Marc had smiled, his charming, beautiful smile. “I don’t know, darling. I must confess, I lied.”
Relief and confusion washed through her. “You lied?”
He nodded, glancing down at the grainy photo of the murdered woman with only cursory interest. “I told the man from the embassy that you left me to tour southern France. I had no idea where you were, or if you were even still in the country.”
Claire held herself very still. “Why did you do that?”
He shrugged, an elegant, classic gesture. “I have an instinctive distrust of the police. And I knew they could have no good reason for wanting to bother you. What was it—overdue parking tickets?”
Brazen it out, she ordered herself. Or confess. Don’t just stand there doing nothing. “Something like that, I would imagine,” she said finally. “I really don’t know. It was thoughtful of you to help, but I’d better go talk with the embassy and see what it is they want.”
“As you wish,” he dismissed it lightly, turning back to his paper. And ever since she’d been cursing herself for a fool and a coward. The more she lied, the deeper the hole she dug herself.
It was a pretty afternoon—one of the best she’d seen in a long time. The sun had come out, bright and strong, and burnt away the soaking rain. Even the bare trees were delicate against the bright blue of the sky, and Paris was at her finest. The air was cool and fresh, hinting of a heat-drenched summer to come, but right now there was only light and warmth on an afternoon of simple pleasures.
Claire found herself walking aimlessly through a residential section. She could only be thankful she had an instinctive sense of direction. Street signs meant absolutely nothing to her, refusing to imprint on her stubborn brain no matter how hard she tried. She could find her way back by recognizing landmarks and houses, not street names, and with that she had to be content.
Marc had taken the pale and still unwell Nicole to see her grandmother, leaving Claire to her own devices. The old woman didn’t approve of him, Marc had said humorously. It would be better to warn her of Claire’s existence, rather than spring Claire on her unannounced. After all, her daughter had been dead less than two years, and grand-mère was still having trouble accepting it. She wouldn’t like meeting her replacement.
So Claire had hours of free time and nowhere to go. The embassy was now out of the question. Since Marc had so innocently covered for her, she could simply stay in Paris, waiting. Waiting until things died down, waiting until she got up enough nerve to go to the authorities herself. Waiting for something.
She could always telephone back to the States. Telephone Brian, whom she’d sworn she’d never speak to again. The telephones in France were direct dial, thank God, and many of the public phones even had English instructions on them. It was her one defense against incomprehension, and she didn’t want to use it lightly. Once she called, there might be no turning back. She would wait just a little bit longer.
She was heading in the direction of the tiny park. It wasn’t far from Marc’s apartment—less than a ten-minute walk, and she’d discovered it one winter afternoon when she’d been searching for an English-speaking druggist.
It was a small and pretty patch of green in the midst of the huge city, and the benches and pathways were always pleasantly filled with people. Old people, feeding the pigeons, reading the paper, playing checkers, gossiping with each other. On a day such as this the park would be packed with people wanting to take advantage of the good weather while it lasted. Claire didn’t mind. As long as no one asked her anything in rapid, incomprehensible French, she was glad to be surrounded by people. She spent too much time alone in Marc’s apartment.
Someone was even selling ice cream at the edge of the park. The sun was surprisingly hot, beating down on Claire’s head. She’d let her red hair flow loose around her shoulders. Marc preferred a more formal style, but Marc wasn’t there to see it. She opened the buttons of her stylish wool coat and stared longingly at the ice cream cart. Why couldn’t she even remember the French word for ice cream? Why couldn’t they have it written on the white steel sides of the cart as they would in the States? At that moment she would have given years off her life for a scoop of coffee ice cream.
Resolutely she moved onward, heading down the winding path toward the shallow, man-made pond. It couldn’t hurt her to lose a few pounds around her hips, she told herself. There wasn’t a woman alive who couldn’t afford to lose a few pounds around her hips.
A woman was walking up the path from the pond, slowly, sedately, with the kind of inborn grace one only saw in royalty and the most expensive prostitutes. She was somewhere past seventy-five, with snowy white hair, dark, lively brown eyes, and softly creased skin. She was well-dressed, in a pale blue wool suit, and her hands were encased in white kid gloves. The gloves were stretched taut over knuckles swollen with arthritis, but the woman’s face reflected none of the pain and discomfort that had to be her daily lot. She caught Claire’s curious expression and smiled, a warm, friendly smile that was reflected in her youthful eyes.
Claire smiled back, breathing a small, sad sigh of relief as the woman passed her without speaking. She was always reluctant to respond to the friendliness of strangers when she couldn’t even summon a word of French. There was no way she could explain to the chauvinistic French that her lack of the language wasn’t arrogance or laziness. It was at times a torment for her, to be locked away in silence.
So intent was she on her brief moment of self-pity that she didn’t notice the rough figure coming up the path behind the elegant old lady. That he saw her made no difference, he wasn’t about to move from the center of the path as he continued on his way. He crashed into her, knocking her to one side, and moved onward without even a backward glance.
Claire had a jumble of impressions. The dark, twisted cruelty of the man’s face, the iron hardness of the body that had plowed into hers, his huge leather boots with their incongruous shine. She’d fallen against another man, and his indignant protests washed over her as she stared after the dark man’s disappearing figure. A slight shiver passed over her, as if a goose had danced on her grave, her grandmother used to say. And summoning her best smile, she turned back to offer an apologetic shrug to the voluble and much-offended Frenchman she’d landed on.
The apologetic shrug was not quite enough. The innocent smile, the damnable English words, “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t speak French” only seemed to make matters worse. There were times when Claire considered pretending she was Lithuanian or Bulgarian, anything but English-speaking. Her obvious nationality never failed to elicit a negative response.
The gentleman was waving his arms and shouting now. He’d been eating an ice cream cone, and her ill-timed descent had managed to squash it all over his elegant black suit. It looked like coffee ice cream too, Claire noticed mournfully. She tried again.
“I’m really very sorry,” she began, when a voice interrupted her, smooth and fluent, and a strong arm snaked around her shoulders, squeezing her very lightly, a reassuring squeeze, telling her he would handle things. She subsided, looking up at her rescuer as he reasoned with the angry man.
He was American, there was no doubt about that. He was also quite tall, well over six feet, with the bony sort of awkwardness that she’d always found oddly attractive. He had thick brown hair that was used to having hasty fingers dragged through it, bright
blue eyes, and a big, friendly mouth. His hands and his feet were in keeping with the size of him—huge and well-shaped, and his rumpled blue jeans and jacket fit with what looked suspiciously like the faintest tracing of early spring freckling across his impressive nose.
He turned back to her, his long arm still firmly planted around her shoulders, and grinned. “The gentleman forgives you,” he said.
Sure enough, the elderly Frenchman was no longer gesturing and shouting. He was smiling, a warm, paternalistic smile, and there was even a hint of worry in his eyes, as if he was afraid he might have upset her. He took her hand between his and spoke long and movingly. Her companion answered, the old man laughed, and then she found herself being walked back up the pathway, that strong, comforting arm still around her shoulders.
“What did you say to him?” she said finally, knowing she should shake his arm free, for the moment not bothering. After all, they were in a public park. The man didn’t look like a lunatic, and even if he were, he couldn’t hurt her, not with so many witnesses. And while she couldn’t speak French, she could certainly scream at the top of her lungs, and that was a fairly universal sound.
He smiled down at her. It was a warm, enchanting smile, full of friendliness and nothing else. “I told him you were my pregnant wife and you had occasional dizzy spells.”
She considered several outraged responses. Instead she found herself laughing. “Thank you. I’m afraid my lack of French didn’t help matters.”