The Librarian Spy(78)

But if James was removed from his duty, would she still have help in saving the mother and child being transported from Lyon?

Despite it all, she didn’t want to believe he might be in league with the Nazis, that he wasn’t the good man she thought him to be.

Voices sounded somewhere nearby, muffled by a closed door. Without questioning what she was doing, she slid off her shoes and dashed soundlessly across the cold marble floor. She stopped before a set of double wooden doors carved with a handsome couple lounging beneath a large tree, the woman naked as was often the case with goddesses. Most likely Orion and Artemis based on the hunting motif.

“I best be getting back before my absence becomes prolonged.” It was James’s voice on the other side of the door.

Ava pulled in her breath and held it.

“Before you leave,” another voice said. “Does Miss Harper know?”

“Of course she doesn’t,” James replied with a confidence that slapped Ava in the face.

Was she so gullible that she would believe anything he told her? A protest rose in her mind, but she quashed it.

She had spent so much of her life with a book in front of her face that she knew written characters better than real people. Yes, she could recite dates of events and names of philosophers and authors long since dead, but she also knew that there was a maddening naivete about her that she could not seem to overcome.

It led to careless mistakes, like trusting James.

“Be sure that it remains that way,” the voice said dryly. “Having her find out could be dangerous.”

Footsteps clicked over the floors, and she realized in a heart-stopping moment that the discussion was done. Frantic, she whisked back to the other side of the hall, slid her shoes on as fast as was possible, and slipped into the dining room with an air she hoped was casual.

“Did you find it?” Mrs. Kingsbury asked politely.

Ava blinked, her mind devoid of any thought other than the conversation she’d overheard. “What’s that?”

Mrs. Kingsbury’s pleasant smile remained on her face, but a mildly confused furrow tightened across her brow. “The powder room.”

“Yes,” Ava said quickly to make up for her own folly. “Yes, thank you.”

She was saved from having to add anything further by James rejoining her at the table. Now would be an ideal time to offer up some witty comment that would encourage the table into a lively discussion so she could consider her next steps. Except nothing came to her.

The silence grew around Ava, pressing at her with urgency even as her pulse pounded, pounded, pounded in her ears.

“Dinner was wonderful,” she said.

“It was,” James agreed, his demeanor easy and relaxed.

That nonchalance dug at Ava, that he would so readily exploit her trust and then not even exhibit a shred of guilt. She didn’t bother trying to speak with him for the remainder of the evening. When it was time to depart, she rose from her chair and strode ahead of him toward the exit, ready to be away from the ornate palace and all the ugliness its beauty could never compensate for.

There was a strangeness to her shoes as she walked, as though her footing was not balanced correctly. James looked down and raised a brow. “Are your shoes on the wrong feet?”

She glanced to where the rounded toes of her black heels were pointing out slightly in the opposite direction. In her haste to return to the dining room, she had indeed put her shoes on the wrong feet.

The drive back from Sintra had been stifling as Ava tried to avoid any sort of light chatter with James, a difficult feat when it had once flowed so easily between them. Before she knew he’d betrayed her.

She meant to wait until she’d spoken to Theo and Alfie, the two librarians James worked with, to see if they would still help the mother and child coming from Lyon. But as the car drew to a stop on Rua de Santa Justa in front of Ava’s building, James turned to her, concern sharp in his eyes. “Did something happen at Monserrate?”

She shook her head.

“Ava, I know you,” James said patiently. “Ever since I returned to the dining room, you have been acting strangely.”

It became a little harder to breathe.

Dang it. He did know her, and it would be to her disadvantage now.

Suddenly the truth couldn’t stay inside her anymore, not when it was clawing to be free.

“My brother is out there in the war.” She glared at him. “Do you know that?”

“Of course I do.” James had the temerity to appear offended.

Ava refused to allow her overinflated sense of guilt to plague her. Anger exploded inside her skull. “Yet you were talking to a Nazi at dinner. Sharing Allied secrets with him.”

“I was not.”

“I heard what you said to that man with the swastika cuff links.” She put her hand on the door handle, ready to jerk it open and be free from the enclosed space with James. There wasn’t enough room for them both inside that small cab.

“It isn’t what you think, Ava.”

“Were you sharing Allied secrets, James?” she demanded. “My brother is out there somewhere. Along with other brothers and fathers and husbands.”

“My brother is too,” he said sharply.

Ava quieted, stunned. In all their times speaking to one another, he had never mentioned having a sibling.