“You remind me so much of your mother,” he said.
Daisy stopped and wheeled to face him. “I’m not a bit like my mother. Anyway, I have a father. Nobody ever thinks of him, but he’s there. He was kind and good, and he loved my mother. He created me with her, and then he marched off to Verdun to be killed by some German. He’s part of me, too, and I expect I’m a great deal more like him than her. The so-heroic Demoiselle de Courcelles.”
Von Sternburg simply stared at her, and it occurred to Daisy that his blue eyes had grown glossy, that his expression had become one of immense longing. He wore an ordinary trilby hat with this civilian costume of his, and it cast an arc of shadow on his face. Suddenly he seemed human, diminished. Even a little old.
“Of course, I wouldn’t really know, either way,” she heard herself say, sounding for an instant like the old Daisy instead of this new, impudent one, who felt unaccountably free to spar with German officers. With this German officer. “They’re both dead.”
“I am so sorry,” he said hoarsely.
“So am I. Have you anything else to say to me? Is it now forbidden to bring the comfort of literature to the destitute of Paris? Can I expect the police to knock on my door in the middle of the night and raid my children’s rooms?”
“Of course not. I only mean to tell you this. If you have need of a friend at any time, for any reason, I hope you will consider me that friend.” He took a small rectangular card from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “I live at the H?tel Meurice, on rue de Rivoli. The number is here.”
Before she could reply, he walked away, in the opposite direction. The heat shimmered around him. Daisy watched him go, until his trilby hat and his broad shoulders simply disappeared around the corner, leaving her alone and unsettled, yearning for something she couldn’t name.
Chapter Nineteen
Babs
Paris, France
April 1964
I sat with Drew at a table outside a small café on rue de Richelieu feeling rather alone and unsettled, yearning for a cup of strong tea that seemed strangely absent from the café’s menu. I felt very out of place surrounded by beautiful, chic people at neighboring tables, most smoking and chattering loudly in French while they sipped coffee or wine. Even Drew, with his large Americanness, seemed to fit in. He wore sunglasses, and his long legs were stretched out under the table, his ankles crossed, making him look quite bohemian. Except for the broad shoulders and tan, of course.
When we returned from Picardy the day before, Drew had rushed off to his office, so we hadn’t had the chance to go over everything we’d learned at the ruins of the chateau. Or the reason why I still felt his hand where it had clasped mine as we’d descended the hill. I found myself stroking my hand with the other and immediately sat on them. It had been a successful strategy to stop biting my nails when I was a child, after all.
The hand stroking had started the night before when I’d gone to Margot Lemouron’s room to read to her from Les Misérables, but she’d fallen asleep after just a few pages. I’d stayed with her for a long while, to see if she might awaken and need something, and as I sat I’d replayed the day in my head, still feeling Drew’s hand on mine.
“Are you all right?” Drew asked, his dark glasses masking his eyes so I couldn’t tell if it was real concern or if he might be laughing at me.
Realizing that I must look like a schoolgirl waiting outside the headmistress’s office, I immediately returned my hands to my lap. “Quite. I’m just a bit eager to see what you’ve turned up. You weren’t really clear in your message.”
He took a sip of his coffee, the tiny cup looking Lilliputian in his hand. “I’m not sure yet, myself. Someone from the office should be here shortly to bring the papers I requested. It’s a nice day so I figured we’d mix a little business with pleasure.”
He grinned at me, as if the word pleasure held all sorts of meanings. Which it did, of course, but surely not in the way I was thinking.
I looked down at my coffee cooling in its cup, the cream beginning to stick to the sides. I took a brief sip, trying not to make a face. The war years had taught me not to waste anything, which meant if I ordered a coffee, I would drink it.
A waiter approached our table with a teapot, creamer, and a clean cup and saucer. He set it before me and nodded before turning away. I looked at it with surprise.
“I asked for them to make you tea. I’m not sure what kind it is, but at least it’s not coffee, right?” Drew’s boyish grin made me want to kiss him, right there in the middle of a Parisian sidewalk. “I made sure they included cream since I know you like that with your tea.”