“Also the stones of the floor,” said Max. “But I would happily freeze my knees for love of you.”
“I don’t believe love requires such tests as that,” said Aurélie absently. Max was stroking her bare arm and it was very distracting. “But, really, Max! How could we possibly marry now? It’s not because you’re not Catholic”—there were dispensations for that—“or because you haven’t proposed properly,” she added, just in case he decided to try the frozen knee approach after all. “Did you think what people would say? Hoffmeister would use it as an excuse to have you court-martialed. And my people—they would think I had betrayed them.”
That was the real reason, and they both knew it. The Demoiselle de Courcelles was a symbolic figure, more so than ever after her very public defiance. Her argument with Hoffmeister at that first, horrible dinner had already become legend. Local gossip had turned her exploits into something more than they were, making her a latter-day Robin Hood.
To marry the enemy would be to betray everyone who believed in her, who clung to her legend for hope.
“I see,” said Max, and the worst part was that she was fairly sure he did. Aurélie braced herself for reproaches, but all he said was, “After the war, then.”
“Yes, after the war,” said Aurélie, but it hurt a bit to say it, to pretend. Because surely this war would go on forever and there would be no after. Or he would go back to Berlin and realize that he had been mistaken in her, that she was just another souvenir of Paris, like a pressed flower or a theater program, a remembrance of a time that had been rich and calm, before the world went mad.
“We wouldn’t have to live all the year in Berlin,” said Max, and she realized he meant it seriously, quite seriously.
Aurélie drew her knees up to her chest. “Where, then? Paris?”
“If you like.” There was a slight pause. “Would you like?”
“I never felt truly at home in Paris.” She had always felt large and awkward next to her mother. “I’ve always thought I would live in the country someday, with a house full of dogs.”
“Only dogs?”
“Children, too, I suppose.” There had never been a husband in her imagining. Or, rather, there had, but he had been in the background, largely absent. “And motorcars, of course.”
“I never had a dog,” said Max. He stretched his arms above his head, finding a more comfortable spot on the pillow. “They made my mother sneeze. But I always wanted one.”
“What about a half dozen?”
“Large or small?” inquired Max.
“Large.” Aurélie thought for a moment. “Although I do rather like King Charles spaniels.”
“And wolfhounds?”
“Of course.” Her father had always had wolfhounds. Clovis was the last of his line. When she thought of Courcelles, it was of the feel of fur between her fingers, the hot moisture of a large tongue licking her cheek.
As if he could tell what she was thinking, Max said, “We could spend summers here. If your father would allow us.”
Aurélie looked down at him, at the dim outlines of his face in the darkness. “If he sanctions the match, you mean.”
Max sighed and pulled her down beside him, into the crook of his arm. “I’d like to think, had there been no war, there would have been nothing to which he could object.”
“He did approve of your grandfather. He doesn’t approve of many people.” Aurélie rested her head on Max’s shoulder, trailing her fingers across his bare chest. Such an interesting and alien thing, a male chest, rising and falling with his breath, lightly fuzzed with pale hair. “And if my father refuses his blessing? Will you elope with me despite his objections?”
Max’s voice was very quiet in the darkness. “Oughtn’t I to be asking that of you?”
Aurélie’s fingers stilled on his chest; she could feel the weight of the silence pressing around her. It wasn’t just marriage he was proposing now. He was asking if she would defy her father, her people, to follow him.
“My father left me.” In the dark, in the quiet, with Max’s arm around her, it was easy to speak honestly, to speak the truths she wouldn’t even admit to herself. “Not once, but again and again and again. He would miss me, I think. When he remembered me. But I’m not sure he would. If he objected to our marriage, it would not be out of concern for me, but for what people would think—of what you are. Not who you are, but what you are.”