Page 43 of Across Eternity

His mouth tips up at the corner. “Keep spending time with me.” His palm spreads over the back of my hand for only a moment. “I can assure you we’ll make him regret it more.”

* * *

We arrive at Le Tigre, a bar deep in Montparnasse a little over an hour later. It’s a relief. Twenty years may have passed, but the idea of being anywhere near Montmartre, where I was taken captive, terrifies me.

Looking around, you’d never know there was a war going on. Women are dressed more flamboyantly than ever, and most of them carry strange satin bags or boxes with them. “What are those things?” I ask Luc as we walk to the table. “I was here only a year ago. Handbags that large can’t have suddenly become fashionable.”

He looks at them and shakes his head. “Those are gas masks. It’s become all the rage among rich women to carry them in matching bags for exorbitant amounts of money.”

I sigh. “They should be saving every penny for what’s coming.”

“What do you mean?” he asks. “This phony war won’t continue much longer.”

“Your country just lost a decisive battle and went running home with its tail between its legs. You can’t still be under the impression the Germans aren’t a threat?”

“We were trying to punish them for what they did to Poland and we lost. But they’ll never get into France. The Maginot Line is well defended, and they can’t possibly get through Ardenne. The terrain is too difficult.”

It’s the very philosophy that will allow the Germans to invade without obstacle next spring. I’d like to tell him that, but I can’t, and it’s a reminder that there is a vital piece of me he can never know, much as Mark could not. That was the beauty of being with Henri, or at least part of it—I didn’t have to hide from him.

He hands me a glass of champagne and I drink it to the bottom and place it on the counter.

“I think you should teach me to dance,” I say.

“I’m happy to teach you anything you want to learn,” he says with an intentionally lecherous grin, which makes me laugh. Luc may not be everything I ever wanted, but he makes me happy, and it’s been so long since I felt happy that I barely remember the experience.

We each finish another flute of champagne and then he pulls me to the dance floor, painstakingly teaching me how to do the Lindy Hop. Henri once suggested I should know the dance because it was named after Charles Lindbergh, and the memory—even though we were fighting at the time—saddens me. It led to what followed, when he came up behind me, his breath at my ear, and finally let me know what was in his heart.

Did it mean anything? Did he say the same sort of thing to Yvette a few months later? Somehow, even after what he’s done, I’m incapable of believing it.

Luc lifts my chin. “Where’d you go, Amelie?” he asks. I see pity in his eyes.

I smile too broadly. “Sorry. I’m easily distracted. Show me again?”

We dance, and it feels as though if I can keep moving, I can stave off my sadness. But once we sit, it returns. Despite all the champagne and the shots, I am painfully sober again, and desperate for some new answer. Could Luc be it? He’d sleep with me tonight if I asked it of him, I’m sure. Why shouldn’t I? I saved myself all those years for nothing, for a man who didn’t wait three months for me.

“The next time we come I’ll teach you to tango,” Luc says.

I shake my head. “I leave in two weeks.”

His hand covers mine. “Stay. Give me a chance. I can make you forget him.”

My eyes flutter closed. It’s late. Something Cecelia wants badly is on the cusp of happening.

Is it this? I can’t have children, so she isn’t my daughter…but do I raise her with Luc? None of it makes sense, but maybe it doesn’t need to. Everything seems meaningless at this point. Maybe I should give into it and have some meaningless fun with a man who isn’t lying to me about it to make it happen.

The words why don’t we go somewhere private rest on the tip of my tongue…and fall silent when my eyes open again. Henri looms over the table, glowering at the two of us as if we’ve been caught naked together.

“I came to bring you home,” he says, his jaw stiff as steel, his mouth flat.

I’ve been through too much to be treated like a child with a curfew by anyone, but especially by him. “You came all the way here for that?” I ask incredulously. “I’ll ride home with Luc.”

A muscle twitches just beneath his cheekbone. “Amelie,” he says softly. “Please.”

I thought there was nothing he could say to sway me, and yet he’s found it. That single word, please, is imbued with so much desperation, so much pain, that I’m unable to deny him.

I’m probably not the meaningless fun kind of girl anyway. I turn to Luc. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

He grabs my hand. “I’m here when you’ve figured this out.”