The Last Time I Saw Paris - Lynn Sheene [77]
The air tasted metallic on her tongue. “What is this place?”
“Paris’ war effort for the Vaterland,” Grey said, his mouth twisted. “Ironworks, steel, pharmaceuticals.”
They pulled over at a checkpoint, north of Saint-Denis, where a few cars and trucks waited off the road’s edge. A gendarme stepped up to the window, scrutinized their permit and listened to Grey’s story. Sold all the season’s beets, going home to the farm north of Beauvais. Claire was amazed by Grey’s perfect farmer’s French. He was as English to her as Prince Edward. Hell, even more so. But today, just a simple French beet farmer.
A second gendarme opened the back of the truck. His heavy boots thumped around the empty truck bed. After a moment, the truck shook as he jumped to the ground. The gendarme at the window motioned them forward. Claire sat back and exhaled as Grey accelerated back onto the road.
The sun broke free from the horizon as they pulled onto a smaller road and headed northwest. She kept her gaze out the window. Open farmland, giant strands of heavy trees, a small village in the distance, church spire puncturing the sky. Madame Palain would have arrived at the shop by now. Claire rubbed her burning eyes.
The engine growled as they lumbered over hills. They turned onto a hard-packed dirt road. The truck jumped and swayed as they bottomed out over a deep hole. Grey flinched and cursed. After the truck righted itself, he stretched an arm behind to the back wall of the cab and rapped hard twice.
A moment and two raps back.
“You still don’t trust me?” Claire said.
Grey could only spare her a glance; he struggled to keep the truck on the road. “If we were searched, it would be better for you not to know.”
Claire tightened her lips; she stared back out the window. They’d squandered her life, and still, she wasn’t trusted.
“Claire—” Grey cleared his throat, let the truck coast to a stop. “I, we, didn’t expect you would be questioned. There was no reason for them to suspect you.”
“So what happened, then?”
“You caught somebody’s eye. It wasn’t your fault.” He shoved the shift stick forward, the gears ground. “I’m sorry I ever got you involved in this.”
“In rue Saussaies?”
“In everything.”
Claire leaned back in her seat, settled her chin in her palm, her elbow wedged against the door. “Thank you.” She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye when she realized what he meant. Grey was the who Odette referred to that believed in Claire, but never named. Not Laurent. Well, damn.
The truck bucked over a road that grew more narrow and rutted. They entered a dense forest, towering trees cut out the sky. A steep climb, the engine protested and they crested the top of a hill. For a moment they were above the trees in the bright summer sun. Before them lay more woodland, then open farmland and orchards. In the distance a small village was tucked inside a thick forest.
“Lyons-la-forêt. But we are going there.” Grey pointed toward a dense grove to the north.
“Secluded,” Claire said.
Grey grinned. “No formal balls for you.”
Claire threw him a dark glance. She had the awful feeling she was being hauled back to the French version of the farm she had escaped from long ago, the rebellious pig being dragged to slaughter.
They descended back into the forest and its shade, crossed over a heavy wooden bridge, then turned onto rutted tire tracks. Another half hour of bucking, and they pulled into a dirt farmyard. The house was a ramshackle thing backed up to the trees, constructed from bricks and heavy timbers in the Normandy tradition. Heavy dark beams crossed the walls; too many hard seasons had made the high-peaked wooden roof cant at an awkward angle.
A tilting barn of the same construction sat across the yard. A small orchard on one side, surrounded by a half-fallen fence. Many of the trees had broken branches or leaned wildly. It must have been