Page 92 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Tu m’enivres. You intoxicate me.

Betsy stopped going to Charles’s apartment. September blundered along, one day following miserably after the other. The papers announced an armistice. The war was over. Irreparably, irretrievably over. All those lives lost, all those brave Cypriots and Macedonians who had fought for freedom, the Italian Garibaldians who had come to lend their lives for the cause, the men who had perished on the Albania. Charles.

All gone and for nothing, worse than nothing. Not only was the Ottoman yoke still in place, but Greece, chastened, had to cede more territory to the Turks, more Greeks under Turkish rule, and pay a vast indemnity to boot.

September lurched into October. The gatherings in Aikaterini’s salon were muted. Betsy didn’t attend them anyway. She had better things to do, like write letters and tear them up again, or lie in bed, with Charles’s gold coin clutched in her hand. She couldn’t stop thinking about all those men, marching off so bravely. All those men who would never go home again. Men who limped home without limbs, men whose bodies had been broken by fever. Children left without homes; mothers with skeletal babies begging for scraps.

Her baby.

Charles.

Betsy tightened her hand around Charles’s coin, holding it until it hurt. Charles had given her his luck and she’d turned it against him. Not intentionally. She’d never meant to harm him. But she had anyway.

When Betsy opened her hand, she could see the imprint of the angel on her palm. Marking her. Maybe she should be marked. Didn’t they used to do that in France, to murderers? Brand them? Betsy folded her hand closed and opened it again, watching the marks fade. But she knew. She knew what she’d done. She wondered how she could explain to this baby, this child growing inside her, that she had killed its entire family. Its grandfather. And its grandmother.

And now Charles. But for her, he would never have been in Lamia. But for her, he would still be alive. Betsy wrapped her arms around herself, around the space where their child was growing, and rocked back and forth, her head pressed against her knees, her mouth opening and closing in mute misery.

There was only one conclusion. She carried death with her.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured to her baby, Charles’s baby. “I’m so sorry.”

The baby pushed and kicked inside her. Six months along now and it was already trying to get away from her.

“Elisavet. Betsy? There is someone to see you.” Betsy knew it had to be important for Aikaterini to fetch her herself, rather than sending a servant.

Betsy shook out her crumpled tea dress and made a half-hearted effort to stick a few pins into the bird’s nest of her hair.

Dr. Richardson, she assumed. Come to make sure she didn’t intend to return to the American School. Or maybe Mrs. Richardson, sent as emissary.

But it was neither of those. A woman stood by the mantel, where Charles used to like to stand, a woman in a perfect dream of a dress, the very latest model in cut and color.

Betsy knew who it was, knew it deep in the pit of her stomach, even before Aikaterini pronounced the words. “I would like to present you to the Baronne de Robecourt.”

Charles’s wife was beautiful. Charles had never said she was beautiful. No, maybe not beautiful, but—lacquered, like an expensive box, all shiny finish and everything locked inside.

She was fair, like Betsy. Or maybe not like Betsy. Her hair wasn’t an ash-blond muddle last washed a week ago but smooth and shining, coaxed into curls and gleaming gold.

She was taller than Betsy. That wasn’t surprising. Everyone was taller than Betsy. She was tall and slender and wore her Paris gown the way the women in the fashion plates wore them, all long lines and perfect posture and not a seam out of place.

Betsy looked down at her battered Aesthetic gown. There was a dried splotch of honey on the bodice and what she thought might be coffee down the skirt.

From the way the baroness was looking at her, she didn’t think much of Betsy either.

“You are Miss Hayes.” The baroness’s accent was much thicker than Charles’s. “I understand you knew my husband.”

“Knew. Yes.” In the biblical sense. Why was Aikaterini doing this to her? “He was a remarkable man.”

“Yes,” said the baroness drily. “Remarkable.”

Were they just to repeat each other’s words like parrots? Betsy cast a look of entreaty at Aikaterini. Aikaterini guided Betsy to the settee, sitting down beside her in a fluid movement of silk and embroidery.

“I believe Madame de Robecourt might be able to help you in your difficulty,” Aikaterini said gently.

Help? The woman looked like she wanted to squish Betsy like a bug.

The baroness seated herself elegantly on the most elaborate chair in the room. “My husband left something with you. I will take it.”

It took Betsy a moment to figure out what she meant. Charles’s most prized possession. His luck.