René was still talking. “Perhaps you think you can disgrace me, turn me in as a profiteer? I’m a respected man in Grasse, with powerful friends. You’re a half-mad crone gone crazed from grief. Who do you think will be believed?”

“You’re the man who informed against Oradour-sur-Glane.” Charlie’s voice dropped into the conversation like a chunk of ice. Eve looked at her, startled. Don’t speak, don’t draw his notice—but Charlie went on, eyes burning like coals. “You’re responsible for the massacre of six hundred souls. I don’t care how many powerful friends you have, you old bastard. France will not forgive that.”

René’s eyes went over Charlie’s face, lingering, but he still spoke to Eve. “Who’s this little thing, then, Marguerite? Not a daughter or granddaughter, I think. That shriveled old cunt of yours surely never produced anything this pretty.”

Eve didn’t respond. She looked at Charlie instead, feeling the squeeze of an unfamiliar emotion inside. Perhaps love. “Call her Mercury, René. The winged messenger who came knocking at my door. She’s the reason I’m sitting here. She’s the reason you won’t get away this time. She’s your downfall.” Eve raised her champagne in salute. “Meet Charlotte St. Clair.”

His brow creased. “I don’t know the name.”

“You know my cousin’s.” Charlie’s fingers tightened so hard around her champagne flute, Eve was surprised it didn’t shatter. “Rose Fournier, also going by the name of Hélène Joubert. She was blond and lovely and she worked for you in Limoges, and you got her killed, you son of a bitch. You gave her name to the Milice because you were afraid she might be spying on you, and she died with nearly every other soul in Oradour-sur-Glane.”

The waiter chose that moment to arrive with the rillettes de canard. René continued to look at Charlie thoughtfully as he unfolded his napkin, smeared a toast point with duck-fat paté, and consumed it with another small sound of appreciation. “I remember her,” he said at last when the waiter glided away. “The little bitch who liked to eavesdrop. I take a dim view of nosy waitresses.” A glance at Eve. “Never let it be said I don’t learn from the past.”

“Why didn’t you just fire her?” The words rasped as if they were scraping out of Charlie’s throat. “Why did you turn her in?”

“Just to be safe. And to be blunt, because it pleased me. I have a great antipathy now for spying women.” A shrug. “But I hope you aren’t blaming me for the death of the entire village? That would be astoundingly poor logic. I am hardly at fault for some German general choosing to so thoroughly exceed protocol.”

“I blame you for her death,” Charlie whispered. “You didn’t know if she was Resistance or not, and you still reported her. She could have been innocent, and you didn’t care. You bastard—”

“Quiet, child. The adults are speaking.” René reached for another toast point. “More champagne, Marguerite?”

“I believe we’re done here.” Eve drained her flute and rose. “Come along, Charlie.”

The girl froze. Eve could see her trembling, knew the kind of rage that gripped her, how she wanted to hurl herself across the table and saw that old throat open with a butter knife. Eve understood that feeling very well.

Not yet, Yank. Not just yet.

“Charlie.” Eve’s voice cracked like a whip.

The girl rose, visibly shaking. She looked at René, calmly sitting there with duck fat glistening on his lips, and she whispered, “We’re not done yet.”

“Yes, we are.” He talked past her, to Eve. “If I see you again, you raddled bitch, or hear you are trying to find my home or blacken my reputation, I will have you arrested for harassment. I’ll consign you to oblivion and go back to a life where I never have to think of you.”

“You think of me constantly,” Eve said. “The thought of me gnaws at you every day. Because I’m walking proof you never were as clever as you thought you were.”

His eyes flared. “You’re a turncoat who betrayed her own thanks to a spoonful of opium.”

“But I still fooled you blind. And that’s been eating you alive for thirty years.”

The mask fell at last, and Eve saw raw fury. His eyes burned as though he could fell her dead on the spot, and she gave a slow, contemptuous smile. They did not move, just exchanged their dueling gazes in venomous stillness as waiters exchanged puzzled looks. This was clearly not the happy reunion they had thought to see.

“Au revoir.” Eve reached over to his plate, picked up a toast point, ate it slowly. “‘I must lie down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’”

“That’s not Baudelaire,” he said.

“Yeats. I told you to find another poet.” Eve picked up her hat. “In that foul rag and bone shop you call a heart, René, take the time to admit you are afraid. Because your fleur du mal has come back.” She took Charlie’s arm in a grip like steel and turned for the door. “Sleep on that.”

CHAPTER 39

CHARLIE

I stopped outside the restaurant and stood gulping for air, as though I’d just stumbled out of a poison cloud. I could still hear that flat metallic voice telling me he’d reported Rose to her death just to be safe. That it had pleased him.

Eve had described him so often. The unwavering eyes, the long fingers, the elegant surface. But she had not done him justice. That hadn’t been a man sitting across the table from me. It had been a human viper.

I wanted to be sick. But Eve moved past me, heading down the street nearly at a run, and I forced myself into motion.

“Eve, we don’t have to run.” Dashing to catch up. “He’s not coming after you.”

“No.” Eve never stopped. “I’m going after him.”

For an instant my heart howled agreement. I thought of that man, and I didn’t feel any of the queasiness I’d experienced when I first realized Eve’s revenge might be murderous. Half a glass of champagne in René Bordelon’s company would be enough to convince anyone that sometimes even old men deserved to die.

But common sense struggled through the red haze of fury, and my heart lurched. “Eve, wait. You can’t risk it, you—”

“Hurry up!” She kept striding, blazing eyed, through the twisting streets. A tall Frenchman took one look at her expression and stepped out of her way. My mind raced, pulled in two directions. Stop her, common sense argued, even as rage screamed, Why?

Turning the last corner, I saw the Lagonda in front of our hotel, blue and gleaming. I sagged in relief. I needed Finn: his calm, his quiet logic, and if all else failed his implacable arms keeping Eve from charging into disaster. But he wasn’t beside his beloved car, and inside, the desk clerk passed me a note covered in his back-slanting scrawl. “He went out to have drinks with the garage mechanic,” I said, replying to Eve’s look of brusque inquiry. “They’re offering him a job, something about engine restoration—”

“Good.” Eve took the stairs two at a time. I crammed the note in my pocket and followed.