“Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” Susan linked her arm in Amelia’s and pulled her into a long, rectangular gallery with faded and scuffed parquet floors, elaborate white molding, and a graceful marble fireplace with a fire burning inside. The heat and cheer of the fire were matched by the chatting guests sprawled on mismatched French furniture with a few modern pieces sprinkled in. “Everyone, this is Amelia. Amelia, this is everyone.”
The tuxedo-clad men, and the women in chic knockoff evening dresses, stopped talking and raised their glasses in a collective “Hello!”
“What department do you work in?” Daniel returned with a wineglass and the open wine bottle and poured Amelia a healthy serving.
“She doesn’t work at the Embassy, she’s the Duchess of Windsor’s private secretary,” Susan corrected, loud enough for everyone to hear.
He stopped pouring and there was a noticeable lull in the conversation. The old desire to run and hide hit Amelia but she held her ground, facing the silence with poise and grace.
“You raid the ex-king’s wine cellar for this?” Daniel clinked his glass against hers and broke the spell.
“Something like that.” Wallis had sent the wine with her because she didn’t like the British aristocrat who’d given it to her. “I’ll do it again if I’m ever invited back.”
“Bring wine like this and you will be.”
Susan batted a hand at him. “Ignore him. Daniel works in the press office, that’s why he has no manners. You have to meet Lisa. She’s in the visa department and can do wonders if you ever need travel documents.”
“What’s it like working for the Windsors?” Lisa asked as soon as Susan maneuvered Amelia to the empty place on the sofa beside her. “Is she a dear or a monster like the newspapers say?”
“Don’t bother her about that,” Susan chided. “You don’t want to talk about your work. I’m sure she doesn’t want to talk about hers.”
“She’s probably the only one who can talk about her job; the rest of us are sworn to secrecy.” A tall man named Christopher dropped down on Amelia’s other side.
“Are you kidding, her privacy clause is probably stiffer than ours.” Lisa’s tortoiseshell glasses slid down her nose and she pushed them back up.
“Is it?” Christopher asked.
“What do you think?”
“See.” Lisa laughed. “I told you she has to keep more secrets than we do.”
“Then stop trying to pry them out of her.” Mr. Morton’s voice carried over the crowd as he crossed the room in a few long, strong strides. He stopped in front of Amelia and Christopher, towering over them, his dark tuxedo making him appear even more impressive. He tilted into a bow and motioned for her hand. “Mrs. Montague?”
“Amelia.” She slid her hand in his, enjoying his smooth skin and firm grasp.
“Robert.” He squeezed her fingers before letting go, his gaze never leaving hers, and the entire room fell away. She could’ve sat like that all night but he flicked a glance at Christopher, who looked back and forth between them before jumping to his feet.
“I’ll get another glass of wine. Can I get you one, Robert?”
“Thank you.” Robert sat on the faded brocade beside Amelia, and she inhaled the light cedar scent of his aftershave. It smelled young and fresh, unlike the deeper sandalwood scents of the Duke and his friends.
“That’s quite a party trick. Forcing a man from his seat with little more than a look.”
“I didn’t force him to do anything. He got up of his own free will.” He flashed a devilish smile that made Amelia’s toes curl in her patent leather pumps and she wondered if it was the look or the wine making her head fuzzy. “How was Germany?”
“Eye-opening, even if I didn’t see much. The Germans don’t like visitors poking around unaccompanied.”
“I don’t suppose they do.”
“You must see loads of famous people at the Hotel Meurice. Isn’t Marlene Dietrich there?” Lisa gushed, her sheath dress with the halter top similar to one Amelia had purchased from Susan’s seamstress.
“She is, and she’s as beautiful in person as she is on-screen.” Amelia indulged in this little indiscretion, remembering Wallis’s dictate that dinner guests have a moral obligation to be entertaining.
She and Lisa continued to exchange stories about the Hollywood stars they’d seen in Paris before talking about Lisa’s prior posting in Mexico. While they chatted, Amelia waited for Robert to politely excuse himself and work his way around the room to Susan but he remained beside her. If he and Susan were a couple, he wasn’t eager to be with her. Perhaps they were being discreet in front of their colleagues or maybe there was nothing to whisper about. It shouldn’t matter to Amelia one way or the other but the longer he sat with his leg pressed against hers, his breath whispering delicately across her exposed neck beneath her upswept hair, the more it did.
“Dinner is served,” Susan announced, and everyone rose and made for the dining room with the faded and scratched Louis XIV table surrounded by mismatched chairs. Fine china, stemware, and a matched silver service were expertly laid on a linen tablecloth that would impress even Wallis. “Amelia, you’re over here.”
Susan led her to a cane chair and she was about to sit down when Robert stepped up and held it out for her. “Allow me.”
“Thank you.” Amelia draped the fine linen napkin over her lap. “This is quite a table setting.”
“Don’t let her fool you, none of this is hers.” Lisa laughed. “She’s friends with the staff of everyone who’s anyone and they let her borrow their china and crystal.”
“Guilty,” Susan said without shame as she passed a bowl of mashed potatoes. “The ambassador’s cook is such a dear. He offered to whip up a little extra for me while he was preparing the Ambassador’s dinner. All I had to do was pick it up.”
“She has a knack for making connections,” Robert said, serving Amelia from the platter of turkey.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” It was a talent Amelia herself was developing as she got to know the staff of Wallis’s friends. She’d add more people to her list of acquaintances tonight.
The turkey, stuffing, and green beans, cooked to perfection, didn’t stop the steady flow of conversation about prior overseas postings and the quirkier aspects of their jobs. During the taxi ride here, Amelia had worried about being different from Susan’s friends, but the more they talked, the more she realized she wasn’t so different from them, at least not where her work was concerned.
When the pumpkin pie was sent around, the discussion finally wandered to politics.
“I predict Herr Hitler will roll over Austria in the next few months,” Daniel said.
“It would set off an international crisis,” Lisa said.
“He’s ridiculous but not foolish enough to start a war, not with the French and British ready to lick the Germans the way they did in the Great War,” Christopher insisted, and a number of people nodded in agreement.
“Amelia, you were in Germany. What do you think?” Susan asked, drawing everyone’s attention to her.
The old urge to mumble something innocuous and fade into the woodwork caught the words in her throat before she sat up straight. They’d asked for her opinion. Given her position and experience, she was as qualified as they were to share it. “Germany will annex Austria. I can’t say when, but I’m sure it’ll happen. Frau Goering mentioned it and there was a map at Ordensburg with Germany and Austria combined. I don’t know if they’re planning more but all those factories and soldier schools the Duke toured aren’t for nothing.”
“That certainly puts a grave spin on things.” Daniel exchanged concerned glances with Christopher. Amelia’s firsthand observations of Germany’s ambitions, and what they might mean for everyone at the table and Europe’s future, hung as heavy in the air as the cinnamon.
“Let’s go back to the gallery. I still have oodles of champagne you have to drink up,” Susan encouraged, reviving the holiday cheer.
“I hope I didn’t bring everyone down,” Amelia said to Robert as he pulled out her chair.
“You didn’t. They already suspect it from the daily reports. It’s just rare to hear it blatantly confirmed. Would you like to step out on the balcony?”
He offered her his elbow and Amelia slid her hand in the crook of his arm. Something primal rose up inside of her at the feel of his muscles beneath her fingertips as he escorted her through the glass doors and onto the narrow balcony.
She let go of him and stepped up to the wrought-iron railing, needing the fall air to cool her skin and a little space from Robert so she could breathe and think straight. The city was beautiful under the stars. The lighted windows in the buildings glowed in the semidarkness, and the tip of the Eiffel Tower was just visible over the slate roof of the apartments across the way.
Robert joined her at the railing and she resisted the urge to lean into him. “Where are the Windsors tonight?”
“La Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel. Lady Mendl is hosting the party and Wallis heard a rumor that Rose Kennedy might be there. She’s desperate to have Mrs. Kennedy to dinner but she’s declined every invitation.”
