“I don’t doubt it,” said Max mildly, setting the pile of books down on the desk. “Although I would hope to at least make you work for that touch.”
A touch. The moment of contact in fencing. Something about the way he said it made it sound less a blow and more a caress.
“Well, then,” said Aurélie belligerently, hoping the red didn’t show too much in her cheeks. “What are you waiting for?”
“A duel,” Max said slowly, “is an affair of honor. These men have no honor, Aurélie. They will use whatever means they may against you. And you, you will be powerless against it, because you are not they.”
“I’m half American,” Aurélie protested. “My grandfather was what they call a robber baron. I can be ruthless.”
“Can you? Could you send a man to his death?”
“If there were cause,” Aurélie blustered, but she wasn’t really quite sure. If Hoffmeister were to plummet from a parapet, she didn’t think she would rush to grab his coattails. But could she be the one to push him? Something in her shrank at the thought. She glowered at Max, her voice shaking with helplessness and frustration. “And what of you? If ever there was a man crippled by honor—don’t you understand? He means to poison you. To drug you, that is. To drug you so that you take a fatal fall. If you stay here, they’ll kill you.”
Max looked down at her, his expression wry. “One less German in the world.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” retorted Aurélie, and she had to tilt back her head to look up at him. “You know that’s not how I think of you.”
“Isn’t it?” He was so close, she could feel his breath against the hair bundled in a disorderly pouf on the top of her head. “I am German, you know. No matter how well I speak your language, I will always be a foreigner.”
“I know but—” She pushed lightly against his chest. “You’re not one of those Germans. You’re different. You’re . . . you’re . . . you.”
Standing with her at the back of her mother’s salon, ready with an umbrella in the rain outside the Louvre, delivering toys to the children of the village because he couldn’t let them think Father Christmas had abandoned them. Because he was Max, just Max, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else in the world like him, with the strength to be kind in a world that drew power from cruelty, with a deep-down goodness that transcended allegiances and uniforms and all the nonsense men used to justify their baser instincts.
She was going to lose him; either he was going to leave or they were going to kill him, and she couldn’t bear to think of it, of Max not being there, not loving her. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why he would love her, but that he did—he seemed not to have the slightest bit of doubt. That certainty was like a raft in the middle of the ocean, the one solid thing among the waves and the sharks and the howling winds.
“Please,” she said, and she wasn’t sure whether she was begging him to stay or to go. “Please. Don’t let them hurt you.”
“I won’t,” he promised, and she knew it was nonsense, that he was just what he’d accused her of being, an honorable man, and what defense did he have against evil?
All she could do was reach up and cup his face in her hands, memorizing every feature, the texture of his skin, the freckle above one brow, the way the color of his eyes changed from blue to gray in the lamplight. Because this, this might be all they would have, all they would ever have, and she wanted this, this memory to hold on to once he was gone, the one man in the world who loved her really, and truly, and just for herself.
“Aurélie,” he said, and that was all, but it was enough.
With one hand, Aurélie reached and extinguished the lamp, turning down the wick until only the faintest ember still lingered before it winked out against the smoke-stained glass. And then they were in darkness, safe in the darkness, in this room that was shuttered and still and entirely their own.
“Shh,” she said when he started to speak, and she hooked her fingers through his braces to pull him close.
Chapter Twenty-One
Daisy
Avenue Marceau
Paris, France
July 1942
The apartment was quiet and dark, husband and children far away, and Daisy felt like the only person in the world. She sat in the armchair in the drawing room that was nearest to the foyer, so she could jump up as soon as Monsieur Legrand’s tap sounded on the door. Certainly it wouldn’t do for him to linger outside! She must be ready for his arrival. On the mantel, an ormolu clock ticked sharply. Daisy fixed her hands on her lap and tried not to count the seconds.