eyes gleaming.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe not.’
Gérard held me close, his warm hand above my dress, sliding down my back to my waist. ‘We paid a man,’ he whispered. ‘Le mouchard—the informer. Turns out he’d tell us anything we wanted to know for a little money and two tickets to Cannes.’ He nuzzled my neck, lips skimming over my skin with small kisses. ‘The Résistance won’t know what happened when my men drive into Laudemarière tomorrow, take them by surprise.’
My heart raced. A raid? I moaned, pretending to enjoy his kisses, but inside I was spinning. ‘Laudemarière?’ I said, and he pulled away. ‘What could possibly be there but some gnarled grape vines and abandoned spas?’ My hands shook a little from learning so much information in just a few minutes.
‘I can’t say any more—it’s fragile still, the operation.’
The waiter asked him if he wanted another drink, and I counted backward from ten in my mind, thinking about lying in the grass in the sun just like Marguerite had taught me, breathing slowly. My hands stopped shaking. I touched my chest, feeling the thrash of my nervous heart and my warming skin, and thought some more about the grass, sipping my gin slowly. Don’t push, I thought, be nonchalant.
Gérard took a bottle of champagne from the bar meant for someone else and mixed his own drink with gin and lime before tossing it down his throat in one gulp.
I helped him make another—hoping then he’d tell me more about le mouchard.
Two men, one in a suit, the other in a guard’s uniform, walked up to Gérard, drinks in hand. They looked me up and down, one of them settling his eyes on my breasts as if he could see through the chiffon.
‘So, this is the nun, huh Gérard?’ one of them said, laughing.
Gérard shrugged, looking away, setting his elbows onto the bar. He was either incapable of defending me, or unwilling.
I held my head up high, waiting for them to finishing eyeing me in Charlotte’s gala gown. ‘Do I look like a nun?’
One of them noticed Gérard’s reddening cheeks. Nothing could clear a room faster than Gérard’s temper. The man tugged on his friend’s sleeve and they moved away from us both.
‘Why do you have to do that, Adèle?’ He talked into his glass as he drank, shaking the ice that was left at the bottom.
‘Do what?’
‘Look so damn irresistible. Make men notice you.’
I choked down a laugh. ‘Irresistible is a strong word.’
Gérard’s eyes rolled over my body, a slight scowl brewing on his face. ‘You’re a tease, and you know it. Why didn’t you wear the pink dress I bought you?’
‘It’s a day dress,’ I said.
He gulped the last of his drink, the ice clinking against his teeth. He was angrier than I thought. I knew not to move until he had calmed down. ‘Gérard, I—’
He slammed his empty glass down, and everyone at the bar jumped. ‘Don’t move,’ he gritted, and then took the hand of the woman who’d slunk by earlier and pulled her into the middle of the room where cheers and glasses chinked together.
‘Kill the traitors!’ they shouted.
Elbows nudged me to join, but I drank quietly at the bar.
Gérard smiled as the woman placed her hands on his chest, her dark brown hair looking very black against the grey smoke hovering in the air and her lips a deep scarlet red—a distraction that cooled his temper. I retreated to the street-side windows near the door and lit a cigarette the bartender gave me, watching passers-by outside, some trying to catch a peek of the excitement inside the brasserie.
I leaned into the folds of the velvet curtains, repeating Gérard’s words to myself about the raid as I smoked, wondering what kind of person would be so selfish to give up the Résistance’s whereabouts for two train tickets. Down the street, just behind a patch of fog misting over the roadway was the square where I’d seen Les Femmes de la Nation. The chanting booming behind me was an eerie contrast to what I’d seen, and a reminder of what the regime had done to us.
‘Adèle!’ Gérard grabbed my hand and I instinctively pulled away, but his nose turned up and, remembering where and whom I was with, I apologized. ‘Don’t scare me like that, Gérard. I’m having a cigarette. You want to kill me like you do your résistants?’
‘I wouldn’t kill you,’ he said. ‘Not yet, anyway. I’ve invested too much time.’ He moved in for a