Chapter Twenty #2
She locked her gaze onto his desk. Kept her shoulders curled inward.
“It doesn’t matter. He’s declared the experiment failed.
They all have.” As dejectedly as she could, she hefted the case and slid it over to him.
“This was all I was able to recover from the drop of money England sent. If there’s more out there, my former colleagues have absconded with it and disappeared. ”
His sneer said she was pathetic, but he opened the suitcase, surveyed the stacks of bills inside, and sighed. “I suppose it will suffice.” Rather than sit, he straightened. “Come. My wife is expecting us for dinner.”
“Your . . . wife?” She’d met Madame Rollin before too, yes, that same decade ago.
She had a vague recollection of one of those military wives she’d soon realized she could never be.
Perfect composure, perfect deference, perfect respect for her husband, perfect devotion to their children—and nothing more.
“When she heard you were coming to Vichy, she was eager to see you again.”
“How . . .” Baffling. Suspicious. Alarming. “Kind.”
“You can follow me to our home. It’s our hope you’ll stay with us tonight as well, before you leave in the morning.”
“I . . . I thought . . . the note said tomorrow would be the real meeting. That this was an introduction. I assumed you would decide tonight, you and your colleagues, what to tell me tomorrow, after seeing if I’d complied with the demands for the money.
” Were they trying to throw her off? Or was this invitation now meant to soften her?
Or perhaps an attempt to get her comfortable so they could pump her for information?
She put a quiver into her lips. “I promise you, I tried to get it all back, but I couldn’t find anyone, it’s all fallen apart.
Please, monsieur, I pray you have mercy. ”
His smile harkened to the old—or rather, younger—Rollin. “Calm yourself, madame. It’s my hope we’ll have no real need for tomorrow’s meeting at all. I promise you, Julie’s invitation is meant only to put you at ease.”
She blinked, added a sniff for good measure. Nodded. “All right. Thank you.” They would be playing some game, she had no doubt. But she would play it, learn their moves.
Monsieur Rollin had found a gem of a house for himself and his wife, with row upon row of gleaming windows set in the golden honeyed stone of its enormous facade.
Nothing compared to Grigoryan’s home in Paris or even Charaudeau’s in Madrid, but she gaped appropriately as he led her inside after a brief walk from his office.
She fiddled nervously with the hem of her jacket, checked her hat and hair as if both suddenly felt shabby.
Julie Rollin must have been watching for them, because she hurried through the immense foyer as they entered, hands outstretched. “Zelie! It’s been ages. Last I saw you, your first child was but an infant in arms.”
Familiarity that hardly fit their few, merely social interactions, and an immediate reminder of her children. Noted. Zelie made her smile a little strained, a little relieved, a little humbled. “I am surprised you remember me, madame. I must have seemed a naive ingenue to you back then.”
Madame Rollin tilted her head back in laughter, showing off her dangling earrings and matching collar necklace.
“Weren’t we all, at the start of our marriages?
” She moved to Zelie’s side, weaving their arms together.
“First, you must call me Julie. And now come, join me for cocktails while Chef finishes dinner. Your little boy must be . . . what, nine or ten?”
Zelie let herself be led into a well-appointed room. “Ten, yes. I can’t believe how quickly the years have flown by!”
“How well I know it. My own baby is twenty-one now. I look at him and can’t fathom how he’s so old when I still feel like I’m not yet thirty.”
Mimicking her hostess’s laugh, Zelie swept an appreciative gaze around the room—and out the door.
Rollin hadn’t followed them in, but she saw him angle toward the door beside this one.
No doubt they’d already determined that he’d be able to hear anything she said through the wall.
“I’d never guess, to look at you, Julie, that you have children in their twenties. ”
Smiling, Julie motioned her toward a chair. “What’ll you have to drink?”
“Oh, just water, thank you. Jacques never approved of me drinking.” He’d never cared, but it was a handy excuse for refusing anything that could dull her senses, and it would make her seem the devoted widow.
Julie slid some ice into a glass and then popped the cap on a bottle of Perrier. “You have another child too, don’t you?”
“Elise.” She didn’t have to fake the smile. “She’ll be seven this year.”
“Ah, so precious. Treasure these years with them, Zelie. They go by too fast.”
“I know.” She accepted the glass of sparkling water and sipped at it. “Every time Blaise comes home from school, he’s sprouted up again. He’ll be taller than me before I know it.”
Taking the seat across from her, Julie gave her a maternal, sorrowful look. “I was so distressed to hear that you’d gotten caught up in this so-called Resistance. Did you give no thought to your children and what it would mean for them if you were found out?”