now. But she discovered in that moment that she wasn’t willing to be called whore by anyone else, least of all a woman stupider than a bowl of lobster bisque.
CHAPTER 21
CHARLIE
May 1947
I remember this.” Eve pointed to the stone-arched bridge spanning the slow blue river that wound through Limoges. A Roman bridge, I thought, crumbling and romantic looking, the little French cars hooting and dashing across it looking incongruously modern. “It was twilight, not afternoon,” Eve went on. “René Bordelon stopped there, right by the river, and said he’d always thought outside seating an abomination for any restaurant that was not a common café, but if he could have that view, he might consider it.”
She turned away, hands thrust into the pockets of her fraying sweater, and looked along the grassy slope, the trees, the buildings stretching away along the bank. “The son of a bitch got his wish. He opened his second restaurant down the bank, with this view.”
She went striding off down the cobbled street. I looked at Finn, and we both shrugged in unison, wandering after her. Eve had awakened early, and we’d made good time from Paris to Limoges. Eve had been talkative again, so each mile brought more war stories, though some of them I had trouble believing (a failed attack on the kaiser?). She’d directed us to a hotel near Limoges’s medieval cathedral, sending Finn to park the Lagonda while she went in and interrogated the concierge in rapid French, waving the scribbled address I’d given her—the address of the second Le Lethe, where Rose had worked. As soon as Finn came back, Eve was setting out into the city on foot, leading us down twisting cobbled streets. Limoges was a pretty place: weeping willows drooping toward the river’s surface, Gothic church spires piercing the skyline, potted geraniums hanging from balconies—and it didn’t have the half-wrecked look of northern France, which had been more thoroughly overrun by Nazis.
“More peaceful here than in Paris,” Finn said, echoing my thoughts. He strode along in his shirtsleeves, drawing a few disapproving looks from Frenchmen in their crisp summer suits, but the women didn’t seem to mind his rumpled appearance if the glances were anything to go by. Finn looked back at all those passing faces—the bustling young mothers with their straw hats, the men frowning over their newspapers at café tables. “Pink cheeks,” he noted. “Not so pinched and bleak as the people we saw up north.”
“This was the Free Zone,” I said, finally able to keep up with Finn’s long stride now that I had flat sandals and cropped trousers rather than tottering heels. “The Vichy crew wasn’t anything to write home about, but the people here still had it better than they did up north.”
“Heh,” Eve snorted from ahead of us. “Don’t be so sure. They had the Milice to deal with, and the Milice were nasty buggers.”
“Milice?” Finn asked.
“French militia recruited to hunt their own for the Germans. I always hated those b-bastards.”
“But the Milice weren’t around during your war, Eve.” I tilted my head, curious. “You weren’t part of the last war.”
“Says you, Yank.”
“Wait, you did work in the second war, too? What did you—”
“Not relevant.” Eve stopped suddenly, cocking her head as the sound of bells drifted down through the lazy summer air. “Those bells. I remember those b-bells.” She resumed her straight-backed stride down the riverbank and I followed, shaking my head.
“When were you last here in Limoges, Gardiner?” Finn asked.
“August 1915,” Eve said, not looking back. “René Bordelon brought me for a weekend.”
Just a handful of words, but the suspicion I’d been nursing slid to certainty—a suspicion about the elegant owner of Le Lethe. I’d known from the sheer volume of loathing in Eve’s voice that he was something special to her; you don’t hate someone that much without a very personal involvement. Now I knew: he’d been her lover. Eve had climbed into bed with the enemy to spy on him.
I looked at her, her proud ravaged face and soldierly stride down the cobbled street. She hadn’t been much older than me at the time. Could you climb into bed with a Hun just to spy on him, Charlie? Pretend I liked him, smile at his jokes, let him unbutton my blouse, all so I could rifle his desk and his conversation for useful information? Knowing I could get shot any time I was caught?
I looked at Eve, and I admired her so much. I didn’t just want her