I wanted desperately to kiss him, but in nursing apron and cloth forager cap, I was in no state for romance, and we had an audience. When the little gap-toothed boy whose bootlaces I’d been tying tugged at my sleeve, I disentangled myself from Max, who stooped down to eye level with the boy and asked, “Who might this be?”
“Henri Pinton,” I said, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Son of a fallen hero. His mother is too ill to care for him . . . and I suspect when she is better, she won’t have the money to see to his education, so we’ve taken him in.”
“Can I try on your cap, monsieur?” Henri asked.
Max surrendered his captain’s visor to the boy without a hint of regret. “Keep it. I’ve no intention of wearing it again.”
Then he stood and surveyed Lafayette’s domain—the castle, the pastoral grounds where the children were playing, the ambulance, and the improvised cantina on crates we’d made to entertain American doughboys. All that of which I was so proud . . .
“I thought you said the castle was white?”
I smiled. “It was. But as it turns out, white walls are devilishly expensive and time-consuming to maintain. And now that the years are taking their toll on my own facade, I feel happier with my decision to remove the plaster and let these stones reveal themselves au naturel.”
He laughed, bringing my hand to his lips. “Madame, both you and your castle are magnificent au naturel . . . Now, tell me, where is our little cherub?”
I smiled tenderly, shielding my eyes from the sun. “I’m not sure where Marthe is just this moment . . .”
“She’s not with the other children?”
“She’s an odd duckling. There are days she prefers her own company.”
“I know where she is,” said our gap-toothed interloper, leading us to a nearby covered passage where the pigtailed terror was watching frogs hop about.
“Marthe!” I called to her. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
She let Max pluck her right up into his arms.
One of the doughboys was taking pictures to send back home, and just then he snapped one of the three of us together; I asked him if he would be kind enough to take another and send it to me. I knew we should both like to have it. And all this attention put the little girl in a fine, cooperative mood.
She let Max carry her on a tour of the castle. Only once Marthe was asleep, thumb in her mouth and golden curls damp on her brow, did I pry her from his arms and give her over to Marie-Louise. Then we continued on to the museum room, where I showed him our treasures.
“Are the rumors true, Beatrice, that you’re soon to be knighted?”
I grinned with a warm rush of pleasure, for I was soon to be awarded the Legion of Honor—the highest civil merit in France. Whatever else I had ever been, I would now also be a chevalier of that order, a rank and title not conferred by birth, but earned, and by a woman at that!
“Congratulations, darling girl.” Max took me into his arms. “I know how much this must mean to you.”
“I shall try not to let it go to my head.”
“I suspect you’re already planning occasions to which you might wear your decoration.”
“I’ve been wondering if it can be worn as a hatpin!” Then, with a laugh, I stole away with him up the tower staircase to my chambers, where we might have true privacy.
It was there, beneath the chandelier in the turret, that he kissed me with an air of sanctity. “Do you know that I’d marry you right here, right now, if I could?”
If I could . . .
There was still, of course, the little matter of my divorce, a thing Max wished to dispense with straightaway. “I’m taking you home to New York, to your boys. I’ve booked passage for us on a steamer from Bordeaux, and we can leave in the morning.”
My head spun with pleasure at the idea and distress at the suddenness of it. “In the morning? I can’t just leave on a whim . . .”
“Oh, don’t fret about so much as packing a bag. I’ll buy you anything you need and send later for the rest.”
“It isn’t that—I meant I couldn’t possibly leave France while Emily sits vigil at her husband’s bedside. And not while there’s still so much to do here at Chavaniac.”
“There will always be more to do here, ma chère, but you have people to do it. The one place you are indispensable is in my arms, and if I’ve learned anything slogging through mud and hails of bullets, it’s not to waste a single moment.”