“Then maybe you ought to assist him in that fiction.” Her father regarded her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Men speak unguardedly to women they admire.”
The jam stuck to the roof of Aurélie’s mouth. “You want me to consort with the enemy?”
“Only one of them,” said her father, as though that made a difference. “Just—lend him an encouraging ear.”
“Spy, you mean.”
“There’s no need to be crude about it.”
Aurélie frowned at her father. “Only canaille sink to such levels, you said. A gentleman goes into battle properly, honorably.”
“You are a woman.” Her father waved a hand, appealing to the shepherdesses on the wall, hideous, simpering things. “Women wage war differently.”
Aurélie was too outraged to mince words. “On their backs, you mean?”
“Aurélie.” Her father had been friends with the late English king during his wild career as the Prince of Wales. He was disapproving, but hardly shocked. “I’m not suggesting you turn courtesan.”
It was exactly what he was suggesting. “Men speak unguardedly to women they admire?”
“Use the wits you were born with. When one is in extremis, one does what one must. We ate rats during the Siege of Paris.” Before Aurélie could point out that she’d heard about those rats before, her father changed tack. “Your mother wouldn’t balk at it.”
And that meant she shouldn’t either? Aurélie pushed her plate away. “Just because Maman—” she began, and broke off, unable to say the words.
“Lived her life with a man not her husband?” Her father’s voice was lightly ironical. “There’s no need to protect my pride, my dear. If all of Paris knew, I could hardly remain ignorant.”
“Yes, but . . .” Aurélie wasn’t quite sure how she had found herself in the wrong. She was meant to be the picture of outraged virtue, not a shamed schoolgirl. “I don’t want to be like Maman.”
“Your mother has her merits,” her father said neutrally, which seemed rather rich given that her parents had been estranged for the past fifteen years. They were like the mechanical figures on a clock. When one came out, the other went in. He couldn’t resist adding, “Discretion, however, was not one of them.”
“What, then, am I meant to be?”
“The picture of maidenly virtue.” Her father shrugged. “Take Von Sternburg for a stroll in the gardens. Show him the portraits in the green salon. You can take a chaperone if you fear for your good name.”
The good name she had never had, thanks to her mother’s notoriety. Other girls were considered virtuous until proven otherwise. Aurélie had been labeled fast before she had even known what it meant. She had worked so hard to distinguish herself from her mother, to prove to the gratin that she, at least, was above reproach. And now . . .
“There’s no point to it. They’ll be gone in a week. Herr von Sternburg said so.”
Her father cast her a long, sidelong look. “You see? You’ve begun already.”
“But I didn’t—” The intimacy of that encounter, the damp dress clinging to her, the warmth of Von Sternburg’s regard, all came crashing back, tangling her tongue, making the color rise in her cheeks.
Her father looked owlishly at her over his coffee cup.
Aurélie ate the rest of her breakfast in dignified silence. What her father suggested was impossible.
Besides, it would be only a week, two at most. There was no need to work her dubious wiles on Von Sternburg to obtain information that could only be of limited use. The French would push forward again, she was sure of it. And then they would be free.
But it wasn’t a week, or even two. September slid into October and the Germans were still there. Twenty-four kilometers to the west, the shelling continued, a faint rumble like thunder, a storm that went on and on without breaking.
In the village of Courcelles and all the other villages under Major Hoffmeister’s command, the walls of the mairies were pasted with overlapping notices. At first, it was almost laughable, the commands that all hens were to lay two eggs a day, all of which were to be reserved for German officers. Every wild rabbit was to be counted and listed. All molehills were to be flattened.
“Do they mean to make the chickens march in goose step?” snorted Victor as he hid jars of preserves beneath the straw of the old icehouse.
But his laughter faded as the demands continued. The mattresses, the linen, the cooking pots, the meager treasures of the families in the village were methodically stripped away. A tax was imposed, eighty-six hundred francs in so-called war contributions.