Owen is both surprised and annoyed to find me waiting when he comes home from wherever he’s been. I’m seated on the cream-colored sofa, pretending to read a book I borrowed from his library. I feel all wrong sitting here, worrying about what I look like, how my legs are crossed, what to do with my hands, but he pretends not to see me as he goes about pouring himself a drink.
I watch mutely as he drops two cubes of ice into a glass, then adds a splash of amber liquid, and I find myself wondering how the ice got into the bucket. Belinda, I suppose. But Owen isn’t the least bit curious about the ice. He’s used to everything being exactly as he expects it to be. It’s why he doesn’t like me, because I’m not what he expected for his son.
Finally he turns, pivoting stiffly on his bad leg. I close the book, waiting while he takes a pull from his glass. At long last, he fixes me with a chilly stare. “What is it that has you up so late, Miss Roussel?”
Two weeks and he still refuses to call me by my first name, as if our relationship is a temporary one. “I was hoping to talk to you about Cynthia—about her clothes.”
“Her clothes?”
“Girls are different from boys.”
“You don’t say.”
There isn’t a hint of humor in his tone, but I push on, determined to make my point. “Girls reach an age where they start comparing themselves to their friends. How they look. What they wear. They worry about fitting in. Cynthia is at that age now.”
“There is nothing wrong with my daughter’s clothes.”
“Not wrong, no. They’re just a bit . . . plain. And they don’t fit her as well as they could.”
“We’ve all had to do without a great deal since the war started. Gasoline. Cooking oil. Even paper. With the men off fighting, there’s no one to cut down the trees. It’s easy to take things for granted until you suddenly have to do without. It’s a matter of sacrificing for one’s country.”
I stare at him, piqued by his platitudes. From where I stand, there is precious little the Purcells have gone without compared to the people of France and England. No bombs have landed on American soil, no businesses looted or seized, no oafish soldiers plundering their store shelves. It’s true that their men are across the sea, fighting the Nazis, and that it’s a great sacrifice indeed, but it isn’t the same.
“We’re well acquainted with sacrifice where I come from, Monsieur Purcell. We learned about it the day the Germans marched into Paris and hung their swastikas all over the city.”
He eyes me coldly, but there’s a glint of surprise in the look too. He isn’t used to anyone talking back to him, and certainly not a twenty-year-old seamstress without a sou to her name. “How fortunate that my son came to your rescue when he did.”
I smile meekly, pretending not to register the dig. “I was fortunate. Not only because Anson and I met and fell in love, but also that you’ve been kind enough to open your home to me. In fact, I’ve been thinking about how I might repay that kindness. I thought perhaps I could make a few new dresses for Cynthia. She’s such a pretty girl, and a new dress or two would mean so much to her.”
His eyes narrow, as if sensing some trap in the offer. “She put you up to this, did she?”
“No. It was my idea. She doesn’t even know I was planning to ask. I wanted to be sure I had your approval before saying anything.”
He takes another pull from his glass, eyeing me over the rim. “My daughter’s dresses are perfectly suitable for the times, Miss Roussel. Good, sturdy clothes.”
Ugly clothes, I think to myself.
“Actually, she’s outgrown most of her dresses. She hasn’t mentioned it because she doesn’t want to be selfish. She understands that things are in short supply and that the war effort must come first, but I’ve had an idea.”
He rattles the ice in his glass, signaling his impatience. “Have you, indeed?”
“In Paris, when the Nazis came, they went through our stores like a swarm of locusts, snapping up food, shoes, even books, until the shelves were bare. And then the rationing started. There were no clothes to be had and nothing to make clothes with. So we learned to make do. By the time I left, women were pulling apart their husbands’ suits to make new clothes for themselves. So I thought, if you had some older things lying around, some things of her mother’s perhaps, I could rework them for Cynthia.”
“That won’t be necessary. My secretary—”