The Alice Network

  “Yank, here. I don’t know what that means.”

  “Before you get drenched. Not good for the bairn, Mrs. McGowan.”

  I ignored that, leaning up against the Lagonda beside him. “Does Eve know?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “‘I have a weakness for handsome men with Scottish accents and prison records, so I’ll give you a try.’ And never mentioned it again.” He shook his head, hair falling over his eyes again. “She’s not one for judging people.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “You still shouldn’t be hanging around a bad apple like me.”

  “Finn, I’m a former good girl, and a current unwed mother-to-be. Eve’s a former spy, and a current drunk. You’re a former convict, and a current mechanic and driver and cooker of English breakfasts. You know why none of us judge?” I bumped his shoulder with mine until he finally looked down at me. “Because none of us have the goddamn right to look down our noses at anyone else’s sins.”

  He looked down at me with an invisible smile that began and ended in the corners of his eyes.

  I reached behind me and hoisted myself up to sit on the Lagonda’s long hood. It put me almost level with Finn when he turned to face me, as I leaned forward to fit my mouth carefully, gently, against his. His lips were soft and his jaw rough, just like the first time I’d tried to kiss him. Just like the first time, his hands rose to my waist—but this time I broke off the kiss before he could move back. I didn’t think I could stand it if he pushed me away again.

  But he didn’t. He lowered his head back to mine, catching my lips and lingering. His hands were big and warm on either side of my waist, pulling me closer against him on the edge of the Lagonda’s hood. I let my hands slide into his rumpled hair where they’d been aching to go, and his hands slipped under the edge of my new striped jersey. He didn’t go lunging upward from there, just ran the backs of his fingers very slowly up and down the bare sides of my waist as we kissed. I was trembling all over by the time we pulled apart.

  “I got engine grease on you,” he said, looking down at his oil-stained hands. “Sorry, lass.”

  “It’ll wash off,” I managed to say. I didn’t want to wash him off me, his smell or his taste or his engine grease. I wanted to keep kissing him, but it was an open street and the misty drizzle was going to be rain soon, so I slid down from the car and we turned and wandered back into the hotel. Come up to my room, I wanted to say, come up with me—but the night porter was giving us one of those very French looks, an impassive expression over knowing eyes. “Bon soir, Monsieur Kilgore,” he greeted Finn, eyes flicking to the hotel register where we’d signed in. “Madame McGowan.”

  “Wonderful,” I muttered as I thumped back into my solitary room. “I have not only ruined Miss Charlie St. Clair’s reputation, I have officially ruined Mrs. Donald McGowan’s.” My Donald would have been shocked.

  CHAPTER 20

  EVE

  July 1915

  René’s gift, offered with a flourish shortly after Eve returned from her journey, was a silk robe. Rose red, fine enough to slip through a ring—but not new. It smelled vaguely of a woman’s perfume, some woman who undoubtedly saw it seized in a requisition raid, and now it had ended up on Eve’s back.

  She imagined the kaiser’s train blowing to bits, let it give her pleasure, let that pleasure show on her face as she rubbed her cheek against the silk. “Thank you, m-monsieur.”

  “It suits you.” He leaned back, clearly pleased that she was now suitably outfitted for her surroundings. Eve found herself darkly amused by his aesthetic relief. They were in his opulent study; he wore one of his beautiful dressing gowns, as he usually did while waiting for Eve to finish bathing away any possible food smells from a long night’s shift. Now that she had come out in a silk robe rather than a towel or her black work dress, she was no longer an eyesore.

  “I’ve a mind to take you away somewhere.” He unstoppered his decanter of elderflower liqueur, pouring the usual modest measure for himself, and the generous one that would make Marguerite’s head spin. “I dislike hurried nighttime trysts. I have been planning a short journey to Limoges soon. I may take you with me.”

  Eve sipped. “Why Limoges?”

  “Lille is dreary.” He made a face. “It will be pleasant to walk down a street that does not have a German name. And I am thinking of opening a second restaurant. Limoges may prove to be the place. I will take a weekend to inspect suitable locations.”

  A weekend with René Bordelon. It wasn’t the thought of the nights that made Eve shudder, it was the days. Long suppers, cups of tea, afternoon walks at his side, having to sift every word and guard every reaction. She would be exhausted long before she got to the linen sheets, and what happened between them.

  Half a chess game and two glasses of fragrant elderflower fire later, they retired to the bedroom. A suitable interval after things were concluded there, Eve slipped back into her work dress and prepared to go home. Watching her dress, René gave a small tsk. “This rushing out before the sheets grow cold,” he said. “Most uncivilized.”

  “I don’t w-want there to be talk, monsieur.” Not to mention the fact that Eve didn’t dare doze off in his presence. What if she muttered German or English in her sleep, or something else she couldn’t explain away? It didn’t bear thinking about. If you spend the night with him in Limoges, you will have to think about it. “There will be gossip in town if I don’t go home at nights,” she said, sliding into her stockings. “The b-baker pisses in the dough he uses to bake for the women who . . . go with the Germans.”

  René looked amused. “I am not a German, my dear.”

  You’re worse. A French Judas who betrayed his own for profit—Germans were hated in Lille, but men like René Bordelon were loathed with an even brighter passion. When the Germans lose this war, you will be the first strung up from a lamppost. “I’ll still be s-scorned,” Eve hedged. “Threatened.”

  A shrug. “If anyone threatens you, give me their names. They will be reported to the Germans and find themselves with a ruinous fine or jail time, perhaps worse. The Kommandant would oblige me, being eager to reduce discord among the civilians.”

  The thought that someone might be hauled to a cell or fined to the point of starvation on his whisper did not seem to trouble René in the slightest. Eve had overheard him several times passing names to German officers over the dinner brandy: people who displeased him, who hoarded requisitioned supplies, who spoke out against the invaders. But to hear the suggestion tossed out as casually as this . . . She studied his expression wonderingly. It really did not stir his conscience at all.

  “Are you really still so shy, my pet?” He tilted his head. “Too shy to let people know you are now mine?”

  “I just don’t want b-bread with piss in it,” Eve whispered, as if in an agony of embarrassment. Really, it was horror.

  René looked as though hovering between a chuckle or a frown at her honesty. To Eve’s relief, he decided on a chuckle. “Eventually, Marguerite, I’ll teach you to be indifferent to what people think. It’s very freeing, to care for no one’s opinion but your own.” He looked urbane even when naked, his flesh pale and smooth against the linens. “Limoges soon—I’ll take you with me. You may concoct some story for the staff about an aunt taken ill, if you wish. I shall be publicly displeased with you.”

  “Thank you, monsieur.” But Eve had no intention of going with him to Limoges. In two more days, if all went well, the kaiser would be dead and the world would be remade.

  It will not be that easy, she told herself. Wars were vast machines; they didn’t grind to an instant halt when one man died, even if that man was a king. But even if the war didn’t end, the world would still be a vastly different place. In that world, René Bordelon would surely be taking rapid stock of his allies and enemies, not taking leisurely weekends in Limoges.

  The days before the kaiser’s arrival passed at the speed of a glacier
, and the nights in René’s immaculate bed moved even more slowly, even if she did learn some intriguing facts and figures about the local airfields that Uncle Edward would find very interesting. At last The Day dawned, hot and sticky even in the early hours, and the fleurs du mal met in silence. Eve saw the same expression in Lili’s darting eyes and Violette’s wary ones: a hope so violent it had to be stamped down like a hydra. They hurried out of the city without speaking, making for the grassy hills. “We should not be going to watch that train,” Violette said.

  “Tais-toi,” Lili said. “I for one will go mad if I have to sit inside listening for aeroplanes overhead. Besides, I can’t make my report to Uncle Edward until I have results, so there’s no use going back to my usual rounds.”

  “A bad idea,” Violette muttered, but none of them went back. They made their way past the local farmhouses, small and ravaged, and the three women took their place on a long low hill overlooking the distant train tracks. The same hill where Lili and Eve had scouted terrain for the attack. Violette chewed a strand of grass in terse silence; Eve flexed and unflexed her fingers. Lili chattered as though she was at a party: “I bought the most ghastly hat on my last trip through Tournai. Blue satin roses and spotted net; I left it on the train and it’s probably still there. No self-respecting streetwalker would steal that blue satin pile of—”

  “Lili,” Eve said, “shut up.”

  “Thank you,” said Violette, speaking for the first time in two hours. They stared down at the train tracks as if concentration alone could make them ignite. The sun climbed higher.

  Lili’s eyes proved sharpest. “Is that . . .”

  A tiny smear of smoke. A train.

  It chugged sedately into view, too far away to hear its clacking wheels or the peals of steam from its engine. Too far away to make out details . . . But according to Eve’s information, this was it. The train that carried Kaiser Wilhelm in anonymity toward the front.

  Eve looked up. The blue skies stretched empty.

  Lili’s small hand covered hers in the grass, gripping tight. “Nique ta mere,” she said, eyes following Eve’s skyward. “You RFC buggers . . .”

  The train inched closer. Lili’s grip was like a vise. Eve reached for Violette’s hand on the other side and squeezed that just as hard. Violette squeezed back.

  When Eve heard the low drone of aeroplanes, she thought her heart would stop. For a moment it was just a buzz, like hovering bees, and then she saw them, two aeroplanes in formation like eagles. She didn’t know if they were monoplanes or biplanes; she knew nothing about aviation, just the meaningless technical words she committed to memory when German officers droned over dessert. But these aeroplanes were beautiful, and she let out a gasp. Lili muttered obscenities that sounded like prayers, and Violette turned to stone.

  “You know,” Eve heard herself saying tautly, “I don’t even know how aeroplanes bomb targets. Do they just throw the explosives over the side?”

  This time Lili said, “Shut up.”

  The train surged along. The aeroplanes streaked through the blue sky. Please. They were all thinking it. Please, make the hit. Let it all be over now, on this summer day with the smell of warm grass and the sound of birds.

  They were too far away to see any explosives drop, or the rounds, or whatever they were. They would only see the explosion, the fire, the smoke. The aeroplanes droned like lazy birds over the train. Now, Eve thought.

  But there was no explosion.

  No smoke. No fire. No crashing derailment sending the train careening from its tracks.

  The kaiser chugged placidly on toward Lille.

  “They failed,” Eve said numbly. “They f-failed.”

  Violette spoke in empty rage. “Or the explosives were faulty.”

  Make another pass, Eve howled inside. Try again! But the aeroplanes disappeared, not proud eagles but failed, draggle-tailed sparrows. Why?

  Who cared why? The kaiser lived. He would tour the front; get a view of his soldiers in the trenches; perhaps pass through Lille and nod approvingly at the clocks turned to Berlin time, the boulevards renamed with hammered German signs. Unless he came to eat at Le Lethe and gave Eve the opportunity to bury a steak knife in the back of his neck or season his chocolate mousse with rat poison, he would return to Germany alive and well, riding the machine of war as easily as he rode his untouched train through the countryside.

  “It’s just as well.” Violette rose, sounding as though her throat were full of gravel. “The kaiser’s death at Lille would focus all the German attention here. We’d likely all get caught.”

  “And it’s n-not as though the war would have just ended,” Eve heard herself saying emptily. “It wouldn’t have changed m-m-m-m—” She couldn’t make the word come and didn’t care enough to force it. She just trailed off, rising and brushing off her skirt with mechanical motions.

  Lili hadn’t moved. She stared at the distant train, and her face was ancient.

  Violette looked down, spectacles flashing. “Get up, Lili.”

  “Those goddamned—” Lili shook her head. “Oh, you bastards.”

  “Ma p’tite, please. Get up.”

  Lili rose. She looked down for a moment, kicking the grass, and when she raised her chin she was smiling. Grimly, thinly, but smiling. “I don’t know about you, mes anges, but I feel like getting drunk tonight.”

  But Eve wouldn’t be there sharing whatever rotgut brandy or whiskey Lili could get her hands on. I have René tonight, she thought. And tomorrow night. And soon, if he takes me to Limoges, I will have him for two whole days and nights.

  All the nights had a rhythm. The bath. The quiet ten minutes or so afterward, silk robe whispering against damp skin, sipping at a very large glass of elderflower liqueur. As Eve drank, René would put on a record and tell her, maybe, about the Débussy piece they were listening to, and how Impressionism was expressed orchestrally, and who were the other Impressionists of art and literature as well as music. That was the easy part. All Eve had to do was listen admiringly.

  Then the moment came when René took the glass from her hand and drew her to the bedroom next door. Then it all became difficult.

  His kisses were long and slow, and he left his eyes open. His eyes remained open throughout everything, unblinking, measuring, watching for the smallest gasp or hitch in breath. He unwrapped Eve from the rose red silk at leisure, spread her unhurriedly on his pristine sheets, discarded his own robe, and then he stretched over her and took his time.

  How very, very much Eve wished he would take his pleasure quickly and roll off. That would have been so easy.

  “I’ve never trained a virgin before,” he had remarked the first time. “Normally I value expertise over innocence. We shall have to see how fast you learn. I don’t expect I will please you the first few times—that’s the way for women, rather unfairly, I have always thought.”

  René liked to explore every part of Eve, tracing every crevice and corner of her body, his tongue lingering as long on the spaces behind her ears and the hollows of her knees as on the more expected places. He spun it out endlessly, content to play for hours, taking her hand and using it to explore his own pale unmarked skin. He turned her and posed her, positioned her and explored her, watching and learning through it all.

  “Your eyes widen just a little whenever I surprise you,” he observed one night. “Like a doe’s—” And he turned to her breast and employed his teeth in a bit of sudden expert roughness. “Like that,” he said, brushing her lashes with his thumb. It wasn’t something Eve ever considered; how the intimacy of skin against naked skin unpeeled another layer from people besides clothes; how it was another way for people to know one another. I do not want him to know me, she thought desperately. Her work depended on him not knowing her, yet every night he learned more.

  “It is hardest to lie to those who know us best.” Captain Cameron had said that in Folkestone. Eve shoved the thought of him away, not wanting it anywhere near her nights in Ren
é’s bed, but the fear persisted. If René learned her well enough, would she be able to continue fooling him?

  Yes, she thought fiercely. It will mean more and better lying, but that you can do. And remember: you are learning him too.

  Night by night, Eve learned the twitch of René’s every muscle, each flare of his eyes. The man armored in his beautiful suits was easier to read now that she knew how the naked muscles moved beneath.

  Once he finished toying with her, the joining was swift. He preferred to be behind or above, hand twined in her hair to tip her face back, holding her where he could see her every reaction. He liked her to look back at him—“Eyes open, pet,” he ordered frequently, never missing a stroke. And when he finally allowed his own pleasure to make an end of it, he sank slowly over her, letting her body cushion his as their sweat cooled, and picked up whatever conversation they’d been having in his study, about Débussy or Klimt or Provençal wine.

  Tonight it was about the kaiser.

  “I’m told he was pleased by this visit. The airfield met with his approval, though one has to wonder what he thought of the trenches. Ghastly places, one hears.”

  “Did you m-m-meet him?” Eve lay still, her fingers twined with René’s against the pillow and her legs tangled around his lean thighs. During moments like these, he was at his most incautious. “I h-hoped he would come to Le Lethe . . .”

  René caught a flicker of emotion from her there, as much as she masked her face in innocence. “So you could spit in his vichyssoise?”

  Eve made light of it, not lying. She never lied when they lay pressed together skin against skin, not if she could help it. Thoughts traveled faster skin to skin. “I wouldn’t spit in his soup,” she said frankly. “But I’d t-t-think about it.”

  René laughed, rolling away. His flesh slid from her, and Eve repressed the usual shiver. “One hears he is a vulgar man, kaiser or no. Still, I was hoping he’d come to the restaurant. Quite a coup that would have been, playing host to an emperor.”