All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 12

  “We shall provide you with receipts for anything taken, of course,” Lieutenant von Sternburg hastened to assure them. “You shall be made whole. When they are processed, that is.”

  “Processed,” repeated Aurélie’s father with heavy sarcasm. “At least the man who last picked my pocket in Paris was an honest thief; he never pretended he meant to repay me.”

  “Enough of this,” said the major. “Lieutenant, see the best room prepared for me—and one for yourself, of course. Dreier and Kraus will be billeted here, the rest of the men in the village. The peasants can see them settled. I want the mayors of all the villages in the district summoned here. They are to attend me at supper. I shall receive them . . .” His gaze took in the castle yard, the Italianate facade of the new wing, the bulk of the great keep. His eyes narrowed on the giant tower. He gave a sharp nod of satisfaction. “There. I shall receive them there. I want everything in place by seven. See to it, Von Sternburg.”

  Turning on his heel, he walked away, taking it as a given that his demands would be obeyed, leaving the Comte de Courcelles fuming behind him.

  Aurélie vented her ire on Lieutenant von Sternburg. “Are we to be your innkeepers or your captives?”

  “Would it be easier to think of yourselves as our hosts?”

  “The same way we’re meant to make a loan of our property? As if we had any choice in the matter!”

  “Mademoiselle de Courcelles . . .”

  “Why? Why did you have to come here? Why couldn’t you have gone to . . . to the castle at Le Catelet? Surely that would be more convenient for you? Why infest us here?”

  “There were reasons.” Von Sternburg looked away. “Why aren’t you in Paris? I had thought you were meant to be in Paris.”

  “There were reasons.” Aurélie tossed his own words back, mocking him, while the soldiers and the retainers looked on in horrified fascination. “Why should you be thinking of me at all? It’s none of your concern where I am.”

  “But it is. At least now, now that we’re here. This is occupied territory, and you”— looking down, into her eyes, he said with disarming diffidence—“I suppose it is too much to hope you might not be entirely displeased to see an old acquaintance?”

  “Are you mad?”

  Von Sternburg smiled wryly. “The world’s gone mad. It would be strange if I didn’t go at least a little mad with it.”

  Aurélie’s father was still staring after the major. His voice was like ice. “No Courcelles has ever been a servant in his own home. Never.”

  “Sir. Monsieur le Comte.” Lieutenant von Sternburg stepped in front of him, between him and the retreating form of the major. “Whatever you are thinking . . . don’t.”

  Slowly, Aurélie’s father turned his attention to the younger man. “Is that a threat, lieutenant?”

  “No—a warning, only. Before you respond, know this. My grandfather fought at Mont-Valérien. My mother’s father. Perhaps you recall him, sir? The Graf von Enghein.”

  “He gave me my sword and my parole. He was a true gentleman. Even if he was a Prussian.” The count subjected him to a long, measuring look. “You have the look of him—particularly about the nose.”

  “Sadly, there are not so many of my grandfather’s stamp as there were.”

  Aurélie’s father snorted. “Your commanding officer, for one?”

  Von Sternburg bowed his head. “We must all find our way in this new world.”

  “At the cost of your honor?” demanded Aurélie.

  The lieutenant looked down at her, his expression rueful. “Honor demands I serve my country.”

  Aurélie lifted her chin. “Honor demands I defend mine.”

  “Your country, mademoiselle, or your pride?” asked Lieutenant von Sternburg quietly.

  Aurélie found herself, maddeningly, without an answer.

  Her father replied for her. “They are the same,” he said curtly. “The Courcelles and France have always been as one.”

  Except when they hadn’t. Except when they had warred with the monarch or his favorites, when they had backed the wrong pretender to the throne or made too blatant a bid for power. But that had been in earlier, darker times, and now the enemy was clear, the enemy was standing before her.

  “Are they?” asked Lieutenant von Sternburg. “There is a poet—an English poet—who says they also serve who stand and wait. It might be best to stand, sir.”

  “What can one expect of an Englishman?” asked Aurélie impatiently.

  “Action might be a salve to your pride, mademoiselle—but can France stand to lose the last of the family Courcelles? Or,” he added, with a bow in the direction of her father, “the hero of Mont-Valérien?”

  Her father held up a hand. “Tell me, lieutenant. Why should I take advice from an enemy?”

  “Because Herr von Sternburg is one of Maman’s admirers.” Aurélie’s voice sounded unnaturally high in the old stone courtyard, against the unfamiliar sounds of German voices in the background. “Is that not so, Herr von Sternburg?”

  “I think any man of sense would find much to admire in Madame la Comtesse de Courcelles—and in her daughter.” For a moment, his eyes met hers. Aurélie felt the color rise in her cheeks, not because there was anything insolent in his stare, but because there wasn’t. Turning again to her father, he said, “I may be France’s enemy, sir, but I should wish not to be yours. There is a difference. My object is only to avert unnecessary strife. I should hate to see you discommoded. Any more discommoded, that is.”

  “You speak like a diplomat, Lieutenant von Sternburg.”

  “Sadly, no diplomat. Only a lowly aide-de-camp. And I must see to my superior’s supper. Until then, Monsieur le Comte, Mademoiselle de Courcelles?” Bowing his head, Lieutenant von Sternburg excused himself, grave and courteous.

  Aurélie watched him go, tall and straight in his uniform, furious with herself, for giving so poor an account of herself, and with him, for giving the lie to his own words. Whatever respect he claimed to hold for her and her family, his actions spoke for themselves. He was here, with his ghastly superior, preparing to sleep in their beds and batten off their beef.

  And there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing.

  Mad schemes flitted through her head. Poison, arson, havoc. But she knew them all for nonsense. Von Sternburg had made it clear that they were nonsense. That there was nothing to do but—how had he put it?—stand and wait.

  Had her ancestors stood and waited at the Battle of Rouvray, where Jeanne d’Arc had worked her miracles? No. And nor should Aurélie. If only she could think of something, anything, to do.

  “So we have been invaded.” Her father’s voice brought her back to herself. “How well do you know that curious young man?”

  Aurélie gave her head a brisk shake. “Hardly at all. Herr von Sternburg is Maman’s acolyte, not mine. He was kind enough to make me the loan of an umbrella one afternoon when I found myself without one.”

  Wandering among the paintings at the Louvre. Chocolate and cakes at Angelina. Delicate white-and-gold daisies and the press of a gloved hand.

  It had been a matter of chance, nothing more than courtesy. He wasn’t at all her sort of person; maybe that was why the afternoon had stuck in her head, the unlikelihood of it. The Louvre was her mother’s province, not hers. She had always preferred to race with Jean-Marie, to play pirates with his brothers. That, she reminded herself firmly, was why she and Jean-Marie were so very well suited. He would come back from the war and they would marry and they would go on just as they always had. Lieutenant von Sternburg had nothing to do with it, nothing at all.

  Except now he did. Now he held their fates in his hand.

  “His grandfather was a good man,” said her father thoughtfully.

  Aurélie scowled at him. “Do you know what the Germans said, when they came to Le Catelet? ‘The barbarians have come.’ That is what they said. And then they made good their word. Victor told me. It doesn’t matter what his grand
father might have been. He’s one of them.”

  “One doesn’t reject a sword because it is made out of the wrong sort of steel. Not when one has no other.” This was a side of her father she had never seen before. Calculating. “Herr von Sternburg is no barbarian. And he has a softness for you.”

  “For Maman, you mean.” She wasn’t sure why it was so important to press that point, but it was. “I shouldn’t have thought you would give in so easily.”

  “What am I meant to do, run them through with a lance?” Never mind that she had suspected him of planning to do just that. At the look of disappointment on her face, he gave a gruff laugh and said, “A child of my own heart. At nineteen, I felt as you. But one learns with time.”

  “To surrender?”

  Her father winced. Surrender was a sore point with him. For all his fame, for all his legend, the French had lost at Mont-Valérien. “To bide one’s time. Your German made a good point, whatever his motives.”

  “About waiting?”

  “About the price of pride. Once, war was waged by gentlemen. But now . . . If my opponent is no gentleman, need I treat him with honor? There are some with whom one would not sully one’s sword.”

  He was speaking to himself as much as her. Aurélie wasn’t sure she liked the way his thoughts were tending. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we wait,” said her father. “And we see if your Lieutenant von Sternburg may yet be of some use to us. But in the meantime, we dress for dinner.”

  The major demanded that dinner be laid out, not in the dining room in the new wing, with its mahogany table that seated forty, its gas lighting, its intricate plasterwork and beautifully painted murals, but in the cavernous hall of the old keep, where torches guttered in holders long rusted with disuse, wax dripped from the tallow candles in the ancient iron chandeliers, and the servants huffed in indignation as they hauled platters the breadth of the courtyard.

  The mayors of the various towns who had been summoned from all about the region had been left standing, huddled in small clusters in the great room. Some of them had struggled into their Sunday best, ill-fitting suits and too-tight collars. Others had come as they were. All seemed nervous—and hungry.

  “Has no one brought refreshments for those men?” Aurélie caught Victor by the sleeve as he passed with a carafe of wine.

  “We were told not to. By His Royal Uppishness.” Victor jerked a thumb at the major, who sat in state at the lone table placed in the hall.

  The major had placed himself in the center, above the salt, like a medieval lord. All that was missing were the rushes on the floor and the dogs nosing about for bones.

  “Bring him the best wine, he demanded, as if he could tell the difference between wine and horse piss.”

  “Victor—” Aurélie looked at her father’s old retainer with alarm.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said with regret, although Aurélie suspected he might have spat in it once or twice.

  “When you’ve delivered that, tell Suzanne to see that bread and beer are brought for the mayors. It’s absurd to bring them here when they would be at their suppers and leave them hungry.”

  Victor grinned at her. “Yes, mademoiselle.”

  As an afterthought, Aurélie asked, “Where’s Clovis?” Her father’s wolfhound was always at her father’s feet, but he was conspicuously absent tonight.

  “In the kitchen,” said Victor. “With Suzanne. His Lordship the High and Mighty doesn’t approve of animals. He says they’re unsanitary.”

  “Clovis?” Clovis had always thought himself more people than people. He was the very aristocrat of animals and considered himself well above such lesser beings as the kitchen cat. “Clovis is as much a member of the family as I!”

  “I’ll show him unsanitary,” said Victor grimly, and spat twice in the carafe for good measure.

  Aurélie rather wished she were in the kitchen with Clovis instead of in the decidedly drafty hall dressed in last summer’s best, a Worth gown of rhinestone-embroidered tulle over pale pink satin. The rhinestones itched and the tulle draping her arms was more a suggestion than an actual sleeve. The prior Demoiselle de Courcelles, she thought with some annoyance, had been fortified with rather more layers of velvet and wool before being expected to dine in this hall.

  There were diamond clips in her hair and on her breast. Well, paste. But they looked like diamonds in the uncertain light. One didn’t discard a sword, her father had said, because it was made of base metal. One could only hope the major would be too impressed by the glitter to look to the provenance. For good measure, Suzanne, the cook, had insisted on clasping a crucifix about her neck as though they were meant to dine with a vampire rather than a Hun.

  Suzanne had not been impressed by this distinction.

  He was only a man. A grasping little man. Just passing through. How long could they possibly stay? A night? A week? Sooner or later, one imagined, the line of battle would move again, as it had all through the fall, and the troops would go this way or that, and the major and Lieutenant von Sternburg would rush forward or fall back, depending on the fortunes of war, but, at any event, they wouldn’t be Aurélie’s problem anymore.

  She was stalling. She was stalling because she didn’t want to step into that room, so familiar, and so strange, and be forced to sit at that high table with Germans, as though she were their hostess rather than their captive.

  It wasn’t that she was scared. Not of Major Hoffmeister. Aurélie pressed her cold hands together, looking at the men at the high table, Hoffmeister with his ratlike features, his subordinates, one with a flaming thatch of red hair that made him look like a turkey—and Maximilian von Sternburg, who once, in better times, had made her the loan of an umbrella and had listened to her as though her opinions had merit, as though she weren’t just so much debris in the wake of the brilliant comet that was her mother.

  Her father was already at table, impeccably turned out in evening dress, his Order Grand Croix proudly pinned to his breast. He had been seated, in an unsubtle form of insult, at the far left of the long table, not at the major’s right hand, as his position would have commanded. There were only seven places set at the table, all facing out, so the assembled local dignitaries might see their conquerors eat as they stood hungry. All were filled but for one.

  Aurélie lifted her skirts and entered the room. The mayors fell quiet as she approached. Aurélie could feel the torchlight striking off the diamonds in her hair and at her breast.

  “The Demoiselle de Courcelles,” announced Victor, pronouncing the words with relish, as though she were their talisman, a relic made real.

  The lieutenant rose. The major didn’t.

  “Major. Lieutenant.” Aurélie inclined her head with what she hoped was elegant condescension but felt more like a tic of the neck.

  The major didn’t bother to respond. He was staring at the servants, who had begun circling among the local dignitaries, offering platters of bread and mugs of the local beer.

  “Who told them to feed those men?”

  “I did.” Aurélie’s voice carried through the hall. These weren’t her people, not most of them; they came from other villages, held by other families, some old, some new, but, now, in this moment, local rivalries were forgotten, extinguished. She stood for them and for France. “Those men had a long and weary walk and will have another before they see their beds.”

  The major pressed both palms on the table, half rising from his seat. “I did not authorize this.”

  “No,” said Aurélie, holding herself straight and tall in the light of the torches. “I did. It was my beer and bread to give.”

  “Not anymore.” The major turned his ire on Lieutenant von Sternburg, who had moved to pull out Aurélie’s chair. “What do you think you’re doing? Stop. Who said she has leave to dine with us?”

  The empty chair did. It had been clearly left for her. The confusion on Von Sternburg’s face told her all she needed to know. This, Aurélie realized
, was reprisal. Instant and petty reprisal for having the gall to bring bread to hungry men.

  Von Sternburg opened his mouth to intercede, but Aurélie forestalled him. “Is this to be one of those dinners?” she asked, keeping her voice worldly and just a little condescending, in her very best imitation of her mother. Never mind that she was shaking with rage underneath. “In that case, I shall take a tray in my room. I shall leave you gentlemen to your claret and your hunting stories.”

  “I don’t think so.” Slowly, Major Hoffmeister lowered himself back into his seat and there was something in his face that made the skin on Aurélie’s arms prickle beneath her long evening gloves. “If you are so concerned that everyone be fed, you may see that we are served. You! Boy!” He snapped his fingers at Victor, who was standing, horrified, clutching a carafe of wine. “Give that to Mademoiselle de Courcelles. She will wait at table tonight. We will have our supper from her own fair hands.”

  The men below stopped and stared, bread and beer mugs frozen suspended, mouths open. Aurélie hoped she wasn’t gaping as they were. She saw Victor’s hands tighten on the handle of the carafe and feared that he meant to empty it over the head of the major. She reached, instinctively, for it, to stop him. Victor yanked it back, away from her—and another pair of hands settled around the base, removing it gently but firmly from Victor’s grasp and presenting it to her.

  “It was the tradition,” said Lieutenant von Sternburg, his voice pitched to carry, “in the medieval period, for the daughters of the house to pour wine for the family’s guests. It was seen as no diminution of honor.”

  She couldn’t seem to stop staring at his hands, those graceful musician’s hands, against the cut crystal of the carafe. He wore a signet ring on one finger, a coat of arms worn to near invisibility.

  “My lady,” said Von Sternburg, and the use of the title felt less a formality and more a declaration. “My lady, will you do us the honor?”