Her own orchestra, he supposed. She the maestro.
“Would you?” A maestro who still couldn’t seem to fathom that all eyes were on her, right where they belonged. “I know it’s an inconvenience, you’d have to stay at the villa overnight. The plane won’t come until full dark. You’re likely tired after three days of auditions...”
“I wouldn’t have offered if I weren’t willing.” He proved it with a smile.
“Hurry up, old man,” Gustave taunted from the door to Marcel’s office. “La patronne’s cook will have food, and I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving.” Zelie had clearly gotten to know his cousins well while Marcel was in Germany. It still took him by surprise at odd moments.
Emile stepped from the room with Marcel’s briefcase in hand. “Do you need anything else? I want to spend some time with Marie after dinner, before the drop tonight, so we need to get going.”
Juste ciel,they were still as impatient as they’d been as boys. “Let me pack my own things, Em. You won’t die of starvation in two minutes, either of you, and Marie will wait five minutes for you, I daresay.” He jogged the last few steps, pulled the briefcase from Emile’s hand, and moved into his office. It didn’t take him long to gather all the judging forms from the last few days, shuffle them into a neat pile, and slide them into his case. He grabbed the keyring he’d put in his desk drawer and locked the door behind him when he stepped out again.
Zelie cast a glance at his head. “Do you never wear a hat?”
His cousins both sniggered like idiots. Of course. “Never,” Emile said.
“It would mess up hishair,” Gustave added, oh-so-helpfully. Complete, of course, with a feminine affectation and exaggerated bounce of his hand near his own tight-cropped locks.
Vivi cackled with laughter. Zelie pressed her lips against a smile.
Marcel shook his head and led the way toward the exit. “Careful, boys. I know all your secrets too. Emile, who would always flip over the game board and storm off rather than lose. Gustave, who was convinced a monster lived under the cellar steps. And which of you was it, again, who slept with his teddy bear until he was nineteen?”
Laughter followed him out the door.
Nine
Zelie knew it was selfish of her to have pulled everyone to the old stone house along the seashore for their evening’s work. Emile had returned from his rendezvous with his lady love, and he and Gustave were out in the field they’d be using for the airdrop even now, armed with electric torches that would be all the pilot would have for signals as to where to send the parachutes. But there was no reason beyond her own desire for their company to have asked Marcel and Vivi to do their candidate scoring here rather than in their offices in Marseille.
Their voices soothed her, though, as she bent over a cluttered desk in the corner of the main drawing room, reading through reports on German activity along the demarcation line. A nearly constant stream of couriers and agents came in and out—cryptographers who would encode all the information on Nazi military operations that she wanted to pass along, radio operators to send those encrypted messages to England, former military consultants to help her make sense of what each detail meant, locals to give their perspective on activity in certain areas. Some had alreadyretired, but given the impending delivery, most were still up and about, busying themselves.
For all the company, she usually felt isolated. Alone. She was, as the Laurent cousins called her,la patronne. The boss. The one all those people expected direction from, encouragement, orders.
She wasn’t their friend. Wasn’t their confidante, not about their personal lives.
Vivi was obviously different, having known her all her life. And Marcel... he was different too, though she wasn’t sure how it had happened. How he’d become a friend so quickly.
Regardless of how, she was grateful. It meant that at least once every week or two, when they met to exchange information, she would be able to be herself for a few minutes. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable after Navarre’s last visit, and he hadn’t judged her for it. Hadn’t deemed her a useless, emotional woman who couldn’t be trusted.
No, it was more than that. It wasn’t that he hadn’t judged her. It was that hehad—he’d judged her capable.
Gustave rushed into the room and came directly toward her. “They should only be a few minutes behind me. Everything went off according to plan, all parachutes landing safely and easily retrieved. I left them with the lorry and all the equipment and biked ahead to let you know.”
“Thank you, Gustave.” She considered the mountain of sensitive information out on her desk. The Englishman they were expecting tonight was an ally, so she probably didn’tneedto put it all out of sight... but the instinct was too strong. She shuffled it all into a tidy pile, slipped it into a folder, and slid the folder in the space between the wall and bookcase that she’d already created for such occasions.
Marcel and Vivi both stood too and drifted her way. “Where do you want us?” Vivi asked. “Here in the room? Or we could hide somewhere. Out of sight, so you can receive him alone. But within hearing range.”
A sudden image of Vivi hiding in a closet with a mop crowding her made Zelie smile. “Here is fine. In fact, Gus, please call anyone awake to join us.”
Gustave saluted and darted out. Though his method of gathering everyone together was less subtle than she’d have liked. He simply shouted down each hallway and up the stairs. Effective, but the mother in her winced. “He’s as bad as Blaise,” she muttered.
Marcel chuckled. “I trust you’re beginning to understand how I can play the piano with distractions.”
“I more wonder that you ever gotanythingdone.”
Lucien Vallet, her radio operator, entered first, handing her a slip of paper. “The Brits sent this when the airplane left England.”
“Thanks.” She skimmed it. Up until now they’d withheld details about this emissary of theirs, making her wonder if they really meant to send someone. This fellow’s name was Blanchet, it said. Probably his pseudonym, she doubted he’d be operating under his actual identity. It offered little more beyond an assurance that he was the best, and that after he finished training her people here, he was to proceed to Normandy and set up a new Alliance sector.
