*
“You cannot leaveus Tuesday, but must remain for the June festival,” Georges insisted the next day at luncheon.
“Especially for the ball Friday night,” the youngest daughter, Sophie, declared. “It’s the town’s grandest occasion.”
“I planned to be finished with my rock samples before then,” Ram claimed. He was privately overjoyed to stay, because from Georges last night at dinner he had learned nothing about the production of muskets at the old armory.
Amber joined in. “We will not be a burden to you for so long, Georges.”
“Nonsense!” The man was determined to be a good host and the finest of relatives.
Ram gave in. They would stay.
A good thing, too. Because they had learned little from local residents about production of weapons. Their visit to thelocal goldsmith had resulted in a lovely, if simple, wedding ring for Amber, but that man did not gossip. Neither had thepropriétaireof their auberge or the pretty town boulangère. Georges Boyer concerned himself only with pumping details from Ram about their recent journey to Buzancy. Ram said he needed any changes in the town so that he could include them in his updated travel guide. Georges’s three children shrugged, confessing they knew little about the armory. The only fact they learned was that two of Edouard’s friends had fathers who worked there.
*
Later that sameafternoon, Sophie tugged Amber up into her lavender bedroom and took up her favorite subject, gowns for the town’s summer ball Friday night.
“It is to be a grand occasion on the plaza outside thehôtel de ville. You are so lovely, madame. Everyone will be in awe of you.”
Amber thanked the girl for her sweet compliment. “I must think on this, Sophie. I have no gown for such a grand occasion.”
“Anything you wear will make it grand! Besides, what if you borrow my blue gown?” The girl clapped her hands. “I am an excellent seamstress, and you will never know the dress was altered.”
Amber could not refuse such generosity from so sweet a child. The girl regarded her as a lady of taste. Why that was, Amber didn’t know—she showed no hint of her life in Paris. She was dressed in her simple attire sewn by the Buzancy modiste.
When Amber mentioned the conversation to Ram that night as they undressed for bed, he waved a hand and dismissed her concern.
“Ah, fear not,ma femme.” Calling her his wife these days in increasingly endearing tones, he took up her hand and kissed theback. “Sophistication shows in everything you are. The way you walk, the way you speak, how you look at the world as yours. Sophie sees a woman who knows what she wants—and who she is.”
“I hope not all of who I am!” she joked, but reveled in Ram’s words, including his reference to her as his wife. She was his co-conspirator, a stranger whom he had adopted, a woman whom he’d vowed to save. Since they had united, they had become friends who truly enjoyed each other’s company. In that, he played the part of her husband as deftly as an actor at theComédie-Française. But the past few days, when he gazed at her across the Boyers’ salon or smiled with her at breakfast, she saw him transform by tiny increments from the man who acted as her mate to one who became the husband she laughed with, planned with, plotted with—and slept beside.
He had become so natural a mate to her these past few days that she had no answer for the question that had begun to form in Buzancy. Was Ram, this British spy who had invaded her life, becoming more than he claimed? Was he more than her protector? Was he at once her conspirator? In subtle ways, also her confidant? Her friend?
And if he was all of that in so little time, was she lax, careless? Or wise?
Prudent.Ram had used that word. And she liked it. Favored it. Told herself many times a day as she glanced at him and smiled or nodded in agreement that she was being prudent to accept his kind offer of his attention, his care, his body as her bulwark against the misfortunes those like Vaillancourt could cast against her.
I am prudent. Aren’t I?
“What do you think, madame?” The next day, Sophie held up for Amber’s inspection another garment she had altered for herself. But the girl’s question helped Amber avoid answeringher own. “Is my stitching good enough for the alterations to the blue gown for you?”
Sophie was bubbly and lovely. With pale blonde hair and woodsy-blue eyes, she was the epitome of youth and positivity. All of which Amber had never been. Only once had she approached that much joy for life, and that had been in the eighteen months when she was married to Maurice. Now she had begun to accept the help of an agent of espionage to help her escape the price of her own acts of spying.And my acceptance of Ramsey does not challenge what I still feel for my darling Maurice. For Maurice, that was love. This for Ram is gratitude, delight…and friendship. Just friendship.
She regarded Sophie with a broad smile. “Merci beaucoup, Sophie. Your stitching is expert, and I am so honored you will allow me to wear the gown.”
“It’s not grand, like a Paris gown, madame. But—”
“I love it,” she assured the girl.
“Even after I finish, it may not fit well,” Sophie said worriedly.
“I think it will be superb.” Sophie was a chubby girl, and as tall as Amber. So the length would be right and the wealth of fabric around Amber’s large breasts would fit. If she were not in the height of fashion, she was not in the city, in Society, nor in the mood to beau courant.
She took the shimmering icy-blue charmeuse, dotted with tiny embroidered white peonies, between her fingers and rubbed the smooth silk that flowed like water from her touch. “I think it is from Lyon.”
“It is. Papa ordered it for Mama, but she was never able to wear it.”
