The Paris Agent(52)

We talked every day over the two months of his course—sometimes he’d sit at my desk and distract me for hours after he finished his training. I didn’t mistake the way his eyes would linger on mine or the faint flush on his cheeks when I smiled at him. He was shy—but not so shy that he wouldn’t talk to me. And even after all of those weeks, he’d never asked me out. I couldn’t make sense of it and as his course was ending, I’d run out of patience and time.

“Well?” I said impatiently, when he walked past me on his final day at Hatfield flight school, giving only a polite nod.

“Well, what?” he asked, turning back to me in alarm.

“Are you going to ask me out, or not?”

“Do you…do you want me to?” he said. He seemed shocked by this.

“Only if you want to!” I exclaimed. He paused, staring at me quizzically, and I deflated. “Giles, I don’t understand. You seem to like me, but you’ve made no move to ask me out.”

“I wasn’t sure if my feelings were reciprocated,” he said, raising his chin proudly. “I thought it better to be left wondering than to inadvertently cause offense.”

It was a whirlwind courtship and we were married within six months. Pushing Giles to ask me out was the single best decision I had ever made. The depth of grief I felt at his loss was a testament only to the depth of love I felt for him in life.

And then there was Hughie—the piece of our family we didn’t even know was missing.

During my mission, I had blocked most thoughts of my homecoming from my mind. I could not afford to lose focus when I was in Rouen, and the idea of reuniting with my son and even my mother tended to leave me impatient and anxious. But now that I was relatively safe in Paris, I let myself imagine that moment for the first time—how it would feel to open the door to my apartment and to see them both there, safe and well and no doubt overjoyed to have me home.

Counting the weeks of preparation with Basile at Baker Street, I had been away from Hughie for the better part of six weeks this time. We’d endured long separations during my training so I knew to expect a little hesitance from him at first, but within an hour or so he’d be smothering me with hugs and messy kisses.

It was that thought that tripped me up.

The tears came unbidden and I was too exhausted to resist so I let them run down my face and into my pillow. I loved my son. I loved every little thing about him—from his desperate curiosity about the world to those beautiful blue eyes. I had tried, in the beginning, to speak to him in both English and French so that he might be bilingual but he had taken to French so much more quickly than English. I loved the way he would babble at me in my mother tongue. I could not wait to hear his little voice call “Maman!” again.

“Are you okay?” Chloe asked, her voice thick with sleep from the other side of the room. My face flushed with embarrassment, and I sniffed and rolled toward the wall.

“Sorry. I’m fine.”

“If you need anything—”

“I don’t.”

I spoke more sharply than I intended to, but Chloe’s breathing deepened again within minutes, and she was back to sleep.

“Can I ask you something?” Chloe said. It was midmorning the next day and we were sitting at Madame Célestine’s table sharing yet another cup of tea. Her home was lovely, but both Chloe and I were at loose ends waiting for the next phase of our deployment, and neither one of us was accustomed to having free time. “You have a family at home, don’t you? You don’t have to tell me the details,” she added quickly at my surprised look. “It’s just that when we first went for training, I noticed you had a tan line on your ring finger. And you’ve never mentioned any names but…” She cleared her throat. “Sometimes you toss and turn in your sleep. I think you might cry in your sleep sometimes too.”

“My husband is gone,” I said. It was against the rules to tell her anything at all about my personal life—but I could see no harm in telling her this much. As the words left my mouth, a memory flashed before my eyes. He was home on leave the last time I saw him. I had finally adjusted to the shock of finding myself pregnant after his previous visit home. Giles could not stop touching my belly. He kept telling me how beautiful I was—how excited he was that we were going to be parents.

We went for dinner with one of his squadron pals who happened to bring his camera along. After the meal, the friend insisted on taking a photograph of us. Giles was leaning against the wall of the restaurant, standing right behind me. He was beaming at the camera, his arms around me, hands resting proudly on my belly. I looked as carefree and happy as I’d ever remembered feeling.

Giles was a man of deep faith, raised Catholic by his mother. When he left for North Africa two weeks later, I gave him a copy of that photograph and a set of rosary beads attached to a little medal.

“St. Michael,” he had murmured, running his finger over the medal. “Patron saint of the military. He’ll watch over me to keep me safe.”

If only.

My eyes filled with tears at the memory and I blinked them away, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice sympathetic, and I felt myself bristle. I didn’t want pity—not even from Chloe who I genuinely liked and trusted, and who seemed a little distracted herself that day. In stretches of silence that morning I’d caught her staring off into the distance, her expression heavy with grief.