His bushy eyebrow lifts a fraction. “You came out to walk these woods alone, without a hat?”
“I—I lost it.”
“Ah, we can retrace your steps. I’ll help you find it.”
“I mean that I lost it somewhere in the castle. I had to go without it today. I’m sure it will turn up.”
I don’t think he believes me. “You can’t be too careful these days, you know. If someone attacked you—”
“No one attacked me.” I just blundered onto a hiding spot, and they didn’t want me to go blabbing about it. I must have surprised and frightened the man who grabbed me as much as he and his comrades surprised and frightened me.
Now the gendarme reaches across to open the side door. “Get in. I’ll take you back to the castle.”
“Thanks.” I slide into the passenger seat. “Sorry to be a bother.”
“A pretty girl like you is worth the bother.” Travert takes a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his uniform. Lucky Strikes. An American brand. Which means they must be dry and stale, because it’s been years since the American exodus from the preventorium. “Here. Even nice girls smoke these days. It’s the damned war; we all need something to put in our mouths.”
I’m not sure if he’s insinuating something vulgar, but I tuck them into my coat pocket. At the start of the war, Travert was a blimp of a man who patrolled the streets with a stick instead of a pistol. I liked him better then. Now he’s become lean like everyone else, too impressed with the effect his new physique has on the village girls. How else can I explain the way he drapes a muscular arm over the back of the seat, like I’m meant to admire it? “Mademoiselle, for you, I can keep a secret.”
“I’m not interesting enough to have secrets.”
It’s meant to discourage him, but he only chuckles. “You’ve always been the most interesting girl in these mountains. Even so, we all have to be careful and know who our friends are. The gendarmes need to know who lurks in our forests—but we can look the other way. We leave good, respectable people alone. No one wants to see them in the refugee camps.”
I relax a little to hear that. We’ve seen reports from the Red Cross about the deplorable conditions at Gurs, Rieucros, and Rivesaltes. I’m glad he doesn’t want to send anyone to those camps, but then he says, “Of course, not everyone in hiding is a good, respectable person. Since last month we’ve had to inspect the bags of everyone who comes into the prefecture, looking for stolen explosives. Now that the communists have started throwing bombs into swanky cafés . . . maybe you heard the news?”
It was a café where Nazi officers liked to go, so I can’t really blame the communists. In fact, I’m starting to admire their daring. There’s an underground Resistance now, though Faustine Xavier claims the only people who have joined it are madmen, nobodies, and ne’er-do-wells. She might be right, but still my heart feels a pang of pea-brained pride that any Frenchmen still want to fight! So I don’t say anything to Travert about the men in the woods. “Not many swanky cafés up here in these mountains. Maybe you shouldn’t worry.”
He actually laughs. “Touché. Maybe I’m just hoping to do something more important than keep watch on the preventorium, the way my supervisor wants me to. We’re supposed to keep Jews out, that sort of thing.”
I feel sick. He doesn’t mean Jewish children, does he? I pretend he’s talking about the staff. “You know every teacher is Catholic. We’re at Mass every Sunday.”
Even if some of us mouth our prayers by rote . . .
Travert’s cheeks redden. “We get denunciations, though. Mostly petty nonsense. It seems Madame LeVerrier was a rabble-rouser in her day.”
It’s impossible for me to imagine our stooped, lace-making doyenne as ever having been a rabble-rouser, but it infuriates me that someone denounced her. “Madame LeVerrier is almost seventy. No threat to anyone.”
“All right,” Travert says, holding up his hands in surrender. “Just make sure everyone at the castle has their papers in order in case someone higher up pays a visit. We have to be careful these days, especially someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
He gives a pointed glance at my torn trousers. “You’re a walking legal infraction. The new prefect doesn’t want women wearing pants.”
Of all the stupidity. We’re supposed to be getting back to the land, hiking and biking through nature—but heaven forbid we do it in trousers. We can’t wear skirts either, because it’s considered immodest to go without stockings, but nobody can get stockings except on the black market, so we’re all painting black lines down the backs of our legs. “Maybe the new prefect should try walking through the woods in a skirt and heels, and see how he likes it.”