The Librarian Spy(80)

No matter how comfortable Sarah remained in Manon’s house, she still had not lost the hunted shadow in her eyes. It was an expression that could not be masked—gaze lowered and shifting, perpetually seeking out possible threats around her, shoulders hunched as if wishing she could make herself and her son disappear from view. The demeanor couldn’t be erased by will. It was engrained from the trauma of always being on the run, from safe houses suddenly becoming a threat, from the knowledge that anyone could be a collaborator—the old man smoking at a café on the corner with a smile or a kindly teacher who tended to young children.

The night of their departure came swiftly. Elaine waited for the liaison between the Resistance and the Maquis to join her at the warehouse where they would set off together. But when the person finally arrived, her stomach dropped.

Etienne.

Only he did not appear the same Etienne she had always known. His skin had gone sallow, paper-thin and speckled with a dusting of thick bristling whiskers over his unshaved jaw. The bruising of exhaustion under his eyes was all the more prominent, as though he had not slept in weeks.

He regarded her with a wounded expression, visibly pained.

Their last meeting had not been a good one and still edged into Elaine’s thoughts from time to time, like when a sound jolted her from a deep sleep and her racing heart led to a racing mind in the predawn hours of another long night.

They nodded in greeting to one another, masking all that needed to be said with the veneer of civility.

Once outside in the frigid February air, the night sky dark as heavy velvet, Etienne was the first to speak. “You were arrested by the Gestapo.”

The nightmare of facing Werner rushed back to Elaine, the fear of what agony might have been implemented by those vicious metal tools and the soul-shaking curiosity if she could maintain her silence.

She nodded and tensed, waiting for an accusation or an outburst of anger at how much she had risked.

Instead, he rubbed at the back of his neck and blinked slowly. “Thank God you are safe.”

“Thanks to Nicole,” she replied.

“I was the one who recommended you work for Marcel.”

“You did?” Elaine glanced at him. “Why?”

“I knew you would be in the Resistance regardless.” His expression was hidden in the shadow of his fedora. “I thought it might at least be safer. I promised Joseph I would always look out for you.”

Suddenly it made sense that Marcel had taken Elaine on simply based on her experience with the Roneo. Many people knew how to operate the small duplicating machines. Etienne had pull within the Resistance; she was aware of that, even if she wasn’t entirely sure of what he did.

“Being arrested was my fault,” Elaine confessed. “I would have been fine in the warehouse, but I volunteered to drop off a delivery. That’s when I was caught.”

The tension in his shoulders relaxed somewhat. A comfortable silence settled between them.

“You do know that Joseph only wanted your safety,” Etienne said. “It was why he urged you not to help.”

A group of German officers strode by with women at their sides garbed in slinky dresses and fur stoles. The men didn’t even notice Elaine and Etienne, too riveted by their garish dates. Etienne and Elaine fell quiet until they passed, the women’s noxious floral perfume trailing in their wake.

“Not long after the Nazis occupied Lyon, Joseph and I had to travel to Grenoble,” Etienne said in a gravelly, distant voice. “We went through the forest on the way back as we had rubber for the stamps Joseph needed for the identity cards. The Germans were searching everyone boarding the trains, and we could not afford to have them see our cargo.”

As far as Elaine knew in her life before the Resistance, Joseph had always been in Lyon for his job. Since then, she learned not only of his heroic efforts, but also how very mobile he had been around France.

“When we were coming through the forest, we came upon a body,” Etienne continued in his flat tone. “It was just a foot at first, lightly covered by the leaves. We could not leave it there and decided to bury it. In doing so, we discovered the corpse to be that of a young woman. Forgive me for saying such things, but she was nude and there was evidence of torture...”

Elaine winced in horror, and her mind immediately went to the chair in the middle of Werner’s office. The gleam of those metal tools, the damp seat leaving a cold, wet impression on her bottom and the backs of her legs, the heart-pounding anticipation of pain...

A shiver rippled over Elaine’s skin.

“Joseph saw the woman and thought of you.” Etienne avoided a lamppost as they walked, keeping to the anonymity of darkness. “He knew your fierce determination to liberate France, to help others, no matter the cost. And while the toll was one he realized you would gladly pay, it was not one he could allow you to make.”

The abrupt change in Joseph suddenly made sense, the way he had so vehemently insisted she abandon all the efforts of fighting Nazis and instead give herself over to being a good wife.

An ache burgeoned within her. “He could have told me,” she said raggedly.

“Would you have listened?”

Elaine sniffed and gave a mirthless laugh. “No.”

Etienne lifted a palm up, as though to say “and there you have it.”

“Joseph loved you,” Etienne said with vehemence. “I’ve never seen a man so besotted with his wife.”