All the Ways We Said Goodbye

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White

Genres: World War I; World War II; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The New York Times best-selling authors of The Glass Ocean and The Forgotten Room return with a glorious historical adventure that moves from the dark days of two World Wars to the turbulent years of the 1960s, in which three women with bruised hearts find refuge at Paris’ legendary Ritz hotel.

The heiress....The Resistance fighter....The widow....Three women whose fates are joined by one splendid hotel

France, 1914. As war breaks out, Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. When the Germans move into their family’s ancestral estate, using it as their headquarters, Aurelie discovers she knows the German Major’s aide de camp, Maximilian Von Sternburg. She and the dashing young officer first met during Aurelie’s debutante days in Paris. Despite their conflicting loyalties, Aurelie and Max’s friendship soon deepens into love, but betrayal will shatter them both, driving Aurelie back to Paris and the Ritz — the home of her estranged American heiress mother, with unexpected consequences.

France, 1942. Raised by her indomitable, free-spirited American grandmother in the glamorous Hotel Ritz, Marguerite “Daisy” Villon remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator, after France falls to Hitler. At first reluctant to put herself and her family at risk to assist her grandmother’s Resistance efforts, Daisy agrees to act as a courier for a skilled English forger known only as Legrand, who creates identity papers for Resistance members and Jewish refugees. But as Daisy is drawn ever deeper into Legrand’s underground network, committing increasingly audacious acts of resistance for the sake of the country — and the man — she holds dear, she uncovers a devastating secret...one that will force her to commit the ultimate betrayal, and to confront at last the shocking circumstances of her own family history.

France, 1964. For Barbara "Babs" Langford, her husband, Kit, was the love of her life. Yet their marriage was haunted by a mysterious woman known only as La Fleur. On Kit’s death, American lawyer Andrew "Drew" Bowdoin appears at her door. Hired to find a Resistance fighter turned traitor known as "La Fleur", the investigation has led to Kit Langford. Curious to know more about the enigmatic La Fleur, Babs joins Drew in his search, a journey of discovery that that takes them to Paris and the Ritz — and to unexpected places of the heart....

Release date: February 16, 2021

Publisher: William Morrow

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter OneBabs

Langford Hall

Devonshire, England

April 1964

IT WAS ALWAYS worse at night. The shadowy figure that followed me each waking hour yet seemed just beyond my reach, just around the corner. That fleeting flash of movement out of the periphery of my vision became mortal at night. It slipped into my bed and rested its head on Kit’s pillow, melded itself against my back under the counterpane, exhaled a breath against my cheek in the darkness.

Sometimes, if I was in that half-world between wakefulness and sleep, I’d imagine Kit had come back to me, that he slept in his spot on the bed that even a year later I hadn’t encroached upon. Other times, like tonight, it would only remind me that Kit was truly and completely gone, and the tight ball of grief that resided in my chest would unfurl its sharp talons, stealing all hope of sleep.

With a sigh, I threw back the bedclothes and slid from the bed, shivering. I was always cold in the house, even more so now that it was almost unbearably empty. After sliding on my slippers and pulling on Kit’s dressing gown that rested at the foot of the bed, I wandered aimlessly through the drafty, cold hallways and rooms of Langford Hall, Kit’s ancestral home.

Although I’d been raised with three older brothers at the neighboring estate, I’d always considered Langford Hall mine as much as Kit’s, having spent as much time growing up there as in my own home. Since the time when I’d been a little girl, I’d adored the elegant rectangle of red-brown Georgian brick, the three stories tucked under a hipped, dormered roof. The sash windows, twelve panes each, evenly spaced on either side of the door. Or maybe I’d simply adored it because it was where Kit lived.

I’d been in love with Kit since I was four years old and he’d lifted me up onto the saddle in front of him when I’d announced that ponies were for babies. When I was eight I’d told my eldest brother, Charles, that I would marry Kit one day despite our ten-year difference in age. He’d laughed but had promised to keep my secret. And he had, taking it with him when he’d been shot down over the Channel during the war.

Clutching Kit’s robe tightly around me and trying my best not to personify a tragic heroine from one of my sister’s novels—those gothic romances that she thought nobody knew she read—I walked slowly down the upstairs hallway and visited the three vacant bedrooms of our children, all but one away at school. Even the family dog, Walnut the whippet, had abandoned me, allowing pity cuddles now and again but vastly preferring the warm kitchen and the prickly housekeeper, Mrs. Finch. It made no sense that Walnut would choose to align himself with a woman who professed daily that she didn’t like dogs, but I had long since given up trying to make sense of a world that refused to make itself logical.

Moonlight through the tall windows guided me across the foyer to the closed door of Kit’s study. I paused, my hand on the knob, still feeling as if I might be intruding. I was beyond exhausted of feeling that way. Tired of pretending and acting as if everything were normal, that Kit had merely been away for a short trip and would be returning soon. But he wouldn’t. I knew this, but I still found myself turning toward him in the evening to say something or tiptoeing past his office so not to disturb him. It was all so foolish of me, yet I couldn’t seem to resurrect the sure-footed and unwavering young woman I’d been when I’d first married Kit. The same woman he might have even been a little in love with. Turning the handle, I pushed gently on the door and stood in the threshold for a long moment. The spicy scent of his pipe smoke wafted toward me and I found myself peering inside the room expectantly, as if Kit might be sitting at his desk or in his favorite reading chair by the window. But the scent quickly evaporated, and I was left with the empty room 

again. With a resolute jut of my chin for encouragement, I walked forward as memories like water threatened to drown me.

The large leather couch was where Kit had done most of his convalescing in the year following the war. He’d been in a prison camp in Germany for nearly two years before that, and he’d been returned to Langford Hall with a racking cough and an insatiable hunger that merely tormented him as he couldn’t keep down more than a spoonful at a time. His blue eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, his cheekbones bird-wing sharp. His parents had hired doctors to oversee his care, but it had been I who’d slept on a cot beside him, first in his bedroom and then in his study when he’d threatened mutiny if he was kept in his bed one more moment, dropping water onto his tongue and feeding him soup until he was strong enough to hold a spoon.

It’s where I’d cooled his fevered brow with water-soaked cloths, held his hand, and listened to his almost incoherent ramblings that only hinted at the horrors of what he’d experienced. Of how he’d prayed for death just to end the constant hunger, cold, and pain. He’d spoken of other things, too, things he never mentioned again. Things that I never brought up afterward, either. The absence of the signet ring with the two swans that he’d always worn was never mentioned as its memory, too, became entangled with his time in France. It was as if those years hadn’t existed if we never spoke of them, surviving only in the occasional outburst fueled by nocturnal nightmares. And I found that ignoring unpleasant things made it easier to pretend they didn’t exist.

I had always been a stickler for the truth, for facing unpleasantness and dealing with it forthwith. But I’d discovered that there were some things too fragile to touch, the threat of shattering too imminent. It’s why when the letter arrived for Kit after he’d been home for nearly a year, after he’d slipped his mother’s sapphire engagement ring on my finger and we’d made plans to marry in the new year, I had gone against everything I believed myself to be and hidden it. I was too pragmatic to destroy it, its continued existence a balm to my conscience, never truly forgotten but more like a ticking bomb whose day of detonation I knew would be as sudden as it would be devastating.

My gaze traveled to the study window, seeing the white path of moonlight that led to the folly where Kit’s father, Robert Langford, had written most of his bestselling spy novels. In a testament to her grief, his widow, Tess, had ordered it locked up after he’d died. I stared at the gray glow of stone in the middle of the lake, like a monument to a broken heart. I had never considered myself the sentimental sort, but the sight gave me pause, made me wonder if I needed to make some grand gesture to acknowledge my own grief. Or if wandering Langford Hall

like a nocturnal wraith might be sufficient.

With one last look at Kit’s desk, where his pipe still sat in the empty ashtray, I let myself out of the study, then paused at the bottom of the stairs, loath to go up and return to bed. Maybe I could change bedrooms or rearrange the furniture. Or do what everyone had been telling me to do since Kit’s death and the resulting taxes—deed the hall to the National Trust. But how could I? Langford Hall was Kit’s legacy, the place where I’d fallen in love, where we’d raised our children. It was inconceivable, really, to imagine strangers traipsing over the Exeter carpets and staring at the portraits of the Langford ancestors that glared down from their perches.

My feet were already leading me away before I realized where I was headed. I pretended I’d heard Walnut whimper, which was why I needed to be in the warm kitchen, making sure he was all right and had water in his bowl. I would be the last person to admit that I needed the warm comfort of a living creature, even a four-legged one, to face the rest of the night.

I sat down in the chair at the marred kitchen table and watched as Walnut stirred from his bed. He lifted his head, his eyes martyr-like as he issued a heavy sigh before heaving himself out of his warm comfy bed to amble over to me. He dutifully sat down next to my chair and rested his head in my lap so I could stroke his silky ears. Tired now, I rested my head on the table, feeling inordinately comforted by the soft snoring and fuggy dog breath coming from my lap. I closed my eyes, my last waking thought wondering how on earth I was meant to face another day.

I WAS AWAKENED by the sound of the heavy slap of something hitting the table by my head. My head jerked up, and I regretted the quick movement as my neck revolted from being in an awkward position all night. My lap was cold; my canine companion had long since deserted me to the more comfortable confines of his bed and was enjoying the heat of the cast-iron stove that had apparently been lit.

“You shouldn’t be sleeping in the kitchen, Mrs. Langford. It’s not proper.”

I blinked up into the pinched face of Mrs. Finch, the housekeeper’s eyes enlarged by the thick lenses of her glasses causing her to resemble her namesake. She was of an indeterminate age, the tightly permed hair and shapeless housedresses giving no clue as to her exact age. Mrs. Finch’s mother had been the housekeeper at Langford Hall for years until she’d moved to a cottage closer to the village and Mrs. Finch had taken over. Her mother had been called Mrs. Finch, too, and I rather hoped it was because the name came with the position rather than because of any improprieties in the family tree.

I blinked again, staring at the stack of post that had been dropped on the table beside me. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Finch. I just wanted to rest my eyes for a moment.”

“You were up wandering again, is more like,” Mrs. Finch said between tight lips. She jutted a pointed chin at the post. “That’s been piling up

for a week now. I’ll put the kettle on and bring your tea and toast to the breakfast room, where you’ll be more comfortable sorting through it all.”

The kitchen was Mrs. Finch’s domain and she resented any interlopers, including the mistress of the house. I could manage an entire cadre of forceful women in the Women’s Institute, supervise dozens of small children and live barnyard creatures for the Nativity play at the local church, as well as organize the annual gymkhana on the grounds at Langford Hall with ease and aplomb, but I couldn’t bear to argue with Mrs. Finch. Maybe it was because I always suspected that Mrs. Finch thought that Kit could have done better in choosing a wife. Someone who retained her good looks and youthful bloom and didn’t “let herself go” as my sister called my lack of interest in clothes and other feminine things meant to retain one’s attractiveness postchildren. And maybe it was because I knew that Mrs. Finch was probably right.

“Yes, of course,” I said, looking down at my lap, mortified to see that I still wore Kit’s navy-blue dressing gown. “I suppose I should wash and dress first.”

Mrs. Finch looked at me with what could only be called disappointment and gave me a brief nod.

I grabbed the stack of envelopes on my way out of the kitchen, walking slowly toward the stairs as I flipped through each one to see if there was anything more interesting than the usual bills and the slightly threatening overdue notices that had been coming in with an alarming frequency since Kit’s death.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of handling the family finances, it’s just that Kit had always taken care of things. Even my father had told me that I was very clever with maths, something that had made my perfect older sister, Diana, positively green with envy. As if having all the poise and fashion flair in the family hadn’t been enough. I made a promise to myself that I’d finally sit down at Kit’s desk and open up all the account books to see what was what. Soon. When I could summon the energy. I was just so tired all the time now. So tired of wishing each day I’d feel better, that there would be some hope or purpose on the horizon. That I’d rekindle the joy I’d once had in the busyness of my old life.

I stopped, noticing an unusual postage stamp on one of the envelopes. It was a red US Air Mail eight-cent stamp showing a picture of aviatrix Amelia Earhart. My name and address had been scribbled in barely comprehensible letters on the front in bold, black ink. Definitely not a graduate of a British boarding school, then, so perhaps not a school friend of Kit’s offering condolences.

I looked at the top left corner to read the return address. A. Bowdoin, Esq., Willig, Williams & White, 5 Wall Street, New York, NY. I assumed Bowdoin was either a funeral director or a lawyer, having never clearly understood the difference between the two when it came to death and taxes.

Climbing the stairs, I slid my finger under the flap and began tearing the envelope, not wanting to go through the bother of retrieving a 

 letter opener. Tucking the rest of the post under one arm, I pulled out a piece of letterhead paper and began to read.

Dear Mrs. Langford,

My condolences on the death of your late husband, Christopher Langford. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but my father, Walter, was a huge admirer and shared with me many stories of your husband’s bravery and courage during the war.

We only recently became aware of your husband’s passing when an old war friend of my father’s mailed him the obituary from the Times. It took a while to find us, which is why it has taken me so long to contact you. I realize my letter might be a surprise and might even be an imposition at best. But I hope you will bear with me so that I might explain myself and perhaps even enlist your assistance.

In the obituary, it mentioned your husband’s brave exploits in France during the war as well as his involvement with the French Resistance fighter known only as La Fleur. As you may or may not be aware, she has reached nearly mythical proportions in French lore—to the point where some even say she never really existed.

My slow progress up the stairs halted, and I grabbed the banister, the other envelopes slipping from their hold under my arm before gently cascading down the steps. La Fleur. I closed my eyes in an attempt to regulate my breath before I passed out. Of course I’d heard the name before. But not from a history book or news article about the French Resistance. I’d once heard it on Kip’s lips, when he was quite out of his head after his return and I wasn’t sure if he planned to live or die, wasn’t even sure which he’d prefer. My Flower is what he’d said in a near whisper, the words spoken as one would speak to a lover. I’d seen the name written, too. In another letter.

I leaned against the wall, listening to the sounds of Mrs. Finch in the kitchen and my own breathing skittering from my lungs like angry bees. Opening my eyes again, I raised the letter and forced myself to continue reading.

My father has had a stroke, which makes communicating difficult as he can barely speak or write. But when I read the obituary to him and mentioned La Fleur he became quite agitated and upset. After I’d calmed him down, I was able to understand that my father had reason to believe that La Fleur was no hero but the grandest traitor of them all—and especially to my father. She ruined his life—something I’ve only just begun attempting to understand.

My father was OSS during the war and was scheduled to receive an important drop from La Fleur. He was told only that he was to receive something

 very valuable to the Resistance, something containing rare and expensive diamonds and rubies. It was not explained exactly what he should be looking for as it would be too dangerous, and he was told only in a message from La Fleur to look for the “wolf with a cross.”

La Fleur never appeared that night, leaving my father empty-handed. A few months later, however, the wives of Nazi officers began appearing in public with beautiful diamond and ruby jewelry leaving many to speculate that my father had lied and had profited from the treasure meant for the Resistance.

He was questioned relentlessly and his reputation permanently damaged, yet he consistently maintained his innocence. For all these years he has been dogged by not only La Fleur’s betrayal, but how he himself was forced into the position of being hailed a traitor and a thief. Unbeknownst to me, he has unsuccessfully spent his entire life attempting to clear his name and find the elusive La Fleur. I’m afraid my father is near the end of his life, and it is his last wish that I might be able to succeed where he has failed.

I have sent many inquiries to various government offices both here in the States and in France for more information and have hit a brick wall, as many records from the war are still confidential. However, after doing quite a bit of research as well as trying to piece together my father’s story, I came to understand that at least part of the answer might well be with your husband’s effects, or even in any of the stories he might have shared with you of his war years.

I apologize if this letter is unwelcome during this time of your grief, but a part of me hopes that you are not only able to assist me, but also willing to revisit some of your husband’s past.

I have arranged to be assigned to my firm’s Paris office for a brief period of time starting April 20th. I understand that this is short notice and you most likely have a very busy life and would be unable to make the trip across the Channel. Yet I feel compelled to at least ask—very brazen and American of me, I know. But I believe that being in Paris while searching for La Fleur is what I must do, and it is my strongest wish that you might be able to join me in this quest. My father never met you, but he was certain that the woman Kit Langford married had to be a force to be reckoned with. I’m not a betting man, but I’d like to wager that he was right.

I will be staying at the Ritz and you may address any correspondence there as they have instructions to forward to my office if a letter arrives prior to my own arrival. I look forward to hearing from you or, even better, meeting you in Paris.

Yours truly,

Andrew Bowdoin, Esq.

My hands shook when I read the letter again, and then a third time. Then, carefully, I refolded the letter and returned it to its torn envelope. Ignoring the rest of the post scattered on the steps, I climbed the remaining stairs and headed down the long hallway to the door at the end, each step more purposeful than the last, my anger at the enigmatic woman I had been forced to share my husband with for almost twenty years growing with each step. The grandest traitor of them all.

I yanked open the door to the attic steps, ignoring the puff of dust that blew in my face and made me sneeze, the stale, icy air of the unused space

 making my teeth chatter. I made my way to the trunk in the corner, a place I hadn’t returned to since I’d thought I’d buried the memory of La Fleur. A ticking bomb, indeed.

With another sneeze, I knelt down in front of the trunk, lifted the latch, and opened the lid. I pulled out a linen-bound book, allowing it to rest in my hands while I sat back on the floor, ignoring the coating of dust. Smoothing my hand over the title, I read it in the murky light. The Scarlet Pimpernel. It was the one thing Kit had managed to keep in the camp, hidden again and again to prevent it from being confiscated. Kit had once confessed that it had been his token of survival, his lucky card. When he’d recovered enough, he’d asked me to throw it away as it was a part of his past. And then he’d asked me to marry him.

I opened the front cover, reading the words stamped inside. Le Mouton Noir, Rue Volney, Paris. I began flipping through the pages until the book opened up to a folded piece of paper, another letter, this one sent to Kit a year after his return. I didn’t need to read it to know what it said. I’d read the French words often enough that they were emblazoned on my brain.

My Darling Kit,

Oh, how I have missed you. I have barely existed these past years after we last said goodbye, waiting for news of you, to know if you survived. It has been so long since I’ve seen your face, but I remember it as well as my own. I see it every night when I fall asleep, and it’s as if you are next to me again, in Paris, where we found love amid so much destruction. When you told me that swans mate for life.

Remember the promise that we made to each other? That if we are both alive we would meet at the Ritz. So, darling, meet me at the Ritz this Christmas. I will wait for you until New Year’s and if you don’t come, I will know that you have a new life and that I am no longer a part of it. I will not write again. My only hope is that you remember me and the short time we had together and know that I will always love you. Always. La Fleur

My anger exploded inside of me, fueled by guilt and betrayal and grief. By the irrefutable fact that I’d never been my husband’s first choice. Shoving the letter back into the book, I slammed down the trunk’s lid before hurrying out of the attic, The Scarlet Pimpernel clutched tightly to my chest.

I marched down to Kit’s study and pulled out a pen and paper. Before I could stop myself, I wrote a letter to Mr. Andrew Bowdoin, informing him that I would book a room at the Ritz and would like to meet with him after my arrival on the twentieth. I signed it Mrs. Barbara Langford and sealed it into an envelope.

As I placed the letter on the hall table to go out with the outgoing post, I had a fleeting worry as to what Mrs. Finch might think, but then quickly brushed the thought aside. I was weary of wrestling with ghosts. It was time to lay this one to rest.

 

Chapter TwoAurélie

The Hôtel Ritz

Paris, France

September 1914

DARLING, DO TRY to rest. You’re making me dizzy with your pacing. Wearing a track in my carpet won’t drive the Germans away, you know.”

“Neither will drinking champagne,” muttered Aurélie, but her mother didn’t hear her.

Her mother never heard her.

Even now, with the Germans a mere thirty kilometers from Paris, with trains running to the provinces to evacuate the fearful, with the government in exile in Bordeaux, her mother refused to allow anything to interfere with her precious salon. The treasures of the Louvre might be hastily packed in crates and shipped to Toulouse, that dreary Monsieur Proust might have taken his complaints and his madeleines and decamped to the seaside pleasures of Cabourg (and good riddance, thought Aurélie), but in the Suite Royale at the Ritz, the famed Boldini portrait of the Comtesse de Courcelles still hung above the mantel, the cunning little statuette by Rodin brooded on its stand near the fireplace, and the remains of her mother’s entourage continued to admire the countess’s elegant toilette, laugh at her witticisms, and eat her iced cakes.

Trust her mother not to allow a little thing like an invasion to discommode her.

When bombs had fallen from a German monoplane the week before, all her mother had said was, “I do hope they don’t blow out the windows. I rather like my view.”

The bon dit had already made the rounds of Paris, and Madame la Comtesse de Courcelles was being held up in the international press as an example of French fortitude, which Aurélie thought was rather rich given that her mother was American, an heiress who had married a French count and had never gone home. Whatever the early days of her parents’ marriage had been, Aurélie had no idea; all she knew was that by the time she was four her father had taken up permanent residence at the family seat in Picardy, staying at the Jockey Club if business necessitated that he spend the night in town, while her mother, abandoning the Courcelles hôtel particulier in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, had established herself in the second most opulent suite at the Ritz, surrounding herself with artists, poets, and would-be wits, American expatriates, British aesthetes, and German philosophers. In short, the riffraff of Europe. Her mother, Aurélie thought in annoyance, was an American’s idea of a Frenchwoman, impeccably turned out, always ready with a quip, urban to the bone, and about as French as California wine.

Through her father, Aurélie was a de Courcelles. She had made her debut at the bals blancs; she was invited to the teas and dances of the Faubourg, as was expected. But she knew that she was suspect, an interloper, alien among her own relations, that web of cousins that comprised most of the old nobility of France. The true old nobility, not those Bonapartist upstarts or the Orleanist arrivistes. But even though her blood on her father’s side went back to Charlemagne, the whispers followed Aurélie through the drafty drawing rooms of the old guard: What could the girl be after an upbringing like that? All of Minnie Gold’s millions couldn’t make up for the taint—although those millions had done rather a nice job of restoring the roof of the château.

But, still, the daughter. Not quite like us. That was what they whispered behind her back. She might be tall like her father, have his straight, dark brows—de Courcelles brows, as distinctive as a royal birthmark, chiseled in stone on the effigies in the family chapel, immortalized in oils in portraits, displayed in the flesh on her father’s beloved face—but her hair was her mother’s, soft masses of fluffy ash-blond hair, like something out of an 

advertisement for soap. Common, they said. So like her mother, even though she wasn’t at all, not really, not if one really looked. But no one did.

Aurélie wished she had been born a man, to prove them wrong. Then, she might have distinguished herself in battle, proved her valor in fighting for her country. She might have been awarded the Légion d’honneur as her father had been, when he was only fifteen and had lied about his age to take sword against the Prussians back in the war of 1870. Admittedly, the French forces had been repulsed and her father had been forced with the rest of the troops to retreat to Paris, where they had endured terrible privations under siege, but no one denied his bravery. It was the first thing anyone mentioned when speaking of her father: “Do you remember the battle of Mont-Valérien?” And they would wag their heads in admiration over his audacity, as though it had been five years ago and not close on fifty.

Here was France in peril again, and what was she, Aurélie, doing? Sitting in a sulk in her mother’s salon while an elderly professor of ancient history droned on about Caesar’s wars and how they wouldn’t be in the bind they were in if only more military men had bothered to attend his lectures.

“Yes, but did Caesar have trains?” said her mother, taking the sting out of the comment by handing the professor another cake. Aurélie’s grandfather had made his fortune in something to do with trains, just after the American Civil War. Her mother rather liked reminding people of that. “Rilla, darling, will you ring for more coffee?”

As Aurélie went to tug the bell, she heard the professor saying stiffly, “He had baggage trains, which was much the same thing.”

“Somewhat slower, I imagine,” said Maman.

“No slower than our army at the moment.” Seizing the advantage, one of her mother’s other guests leaned forward to grab the countess’s attention. “Have you heard they haven’t enough trains to take the troops to the front? They’re requisitioning the taxis.”

“With all the taxis gone, how will we get to the opera?” murmured Maman.

“But the opera is closed,” said the professor blankly.

Maman briefly pressed her eyes shut. “Yes,” she said gently. “I know.”

It was, Aurélie knew, a dreadful trial to her that the clever men, the young men, had all gone off, most to war. Like Maximilian von Sternburg, fighting, one presumed, for the wrong side.

“Shall I see if the papers have come?” Aurélie said, too loudly, breaking

 into whatever her mother was saying. She wasn’t sure what had made her think of Herr von Sternburg. Germans, she supposed. “La Patrie should be here by now.”

Her mother glanced at the ornate ormolu clock on the mantel, a gilded Bacchus reclining on top of the clockface while two cherubs dropped grapes into his mouth. “It’s four o’clock. We should have La Liberté as well.”

Since war had been declared, they measured their days by the arrival of the papers, Le Matin with their morning chocolate, Le Paris-Midi at noon, La Patrie at three, La Liberté at four, and L’Intransigeant at six. It was the one sign Maman gave that she was at all concerned with the fate of her adopted country: the way her jeweled hands grabbed for the daily papers. Not that they were of terribly much use. The government had passed a law back in August banning any military information from the papers and anything that might serve to dampen national morale, which meant that one tended to read very little that actually mattered. But even that little was enough to make them check the clock and badger the porters for the papers.

“They’re saying it will be another 1870,” said the professor. “We’ll be roasting rats for supper.”

“I’m sure the chefs here can turn even rat into a delicacy,” said Maman, never mind that most of the kitchen staff had been called up, along with the rest of the male populace of Paris.

“I remember the last time,” said the professor gloomily. “The Germans at the gates.”

“Plus ça change.” Maman shrugged her narrow shoulders, and her entourage laughed, as though she’d said something dreadfully witty. Aurélie hated all of them: the men about town with their lilac cravats, the artists with their paint-stained waistcoats, the poets who thought themselves above the vulgarities of war. There were no captains of industry here, no men of action; her mother had had enough of those, she said, in her youth in New York. Instead, she entertained the philosophers and the fainéants, the men too old or effete to don uniform.

“That’s not funny,” protested Aurélie, her hand on the ornate doorknob. Whatever the papers said, however much they tried to boost morale, there was no getting around it. They were losing. The word had gone around, all available troops had been called up, all the reserves, all the able-bodied men, all to be rushed west to make one last stand to protect Paris.

Had the Germans already overrun Courcelles? Had her father raised his sword and swung into battle as he had before, one man against an army? There was no word, no way to receive word. All communications had been cut, all was in disarray. Aurélie had tried to use her father’s position and her mother’s reputation to extract information from the Ministry of War, but had been sent pointlessly from one department to the next, shunted along with a bow and a few polite words, before being told, after hours and hours of being shuffled here and there, that spies were everywhere and no information could be given.

I’m hardly a spy, Aurélie had protested. I’m the Demoiselle de Courcelles.

It was a name that ought to have some resonance. Her ancestors had fought with

Joan of Arc.

But the official, a very minor official, had only shook his head and repeated that he couldn’t tell her anything.

Can’t or won’t? Aurélie had asked desperately. Do you know anything of my father? Anything?

But he hadn’t answered, had only flipped the tails of his coat and seated himself again at his desk, as though Aurélie weren’t there at all.

She wasn’t sure what was worse, that there might be news of her father, of her people, and she was not told, or that they didn’t know, that the very Ministry of War was as much in the dark as the rest of them. It did not inspire confidence.

“If the Germans take Paris . . . ,” she said, and broke off, not being able to imagine it.

“Then we’ll treat for peace,” said her mother matter-of-factly.

“What peace can there be with the Hun?” Her father’s stories of 1870 mingled with the pathos of the papers, Belgian babies murdered, women violated, villages laid to waste and plunder.

“They’re not all savages, sweetheart.” Maman’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “One can’t believe everything one reads in La Patrie.”

Aurélie hated being made to feel young and naive.

“They’re not all poets, either,” she retorted.

Paris drew a particular type of German nobleman, or at least her mother’s salon did. They all seemed to quote Goethe, read the poetry of Rimbaud, and have strong feelings about the works of Proust. It was very hard to imagine the Germans of her mother’s entourage spitting babies on the spikes of their helmets.

But they were Germans. Goodness only knew what they might do. What they might be doing even now.

“No, I imagine not,” said her mother. “But a man’s a man for all that. When the war is over, one might even be inclined to like them again.”

Like them? There were thousands dead, thousands more likely to die, whole areas of France overrun by soldiers. How could one forgive something like that? How could one take tea with a conqueror?

“If you were French—” Aurélie bit off the words, knowing she was only opening herself up to mockery. “Never mind.”

“Will you pardon me?” With a gracious smile for her guests, Maman rose from the settee and came to stand by Aurélie. The smell of her mother’s distinctive perfume, the particular way her silk skirts swished around her ankles as she moved struck Aurélie with a combination of old affections and resentments. Once, those had spelled comfort to her; recently, they had been the opposite. Aurélie stood stiffly as her mother set a jeweled hand on her arm. “Darling, I’ve lived in Paris since I was nineteen. More than half my life. Don’t you think I care just a little?”

Yes, that her coffee

 not be served cold.

She was being unfair, Aurélie knew. Her mother wasn’t like the Marquise Casati, who had gone into hysterics in the lobby last week—not because of the men dead or the babies butchered, but because the reduction of staff had meant her breakfast had been delayed. Her mother did care. In her own way.

“It’s not the same for you,” said Aurélie, hating her voice for cracking. “You’re not a Courcelles.”

Her mother glanced fleetingly across the room at a glass curio case lined with velvet in which rested a single item: the Courcelles talisman, a scrap of cloth dipped in the blood of Joan of Arc. One could hardly see the precious relic; her mother, as a young bride, had had it cased in an elaborate pendant of gold, studded with precious stones, so that all one saw was the glow of rubies and diamonds, not the frail remnant of the holy martyr.

Aurélie’s father had been appalled, but he hadn’t interfered: it was a tradition that the talisman was to be carried by the women of the family, ever since a long-ago Comtesse de Courcelles had knelt at the feet of the Maid of Orléans and tried to stanch her blood with fabric ripped from her own dress. The saint had blessed the comtesse, and, ever since, the talisman had protected the house of Courcelles, conferring victory in battle or safety to the bearer, depending on whom one asked.

The relic had been passed down in Aurélie’s family ever since, carefully guarded—until her grandfather had lost it in a game of cards, and her father had suffered the humiliation of having it bought back by an American heiress, a bribe for a betrothal.

“I know I’m not a Courcelles. I gave up trying to be a long time ago. It wasn’t worth the effort.” Maman looked up at Aurélie, twin furrows in her celebrated forehead, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “My dear, I understand your pride. I do. Your father was always rotten with it. No, no, we won’t quarrel about your father. All I mean to say is, you mustn’t let your ancestors rule your life. There’s more to you than your lineage.”

“My life is my lineage. I have a sacred trust. . . .”

“Over a bit of old rag?” As Aurélie glowered at her, her mother said gently, “It’s a beautiful story. I was taken by the romance of it, too—when I was nineteen.”

As if patriotism, as if service to one’s country, were a child’s game that one might outgrow!

“It’s not romantic,” Aurélie protested. “Not if by romance you mean it’s something woven of untruths.”

“It’s woven of fibers,” said her mother. “Like any other cloth. I’m not saying it’s worthless. There’s value to be had in symbols. But you can’t really believe that a saint’s knucklebone can cure a cold—or that a scrap of fabric can confer victory in battle. Not on its own. What is it Voltaire said? God is on the side of the big battalions.”

“Not always.”

“No. Sometimes

the smaller battalion has the better marksmen.” Aurélie’s mother touched her cheek; her perfume tickled Aurélie’s nose. Part of Aurélie wanted to shake the hand off, the other wanted to lean against her mother’s shoulder, as she had done when she was small, before she had grown taller than her mother, taller and more aware of the oddities of their existence. “A talisman is only so precious as the confidence it confers, nothing more, nothing less. Rather like a love potion.”

Her mother would never understand. There was a discreet tap on the door. “That must be the coffee,” said Aurélie, ducking away from her mother’s touch and yanking open the door.

It was the coffee, but not brought by a porter. Instead, a man in uniform stood with the coffeepot, which he raised sheepishly in greeting. “When I said I was coming here, the maître d’ asked if I’d bring this. I gather they’re rather short-staffed?”

“Monsieur d’Aubigny!” Maman kissed Jean-Marie on both cheeks, deftly relieving him of the coffeepot. ...