Page 84 of Daughters of Paris

He cupped her face in his hands, tilting it back slightly. ‘Will you trust me?’

His voice was deep and urgent. It was clear this meant a great deal to him. She needed him to believe she was reliable and sensible enough to work with.

‘I will trust you,’ she said, suppressing a sigh of frustration.

‘Thank you.’

He released her, removed his hat, and wiped his forearm across his brow. ‘I have to go. I’ll send a message to the bookshop or via Sébastien at the Café Morlaix. Remember, if it isn’t from Augustin or Elouard then don’t trust it. Make my apologies to the others for not saying goodbye.’

He walked off across the bridge, hands in his pockets and head up, whistling as he went. Fleur walked back in the direction they had come from and met Colette and Sébastien. She said Laurent’s goodbyes for him. Sébastien then bade the two women farewell and left, carrying a paper bag of books. Fleur and Colette walked back to the Metro together.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Colette remarked, when they hadn’t spoken for four or five streets.

‘I have a lot to think about,’ Fleur admitted.

Colette patted her hand. ‘I can see that. I think you’re in love.’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Fleur said, much more snappily than she intended. She ignored the self-satisfied smirk on Colette’s face because she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that Colette might be correct.

Chapter Twenty-Three

February 1942

‘Fleur is so infuriating!’

Colette threw herself back onto the bed and sighed loudly to emphasise her point. Sébastien looked over from the window where he kept a bottle of wine. He gave her a quizzical look, or at least that was how she interpreted it given how short-sighted he was without his glasses. He obviously wasn’t going to ask her to elaborate so she continued anyway.

‘It’s completely obvious that she is head over heels in love with Laurent and yet she absolutely refuses to do anything about it. They’ve wasted nearly half a year when they could have been doing what we’ve been doing!’

‘How do you know?’ Sébastien walked back from the window. He put two glasses of red wine on the nightstand and climbed back into bed, pulling the nest of blankets around them both.

‘How do I know she is doing nothing, or how do I know she is in love with him?’

‘Both, I suppose,’ Sébastien said.

Colette ran her hand down his front, tickling the thatch of hair below his belly. He squirmed and trapped her hand beneath his own. His skin was warm and slightly damp from their recent exertions but his fingers and feet had already turned to icicles. There was never enough fuel to heat apartments adequately anymore and the winter dragged on, milder than the previous one but still bleak and bitter.

‘I know she’s not gone to bed with him because I ask her. She says they have only met a few times since she started working for him and more often than not it is someone else who gives the messages to her.’

Colette raised herself up onto her elbows, becoming animated. ‘I know she’s in love with him because whenever I mention his name, she does her best not to blush. I can see her trying as if she could stop her cheeks going red by willpower alone.’

‘That doesn’t mean she’s in love though,’ Sébastien pointed out. ‘I would agree with you that she is infatuated, but there’s a big difference between that and love.’

He looked at Colette intently. She gazed back, unblinking, as small flames danced around inside her. For the past months, they had been meeting two or three times a week to go to bed, sometimes in the evening but most often in the afternoons. Together they had developed quite an interesting repertoire of positions that had never crossed Colette’s mind in the brief affair with Gunther. As much as the sex, she enjoyed the lazy times afterwards when they lay and chatted about nothing in particular. It was the longest love affair Colette had ever had, but it definitely wasn’t love. She would recognise that when it swooped down on her, shocking her with a bolt of lightning.

Sébastien handed her a glass of wine and drank half of his in one gulp.

‘Careful, I don’t want you incapable.’ Colette laughed, wagging a finger at him.

‘Oh,mon trésor, if you think a glass of wine is enough to cause that you don’t know me at all.’ He put the glass on the nightstand. ‘Why are we talking about Fleur when I have to go to the café in an hour?’

‘Because she is our friend and we both want her to be happy,’ Colette reminded him. She did still have occasional guilty feelings that Fleur liked Sébastien more than she had initially let on, but she salved her conscience with the fact that Sébastien had never given the slightest indication he felt the same about her. If he had, that would have made things altogether more complicated.

‘True, but I can think of much better things to do with our time.’ He rolled over, pinning Colette beneath him.

‘And our mouths,’ Colette added, gently biting his shoulder.

Sébastien moaned and she giggled. Yes, making love to him was exhilarating and she intended to enjoy every moment before the affair inevitably ran its course. He was not a man her parents would ever approve of, so at some point she would have to find someone suitable to marry.

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