The dancer had finished her performance and was now drinking champagne and laughing wildly with a group of admirers. Robbie leaned back in his seat, surveying the room with a jaundiced eye. The pain stabbed behind his eyes, as if someone were turning a white-hot skewer around and around in his brain. Another glass of wine, even another bottle, would make no difference. He would not sleep, and the headache would only get worse. He was trying to summon up the energy to cancel his order when he saw her.
She was standing at the end of the polished zinc bar. Tall, for a woman, her face unmistakably French in some indefinable way, it was the blankness of her expression as she stared sightlessly across the room that caught his attention. She was beautiful. Glossy black hair cut fashionably short, tucked back behind her ears to show a classic profile. High, wide cheekbones, a very Gallic nose. Her brows were dark, finely arched above deep-set eyes that looked like two black pools in the shadowy light of the club. Pale skin that drew his attention to her mouth. Full, sensuous and pink, it was a mouth made for laughter, though she looked as if she did as much of that as he did. A mouth also made for kissing. Robbie smiled bitterly. Working here, as she undoubtedly did, he bet she did a great deal of that. For the right price.
Her gown was dark blue, draped softly over her breasts in the style of a Roman tunic, revealing just enough of her throat to make a man want to see more. Robbie was surprised to discover that there were some parts of him not quite so moribund as he had imagined. Beneath the gown he imagined her lush body, soft, creamy flesh to sink into, to envelop his own battle-hardened and scarred shell. She would smell of summer, of flowers, of that delightful sweet spiciness that was so peculiarly female. She would not smell of mud or despair.
He groaned. To the dull ache in his head was now added the throb in his groin. Across the room, the woman was staring at him, her mind dragged back from whatever dark place she had been inhabiting, alerted no doubt by the intensity of his gaze. He willed himself to look away, but he could not, though he regretted it immediately when he saw her take the tray from his waiter containing the fresh bottle, threading her way through the crowds towards him.
‘Your wine,
Monsieur Capitaine
.’
She spoke in English. He replied in French. ‘I already told the waiter I’m not interested in company.’
‘You flatter yourself,
monsieur
, I am not offering that kind of company. I think you have drunk too much, perhaps.’
‘Correction. I’ve not drunk nearly enough.’
‘I suspect there will never be enough for someone like you.’
Which chimed so accurately with what he’d been thinking himself that Robbie couldn’t help but stare. Close up, her skin had a surprising freshness. The paleness he had taken for powder was natural. The pink of her lips seemed natural, too. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of other men here who will be more than happy to pay for your services,’ he said.
‘You are mistaken,
Monsieur Capitaine
. I do not provide the kind of services the other girls offer. I work here, yes, but as a waitress only.
Monsieur le Patron
is from my home town and I needed the job. He’s short-staffed as most of the waiters have gone off to fight. What are you doing here?’
‘Getting drunk. Or I would be, if you would give me that bottle. Why didn’t you let the other waiter bring it over?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Why were you staring at me?’
‘I don’t know.’ He glared at her, not because he wanted her to leave, but because now that she was here, he desperately wanted her to stay. ‘For heaven’s sake, since you are here, please sit down,’ he said, snatching his cap from the chair.
She hesitated. ‘I am sorry, I should not have— I can’t think why I— I should go.’
Robbie cast a look over at the
patron
. ‘Will you get into trouble?’
‘I’ve finished my shift.’ She put the tray down on the table and took the seat he had pushed towards her. ‘My time is my own.’
‘Then use it to save me from myself by sharing this bottle,
mademoiselle
,’ Robbie said, pouring the wine. ‘If you are in no rush to go home?’
She shook her head, offering him a small smile. ‘It has been a long night, I confess I would very much like a glass of wine, and I am in no hurry.’
Robbie eyed the club’s animated
patrons
sardonically. ‘Then you’re the only person in this city who is not.’ He lifted his glass.
‘Santé,
mademoiselle.’
* * *
‘Santé
.
’
Sylvie Renaud took a small sip of the cheap, rough wine and studied the man seated opposite her. Dark auburn hair with a natural wave fell over his brow, shaved almost to the bone on one side of his head. A head wound, she surmised, and no doubt the reason for his being here in Paris. Dark shadows told the same story of exhaustion she saw on every soldier’s face who visited the club. His eyes, the grey-blue of the sea in winter, had the blank look of a man who had seen too much. She was accustomed to the sadness and desperation that clung to the men returning from the front, but this man seemed empty, a husk of a man wearing his aristocratic good looks like a borrowed suit of clothes. It was that singular trait that had caught her attention from across the room, though why it had led her to act so uncharacteristically, she had no idea. She closed her eyes and took another sip of wine.
His hand covered hers and her eyes flew open. ‘Stop thinking,’ he said. ‘You stared at me, I stared at you. It doesn’t matter why. So let us both stop thinking, and tell me your name.’
His hand was cool on top of hers. His fingers were long, elegant, extremely clean. ‘You are right,’ she said with some relief, because she really didn’t want to persuade herself to leave him just yet. ‘I am Sylvie. Sylvie Renaud.’
‘Robbie Carmichael.
Enchanté
.’ His mouth curled into what he obviously hoped was a smile. He looked as if he had to concentrate to make it happen.
‘Robbie. That is a difficult name for me to pronounce.’
‘It’s Scottish.’
Which explained his accent, so much softer than the clipped tones of the English officers when they spoke French. ‘But you are not wearing a skirt,’ Sylvie said, trying one of her own practised smiles.
‘Too cold this time of year.’ His smile stretched a little farther this time. ‘It’s called a kilt.’
‘Kilt.’ He had a beautiful mouth. His legs were long, the calves beneath the ridiculous tightly bound gaiters all the British wore, were nicely shaped. Though his face was gaunt, his tunic loose fitting, his body, she suspected, was rather more solid-packed muscle and brawn than starved. He would have been the sort of man women swooned over before the war. ‘You speak very good French,’ she said. A trite remark, even if it was true, but she wanted to encourage him to talk, because then he would forget to drink.
He shrugged. ‘I import wine, so I spent a lot of time here in France. Before.’
‘Before,’ Sylvie repeated. ‘They all have a before, every soldier in this room.’
‘And only a lucky few will have an after.’ Robbie Carmichael picked up the bottle and made to top up her glass, even though she had barely touched it. ‘I won’t be one of them.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
She caught his wrist before he could drain his glass, causing him to slop wine onto the table, but he yanked himself free and took a large gulp. ‘A well-kept secret, Sylvie, but the life expectancy of an officer in our wonderful British army is six weeks these days. I’ve seen action at Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy and the Somme. The odds are stacked against me. It is merely a question of time.’
He spoke not bitterly, not angrily, not even sadly. It was the very lack of emotion in his voice, the matter-of-factness, that got to her, wrenching unwanted feeling from her, that familiar terrible mixture of fear and deep-rooted sorrow that left her bereft. She had forgotten how that felt. More accurately, she had not allowed herself to remember. Blanking it from her mind had been the only way she could survive.
‘You really are trying to save me from myself.’
She didn’t understand what he meant until he nodded at her empty glass. She didn’t even remember drinking it.
‘What were you thinking about?’
His eyes were too focused on her. He saw too much. She pushed back her chair. ‘I was thinking that I was right when I said there would never be enough wine. For either of us.’ She held out her hand. ‘Let’s dance, Capitaine Robbie.’
* * *
If he’d thought about it he would have refused, but she gave him no option, tugging him up from his chair and weaving a path through the crowd to the tiny dance floor, forcing him to follow in her wake. The last time he had danced, it had been with Annabel, at the ceilidh following Flora’s wedding. Annabel was also the last woman he’d made love to. Annabel, who had written to him for a few months following his departure to the front line before giving up for lack of a response. She was married to Duncan now, who was involved in something hush-hush at the Home Office, according to Robbie’s mother, who took it upon herself to keep him up to date with such things. Though why he was thinking about that now, he had no idea. Thinking about his life before the war was like watching a moving picture starring a man who did a lot of laughing and smiling and had no idea that soon there would be nothing, nothing at all in the world, ever to laugh or smile about again.
‘Robbie? We are here to dance,
non
?’
Sylvie’s voice dragged him back to the present. Her scent, just as he’d imagined, was delicately floral. Her hair was thick, with a natural wave. The kind of hair that would be windblown on a bright, breezy summer’s day. Her fingers were long, tapered, elegant. The music was slow. There was barely enough space to move, let alone dance.
He didn’t want to dance, but he wanted nothing more than to be held. Just to be held. Just for a moment. It was to that he surrendered, the basic human desire for contact he had avoided for so long. He pulled her close, his arm on the curve of her spine, on the smooth, feminine silk of her gown, feeling the heat of her body beneath. Curves. He’d known there would be curves. And soft flesh, the antithesis of his own in every way. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the music and the moment.
* * *
It had been a mistake, asking him to dance. It made it impossible for her to ignore the fact that she was attracted to him. She liked the soft burr of his accent, which made her think of misty Scottish glens and rugged Highland scenery. She liked the combination of auburn hair and grey-blue eyes and the latent strength she could feel in that lean, hard body. She liked the hint of sensuality in his unsmiling mouth. For once, she saw not the soldier but the man. A vulnerable man who gazed out at the world from behind his attractive carapace like a hermit crab living in an abandoned shell.
And she so desperately wanted to be held. Not to think. Just to be held. Sylvie relaxed a little, allowing him to draw her closer. He smelled of expensive soap, unlike most of the soldiers, and also a little of that dank, muddy smell that clung to all of them. But mostly he smelled intoxicatingly male. His body was hard, muscled, solid. The arm that slid down her back to rest on the curve of her bottom was warm. She could feel his breath on her cheek, the brush of his thighs against hers. Her body tingled in response. She slid her arm under his tunic, flattening her palm on his back over the soft cotton of his singlet.
She closed her eyes. She forgot she was in the club. She forgot the guilt at being alive that dogged her every waking moment, and she forgot to worry about whether she’d be able to pay the rent if she continued to refuse the tips the other girls earned so easily because there was a war on and the world was utterly changed. She forgot everything save for the delightful heat in her blood caused by this man’s arms around her, this man’s body sheltering her, waking the desire that had long lain dormant, making her want to lose herself in passion.
The music stopped. They stood still, two figures frozen in time. And then the music started again and they moved in rhythm, unspeaking, eyes closed, not dancing but holding, touching. His fingers played on her spine. Hers slid down to cup the taut slope of his buttocks beneath his tunic. His lips fluttered over her temple. She put her mouth to the rough skin of his throat. He was aroused. She could sense the thick shaft of his erection as they moved, though he made no attempt to press against her. It had been so long since she had experienced the delicious frisson of such intimacy. So very, very long since she had even thought about it. It had been easy to repel the advances she inevitably attracted every night in this place. Yet now, when this man had made it clear he would make no such advances, it was all she could think about.
He was thinking about it, too. He could have stopped dancing at the last song, at the one before, or the one before that, but each time the music started up again he pulled her closer. Then the music stopped for the last time, and they were left alone on the dance floor.
‘I don’t want to let you go,’ Robbie said. ‘Not just yet.’
‘Then walk me back to my apartment,’ Sylvie said, without even considering the dangers of being alone with this stranger, a stranger who had been trained to kill without compunction. A man who represented all she hated and all that had damaged her life irrevocably. A soldier. A warmonger. But tonight, she found that she didn’t want to be alone, either.
Chapter Two
S
ylvie fetched her coat, ignoring the raised brows of the
patron
as he locked the nightclub door behind them. The night air was cold, the city streets eerily silent as Paris shut down for the night. All along the Boulevard de Clichy, the clubs were closing up, the last few customers reeling out into the dark. Two
poilus
in the distinctive pale blue greatcoats of the French army, propping each other up like bookends, sang a surprisingly melodic version of ‘La Madelon’
.