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“Stop.” She wanted to lean forward and nail her mouth against his. It would stop him talking, and she knew his lips would be warm. You can’t. You’ll like it too much. Like hearing her name in his soft voice; it was bad for Marguerite and it was bad for her work.

She began to pull away, but Captain Cameron’s hand found her waist. “It’s very hard,” he said softly. “What we do. It’s all right to find it hard. If you want to talk to me—”

“I don’t want to talk,” she rasped.

“It might do you good, Eve.”

She couldn’t hear him say her name again. She could not. Of course that was why he was using it—she’d shown a weak point and he was pushing it, the handler seeing if his charge was close to cracking. Part of his job, evaluating her. Eve put her chin up, blindly turning the conversation to rock him back on his heels instead. “Either let me out of this room, Cameron, or t-take me someplace where we won’t do any talking.”

She had no idea where those words came from. Idiot, idiot! Cameron stared at her, plainly surprised, but his hand still warmed the side of her waist. Eve knew she should step away, but a hungry part of her wanted to step closer and damn the consequences. She wanted to lie down with this man, whose every word and reaction she wouldn’t need to sift, measure, and weigh.

But Cameron stepped away, mutely adjusting the gold band on his left hand.

“Your wife s-sent you to prison,” Eve said bluntly. “From what I heard.” The unspoken words were, What do you owe a wife like that?

He reared back. “Who told you—”

“Major Allenton, back in Folkestone. Why did you conf-f-f—confess guilt when your wife was the one who c-c-committed fraud?” Eve had Cameron on the defensive for once, and she kept pushing.

“I suppose it’s no secret.” He turned away, putting his hands on the back of a chair. “I thought I could save her from prison. My wife—she has always been unhappy. She wanted a child, desperately, and she couldn’t have one. She kept thinking every few weeks that this was the time—then the disappointment every month made her do strange things. Steal things, then make a fuss when they were missing. Fire the maids for listening at the door when they were on the other side of the house. Become obsessed with money, providing for a child’s future when we didn’t even have one yet, and claim her pearls had been stolen so she could cash in the insurance . . .” He rubbed at his forehead. “When that came out, she begged me to take the sentence for her. Someone had to go to prison, and she said she was too afraid. I wanted to spare her. She’s so fragile.”

She’s a liar who was content to let you take the punishment for her crime, Eve thought. Even if it destroyed your career and your life. But it sounded harsh and unforgiving, and she didn’t say it.

“She’s to have a child in the spring.” He turned around. “She’s much calmer now that it’s finally happened. She’s . . . happier.”

“You aren’t.”

He shook his head, a halfhearted denial, but Eve could read him like a book. He was weary and heartsick, they both were, and they might all be dead soon in this hellish place of war and blood. She stepped closer, knowing this was a very bad idea, but unable to stop, wanting so badly to banish the thoughts of René’s spiderlike hands and toneless voice. I’m here, she thought. Take me.

Cameron lifted her hand, bringing it to his lips. The sad gesture of a knight-errant, one who could never take advantage of a lady. It was on the tip of Eve’s tongue to tell him she was no innocent anymore, that he wouldn’t be taking anything René Bordelon hadn’t got first. But she couldn’t tell him that. He might remove her from Lille. He might do that anyway, if she lay with him as she wanted to. Fool, Marguerite’s voice hissed in Eve’s head. Stupid girl, what did Lili tell you? They all think a horizontale isn’t to be trusted and you go throwing yourself at him like a whore?

He won’t think that of me, Eve thought. He’s not so narrow as that.

But Marguerite was warier. Risk nothing.

Eve stepped back. Nothing too overt had been said, quite—she could deny she meant anything intimate, even if they both knew better. “Pardon me, Uncle Edward. Are we f-finished here?”

“Quite finished, mademoiselle. Take care of yourself in Lille.”

“Lili takes care of me. She and Violette.”

“Marguerite, Lili, and Violette.” He smiled, and the worry in his eyes bordered on agony. “My flowers.”

“Fleurs du mal,” Eve heard herself saying, and shivered.

“Baudelaire. We are not flowers to be plucked and shielded, Captain. We are flowers who flourish in evil.”

CHAPTER 19

CHARLIE

May 1947

Four gin martinis sent Eve straight from supper to bed, but I was still restless. Too tired to go for a walk—the Little Problem drank my energy down like hot chocolate; I hoped that part of being pregnant would go away soon—but tired or not, I wasn’t ready to go up to my room. Then Finn pushed back his chair from the table, pocketing the bullets Eve had given him from the Luger. “I’ve some work to do on the car. Come hold the torch?”

It had showered while we were eating, so the night was warm and rain scented. The pavement gleamed under the streetlamps, and cars passed by with a swish of wet tires. Finn rummaged in the car’s trunk, came out with a flashlight and a toolbox. “Keep it steady,” he said, handing me the flashlight and popping the hood.

“What’s wrong with the old girl now?” I asked.

Finn reached down into the Lagonda’s innards. “Got an old leak somewhere. I tighten things up every few days, make sure it doesn’t get worse.”

I stood on tiptoe, aiming the flashlight’s beam as a cluster of giggling French girls blew past. “Wouldn’t it be easier to find the leak and fix it?”

“You want me to take the time to break down the ruddy engine and put it back together?”

“Not really.” As pleasant as today’s drive had been, the warm sunshine and the new camaraderie being woven among the three of us, I was on fire to get to Limoges. Rose. The closer I got to the last place she’d been, the more the hope burned in me that she really might be alive and waiting for me. And once it was Rose and me again, arm in arm against the world, I could do anything.

“Come on,” Finn muttered to a stubborn lug nut or screw head or whatever it was. His Scots burr got thicker, as it always did when he was trying to persuade the car to cooperate. “Rusty aud bitch . . .” He worked away with a wrench, back and forth. “Hold that torch a bit higher, miss—”

“Finn, if you call me miss now, you’ll blow my cover. As spies like Eve would say.” I tapped my fake wedding ring. “I’m Mrs. Donald McGowan, remember?”

He got the bolt to loosen or tighten or whatever. “Grand idea, that ring.”

“I need a picture of my Donald,” I mused. “Something I can look at mistily when I say that my heart is in the grave.”

“Donald would want you to go on with your life,” Finn said. “You’re young. He’d tell you to marry again.”

“I don’t want to get married. I want to find Rose and then maybe run a café.”