Instead, I clenched my hands into fists and began to slide out of the bed, being careful not to disturb the bedclothes. I wanted to escape to my own room, to pretend this hadn’t happened, but the need to use the water closet was too urgent to be ignored. I tiptoed across the carpet toward the bathroom, carefully closing the door behind me.
As I turned on the golden swan tap to wash my hands, I looked into the mirror above the vanity. For a long moment I simply stared, not recognizing the woman who looked back at me. Her fine gray eyes were wide and worldly. Knowing, somehow. Me, yet not me. The sleeve of my dress had slipped from my shoulder, revealing one of the new brassieres Precious had helped me select. It was lacy and feminine and lifted me in places where I hadn’t been lifted since before my first child. I leaned forward, staring at the face of this woman who’d experienced life and love and loss. But whose eyes still shone with light. It was the face of a formidable woman. A woman who wouldn’t recognize defeat.
I returned to the bedroom, quietly moving past the bed toward the door.
“Are you back for some rompy-frumpy?”
I jumped at the sound of Drew’s voice. I slowly turned to see him lying on his side facing me, a sly grin on his face.
“It’s rumpy-pumpy,” I corrected, my mouth lifting in an involuntary smile.
He raised his eyebrows in question.
“No, I’m not. Unless . . .” I indicated the bed with my chin, hoping he’d understand what I meant.
He shook his head. “No, we didn’t. Although it wasn’t from lack of trying. You tore my shirt to shreds trying to take it off me. I thought it best if we slept it off before we did anything . . . rash.”
I nodded, relieved and disappointed at the same time. “Yes, well. I should go.”
He held his hand out to me. “Don’t.”
I looked at his hand and then his eyes, both telling me to stay. I remembered the woman’s reflection in the mirror, my reflection, and smiled. I reached behind my neck and slid down the zipper of my dress, letting it fall to my ankles, revealing my new undergarments. And when I saw the look on Drew’s face, I finally understood their purpose.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aurélie
The Chateau de Courcelles
Picardy, France
April 1915
There were so many bits of her body she had never quite understood the purpose of until now.
Aurélie lay curled up against Max on the narrow camp bed, in the drowsy peace of the dark room. Her head was pillowed against his collarbone, and she knew she ought to feel exactly what Hoffmeister had called her, a German officer’s whore, but she couldn’t muster the energy.
She didn’t feel ruined; she felt as though she had always been here and always should, with Max’s chest rising and falling beneath her cheek, flesh to flesh beneath his scratchy blanket.
Out of the darkness, she heard Max’s voice, just above her head. She could feel the words before she heard them, feel them reverberating in his chest. “Would your mayor marry us?”
“Acting mayor,” said Aurélie. “The real one’s gone off to war. Wait. Did you say marry?”
Max raised his head slightly, looking down at her. “But, of course. You will marry me, won’t you?”
Aurélie scrambled up slightly, or as much as she could in the narrow space between Max and the wall, the movement causing all sorts of interesting things to brush against each other. She really hadn’t thought. Not of marriage, not of consequences, not of anything beyond the moment. “But you can’t marry me.”
Max wiggled up slightly against the pillow. “Is it because I am not a Catholic? I had thought, in France, one could marry by civil ceremony.”
“Well, yes, one may. But there are other concerns—for one thing,” Aurélie said, falling back on the easiest excuse she could think of, one that didn’t involve complicated questions of loyalty and honor, “you haven’t asked me.”
Max gently curled a strand of her hair around his finger. “I had assumed, since you compromised me . . .”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Aurélie, blushing, and very glad he couldn’t see it. She shoved her hair back behind her ears. It felt very louche, the feeling of her own, unbound hair against her bare back. “You did a fair bit of compromising on your own.”
“Well, then,” said Max, as though it were settled. “I would get down on my knees, but I seem to be in want of trousers.”
“Don’t,” said Aurélie hastily. “The bed would be very cold without you.”