The Ambassador's Daughter (16 page)

“Yes, that’s the one. I thought she might faint when you offered up your views.”

“I never should have said anything.”

“Nonsense. You spoke your mind forthrightly and well and the conversation was better for it. You were only voicing what the others were thinking but were too cowardly to say. I admire your courage.”

Courage.
If only he knew. “I hold my tongue as often as I can. Women where I come from aren’t encouraged to speak or do much, you see. We’re meant to go to the parties and salons, to look nice and act pleasant.” I comprehend fully for the first time the truth of my words. Even Papa, who encouraged me to read and learn, did so just for the sake of knowledge—but what good was it all if I didn’t use it? “That’s why I enjoy our work...” I falter.

His lips twitch with amusement. “I’m glad to provide a diversion.”

“That’s not what I meant at all.” What I do, with him and for him, means so much more. But I cannot find the words. “It’s just so frustrating, watching the hypocrisy day after day. Wilson came with promises of freedom and self-determination, the very premise on which America was founded. But the reality seems to only be freedom for some.”

“Yes, but if we give everyone those rights, it will be anarchy. And right now, when we are among the defeated and seeking our own rights, we must be most careful.”

I stop and turn to him. “No, it is exactly now, when we are fighting for our own rights, that we must stand in solidarity with others who seek theirs.”

Georg is silent for a moment. “Of course. Sometimes, amid all of the political struggles, I forget why we are here in the first place. You are like true north on a compass, Margot, and you help me find the way back.” The statement, too bold and naked for the short time we have known each other, hangs awkwardly between us.

“It’s been a beautiful spring,” I offer, eager to break the tension.

“Yes, though I understand the farmers are quite mad to have some rain.” I nod. They’ve only just been able to return to tilling the fields after years of battle. It is difficult to fathom the disaster a drought might bring to a country just coming back from the edge of starvation.

A breeze blows through the garden then, pulling a piece of my hair from its moorings. Georg reaches out and brushes the lock from my face, then stops, hand suspended midair. It is my scar, illuminated in the moonlight, that has drawn his attention. A small colorless indentation just below my left ear, it appeared suddenly years earlier after the flu had passed, a reaction perhaps to the medicines that they tried. It is normally not visible, but tonight with my hair pulled higher, he can see it for the first time.

I hold my breath, wondering if he will find it distasteful. But he continues to stare at me longingly, eyes wide. “Margot...” He fumbles to find further words but cannot.

We continue walking in silence. Though we work beside each other each day, the air between us is somehow different here. “I’m glad you decided to attend the dinner tonight,” he says, then coughs slightly. “I mean, even if it isn’t with me.”

I touch his forearm. “Georg, about that. It was just easier to come with Papa.”

“I understand. He wouldn’t approve.” He believes my refusal was about him, that he somehow wasn’t good enough. I want to tell him that wasn’t it at all, but how can I without explaining the truth about my engagement to Stefan?

“Your father doesn’t like me.” It is not a question.

“That’s not true,” I protest quickly. I touch his forearm. “He thinks you are incredibly smart.” I stop and pull back, a blush creeping into my cheeks. Now Georg knows that we have been talking about him. “It’s only that he is a pacifist. He was against the war.”

“None of us wanted the war,” he replies. “That is, none of the real people. There are old men, of course, in Berlin and Paris and London using the military for their own ends.”

“You talk like it is a chess game.”

“In a sense, it is.”

“And you don’t mind being a pawn?”

“If wars are to be fought, they should be led by men who can do it well. Fewer lives are lost that way. A well-waged battle can bring war to a quicker end.” I do not answer. Through the window, I see Papa talking to one of the other guests.

“You’re quite fond of him,” Georg observed. Fireflies flicker in the distance, then disappear into the blackness like shooting stars.

“It’s always just been the two of us.”

“He’s a good man.” He turns away to stifle a cough. “Though I fear academia is an ill fit with the cut and thrust of politics. As poor of a fit as time at battle.” They are both outsiders here. “You must warn him to be careful. I should not want to see him get hurt.” His pupils have grown large in the moonlight, two wide circles swimming in pools of gray.

Thinking of the information I shared with Ignatz and the danger I’ve brought to Papa, my consternation rises. “You make it sound like war, not a peace conference.” Another sharp breeze cuts across the garden then and I shiver involuntarily. Before I can protest, Georg unbuttons his coat and with a swift motion brings it around my shoulders as he had the night we first met. His scent, wool and fresh soap, wafts up around me, and in that moment it is as if he is holding me in his embrace. “Thank you.”

“Your necklace is beautiful. May I?” I nod and he brings his finger to my throat, skin warm against mine. The back of his nail grazes my skin as he lifts the gem.

“It was my mother’s.” Papa had given it to me as a sweet-sixteen present, pulled from the box at the bank that still holds my mother’s better pieces, the ones he considers me too impetuous and careless yet to wear.

He lets the gem fall gently back to my throat, and as he pulls away his hand trembles. He’s scared, I realize. Georg has always been an island, too remote to let anything touch him. Until now. Am I the same? Though I have been involved with Stefan, these feelings are terrifying.

The back door to the house opens and a silhouette appears. “Margot, are you out there?”

“Coming, Papa.”

“I can escort you home,” Georg offers in a low voice as we walk back across the garden. “That way your father will not have to interrupt his conversation. Perhaps the driver could take us down the Champs-Élysée to see the lights.” A shift from the man who had said a few days earlier that he was not in Paris to play tourist.

Georg’s jacket, I remember as we step into the light of the house, which now feels garish. I slip it from my shoulders and try to hand it to him, but it is too late—Papa has already seen. Confusion, then realization and concern, cross his face in an instant.

Inside, the party has broken up at the table, the men retreating to the library for brandy and cigars. “Papa, Georg has offered to take me home.” I no longer pretend to call him by his formal title.

“That is, if you’d like me to escort Margot back to the hotel.” Georg steps in to save me from having to ask. A fine layer of perspiration coats his upper lip.

I watch Papa struggle inwardly, his own desire to remain in Paris and see Celia colliding with his wanting to keep me and Georg apart. “You’ll take her straight back?” Georg towers over Papa, a giant. But it is Papa who seems somehow larger now, fierce in his protectiveness of me.

“It’s just a ride, Papa,” I nudge gently. “Georg is hardly a stranger.” Something flickers across Georg’s face. To him it is something more. A ride back to Versailles, just the two of us, a goodbye on the steps of our building....

“Fine,” Papa relents.

Georg coughs once, then a second time harder. “I’ll get your coat.”

As Georg disappears, I spy Krysia in a vestibule, motioning for me to join her. “I didn’t have time to speak with you before with everyone around. I’ve done some checking, and I’m afraid Ignatz is for real. I should have guessed it. He isn’t very subtle. He spends money far beyond what he could earn serving drinks and cakes to a bunch of starving artists. He’s gotten in with some folks with legitimate connections. And he’s not going to leave you alone, I’m afraid. His taking the risk to come here tonight is proof positive of that. He must consider you a terribly valuable asset. Any step out of line and your father will be revealed as the leak.”

Papa’s career, I lament, ruined because of my own stupidity. Anger rises up in me, then a sense of futility. Krysia had been encouraging me to be my own person. Instead, I’ve become a chess piece in the very way I’d criticized Georg of being. But if I don’t help, I will discredit Papa. “I hate politics.”

“It’s always politics, isn’t it, unless it is our own point of view? Then it is the truth.”

A sharp coughing erupts across the room. Georg. He has stepped from the cloakroom and gasps for air, his face turning red. Suddenly he slumps against the wall and his eyes roll back. He collapses to the floor.

“Georg!” I start forward, but Krysia puts her arm on mine. “Herr Mitten is a doctor. Let him take care of this.” A group of men swarm Georg, tending to him, loosening his collar. Let him be all right, I pray. Minutes pass with agonizing slowness. Outside comes the shrill cry of an ambulance siren.

I step forward again, desperate to be with Georg. He needs me.

But Papa is beside me now, holding me back as medics put Georg on a stretcher and carry him from the house. I turn to him frantically. “We should go to the hospital.”

“It isn’t our place. The other delegation members will look after him.”

I press against his grasp. “But...”

“We should go.”

I start to protest. The notion of returning to Versailles without knowing if Georg is safe is unfathomable.

“I will check,” Krysia whispers. Papa herds me toward the car, the siren wailing long and desolate as the ambulance bearing Georg disappears into the night.

Chapter 8

The next morning I’ve just finished steeping my tea when the bell rings, signaling an unexpected visitor below. Hearing footsteps on the stairway, I wonder if I should wake Papa in case it is official business. But when I open the door to the flat, Krysia appears on the landing. I am surprised; she has not come to Versailles at all in the months since we moved out here, much less unannounced.

“Did I wake you?” I shake my head. Worried about Georg, I’d slept little all night. I look over my shoulder. The apartment is a mess—Papa’s discarded notes are strewn across the floor in crumpled balls, and dirty glasses and filled ashtrays litter the tables. Picturing Krysia’s elegant flat, I step in front of the doorway, trying to block her view.

“I’m sorry not to have called first,” she says, appearing too large in the narrow, crooked corridor. “But I had to catch an early train and I didn’t want to wake anyone.”

“Not at all. I believe arriving unexpectedly is a tradition I started.”

She smiles slightly, but her expression is forced. Has she come in person to bring me bad news? “What is it? Is it Georg?”

“Everything is fine,” she replies hurriedly.

“Won’t you come in? I’ve just made tea.”

“No, thank you. I have an errand out of the city so I won’t be able to stay long. Perhaps we could walk instead? It really is a lovely morning.”

Outside the air is unseasonably warm but not unpleasant, with a gentle breeze wafting lavender from the fields to the east, clearing the smells of the street.

“He has pneumonia,” says Krysia a moment later.

My shoulders slump with relief. “So it isn’t the flu.”

“No, but pneumonia is no trifling matter. Apparently he’s had it for some time but neglected to get care.” I recall the persistent cough that Georg had shrugged off in order to keep working. Ignoring their health is another way in which he and Papa are alike. “Anyway, they’ve pumped him full of medicine and he should be discharged to his rooms later today.”

We round the corner, skirting the edge of the market, where chickens and cabbage and fabric and tools are sold indiscriminately alongside one another from wooden, tarp-covered stalls or cloths spread on the ground. The smell of fish, still alive in murky tubs of water, hangs heavy in the air. Krysia lowers her voice to a whisper. “I spoke with Ignatz after the reception last night,” she says, and I understand then her reason for coming here in person rather than ringing. “I thought perhaps I could reason with him, but I was wrong. He’s quite dangerous. He came from the Pale, saw his own brother murdered by the czar’s army.” He had lost a brother like Georg, but he had responded with anger and bile. “He has a criminal past, has done things that I’d rather not know about. In another time, he would be just a common thug. But in this world...” I nod. Paris right now is a free-for-all, the old rules broken. Power and opportunity are there for those who dare take it.

“Perhaps I should just refuse. After all, Papa has been given an ambassadorial title for purposes of the conference. With his diplomatic immunity, surely he would be sheltered from any scandal.”

She shakes her head. “I grew up as a diplomat’s child, remember? Immunity is easily dispensed with for political purposes. If your father was found to have leaked information, he could be arrested, or simply declared persona non grata and ordered to leave the country.” I nod. Even if he weren’t formally prosecuted, the scandal and having to face Uncle Walter in failure would be more than Papa could bear. “Ignatz isn’t going to let you off until he gets what he wants.”

“But I haven’t seen any documents,” I say evasively. “Georg only has me work on translations, documents given to him by the English or the French. They’re nothing like the information on German weapons that Ignatz wanted. Perhaps Georg doesn’t even know anything.”

“He’s a senior military officer and a member of the delegation,” she replies impatiently. “Of course he knows something. And now...”

“He’s sick.”

She swats at a gnat, then exhales, exasperated. “So much the better. He’ll be resting, disoriented.”

“I’m not going to take advantage of his condition.” There is a line I won’t cross, even when threatened.

“Why are you protecting him? Is it because you have feelings for him?”

“No, of course not. I’m engaged,” I add, pulling Stefan’s ring from my pocket and holding it up like some sort of amulet to ward off danger. “But Georg trusts me.”