Chapter Ten #3
And Marcel . . . what were his options? Continue with the youth orchestra or something similar, or rejoin one as a pianist. Exactly what he wanted from life, yes. But not the sort of existence that a woman like Zelie would want. What she deserved.
She was, in every way, out of his league, both as a woman and as his boss. He needed to get his pulse under control and be what she needed him to be.
A friend. A lieutenant. Nothing more.
Pep talk given, he locked up and hurried back down to her Citroen. Zelie still sat where he’d left her, staring vacantly. He stowed his suitcase in the back seat and took the wheel again. “I’ll be able to get us to Cannes, but after that you’ll have to give me directions.”
She nodded, proving she wasn’t completely locked inside her own mind.
“Who all was at the villa when you got the news?” Some of the standards, like Lucien, he could assume were present. But had anyone been there who’d have offered support instead of needing it from her?
“The usual crew, and Blanchet was passing through.”
Hence, he supposed, the comment about his interest in Algiers. “He never even met Navarre,” he mused.
“No.” She sighed. “Navarre would have been pleased, though, with how he turned out. He had Lucien an expert on the radio in no time, and he did have good things to teach us. Once I got past his Cockney accent—and after he shaved—he’s been a good addition to the team.”
Marcel hadn’t run into him after that first night, but he’d assumed as much, given that she hadn’t complained about him. “And he still doesn’t suspect that you’re POZ 55?”
She hesitated, then lifted her hands. “If he suspects, he hasn’t said anything to me, and it doesn’t seem as though he’s indicated it to MI6.”
Probably good, though to his mind, her work ought to speak for itself. What did it matter what gender she was, when she was capable of more than the rest of them put together?
Of course, he knew that wasn’t the common view among military men, and military men were the ones in charge of everything.
She leaned her head against the window. “Next time I’m in Paris—assuming it happens again—I should ask Georges Piers what he knows about Blanchet. Perhaps they’re acquainted.”
They filled the drive with easy conversation.
They talked through the orchestra’s schedule into the fall and winter, and the holiday they’d take for much of December, so that all his musicians could be home with their families for Advent.
They laughed together over Vivi’s latest lapse in remembering Marcel’s no-smoking-inside rule, and how when he’d come into the office last week and found her with a smoldering cigarette in hand, she’d panicked and put it out in the cup of coffee she’d poured for him.
Dusk was falling by the time she motioned for him to turn onto a little dirt lane that meandered up a hill. They’d passed the chateau that her family owned but were renting out, and he’d tried not to stare too long at it in the last golden rays of sunlight.
It didn’t matter. A glimpse was all he needed to hammer home the observation from hours earlier.
That was where she belonged. Meanwhile, his parents lived in a townhouse that shared walls with other families, cramped enough that he and his brother had shared a room all their lives. And he’d never wished for more.
Well, other than more concert tickets. But one could never have enough of those.
The lane ended at a farmhouse that had the old but comfortable look of a place he could feel at home.
A lorry rested inside the open door to a barn, and another car was parked in front of it.
He didn’t recognize it, but it must be how their brothers had gotten here, because even as he pulled in alongside, both Raoul and Antoine were striding from the house.
Marcel greeted Raoul with a laugh and an embrace. When he pulled away, two smaller figures were darting out the door, shouting, “Maman! Maman!”
Zelie dropped to her knees there on the path, arms open and tears streaming down her cheeks again.
Both children barreled into her, talking over each other and hugging and kissing.
Blaise had his mother’s dark hair, Elise golden curls that most likely came from the woman leaning in the doorway with a smile on her face and lines bracketing her mouth and eyes to attest to plenty of laughter in her years.
Zelie’s mother, clearly. They had the same lovely features, in different shades.
Zelie held her children as if she never meant to let them go, her face that same blend of joy and grief that he’d seen when she was playing Rachmaninoff on Grigoryan’s Bosendorfer.
Raoul slung an arm over Marcel’s shoulders and chuckled. “I’d say it’s about time you go stupid over a woman, but . . . not sure that’s a wise choice for you, brother.”
Marcel dragged his gaze away. And sent Raoul a glare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure. And Emile gave up sucking his thumb at age five, just like he claims.”
Marcel laughed and let his brother pull him toward the house.