Catching the Wind(19)

CHAPTER 11





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A server bustled around the white-cloaked table at the restaurant, interrupting Lucas’s story. Quenby uncurled her fingers from the edge of her chair, returning to the clamor inside the dining room, the glare of streetlights filtering through the window.

In her mind, she’d been right there in the dark forest with the children, running from the Gestapo. She could hear the clicking of boots across the cold stone floor, eyes examining the face of each child, awake or asleep.

She couldn’t imagine how Brigitte and Dietmar must have felt. Two children trying to survive. Strangers in a hostile country, desperately needing a home.

“Quenby?” Lucas whispered.

She blinked. “What?”

He motioned toward the server. “This gentleman is inquiring about your meal.”

“I can return later,” the man said, clearly concerned about her mental state.

“No, I—” She scanned the menu. “I’ll have the white onion soup and pearl barley risotto.”

The server took their menus, and Quenby turned toward Lucas again. “Did the Nazis find them in Belgium?”

Lucas smiled. “I’ll finish the story after dinner.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’m not going to leave here before I eat.”

“Still,” he said, the firelight from their candle flickering on the glass behind him. “It’s collateral.”

She sipped on mineral water as she studied the man sitting across from her, his dark-brown eyes and the shadow of a goatee around his lips. The arrogance in his gaze had been replaced by something else. Admiration, she might even think, if she wasn’t convinced he thought himself elite compared to her.

Perhaps it was still a game for him to win. Mr. Knight wanted to hire her, so Lucas needed to be cordial to her. The second she declined the work—or found Brigitte—his cold shoulder would turn her way again.

In the meantime, she’d regain her own professionalism and return his attempts at friendliness, no matter how feigned. “So you won’t tell me any more about Mr. Knight as a boy—”

“In time, Miss Vaughn.”

“How about you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “This isn’t about me.”

“What were you like as a boy?”

“Ornery,” he answered. “Inquisitive.”

“Annoying?”

The server was over his shoulder, pouring white wine into his glass. Lucas sniffed it, then took the tentative sip of a wine connoisseur, seeming to consider its virtues. For a moment, she thought he might actually send it back, but he nodded his approval before resuming their discussion. “What did you ask?”

“Were you annoying as a child?”

He shrugged. “It all depends on perspective.”

“How about the perspective of your parents?”

“Unfortunately they weren’t around enough to make much of a judgment. I spent most of my growing-up years at a series of boarding schools.”

The exclusive ones, she had no doubt. She almost made a snide comment about the woes of the upper class, but something flashed in his eyes as he took another sip of his wine. Regret, perhaps. Vulnerability.

This time, she held her tongue.

“Do your parents live in London?”

“Yes,” he replied. “In Brentford. How about your parents?”

The server placed a bowl in front of her, and she dipped her spoon into the onion soup served with pancetta and a poached egg. The egg bounced in the wake.

Mr. Knight had said he wouldn’t tell Lucas about her past, but she’d assumed he would surely learn the worst of it. “I thought you knew—”

“I’ve read plenty about your career, but nothing about your family.”

“My father died when I was four, and my mother—I think I’ll have to decline commenting about her.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Family can be a tricky subject.”

She nodded, dipping her spoon back into the soup. It tasted like peppered bacon and wine.

“They are part of who you are,” Lucas said, “and yet sometimes you wish another family was blessed to have a member or two of yours.”

She wouldn’t wish her mother on any family.

“How about your grandparents?” he asked.

“I never knew my dad’s dad, but my grandmother was my best friend.” She swirled the water in her glass, watching the bubbles cling to the sides. She and Grammy hadn’t had much money, but they had each other—something she’d never taken for granted. “My grandmother loved God and loved Germany even though she had to leave her country after she married. When I was a child, she’d alternate reading to me from her Bible and the Grimms’ fairy tales in German.”

“An interesting mix.”

“She was more like a mom to me than my own mother.” The words slipped out of her mouth quickly, as if she were confiding in a friend, and when she saw the startled look on Lucas’s face, she wished she could retract them.

“What about your mom’s parents?”

“I never met them,” she replied briskly and then changed the subject. “Does Mr. Knight have family in the States?”