“You’re right. I probably should.”
Jean-Paul sat up straighter. “It looks as if you will—we seem to have forgotten to go by the car rental office.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
1944
PARIS
Fabrice
“This is disgusting,” Paulette said, reading one of Fabrice’s pamphlets, in which he summarized reports from Vichy-controlled France, where Marshal Philippe Pétain—chief of state of Vichy France—blamed moral corruption for France’s defeat. He called on women to return to the domestic sphere and have babies, and officially banned them from wearing trousers. Women were not allowed to hold a job or have a bank account without the permission of male relatives.
“And now, from what I hear from my relatives in Provence, the Italians have withdrawn and the Germans are rounding up the Jews,” Paulette said. “Just as they did here.”
“I heard about that, too,” said Fabrice. “I wrote about it last night.”
It was just the two of them in the printshop. It was heaven. Fabrice was doing all the work while she read through his pamphlets, but he didn’t mind. He would do anything to keep her here with him, always.
They were supposed to use only their noms de guerre and not to mention anything personal, but Fabrice spoke to Paulette honestly, sharing with her about his life, his father’s experience in a German hospital, his carpentry shop. He even mentioned the Château Clement.
“Château Clement?” she said, putting down the tract she was reading. “You are related to the Clements of Château Clement?”
He nodded, unsure whether it was a good thing or a bad one. His father had been ashamed of his aristocratic roots, preferring to create what he referred to as his happy-but-humble family home as a carpenter.
“But I am from a village called Fontaine-de-Vaucluse,” Paulette exclaimed. “That is not more than a few miles from Château Clement!”
“I’ve never been to Provence.”
“Never?”
He shook his head. “My father is estranged from his family.”
“Why?”
It was odd, but until this moment Fabrice had never really wondered why, had never inquired as to the details of the family drama. It was not a secret so much as simple knowledge, something he had grown up with, like the scent of freshly cut wood. The Clement family rift had seemed as natural and expected as the incessant sawdust on the tile floor of the workroom, mounding in the corners until his mother would become angry and finally sweep it up herself, giving the sawdust to the man who kept rabbits, or to the icehouses to keep the ice frozen during the sweaty summers. Or now, during the war, to the neighborhood bakers and butchers as a filler for breads and sausages.
“So you mean to tell me you’re the heir to a grand château, and you’ve never mentioned that in all your attempts at seducing me?” she said, a teasing smile playing on her lips.
Fabrice could feel himself blush. He had never thought of himself as an heir, but of course he was; he was the eldest son of Marc-Antoine, himself an only child. Fabrice had a sudden flash of the future: he and Paulette, returning to Château Clement after the war, mending the rift in the family, becoming admired, invitations to their sumptuous dinners highly sought after.
His daydreams made him blush even more intensely.
Paulette pretended to straighten the stacks of papers coming off theprinting press, to give him a moment to pull himself together. Fabrice wondered how he knew this, but he did know. This was how she was. He knew her. He loved her.
“Paulette,” he said, taking her hand in his, “I am old enough to feel what I am feeling. I know I’m younger than you, but my mother is older than my father by two years. It is not unknown.”
She gave a breathless sort of laugh and pulled her hand away, fiddling with the printing press. “It is not only that, Fabrice.”
“Please, Paulette,” he said, sensing he must make his case, that he might not have another chance. “I’ve never felt anything like this before. I can’t think, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything unless it’s for you. I will love you forever, Paulette. I would never leave you. I would never hurt you.”
He leaned in, hesitated for a moment, then kissed her.
She kissed him back. It was everything he had fantasized about, and more. It was sunshine and gold, it was a Shakespearean sonnet. It was an end to this war, it was the defeat of the Nazis. It was manhood. It was exquisite.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
PRESENT DAY
