The Postmistress of Paris(49)

“That wasn’t your question,” she said. “Your question was whether I loved them.”

They all looked to the drive; yes, everyone now heard. They followed the slow progress of a shadow topping the hill.

“Your latest lover,” André said, “was he better or worse than that first man?”

She lifted her glass and took a sip. She was glad of the darkness. She had imagined she could control the commandant, when there was nothing about the situation that she controlled. She had imagined she would rescue Edouard Moss, when she’d been putting him in more danger rather than less.

“I’m beat,” T said. “You must be beat, Nan. Shall we head in together?”

Nanée focused on the car headlights, their dim glow swinging toward them now as the car approached the gate. She stared, hoping to make out the car, but it was impossible to see anything with the headlights still on, even dimmed.

“Better or worse?” André repeated.

“He wasn’t a lover,” Nanée managed.

“I think that’s enough, André,” Jacqueline said.

“How long ago was he?” André pressed.

“Leave it, André!” T said. “Bloody leave it alone!”

They all turned to T, startled. T didn’t rise to anger, ever.

Her friend meant to help her, but it would be easier if she might just give some answer, some small truth that hid the rest.

“I . . . ,” Nanée started.

The car stopped just beyond the gate. Doors opened. At the crunch of footsteps on gravel, Jacqueline was standing, saying with alarm, “Varian?”

Good god, it was someone sent from the camp. That fool of a guard hadn’t kept quiet.

“It’s okay,” Varian said, rising as the gate creaked open and they heard the low murmur of voices—Danny’s voice, thank goodness. Two sets of feet coming up the steps, not more. Two shadows crossing the belvedere in the spill of the light from the French doors.

Danny said, “Hey, you’re all still out here?”

“Edouard,” Varian said. “Welcome.”

“Edouard Moss!” André said. “Good god, man, you gave us a fright. Danny, you might have let us know you were returning with company. We’d have opened the good stuff.”

They were all standing now. Somehow, Nanée too was standing.

“Mr. Fry,” Edouard was saying, declining to shake Varian’s hand on account of his own filthy hands and clothes, his shoes and his pants looking and smelling as if he’d waded through sewage.

“Varian,” Varian insisted, already pouring Edouard a glass of wine, insisting he take it. “I’m so glad we’ve got you here. Why don’t you sit and have something to eat? I asked Madame Nouget to set something aside.”

“André,” Edouard said in greeting. “Jacqueline.”

He kept his distance, embarrassed.

“You remember T,” Danny said. “And Nanée.”

Edouard stared, clearly as stunned to see Nanée as she was to see him.

“You might have been here yesterday if you hadn’t fled, by the way,” Danny said. “Nanée went to fetch you from Camp des Milles, only to find you weren’t there.”

Edouard looked from Nanée back to Danny. “I . . . Nanée, what a surprise. I . . . I had no idea you were still in France.”

Nanée, with a hand to her scarf, said, “Wherever did Danny find you?”

“We got word at the office yesterday that Edouard was here,” Varian said, “hidden in a cellar in the Panier.”

Nanée, feeling dread sinking into her exhausted bones, managed, “Yesterday?”

“Not an hour after your train left,” Varian said. “If we could have gotten word to you to call you off, we would have.”

Yesterday, while she sat in her little blue suit at that café by the Palais Longchamp, passing the time until she could take the later train.

“We felt we’d better get him somewhere safer than the Panier,” Danny said, “so we brought him here to the chateau.”

“We fear, Nanée, that your visit may have alerted the camp to the fact that Edouard had escaped,” Varian said. “Not your fault. Of course not your fault. Just bad luck. Danny tried to get him last night but the streets were teeming with police.” He turned to Edouard. “We’ve set aside one of the chateau’s best rooms for you. Second floor. I’m afraid all the ‘library suites’ are booked this evening, but there is a nice room down the hall.”

Still Edouard stared at Nanée as she stood in a splash of light from inside the house.

“You’re shivering, Nanée,” he said, stepping toward her and beginning to take off his jacket to give to her.

His face as the light hit it was even squarer than she remembered. Thinner. Far more deeply lined. His thin lips were even more set in sorrow than they had been that January she’d first met him, just after his wife had died. The mole at the end of his left eyebrow was the same, though. His eyes were the same compelling green even in this dim light.

He stopped himself just short of her.

He ought to be the one shivering, she thought. His pants were wet up to his knees.