He took the pot of glue and unscrewed the lid and dipped in a brush. Daisy stared at his wrist as he dotted the edges of the lining paper and smoothed it back down again, on top of the papers, so delicate and flawless you couldn’t see the ridges at all.
“Now you try it,” he said.
“I—I can’t possibly. Not as well as that.”
“Just try. There may come a time when you’re the only one to do it.”
Daisy took a book from the stack, and one of the identity cards. Legrand had already unstuck the lining, so it peeled back easily. Daisy asked how he did it.
“Steam,” he said. “Steam and a very slim knife.”
Daisy laid the papers flat, brushed the glue, pressed the thick lining paper back against the front cover. It wasn’t bad; she had used a little too much glue, but the edges were straight, the lump of the additional paper only remarkable if you knew where to look. If you were expecting it there. Legrand leaned over to inspect her handiwork.
“Very good,” he said. “A natural.”
His hair was luxurious, right next to her face. She smelled the pipe tobacco, and maybe soap. She couldn’t remember the last time she had sat so close to a man who was not her husband. Certainly not alone, in this small room with its tiny window and its cozy lamplight and the stairs in the corner that spiraled up—so he said, when they first entered, with a wave of his hand—to his bedroom, such as it was. The room was lined with shelves, which were stuffed with books, muffling the sounds of the bookseller and Philippe and their customers on the other side of the wall. On the table in the middle rested the tools of his trade—the pens, the ink, the magnifying lens, the tiny chisels and knives and brushes of all shapes. They sat so close, his knee brushed hers.
She sat back a little. “So now what?”
“Now we let the glue dry, of course.”
“How long will that take?”
“Generally I prefer to let them dry overnight—”
“Overnight! I can’t stay overnight!”
“Hush, hush.” He laid a finger over his smiling mouth. “I am deeply sorry to tell you that we don’t have the luxury of time, in this case. So we shall have to make do with half an hour only.”
“Will that be enough?”
“It will have to be.” Legrand laid the books open, underneath the lamp. “There. That should help. Wine?”
“Wine? You have wine in this place?”
“But of course. I am a Frenchman, aren’t I?”
Monsieur Legrand produced a bottle of Burgundy and a pair of glasses from a cabinet in the corner. The wine was superb. This in itself did not surprise Daisy—Monsieur Legrand was the kind of man who drank good wine, even in wartime—but she was surprised to find herself enjoying it. They talked about books, a subject that was safe but also intimate. It turned out that Legrand’s father was a writer. Nothing Daisy would have read, he added quickly.
“Because these books are English, perhaps?” she said, in English.
He replied in French. “Because they are to do with men and spies, and not, I think, the kinds of subjects that would interest you. At least before now, eh?”
“What do you think interests me?”
He sucked on his pipe for a moment or two, examining her. “Not Flaubert, thank God. Perhaps Shakespeare. But in English, or translation?”
“Both.”
“Dumas, of course, when you were younger. Père et fils. Hugo. Your grandmother started you on Balzac, but it left you dissatisfied, for reasons you could not articulate. Then you left your romantic ideas behind and started Proust.”
She laughed. “You know he practically lived at the Ritz, when I was young. A strange man. He hated noise of any kind.”
“Genius is usually strange. But was I right?”
“Not altogether. I quite liked Balzac.”
“Ah,” he said knowingly, as if that explained everything.
“And you? What did you read? Dickens, perhaps?”
“You think to trap me, do you?”
Daisy shrugged and spread out her hands.
Legrand removed his pipe from his mouth and stabbed the air with the end of it. “Dickens does not understand people. They are ideas to him, types, objects to move around his moral chessboard. I much prefer Trollope. But my favorite book of all, I think . . . now that I have had time to reflect . . .” His eyes crinkled.
“Yes?”
“I believe my favorite book of all is this one.”
He touched the mouth of his pipe to the small copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel at the corner of the table.