Page 3 of The Number of Love
He slid in front of her again. “Belgian?”
She lifted her brows. Her accent was scarcely noticeable anymore, she’d thought. Not nearly so pronounced as Lukas’s or Maman’s. Her English was as fluent as her French had ever been. She even dreamed in it, most of the time.
And what business was it of his? “Antarctican.” She prepared herself to stalk away ... but there was something about the grin he gave her. Something that said he appreciated her answer.
Margot sighed. She’d always been drawn to anyone who actually enjoyed her sense of humor. She supposed she could stand to be friendly. For a minute, before her exhaustion fully caught up with her.
He held out a hand. “I’m Drake Elton. Have you a name?”
She blinked. It was a question stupid enough that it should have made her itchy. But he’d smiled at her Antarctica quip, so she’d keep playing along. “No, my parents forgot to give me one. It’s a great tragedy. I’ve been answering to ‘you, girl’ all my life.” She extended her hand too, but not with a limp wrist, as women usually did. She held it out to shake.
He breathed a laugh and shook her hand. “All right, You Girl. I’ll simply astound you with my powers of deduction.” He made a show of concentration—pursed lips, narrowed eyes, and fingers pressed to his temples. “Given that lovely hint of an accent, I would guess Wallonia or Brussels.”
Apparently Drake Elton wasn’t a complete idiot. A corner of her mouth pulled up. “And, actually. Notor.”
“Two homes, or did you move?”
She tilted her head to the side. A clever question. The answer would tell him quite a bit about her family’s station. “Two.”
Elton leaned against the wall, exaggerated concentration fading into an easy smile. “Which one did you prefer?”
Not the question she would have expected, exactly. But an easy one to answer. “The one in Louvain.”
Being not-an-idiot, he would be familiar with the nameLouvain—the place that had become synonymous with the German army’s brutality. The place that was now more pile of rubble than actual town.
But his face didn’t settle into lines of horror. Acknowledgment flickered through his eyes, and his smile lost a single degree of its ease, but he held it in place. “What do you miss most about it?”
She drew up straighter. Occasionally people asked her about her former home—what it had been like, how they escaped the destruction, whether the German occupation had been as cruel as the papers reported. But no one had ever asked herthat, and she didn’t have a ready answer—a strange state, for her.
Memories crowded, shouting to be recalled above the others.
The pastries from the bakery down the street. The library at Papa’s university. The old schoolroom where tutor after tutor had fled in exasperation when she’d insisted—and proven—that she knew just as much already as they did. The mountain of books and newspapers and articles they’d lost in the fire when the soldiers invaded.
Strange. Just a few minutes ago, she was thinking of how she didn’t want to go back. Now, in her mind, she had done just that. And her lips curved up. “The tree in our back garden. There was a bench under it—the best place in the world to read.”
His smile brightened again, went warm, invited her to say more.
Maybe she would have, had voices not been echoing down the corridor. But the last thing she wanted was the secretaries to see her talking with a smiling young man and mistake it for something inane, like flirtation. She’d be drilled by them for weeks. So she nodded and stepped away. “If you’ll excuse me. It seems everyone is arriving for the day.”
He pushed off the wall. “Aren’t you going to tell me your name before you go?”
Perhaps her smile was a bit impish. And perhaps she took a bittoo much joy from saying, “No.” Perhaps she would if he actually ever asked her for it. ... “But you’re a clever man. You’ll work it out.”
If she’d been too impish, he apparently didn’t mind. His laugh followed her down the corridor.
It took her only a moment to dart back into Room 40 and gather her things. By the time she exited again, though, the lift had opened and spilled out a veritable sea of codebreakers and secretaries, all chattering.
Margot aimed for the stairs, jogging down them with more of a bounce than she usually had after her once-weekly night shift. The energy would fade soon, but with a bit of luck she could ride it through the walk home.
Maman was just gliding through the doors, her beautiful face lighting in a smile upon spotting her. “Bonjour, ma petite.”
Margot smiled. She returned the greeting in French, let her mother enclose her in a quick embrace, and then pulled her chin out of Maman’s hand when she tried to examine her face far too closely.
“You have shadows under your eyes,” Maman said, still in French.
Margot shook her head. “I’m tired,” she answered in English. “But I am well. Do you need me to run any errands this afternoon?”
Maman shook her head too, but it looked far different than Margot’s mechanical motion would have. All smooth elegance and grace, her every movement. Even dressed in a simple cotton blouse and grey wool skirt, Sophie De Wilde looked exactly like what she was—a gentlewoman, the beauty of her day, a lady to make heads turn wherever she went. One of refinement and elegance that war shortages and a menial job couldn’t hide.
