy she knew like the back of her hand, in far more detail than those memorized facts about Roubaix. She listed streets, landmarks, churches, each one a memory from her own childhood. Her tongue hung up so badly her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she stammered on, making her voice soft and her eyes wide.
But the words must have rung true, because he cut her off midsentence. “You clearly know Nancy well.”
Eve didn’t have time to exhale before he continued, cocking his narrow head.
“Being so close to the German border, there is considerable mixing in the populace in that region. Tell me, mademoiselle, do you speak German? Lie to me again, and