Pygmalion from the Greek myth, and sculpt one for myself.” He reached up with one long finger and pushed a thread of hair off her forehead. “I had not really thought I would enjoy the process. So you see, you too have managed to surprise me.”
Eve couldn’t think of any reply. He didn’t seem to anticipate an answer, just gestured at her glass. “More?”
“Yes.”
He poured another generous measure. He is trying to make me drunk, Eve thought. Seventeen-year-old Marguerite would not have much of a head for strong drink. A few glasses of this would make her pliant and willing.
Eve looked into her glass and saw the train tracks that would carry the kaiser toward Lille. She saw the lazy figures of the Kommandant and his officers, grouped around their schnapps, idly spilling secrets. She saw Lili’s beaming face the day Eve successfully passed on her first bit of information. She even heard Lili’s voice: What a bitch this business is.
Maybe, Eve thought now, as she replied then. But someone has to do it. I’m good at it. Why not me?
She drained her glass. When she lowered the tumbler, René was standing much closer. He smelled of Paris cologne, something subtle and civilized. She wondered if now was the moment he would kiss her. She thought fleetingly of Captain Cameron, looking at her on the beach as he taught her to load a pistol. She banished the thought as René bent his head.
Don’t recoil.
He leaned close, inhaling along the line of her throat, and then he straightened with a faint moue. “Perhaps a bath. You may avail yourself of my facilities.”
Her lips tingled, untouched, and for a moment she didn’t understand. Then she looked down at her hands, her cuffs which showed tiny splashes of beurre blanc and red wine no matter how careful she was throughout her shift, and realized she had a faint film of dried sweat beneath her dress from this morning’s brisk walk in the countryside with Lili. I smell, Eve thought, and it was so humiliating she wanted to weep. I smell like sweat and cheap soap, and before I can be deflowered I must be properly cleansed.
“There is soap.” René turned away, loosening his collar in a matter-of-fact yank. “I chose it for you.”
He was waiting for gratitude. “Thank you,” Eve managed to say as he indicated the door behind him. The bathroom had the same obscene luxury as his study: black-and-white tiles, a vast marble tub, a gilt-framed mirror. There was a cake of unused soap laid out, lily of the valley, undoubtedly requisitioned from some woman’s bathroom on a raid, and Eve remembered René saying that scent would suit her. Light, sweet, fragrant, young.
Every bit of advice Lili had given her about the acts which pleased men poured through Eve’s mind, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick, but she shoved it down. Notice what pleases him, Lili had said. Staring at the soap, Eve knew. Light, sweet, fragrant, young. How he wanted her to be, not just smell. Thoughtful of him to have provided a script.
She filled the tub, splashing hot water with vengeful wastefulness, and sank into the heat with a shiver. For more than two months, she’d had to take her baths from a washbasin with a frayed hand towel. The heat and the two glasses of elderflower liqueur were making her head swim. She could lurk in the warm scented water forever, but she had a job to do.
Better to get it over with.
Eve left her underclothes and worn dress on the floor rather than pull them back over her clean body, wrapping herself instead in snowy towels. She looked at herself in the mirror, and didn’t recognize the girl she saw. Her cheekbones pressed out, a memento of the lean rations on which she now lived, but it was more than that. Soft-faced Evelyn Gardiner surely never looked so flint hard. Marguerite Le François wasn’t hard at all, so Eve practiced in the mirror—parted lips, trembling lashes—until it was perfect.
“Ah.” René greeted her with a smile, inspecting her from bare feet to loosened nut-brown hair. “Much better.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I haven’t had such a b-bath in months.” Gratitude. She knew it was required.
He twined his hand in her damp hair, bringing a handful to his nose. “Lovely.”
He wasn’t un-handsome, lean and elegant, his suit changed for a dressing gown of figured smoke blue silk. His cool hand slipped up the length