“And now here you are,” said Daisy. “Returned in triumph. The great Teutonic conqueror. It must be so satisfying for you.”
“Immensely satisfying, but not—I suspect—for the reasons you think.” He was looking at Madeleine as he said this, frowning a little. He twiddled the stem of his wineglass between his thumb and forefinger and said, “I have a little confession to make.”
“Oh?” said Grandmère. “The interesting kind, I hope.”
He turned to her and smiled, but it was not an especially happy smile. “Interesting to me, at least. Did you know I was billeted at the Chateau de Courcelles at the beginning of the last war?”
Daisy made a little gasp. Grandmère narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t believe I did. You must have known my daughter, then.”
“I knew her well. Who could not admire the fine spirit of the Demoiselle de Courcelles?”
“Who, indeed?” Grandmère said softly. She tilted her head. “I certainly hope you were not still there during the terrible fire.”
“A night I have spent years trying to forget.”
“How dreadful. But surely this is not how you acquired that unfortunate cicatrice?” Grandmère motioned to the side of her own face.
“It is.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. You must have been very badly injured. Such wounds are dangerous, I understand, and difficult to heal.”
He shrugged. “At first, the doctors thought I might not live. I wanted very much to survive, however, and proved them wrong. But I learned there are scars one bears on the inside rather than the outside, and sometimes these are the most painful of all. The slowest to heal, at any rate.”
Von Sternburg was not smiling now. He hadn’t touched his wine, either, at least since Daisy had entered the room. Just washed it around the sides of his glass. Madeleine and Olivier, utterly awed by his presence, sat on either side of Daisy and ate their sandwiches quietly, round eyed, watching the volleys back and forth as one might watch a tennis match.
“It is all a matter of perspective, of course,” said Grandmère. “Some would say that the occupiers get what they deserve. That these scars you speak of—”
“I beg your pardon,” Daisy broke in. “Do you mean to say that you knew my mother? That you occupied her chateau?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“And you said nothing to me of this before?”
“I told you I had heard of her. But it took me a little by surprise, you see, when your husband announced this connection at the dinner party. And I did not wish to discompose you in public with my importunate questions.”
“How kind of you.”
“But I have been reflecting, you see, over these past weeks. I have been thinking about those months at the chateau, and the time that came earlier, when I was in Paris before the war, a time I count among the happiest days of my life—”
“Surely not,” said Grandmère. “Surely you have since married and had a family.”
He stared at her. “In fact, I have not.”
“I am sorry to hear that. My daughter, as you know, was fortunate to escape the horror of German occupation and the terrible fire that destroyed her ancestral home, to make her way to Paris, God be praised, and to marry a good French husband and bear his child, though poor Monsieur d’Aubigny was killed soon after. But at least those two had some joy together, fleeting though it was. She deserved it, after all she had endured at the hands of the Germans.”
“I have no doubt of that. And when the product of this union is a woman so charming as Madame Villon, who can begrudge them their happiness?” said Von Sternburg.
“Who, indeed.” Grandmère rose from the table. “Children! If you have finished your sandwiches, we shall now play at cards.”
But Olivier did not want to play some stupid cards. He was hot and fretful and restless and wanted to go back to the park. Max von Sternburg bent on one knee before him.
“I suppose you want to go on the carousel, young man,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But a ride on the carousel costs two francs, doesn’t it? Have you got two francs?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm.” Von Sternburg peered at Olivier’s right ear, and then his left. “That’s strange,” he said.
“What’s strange, sir?”
Von Sternburg reached behind Olivier’s ear and drew out a coin. “It seems you’ve been hiding something from us, eh?”