“Your sources are mistaken.”
“My sources are never mistaken. They are occasionally incomplete, but never mistaken.” She smiled, and this time it almost reached her eyes. “Come now, indulge me. I have had a very trying few weeks, and I deserve entertainment.”
Thomas sighed the sigh of a man who knew resistance was futile and began to tell the tale of a mission few in the CIA even knew had occurred. That the Baroness knew of it was baffling.
Two bottles and several hours later, when Thomas offered to accompany her back to her hotel, the Baroness refused to return.
“There are too many eyes in that place, and the concierge has a face like a suspicious fish.” Instead of rising to leave, she claimed our sofa with the regal authority of a queen commandeering her throne. We tried to offer her our bed, but she refused that, too.
Thomas found blankets and a pillow while I banked the fire, and by the time we had finished, she had already arranged herself in a nest of cushions, her hair loose around her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she murmured as we turned to leave. “For tonight . . . and for not pressing.”
“We’re here when you’re ready,” I said.
“I know.” She smiled faintly. “That is why I came.”
Thomas and I retreated to our bedroom, closing the door softly behind us. We undressed in silence and slipped beneath the covers.
“She’s scared,” Thomas said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I know.”
“I’ve never seen her scared before.”
“Neither have I.”
He was quiet for a moment. I felt him shift closer, his warmth pressing against my side.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “whatever she tells us tomorrow, I bet it’s going to be bad. I can feel it.”
I stared at the ceiling, thinking about the Baroness’s careful deflections, the fear she couldn’t quite hide, and the way she had flinched at sounds and watched the door. She had spent decades navigating the treacherous waters of Swiss politics and international espionage. She had survived the war and the peace that followed.
If something had frightened her enough to flee toParis—
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
Thomas found my hand beneath the blankets and laced our fingers. We lay there in the darkness, listening to the wind rattle the windows and the distant sounds of the city settling into sleep. We held on to what we had—the warmth, the silence, the simple fact of being together—and tried not to think about what morning would bring.
2
Thomas
Iwoke before dawn to the weight of Will’s arm across my chest and the sound of his slow and steady breathing. For a long moment, I simply lay there, unwilling to move, unwilling to break the spell of the quiet hour.
The flat was cold. Our radiators had given up their battle against the January frost sometime in the night, but beneath the blankets, pressed against Will’s warmth, I felt none of it. His body curved around mine like a question mark, his forehead resting against my shoulder, one hand splayed across my ribs as if even in sleep he needed to reassure himself I was still there.
I understood the impulse. I had it, too.
We had almost lost each other so many times. Paris, the Netherlands, Berlin, Vienna, that terrible night in Rome when I’d thought the bullet had found his heart instead of his shoulder. Each mission carved new scars, visible and invisible, andeach time we returned to our bed, to this small fortress of warmth and silence, I felt the fragile miracle of it.
Will stirred against me, making a soft sound of protest as I shifted.
“Go back to sleep,” I murmured.
“Can’t.” His voice was rough with drowsiness, his lips brushing my shoulder as he spoke. “You’re thinking too loudly.”
“I’m not thinking. I’m admiring.”
