“Of course. You’re right.”
“Listen, don’t worry about your grandmother. I’ve already made papers for her, just in case. I can get her out of Paris at a moment’s notice. I promise I won’t let them take her. Or you.”
“I know you won’t,” she whispered.
Daisy switched off the lamp, leaving them in unexpected blackness. She found the crack of faint light at the bottom of the door and started toward it, only to bump into some piece of Legrand. His shoulder, from the shape of it. She said Oof, and he said Pardon and grabbed her arm to steady her, and for an instant she leaned into that arm, very nearly settling herself against his chest. But she stepped back instead, apologized, and reached for the door handle. He followed her out of the study and back down the corridor, and in another moment he would be gone, and Daisy would be left alone in her empty apartment, the long night ahead, only her spinning thoughts for company.
Wilhelmina de Courcelles, H?tel Ritz. Surely Pierre would not have done this for Daisy’s sake? Of course not. Pierre cared only for his own skin.
Whereas Legrand—I promise I won’t let them take her. Or you.
And he would keep that promise. Legrand was not a man who broke his promises.
They reached the foyer. Without looking at Daisy, Legrand opened the door a few centimeters, looked into the vestibule, and slipped free.
Gone.
Daisy closed the door and leaned against it. Everything was dim and shadowed; night had settled fully outside the windows and in her chest as well, swallowing her ribs and her vital organs, everything. Gone. But of course he was gone; that was right. She was married. She had a husband, however monstrous, and children. She had no business taking this one good thing she had done, these few good deeds, and desecrating them with some sordid act of adultery. She closed her eyes and saw his fingers, operating the safe; she saw his eyes and smile, heard his voice, and her eyes hurt with the strain of her unshed tears. She felt as if someone had reached inside her chest and torn her heart out, still beating.
The door moved. Daisy jumped back.
Through the opening came Legrand, his head and shoulders and then his whole body. He edged around the door and closed it behind him, while an amazed Daisy stepped back and took in the sight of him.
“The damned concierge is having some conversation with one of your neighbors in the hallway,” he said. “Do you mind if I wait a few more minutes?”
Daisy turned and went down the hall to the kitchen. “I’ll pour some brandy,” she said.
They sat not in the drawing room but in the little nook off the dining room, furnished with a sofa and a lamp table, where Daisy liked to read when she had a moment to herself, which wasn’t often anymore. “It’s my favorite part of the apartment,” she explained. “The only room I like at all.”
Legrand sat at the other end of the sofa, leaning forward, dangling the snifter between his hands. “I grew up in a rather grand house myself,” he said. “And I had a spot just like this one, where I liked to go when I needed a bit of time by myself.”
“Somewhere in England.”
He looked up at her, and for an instant she thought he was going to deny it. Then he lifted his brandy in a little salute. “Somewhere in England.”
She smiled. He smiled.
“Then why are you here?” she asked. “This isn’t your fight.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, my dear, we are at war together.”
“Yes, but Paris itself. Our people. It’s one thing, training in an army. This, right inside occupied Paris, it’s so intimate. And dangerous.”
Legrand settled back against the sofa. “I spent a great deal of time in France, before the war. It’s a second home to me. It was like an escape from England and all that provincial life. All those daughters of the local squires, in their cardigans and their brogues and their prim little dresses.”
“Very sweet girls, I’m sure.”
“Sweet, yes. But not very interesting. Not what you’d call cosmopolitan.”
“Oh? Am I cosmopolitan?”
He tilted his head and looked at her, and the warmth of his gaze made it seem as if he was actually touching her. “I wouldn’t say cosmopolitan, exactly. But you’ve seen things. You know things. You have this—this marvelous earthy quality, as if you understand much more than you let on, and it makes me . . .”
“And it makes you what?”
He looked away, at the wall, and finished his brandy. “Nothing.”