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Perhaps when Herr Klausman’s mouth was filled with food, Julia might actually have a chance to participate in the conversation. “That would be—” Julia began.
But Nicholas had already turned Herr Klausman around. He took the cards from the man’s hand, set them on the table, and then gave him a firm pat on the shoulder that appeared to be more of a push. Herr Klausman turned back once more, but Nicholas, hand still on his shoulder, maneuvered him toward the end of the lounge car. The two walked at a quick pace through the door leading to the next car.
Julia stared after them, trying to understand the reason for the suddenness of the departure. “Nicholas is terribly eccentric, isn’t he?” she said to the other woman.
“Such fine men.” Frau Maven fidgeted with her scarf, her cheeks pink. She didn’t appear to have heard Julia’s assessment. She rose. “Come along. We must dress for dinner.”
Chapter Two
Nearly six hours later, Juliaset down her book on the small table beside her berth and put on her wrap. She’d not changed from her evening gown, thinking Frau Maven would be suspicious if she were to discover Julia wearing a different, practical dress so late in the evening. She hadn’t changed into her nightclothes, either, not wanting to change twice and risk the noise awakening her companion in the next compartment. She slid her handbag onto her arm and stood still, listening at the door that joined the sleeping compartments.
A mighty snore rumbled from within.
Julia nodded to herself as she checked the timepiece pinned with a ribbon at her waist and her wristwatch. Two minutes. She left the compartment and walked along the outer passageway of the sleeping car until she reached the conductor’s seat at the far end next to the door.
“Bonne nuit, mademoiselle.”He stood and tipped his hat.
“Bonne nuit, monsieur.”
The whistle blew, signaling an approach to the station, and the clacking of the rails grew further apart as the train slowed. Julia thought through her plan again. The Igney-Avricourt station was not as large as others on the route, but the stopover was longer than most.
Taking this same journey a few times per year, Julia and her father had developed a tradition. After dinner, the two would stay up late or, if Julia fell asleep, her father would wake her after Strasbourg. They would disembark at Igney-Avricourt and make their way inside the station to the cart with the old woman named Frau Spreitzer, who according to Julia’s father, made the bestgugelhupfin all of northeastern France.
The whistle blew again, and the lights of the station came into view. As they approached, Julia could see the crowds of people moving beneath the street lamps. Neither the late hour nor the remoteness of the locale prevented the station from being one of the busiest on the line. Frau Spreitzer’s cart stand was located in a corner of the station opposite the main doors. Julia had only to walk along the main platform, enter the station, cross through to the far corner, purchase the cake, and then return. The entire endeavor should take less than seven minutes, leaving her at least sixteen until the train departed again. Once she was back in her compartment, she would hide the cake in her valise, change into her bedclothes, and hopefully be exhausted enough to sleep through Frau Maven’s snoring. She would wake, refreshed, hours later to the sound of the conductor’s knock, thirty minutes before the train arrived in Paris. She nodded to herself. If there was one thing Julia knew, it was how to make and carry out a plan.
The train stopped, and the conductor stepped out to stand at his station beside the door. He took Julia’s hand and helped her descend onto the platform.
She glanced at both watches again, appreciating that a train that traveled more than a hundred miles in a day could keep such a precise schedule.Twenty-three minutes.
Taking a deep breath, Julia started along through the clouds of steam from the cooling engine toward the main platform, veering around piles of luggage and porters carrying trunks. Families blocked her path here and there, bidding farewell or welcoming a loved one. Voices around her chattered and called out in various languages—some she recognized and others she didn’t. She felt conspicuous, dressed as she was in a silk evening gown with feathers in her hair and pearls at her neck. But with the bustling of travelers moving about, she didn’t think anyone bothered to notice.
Another train whistled, and a man rushed past, one hand on his bowler hat to prevent it from flying off. Others moved at a more leisurely pace, breathing the night air and stretching their legs between long hours in the confined space of a locomotive.
Julia glanced back, making certain she could see her train among the others stopped at the station. She located it easily, with the familiar gold crest on the side of the cars and the immaculate uniform of the Orient Express conductors stationed at each entry. Reassured that she could find it again, she continued on.
When Julia stepped through the doors into the train station, she found the inside even more crowded than the platforms. Voices and the sound of luggage carts clattering over the brick paving stones echoed off the high ceilings. She didn’t remember ever seeing the building so full. But of course, Igney-Avricourt was a main station—a crossroads for quite a few lines—on the way to Paris, which, at this time, would be the most popular destination in the world as people from every nation journeyed to the World’s Exposition.
She clutched her handbag closer and pushed her way through the crowd, reaching the far wall and continuing along to the corner of the station. When she arrived at last, the vendor’s cart wasn’t there. Instead, a row of raised chairs stood against the wall beneath a large sign offering shoe-shining services. Julia would never have imagined anyone to need their shoes shined in the middle of the night, but every chair was filled and other smudged-shoe patrons waited in a queue for their turn.
A pang of disappointment poked in her belly. Had Frau Spreitzer stopped selling her cakes?
Julia looked along the walls, seeing a newspaper stand and, farther on, a man selling cigars from a box attached by straps to his shoulders, but there was no sign of a bakery cart. Glancing in the other direction, she saw only a sea of people in the waiting area.
When she inquired of the cigar salesman, he told her the bakery cart had moved to a new location in the front of the station, near the stagecoach stop.
Julia thanked the cigar man and glanced at both watches. Five minutes had already passed. Tinges of worry started at the disruption to her carefully planned agenda. But quitting now would be foolish—the stop was twenty-three minutes, and if the errand took a few minutes longer than she’d allotted, she would still return to the train with plenty of time to spare. She exited through the doors at the front of the station and relaxed a bit when she inhaled the familiar aroma of the cakes. Following the smell, she found Frau Spreitzer’s cart just where the cigar man had said it would be and joined the queue. Thankfully, it was short.
When Frau Spreitzer saw Julia, she grinned, her round cheeks lifting until her eyes were almost completely closed. “Bonne nuit, mademoiselle. You have come for the gugelhupf, no?”
“Oui,” Julia said. “Merci.”
“But you are alone today.” Frau Spreitzer wrapped the cake in paper, speaking French with the unique German accent of the region. “Your father, he remained on the train?”
“I am to meet him in Paris,” Julia said, handing a bill to the vendor and accepting her change. Noticing that she was tapping her foot, she stopped.
“Oh, theExposition Universelle.” Frau Spreitzer motioned with her chin toward the people moving in and out of the station. “I have never seen such crowds.”
“And shall you attend the exposition as well?” Julia put her money carefully into her change purse and closed her handbag.
