The Ambassador's Daughter (24 page)

“Not at all. I’ll go visit Krysia instead.” I kiss him on the cheek and continue past him on the stairs, warding off further discussion.

Outside, I walk to the bank of the Seine, eager to get as far from the ministry as possible. I start along the quay, trembling. I had done it, delivered Georg’s message and even gotten the document I need for Ignatz. I pull it from my bag, holding it tightly against the sharp breeze that comes off the water. I study the map, an exact duplicate of the one I had lost. I can give it to Ignatz right now and be done with this once and for all. I gaze across the river toward the Eiffel Tower, remembering the pain as Ignatz grabbed my wrist. Once he has the map, I will be free.

* * *

Two hours later, I return to Versailles and enter the hotel. I knock on the door to the conference room across the hall from the library where the German delegation meets. “Captain Richwalder, please,” I say to the aide. A moment later, Georg appears. “Margot, what are you doing here?” he asks, closing the door behind him.

I peer over my shoulder to make sure no one is listening. “I got through to your contact,” I say, deliberately omitting her name. Relief crosses his face. “And here.” I pass him the document. His eyes widen. Having the map will solve many problems for him. I had walked the riverbank for nearly an hour, trying to figure out what to do and to work up the nerve to give the map to Ignatz. But in the end, I could not bring myself to surrender it to him. For even as I had stood on the quay, seeing his glowering eyes, Georg’s trusting face had appeared above his. The document that could have satisfied Ignatz would also save Georg. I could not take it from him.

Seeing his gratitude and relief now, I know that I made the right choice. “Margot, I cannot thank you enough.”

“Lieutenant Bouvier is a woman,” I remark, hating the jealousy in my own voice. “You had not mentioned.”

He looks up from the paper. “Does that matter?”

“Not at all,” I reply quickly. “She’s quite beautiful, though.”

“I suppose, though I really had not noticed.” The explanation sounds implausible, but his voice is sincere. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how we feel that way about some people and not others?” I do not answer. Behind him a door opens and an older man peers out expectantly. “I must return to the meeting.”

“Of course.”

As I turn away, he clasps my forearm. I freeze, caught off guard by the unexpected touch, the warmth of his fingers against my skin. “Margot, wait...” He looks down, as if he has surprised himself. But he does not let go. Several seconds of silence pass between us. “Let me show you my appreciation. Dinner in Paris, tonight? I’ll get a pass and the car and we’ll have a nice meal. No talk about work or the conference or the treaty, I promise.”

I hesitate.
Walk away,
a voice inside me says. The kiss last night, spontaneous and unplanned, seems somehow less culpable than a planned deception. “How can we possibly spare a night of work?”

He considers the question, torn between wanting to take me out and needing to press forward. “Dinner first, then we can come back and work late.”

My stomach flutters. “That would be fine,” I say in spite of myself.

“You’ll go out with me, then, a proper date?” He repeats the question, not quite believing my response the first time.

“Yes.” I shouldn’t, but I will.

His face brightens, hopeful as a boy’s. “Shall I pick you up at seven?”

An older man appears behind him suddenly in the door frame then. “Captain Richwalder, I apologize, but we really must...” He stops midsentence, noticing Georg’s hand on my arm.

But Georg does not pull away, and in that moment, everything between us is out in daylight, exposed. The man clears his throat and disappears back into the room.

“Tonight, then,” Georg whispers. Then he steps away and closes the door between us, leaving me alone in the hallway, shaking.

Chapter 13

That night at seven I stand before the mirror putting the final touches on my outfit, a dress of simple blue satin, adorned only by my mother’s necklace and the bracelet Georg had given me. I study my reflection, fretting. Georg had remarked once that he disliked the stiffer, more ruffled fashions, but perhaps my choice is too plain for a Saturday evening in Paris. If only I had something a bit more womanly to wear, or perhaps some more of the things Celia always tried to press on me, such as a pencil to darken my brows or a bit of rouge.

The doorbell rings and I press the buzzer. “Come in,” I say when Georg reaches the landing. He wears the same dress uniform as the night of the dinner party, epaulets at the shoulder, three gold bands around the jacket forearms.

But he stands awkwardly inside the doorway. Though we have been alone any number of times at the hotel, it is somehow different here and he is reluctant to enter. “Your father isn’t here,” he observes. I cannot tell if he is disappointed or relieved.

I notice an envelope lying on the table by the door. It is a letter I received earlier from Stefan and I had opened it hurriedly, barely scanning the scrawl. It sits now just inches from where Georg stands, the photograph Stefan had included facing upward on top. I hold my breath, waiting for Georg to ask about the man in the picture, to come to the realizations I will not be able to deny. A brother, I imagine claiming, if he asks. A cousin. Then I stop, mortified. How far will my lies go?

But he does not look down, instead staring only at me. “Shall we?” I ask. He clears his throat, nods.

The sky is still bright forty-five minutes later, as the car winds its way into Paris, the late-day sun lingering like the patrons drinking coffee at the sidewalk cafés. Georg stares out the window eagerly in spite of the disinterest he’d professed when we first spoke. He has only been into the city once since arriving, I realize, and that was the night he collapsed at the dinner. The car pulls to a stop by the river, just beneath the Louvre. “Do you feel like walking for a bit?” Georg asks after he had come around to offer me his arm. There is an air of formality about him not present the other times we’ve been together.

We stroll along the quay, past the slanted carts where merchants sell used books and other wares. The waters of the Seine high and brackish. At the base of a bridge, a group of small children hide, pretending to shoot one another with imaginary guns. Georg shakes his head. “How can they still play at war after all that has happened?”

A few minutes later we turn from the river and climb toward the Champs-Élysées. As we pass one of the hotels, lively music seeps out through the open window. Inside, couples glide elegantly across the floor. The Saturday night dances have become something of an institution in the city, persisting even through the darkest days of the war. I’ve always been curious about the waltzes and other more modern steps, the way that the couples move so easily in tandem. I imagine then Georg taking me in his arms and leading me across the floor. “Not much of a dancer, I’m afraid,” he says, noticing my interest.

“Me, either,” I reply quickly, wanting to put him at ease. It is not just the dancing that is off-putting to him. The parties are sponsored by the British and he would not be welcome there.

We continue, navigating the sidewalks crowded with other pedestrians enjoying the summer evening stroll. Several women in fashionable dresses give Georg sidelong looks, but he does not seem to notice. A few minutes later, he stops before Maxim’s. “I thought we’d eat here,” he says. It is a mistake, I decide instantly as we pass beneath the red-and-gold awning through the double oak doors. Georg has not spent enough time in the city to realize that the once-elegant restaurant has changed since the deluge of foreigners arrived. But I do not want to hurt his feelings.

Inside, the front room is packed thick. A group of American officers stands by one of the high tables, enjoying a champagne dinner, great quantities of alcohol and not much else. They are bantering loudly with two women at the bar, who with their heavy makeup and skimpy outfits make no effort to conceal the fact that they are prostitutes. Through another doorway, dance music blares and bodies press together, twirling as gaily as though it were midnight. Something is different from the few other times I’ve been. Though the conference continues apace, there is a sense of it all ending. In days or weeks, the treaty will be announced and then the conference will be over. There is an intensity to the revelers, as though they need to drink it all in before it is gone.

“Perhaps somewhere quieter,” Georg frets as we squeeze between tables in the bar, inching toward the restaurant seating. “One of my colleagues recommended it, only...”

“It’s fine,” I reassure. He has put much thought into the evening and I don’t want to disappoint him.

He wrinkles his nose as a plume of smoke drifts up from one of the tables. “Does it bother you?” I ask.

“Living in such tight quarters on the ship, I inhaled enough of others’ smoke for a lifetime.” He raises his voice slightly to be heard above the din. “Not a major matter. But it’s funny, isn’t it, the way that living somewhere else can change you? For example, the officers’ quarters on the ship were quite nice, but the food ran scarce and once when we were stranded and unable to make it in to port the only thing we had to eat for two weeks were turnips. I’ve not been able to swallow one since.”

I laugh knowingly. Living abroad had changed me, too, not as profoundly as the war had Georg, but in a dozen more subtle ways. Across the room, the banter has picked up, the soldiers now openly catcalling to the women at the bar. Georg scowls. “This is most improper. I’m so sorry.”

“Not at all.”

Georg takes my arm without asking and draws me close. As he scans above the crowd for the maître d’, a large-bellied man jostles into him. “Excuse me,” Georg says reflexively, though the fault is not at all is.

“No excuse, you peacock. Your uniform,” the man jeers drunkenly. “It is a relic.” I picture then the stares Georg attracted on the street. Perhaps it was not admiration at all, but anger at his audacity for openly identifying himself as a German soldier.

“We are at peace, sir,” Georg responds stiffly, his cheeks flushing as though he has been slapped.

“It is still an offense,” the man retorts. Georg winces. To him, the uniform is second skin, the only thing he has known. What future has he without it? He cannot—will not—deny who he is to appease the social and political sensibilities of the day. Without provocation, the man spits in Georg’s direction. I can feel Georg’s arm tightening in anger and I press on it, willing him not to respond, and pull him toward the exit.

“I’m sorry that you had to see that,” he says when we’ve reached the street, wiping the spittle from his lapel.

“Does it happen often?”

“Quite, I’m afraid.”

“Have you ever thought about not wearing the uniform?”

“To avoid trouble, you mean?” I nod. “I considered it in the beginning. But I’m an officer of the German navy. It is a question of honor.”

Honor.
Everything Georg does is about honor. Not stubbornness, but something born of a deeper, more principled place. And me? I’ve lied to him about Stefan, deceived him by taking the document. No, I’m the furthest thing from honorable. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Perhaps we should just return to Versailles.” His eyes betray his disappointment as he looks out across the river where a ribbon of pink sky sits atop the roofs like icing on a cake.

I shake my head, set upon saving our evening in Paris. “I have an idea. Come.” It is my turn to lead now, taking his hand and retracing the route toward the nearby neighborhood where our hotel had been. I stop in front of a crémerie. “Wait here.” A few minutes later I emerge with a basket. “We’re not done,” I say playfully, and dutifully he follows me farther down the road to the bike shop I frequented when we lived here. I pay the shopkeeper for the bicycle rentals and wheel them out onto the pavement.

“Bicycle riding?” he asks in disbelief as I push one in his direction. “That hardly seems...”

I fasten the basket to the handlebars. “You don’t ride?”

“Well, perhaps a few times as a boy. And horses, of course.”

“It’s not that different.” Then I stop. He seems so well and happy now, it is easy to forget that just a few days earlier he had been gravely ill. “Perhaps the strain will be too much.”

“I’m fine.” He squares his shoulders, rising to the challenge.

I mount my bike. “Then catch me if you can.” I navigate carefully down the street in the direction of the park.

“Margot...” Georg’s voice has grown fainter as he falls behind in the distance. I glance over my shoulder, smiling at the sight of him wobbling uncertainly on his bike, shaky as a newborn calf. When we reach the entrance to the park, I pedal faster. I’ve not ridden since our move to Versailles and I savor the familiar burning in my legs.

Georg is beside me then, grabbing the handlebar of my bike to slow me. “Mercy!” He laughs and topples his bike sideways to the grass, falling with mock dramatics, more playful than I’ve ever seen him.

Reluctantly, I set mine down beside him. “We’d best pull farther off the path, so we’re not made to leave at dusk.” We turn the bikes into a clearing set apart by tall bushes. Suddenly it feels as though we are miles away from the city.

“That’s better,” he says. He means the two of us alone, freed from the congestion of the restaurant and the streets. Alone together is the only place this seems to work. “Though we should have a blanket.” He frowns. “Your dress will get soiled.”

I run my hand along the soft, dry patch of moss beneath us. “Nonsense.” I pull from the basket the food I purchased. “Just an assortment of cheese and some pâté. I hope you like them.”

“I’ll eat anything as long as it’s not pickled. I had enough of the canned and the salted on the ship to last me a lifetime.”

“And turnips,” I tease, “don’t forget those.” Hungry after the bike ride, I spread some chèvre, thick and salted, on a piece of baguette and take a bite. As I chew, I peer through the trees. Though I cannot see it from here, I know that just on the other side of the brush sits the pond where I saw Krysia watching the children that first day.