The Last Time I Saw Paris - Lynn Sheene [81]
Claire passed the china cups and empty food tins bursting with riotous purple, white and yellow blooms decorating every surface on her way to the kitchen. A rabbit simmered in a pot with potatoes and flour on the stove. Claire reached for a scarred metal spoon and leaned in for a taste. Not dinner at the Ritz but not bad either. A recipe she’d learned from Mama back when she had to stand on her tiptoes to see inside the pot.
“Smells delicious in here.” Grey stepped up behind her; his muscled chest brushed against her back as he peered over her shoulder at the stove.
Claire felt the warmth from his body, smelled the mix of tobacco and sun. The blood rushed from her head. She gripped the spoon and concentrated on stirring. “Thanks to you.”
He grinned, head tilted forward to examine her face. “I didn’t think Yankee princesses knew how to cook rabbit.”
Claire flushed at his stare and kept her eyes on the stew.
He gripped her hand, stilling the spoon. “Really, Claire, tell me, how—”
“Evelyn,” Anna cried from the doorway. “May I fold the napkins tonight?”
Claire stepped away from Grey, grateful for the reprieve. She handed Anna the squares she’d sewn from an old grain sack. “You remember how I showed you?”
The little girl nodded, her face serious.
Claire turned to Grey and handed him chipped china bowls from the cupboard. “I assume a proper British gentleman knows how to set the table?”
He raised an eyebrow, but his expression was admiring. “I’ll manage.”
A week passed, the new moon rose, a shadowed presence in the dark night. After dinner they sat in the living room gathered around the radio’s crackling tunes. At 9:15 they tuned the radio to the BBC and fell into silence. The opening measure of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony sounded the rhythm of Morse code signal for V, as in victory. Then the messages personnels, read in perfect French. Simple sentences about Jacques’s vacation in Lyon, Murielle’s new baby, a few lines of poetry. In truth, they were prearranged messages designed for certain ears, alerting agents of missions starting or aborting. Grey listened with eyes closed.
“Anything?” Walker asked as the broadcast ended.
Grey shook his head. At the anxious look on Marta’s face, he tried a smile. “It hasn’t been too long. They’ll have more chances.”
As Marta returned to brushing Anna’s hair, Claire offered Grey an appreciative smile. Thank you, she mouthed. He nodded, but his grin faded as he looked out the window into the darkness.
After settling the girls on top of their blanket-bed, Claire joined Grey on the crest of a rolling hill above the farm. A lone oak tree stretched its branches above them. The night was balmy. Tall grass swayed, whispering in a warm breeze that didn’t cool.
Faint lights from Lyons-la-forêt glimmered in the distance, but his eyes searched the black sky. “The plane should’ve landed tonight. Our messenger should have been here by now.”
“What happened?”
Grey scowled. “I don’t know. Our messenger is local. He’s supposed to lead us to the drop point in an open field somewhere out there. We light signal fires. The plane lands; we pull off our supplies and equipment, and load it inside the compartment in the truck. Walker, Marta and Anna take their place on the plane.”
“Could it still come?”
“It might. But these things are bloody difficult to plan, and after tonight they’ll have a moon to deal with. They’ll either have to wait for cloudy night skies for cover or”—he looked at Claire—“the next new moon.”
Claire ran her fingers over her calluses. She waited for the old surge of trapped despair, but found, to her surprise, her thoughts were on Marta and Anna. A sigh of disappointment for them. “But they will come, won’t they?”
She felt more than saw Grey’s shrug in the darkness.
“I know Walker is important to them,” he said.
“And the girls?”
“Well, they don’t weigh much, do they?”
She saw his teeth flash white, heard a low chuckle. In her mind, she inventoried their supplies. The food wouldn’t last. “They will weigh a lot less in a month. What