Nancy stayed in bed the next day, only getting up to wash and dress when Henri was due home in the evening. If Claudette, Nancy’s maid, had noticed the blood on her clothes, she had not mentioned it. Nancy opened the hall cupboard on her way to the drawing room to meet Henri and saw her camel-hair coat hanging neatly on its padded hanger. It was spotless, but a patch on the side, a patch she was sure must have been smeared with Antoine’s blood, was slightly damp to the touch and smelled of vinegar.
Henri talked to her about the usual sort of thing: his day, his workers and, after they had hunched over the radio listening to the evening news on the BBC, the progress of the war. Hitler had lost an army at Stalingrad, the Allies were winning in North Africa. Only when they had begun to eat did Nancy tell him about the previous night.
“We could have got him out,” she finished, staring at the plate.
Henri filled her glass. “Eat something, my love.”
They still ate in the dining room whenever they were at home, and whatever they had, they ate off the best china. Since the arrival of Böhm and the destruction of the Old Quarter they had been having dinner alone more often. Friends not in the Resistance asked too many questions, and friends in the network kept apart from each other when they could.
Claudette had managed to create a sort of parmentier with some black-market mince Nancy had got hold of. I can’t let it go to waste, Nancy thought, staring at her food, and then she saw Antoine putting the gun in his mouth just as she put the fork of potatoes and mince into her own. If Henri hadn’t been watching her, she’d have spat it out onto the plate again. She managed to swallow.
“If he hadn’t seen Gregory, that man the Gestapo had… It was just bad luck,” she said.
Henri picked up his wine glass. He was trying, dear Old Bear, not to stare at her as if checking to see if she were mad, but she still felt as if she was under a magnifying glass.
“I’ll see his family is taken care of, you know that,” he said.
“Thank you, Henri.”
She put her fork down and covered her eyes with her hand. “We could have got him out.”
Henri took her other hand and held it. “My dearest Nancy, isn’t it time to listen to Philippe? To be more careful?”
She pulled her hand away. “No, I told you! It was bad luck! No one betrayed us, it wasn’t a German trap! We got those men out and then some sharp-eyed Boche must have caught sight of the boat in the moonlight.” She stared at him. “They are here, Henri. They destroyed the Old Quarter. They have sent the men off to fucking work camps. They are rounding up the Jews! Any pretense that France is independent is gone. We are under the jackboot. You can’t ask me to stop fighting. You can’t stop fighting.” She began attacking her food again. “It has to be faced. It has to be fought. And I won’t sit back and let other people do my fighting for me.”
He put his elbow on the table and rested his cheek on his palm. He always shaved before dinner as well as in the morning, even now when getting decent soap was a battle. How did she end up married to a man so proper in his habits? Luck. Luck she didn’t deserve.
“But the Germans can’t even win any more! Why can’t they just sod off?”
Henri laughed at that, and she flashed a reluctant smile.
Then he became thoughtful. “A wild beast is at its most dangerous when it is wounded,” he replied.
She put her knife and fork together and took his hand again. “Are we both at home this evening?”
He nodded, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. How strange to still ache with love for a man she woke with every morning, lay down next to each night.
“Invent me a cocktail,” she said. “I intend to win your entire fortune from you over cards and far too many drinks.”
“You may try, wife of mine. You may try.”
Nancy ended the night in happy oblivion, more deeply in his debt than ever.