The moment I opened the door, she swept in like a winter storm wrapped in sapphire silk.
“William, darling!” The Baroness pressed cold-kissed cheeks to mine before I could utter a greeting. The scent of her perfume—something expensive and French—enveloped me like an embrace. She released me and descended upon Thomas with equal enthusiasm, holding him at arm’s length for inspection while avoiding his spoon lest she mar her spotless dress.
“My dear Thomas, stand still. Let me look at you both.” Shetskedand shook her head sharply. “You look dreadful. Have you been sleeping? Eating? Thomas, you are too thin. William, your hair is doing something unfortunate. Honestly, how do you survive without me?”
“Good evening to you, too, Baroness,” Thomas said dryly, though I caught the warmth beneath his tone.
The Baroness Isabella von Hohenberg stood in the center of our modest Parisian flat as if she had inspected every corner and found it wanting. Her fur-lined sable coat sparkled with snowflakesthat were already melting in the heat of the room. Beneath it, she wore a dress of midnight blue that probably cost more than our entire month’s rent. Silver-blonde hair was swept up in an elaborate arrangement that defied both gravity and the evident haste of her journey.
She was, as always, magnificently, impossibly herself.
“Something smells divine.” She swept past us toward the kitchen, shedding her coat onto a chair. “Thomas, you are cooking? How wonderful. How unexpected. How—” She peered into the pot and made a sound of theatrical despair. “How utterly wrong. You are stirring too often. The onions need time to rest between disturbances. They are not children requiring constant attention.”
“They’re onions,” Thomas said.
“They areFrenchonions. There is a difference.” She commandeered his wooden spoon with the efficient authority of a field marshal seizing a strategic position. “Sit down, both of you. You hover like anxious schoolboys, and it is making me nervous.”
Thomas and I exchanged a glance and sat.
The Baroness took command of the soup with brisk efficiency, adjusting the heat and adding a splash of wine from the bottle Thomas had been using. She tasted and adjusted again. All the while, she maintained a continuous stream of observations about the state of our accommodations.
“Your curtains are tragic, William. Where did you find them, a funeral home? And these spice jars—” She opened the cabinet above the stove and made a sound of profound disappointment. “Nothing is alphabetized. Nothing is grouped by cuisine. The labels do not even face outward. How do you find anything? How do you live?”
“We manage,” I said.
“Barely, from the look of things.” She closed the cabinet with a decisive click. “I will reorganize this tomorrow. Tonight, we eat. You do have bread, I hope? Proper bread, not that sad excuse for a baguette I saw on your counter?”
“There’s a bakery on the corner,” Thomas offered.
“Then you will go there first thing in the morning. Before seven, when the bread is still warm.” She tasted the soup again and nodded with satisfaction. “There. You see? Patience. That is the secret.”
The Baroness carried the pot to the table and began ladling soup into bowls she had somehow located without being told where we kept them. She appeared utterly at ease and completely in control.
But as I watched her flit about our kitchen, I noticed things. I had spent too many years reading people in hostile territory not to.
The Baroness’s movements appeared fluid and practiced, but there was a tension beneath them, a tightness in her shoulders that her theatricalgestures couldn’t quite disguise. Several times she paused mid-motion, her gaze drifting toward the window as if tracking something just beyond the glass. And her fingers, when she wasn’t using them to gesture or stir, traced restless patterns against her thigh.
These were not the habits of a woman on holiday.
“Baroness,” I said carefully, “why are you here?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Can a woman not visit her favorite Americans without an interrogation? I was in Paris. I had a craving for decent conversation and competent soup. I thought of you both immediately.”
“You arrived without your driver,” Thomas said. “And without your secretary or so much as a telegram announcing your visit.”
“Spontaneity is good for the soul.”
“You don’t do spontaneous,” I replied.
The Baroness regarded me over the rim of the wine glass she had somehow acquired. Something flickered across her face. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but the wariness of a chess player who had just noticed an unexpected move on the board.
“You have become annoyingly observant, William. I am not sure I approve.”
“Blame our training,” I said.
She was silent for a moment, her finger tracing the rim of her glass. When she spoke again, the theatricalbrightness had dimmed, replaced by something more genuine, more tired.
“I needed to get away,” she said quietly. “For a few days. Bern has become . . . suffocating. There are too many eyes, too many ears, and too many people watching to see which way I will move.” She looked up at us, and I saw shadows beneath her eyes that powder hadn’t quite concealed. “I find that I think more clearly in your company. You have a grounding effect, both of you. It is terribly inconvenient, but there it is.”
