I pressed myself against his back and wrapped my arms around him. “Tell me.” He leaned back into me. “Tell me about Michel.”
Cognac pooled at the edge of the table. “Clare, I…”
I kissed the hollow between his shoulder blades.
He shivered.
“Here.” I brought the blanket from the bed.
He drank a whole mug of cognac before he coughed and cleared his throat. “Michel Chaffre. Bastard was the best friend I’ve ever had. Never had a bad word to say about anyone. Never thought of himself.”
I remembered the boy who’d given over his weekends to cheer a friendless Scottish girl. “A good man.”
“The best. But he…” He leaned heavily against the table. “Damn him.”
I moved the empty mugs to the washstand and refilled them. The cognac was cheap and smelled like paint thinner.
“Clare, he killed Chaffre.”
I took a sip from my mug. It burned. “Who did?”
“Stefan Bauer.”
He spat the name. I lit another candle.
“Chaffre was guarding the cellar where the prisoners were. He let me in—he shouldn’t have, but he trusted me.” He turned to face me, eyes dark and deep. “Bauer took my bayonet, attacked me, left me for dead on that cellar floor and…” He swallowed, reached for the cognac, swallowed again. “And he killed Chaffre.”
I knew this wasn’t the only night he’d spent drinking in the half-dark. All these months, he’d been punishing himself for someone else’s crime. He was punishing himself for trusting Stefan Bauer.
I’d spent too many years doing the same. Telling myself that I’d been stupid and weak and that I’d let myself be led into that brothel bedroom, into a situation I might not have gotten out of. I spent more time blaming myself than the one really at fault. I understood. So I said, “It’s not your fault.” I said, “Bauer betrayed you.” I knew something about that.
“No.” He slid down the wall to the floor. “I betrayed Chaffre.” Beneath the blanket, he shuddered. “Clare, he killed Chaffre with my own bayonet.”
“Bauer betrayed you,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say. I knelt and took his hands. “You didn’t give that bayonet to him. You didn’t tell him to kill your friend.”
“But he did.” He stared at the floor, that haunted look again in his eyes. “And all because I was weak enough to think that an enemy might…might still be my friend.”
This was it. Not his cheek, not his shoulder, not his lack of a job. This right here was the reason he kept his distance, why he refused to be close to anyone. Why he’d take temporary comfort when he could, but shy away from anything that could make him feel.
“But you understand all of that, don’t you?” he said. He pulled his hands back and crumpled them in his lap. “You understand…him.” His gaze was penetrating. “That night, in the cellar…he told me what he did to you.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t know how to answer.
He spoke in a rush. “Believe me, Clare, if I’d known then that he’d hurt you, I—”
“He didn’t hurt me.” I said it quickly, to wipe the anguish from his face. “Though he…tried, he didn’t touch me.”
His eyes went to my hand, where I still had a thin pink scar from that hat pin. “Ah.” He caught it in his and turned it over. “And to think I once thought you were the one who needed protecting.” He brushed a kiss onto the scar. “Clare Ross, you’re stronger than I could ever be.”
I woke to a room smelling warm and light, something like summer. Next to me, wearing nothing but my old brown sweater, Clare curled against my side, asleep. In a rush I remembered last night, in little snatches like photographs. The candlelight on her bare shoulders, that smile that tipped up to her eyes, her curls spread out on my chest, the way I could feel her breathing, watching, waiting while I fell asleep. She’d kicked the blanket down in the night and my gaze traced the curve of her hip and leg beneath the sweater. I tried not to breathe. Her feet were tucked up against my knee. I didn’t want them to leave.
I edged out from under the blankets. Twenty-four hours ago I’d woken up alone, the apartment feeling too dark and too close. I’d dressed thinking of her, of those few hours in the studio where I could steal glances she’d never miss and tuck away the lilts of her voice like forgotten bread crumbs.
But this morning it was as though I’d let the sun straight into my room. It glowed, and it was all because of Clare.
Clare.
On the floor was a bundle of cloth. A pale brown coat, bright red scarf, striped dress, layers of white that could only be what had been under the dress. I didn’t even remember sliding them off. Had I done that?
On the bed, she sighed and toed the blankets.
Yesterday I thought I had nothing in my life but settling. A replacement face. A pamphlet full of replacement careers. Now, I had Clare, at least for a night. For longer? She had come to me.
On the bed, she settled into a rhythm of breathing.
I lifted the edge of the cloth covering the bird cage. Lysander regarded me curiously and I tipped in a flat handful of nuts. “I’ll be back with breakfast,” I promised. I tugged the cover back over the cage and hoped they’d stay quiet.
I pulled on my trousers, stiff and wrinkled from a night on the floor next to her clothes. I found a clean shirt in the drawer. My jacket was on the back of the door, where I’d left it yesterday. The water in the basin was tepid. It was the same I’d washed in after coming back from the studio. I slipped my hands quietly in the water.
From the drawer in my desk, I took out a sheet of paper and my gold fountain pen, that too-ornate pen Papa gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I brought that ridiculous pen with me to the trenches. Because, as absurd as it was out there in the middle of war, it was the thing that made me feel like an adult. It made me feel somehow above the muck and playing soldier.
I think often of that summer, of our summer. Last night we were there again. I woke this morning and it was the shade of the trees and the roses and the river below. With your touch, you erased my nightmares. Don’t leave, Clare, not now and not tomorrow. You’re my happily ever after.
In the drawer was also Chaffre’s little lead Madonna in her case. I’d always before hidden her away, hoping to hide my memories of that night. Today, though, I tucked her in my pocket.
I leaned toward Clare, smelling warm and loved, and kissed her ear. “Don’t leave,” I whispered into it, though she didn’t wake. I slipped on my mask and caught up her red scarf. Tossing it around my neck, I left the apartment.
