“About ten years ago,” she prompts. “Maman brought me with her for some holiday function. You were one of the only girls at the orphanage, so I knitted you a red beret . . . and you took me sledding.”
That jogs my memory. I was thirteen, and she was twelve, sporty and boyish. She’s all girl now, which is why I didn’t recognize her as the baron’s daughter. “Anna de LaGrange?”
Flashing an art deco wedding ring set on her left hand that nearly blinds me with the green sparkle of its big emerald baguettes, she says, “I became the comtesse de Guébriant just before the war . . . not that marriage would stop Maman from scolding me like a child if she caught me smoking near her sacred relics.”
She gestures irreverently to the crates filled with old donations to the castle’s museum that haven’t been sorted yet. Uniforms, maps, flags—tokens of the supposedly unbreakable alliance of Western democracies that helped win the last war. But in this war our British allies left us at Dunkirk, and the Americans let Hitler invade us with a neutral shrug. So as far as I’m concerned, these crates contain the detritus of a democratic alliance in decay. And given the current state of affairs, I don’t think a little tobacco smoke is going to do it any more harm . . .
“So you’re a countess now.” I make a whistle that sounds like la-di-da. “Should I curtsy?”
She laughs. “Don’t you dare. I don’t go by the noble title except to irritate Maman with the reminder that I outrank her, but unfortunately she’s too American to care.”
I grin, stooping to pet the gray cat that circles my ankles. “I actually still wear that red beret. Everyone in the village sees me coming a mile away. And don’t worry about your mother. The baroness is too busy pickling everything in reach to come up here.”
Anna pats the window seat beside her in invitation to me, the cat, or both. “I’d offer you a cigarette, but it’s my last one . . .”
“Thanks, I’ve got my own.” I show her the blue package with its winged helmet, but I don’t have a holder like hers and wouldn’t use one if I did. “Gauloises.”
“Gitanes,” Anna says, snapping shut an empty diamond-encrusted cigarette case.
Well, isn’t she all sparkle? Taking a long drag, she says, “This summer, when the air sirens in Paris sent me scrambling, this cigarette case was the only thing of my husband’s I managed to rescue from our apartment. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have grabbed the framed picture from the wall. Now all I’ve got to remember him by is this . . .”
She pauses, savoring the distinctive sharp smoke as if tasting a lover’s tongue. I feel as if I’ve intruded upon a private memory until she leans forward to light my cigarette with the glowing end of hers—pulling me into the intimate moment.
And I’m caught there.
“Is your husband—is he—”
“A prisoner,” she says. “Papa tells me your fiancé is too.”
I nod. “Stalag VIII-A, somewhere near Poland.”
Her pretty face twists with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Marthe.”
I nod, feeling sorry for her too. What a lousy thing for us to have in common. “What brings you to these hinterlands?”
She shrugs. “I fled to Biarritz after the armistice, but Maman wants to breathe down my neck, so here I am with nothing to do.”
“Oh, there’s plenty to do here—mostly work, though.” I wonder if Anna knows how fortunate she is to have a mother to worry after her. I envy her, but I already like Anna more than I envy her, and I don’t like many people.
Besides, it’s nice to have someone my own age to talk to again.
“Don’t worry.” She grins. “I’m not expecting a vacation. I have a few tennis and swimming trophies to my name, so come summer I’ll give lessons to the kids. Meanwhile, Maman is putting me to work with Madame Simon.”
“My condolences.”
Anna looks wary. “Simon’s that bad to work for?”
I shrug. “She’s blunt—but she keeps licorices for the kids in that leather briefcase of hers, so she’s not all bad.” But her office is in the square tower where we keep all the Lafayette Memorial Foundation’s paperwork. Accounting books. Admissions applications. Discharge forms. Medical, academic, and employment records. In short, it’s the dullest place in the castle. What I tell Anna is, “It’s just chaos in the records office every fifteenth of the month; that’s the day kids are admitted to the preventorium.”