Moonlight Over Paris(32)

“Here—take this,” he said, and thrust it at her. She reached out, but a sudden gust of wind snatched it from her cold-numbed hands and sent it cartwheeling across the street and under the wheels of a passing taxi.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped.

“I don’t mind,” he assured her, grinning. “It was Blochman’s umbrella. He lost mine a few months back. Now we’re even.”

Helena tried to look up at him, but the brim of her hat was so sodden that it had flopped down over her eyes. She pushed it out of the way, shielding her face from the downpour as she did so, and saw that Sam had removed his hat for the same reason. Their eyes met, and they both dissolved into helpless laughter.

“Let’s go to my place,” Sam suggested. “At least until the rain stops. I don’t want you to catch a chill.”

“Are you sure? I can take a taxi home,” she offered.

“Haven’t seen one pass since we left the restaurant. Trams are packed, too.”

“I’ll be f-f-fine,” she protested, but her chattering teeth betrayed her.

He ignored her, and instead took off his mackintosh and draped it around her shoulders. “Here. This will help a bit. At least until we’re inside again.”

“Y-your c-c-coat . . .”

“Come on.” He took her hand in his, and she shivered at the sudden contact between them. “Should we run for it? It’s not far now—only a few hundred yards to my street.”

By the time they reached the lobby of the H?tel de Lisbonne, Helena was soaked through, with even her shoes squeaking under her toes, and Sam was even more bedraggled. They dashed up the stairs, leaving puddles in their wake, and made it to his room without encountering any of his colleagues from the paper. Heaven only knew what they’d say if they saw her going into Sam’s lodgings in such a state.

His room was on the top floor, tucked under the eaves, and seemed ridiculously small for a big man like Sam. It was dominated by a wide bed, hastily made, that had been shoved against one wall. A small coal stove had been installed in the hearth, and beside it sat a bucket of coal boulots. A desk and bookcase took up the opposite wall, and at the end of the room, which was longer than it was wide, a tall window looked onto the street below. To her left, inches away from the door, were a washbasin and bidet.

“Charming, isn’t it?”

“I, ah . . .”

“Like I said, it’s cheap and clean, and they keep it warm in winter. That’s enough for me.”

He went straight to the chest of drawers and, after rummaging through it, handed her a set of well-worn pajamas. “You can wear these. There’s a robe on the back of the door and a towel on the washstand. I’ll wait in the hall.”

As soon as he’d closed the door, Helena stripped out of her sodden clothes and dried herself off with the towel. Moving as quickly as her shaking limbs allowed, she changed into his pajamas, which were so large that she had to roll up the legs and sleeves several times, and wrapped herself in his robe. Her clothes she gathered up in a bundle; perhaps Sam could suggest a way of drying them.

“All done,” she called out.

“Good. You sit on the bed—there’s a blanket you can put around your shoulders. I’ll get the stove going and your things laid out to dry.”

Adding several boulots to the fire, he built it up until she could feel its warmth on the far side of the room, and only then did he pull a rickety old clotheshorse from beneath the bed and set it out in front of the stove. Soon her clothes were draped across it, steaming gently, and that included all her garments, even her careworn old cami-knickers and stockings with darned heels.

Back he went to the chest of drawers, and this time extracted a fresh singlet and shirt. He shrugged out of his braces, and then, as if she weren’t there, pulled his soaked singlet and shirt over his head and tossed them on the floor. She knew she should look away, but his shoulders and arms were heavy with muscle, and though he stood in profile to her she could see a dusting of red-gold hair on his chest. She swallowed, her mouth having gone quite dry, and then had to smother a gasp when he turned away from her and she saw his back.

For a moment she thought it might be a trick of the light, but as he moved, drying himself carefully, she knew her eyes hadn’t deceived her. His back was covered with scars, the skin there mottled red and white, like a half-healed sunburn, and the marks extended down the back of his arms and beneath the waistband of his trousers as well.

“I wish I could make you a cup of tea,” he said as he buttoned his shirt, “but I don’t have a teapot, and I don’t have any tea.”

She smiled, glad to have a distraction from the questions racing through her head. “You Americans really are Philistines.”

“How about some bourbon instead? It’s a kind of American whiskey.”

Heaven only knew what a glass of strong spirits might do to her precarious sense of equilibrium. “I’d better not,” she said. “Thank you all the same.”

It wasn’t a safe or wise subject for them to discuss, but she needed to know what had happened to him during the war. “Back in Antibes, at our dinner with the Murphys, you said you’d served with one of their friends during the war. I can’t recall his name now.”

“It was Archie MacLeish. But that was only at the end of the war. I started out as a volunteer with the American Field Service. Was an ambulance driver for almost three years, mainly around Verdun.”