Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Lower the damn swing! Now!” It was the one clear thing Genevieve heard, she didn’t know how many minutes later. An eternity.

Max roared it from the floor of the auditorium as she hung there, some thirty feet above the ground. She was doing her best to stay conscious so as not to let go of the flower-bedecked chains and fall to her death herself while the theater revolved around her like a carousel and a terrible, rising darkness threatened to whirl her away.

He was there to gather her up when someone responded to his shouts, when the swing was close enough to the floor so that he could grab her. She practically fell off it into his arms, thankful for his strength, glad she no longer had to fight the ringing in her ears or the dizziness that made her feel like she was spinning away or the crushing horror that descended on her in waves, because Max was there and he would take care of everything.

“Let’s get this off you.” He was talking about her headdress, the towering plumes that bobbed and swayed and had taken on all the weight of millstones pulling at her neck as she’d grown dizzy and weak. Between the two of them they got it off. What he did with it she didn’t know, because she melted against him, burying her face in his shoulder, breathing in the safe, familiar scent of him as she fought with every bit of self-preservation remaining within her to shut out everything else.

“I’m taking her out of here,” he told Hahn, as with a snapped order at someone the German joined the contingent of soldiers surrounding Pierre’s body. Max mitigated the fierceness of his statement with a stiff “With your permission, of course.” That nod to the officer’s supreme authority galled him, she knew, but it was necessary because Hahn could snap his fingers and have them both shot, for no more reason than he wanted to.

“A thousand apologies! I would not have had this happen for the world. Our objective was to make an arrest, not endanger our friends and create a spectacle.”

Hahn must have cast a baleful look at his men as he spoke, because one of the soldiers piped up with a timid-sounding, “Sir, we caught him with a radio. He is the one we were searching for—the radio operator. He was trying to escape.”

Smiling, sweating, tomato-faced Pierre a radio operator for the Resistance? It was the most dangerous work of all, with an average survival time that was measured in weeks, not months.

Her heart contracted. A hero.

“We will discuss this later.” The ice in Hahn’s tone disappeared as he said to Max, “She is not hurt?”

“Physically? I don’t think so, no. But look at her. She’s sensitive, an artist, and this is too much for her. It’s a miracle she didn’t fall! She needs to get out of the theater, be someplace quiet where she can grow calm.”

Genevieve was aware enough to realize that he had only one arm wrapped around her, because, of course, in the presence of the enemy, he could not be seen to not need his stick.

“Certainly you may take her away. When she’s feeling better, please tell her how much I enjoyed her show, and that I hope we may meet again under better circumstances.”

A soldier said something, and Hahn must have turned to answer him because Max, with a muttered, “We’re going to walk now,” started off, slowly, taking her with him.

She would have thought he was being overcareful of her, but she discovered as she moved that her legs were unsteady and her head still swam and the heavy rushing sound she could hear was actually only in her ears. Her vision was fine, except she felt at a distance from things. As if she were standing on the outside of a building watching what was taking place within through a window.

“My God, did you see that?”

“Look, it’s her! The Black Swan!”

“Genevieve, hello! Over here!”

“At first I thought it was part of the entertainment. Then—”

“Mademoiselle Dumont, loved the show!”

Snatches of conversation reached her ears through the noise and commotion swirling around them as the audience was ushered from the auditorium. She didn’t respond to the voices calling out specifically to her because she couldn’t. It took all her strength to keep moving. Without Max’s support, she would have collapsed in a heap. A few of her girls in their bright bird costumes huddled together near the stage. Someone somewhere finally thought to kill the stage lights. An unwary glance back found one of the soldiers around Pierre’s body kneeling to close the dead man’s eyes. The moment when death was truly acknowledged, when all hope was relinquished.

She got a flashing image of another, infinitely loved pair of eyes being oh-so-tenderly closed and went ice-cold and light-headed all over again.

After that she saw nothing at all, because she kept her eyes tightly shut and her face buried in Max’s shoulder. If she allowed herself to look, or think about it, or remember...

She couldn’t let herself remember. She would shatter into a thousand tiny shards if she did.

“Here, put this on.” Max slid out of his jacket and wrapped it around her. He had a brief exchange with a soldier. Then they were through the door, stepping outside, and the combination of the cold night air and light rain that blew into her face revived her enough so that she felt able to lift her head from his shoulder and look around.

Rue de Clichy in front of the theater was crowded with vehicles. After a niggle of initial surprise, Genevieve realized that the show had been cut short by only about ten minutes and the previously arranged rides were arriving as scheduled to pick up the audience. In that same vein, she saw that Otto was in place with the Citroën.

Max bundled her into the back, got in beside her.

“What happened?” Otto’s tone made it clear that all it took was one look at them to know something had. Not a surprise: if she was half as pale as she felt, she must look like a ghost, and Max had his arm around her in the car, which he never did. Huddled in Max’s jacket, pressed against his side, she still shivered from head to toe. Her heartbeat felt erratic. She had to work to keep her breathing even.

Max said, “I’ll fill you in later. Take us to the studio.”

“Why not the hotel?” Genevieve asked him as the car moved off. She might be leaning against Max, but her head was up and she was once again functional. She was doing her level best to regain her composure, to close her mind to the terrible events of the night, to fight off any link to the past.

“Because the place is going to be packed. Because you don’t want anyone to see you like this.”

“In my costume, you mean?” Because she had just realized that under his jacket she was still wearing her black swan costume from the last number. Coupled with the fact she was reasonably sure no one could tell, just from looking at her, now that her head was up and her eyes were open and she was talking and walking, that she was shaking to pieces inside, her attire seemed to her to be the most logical explanation.

Max leaned close, whispered, “I mean this,” so only she could hear, and touched a forefinger to her cheek. It wasn’t until he held it up and she saw the moisture glistening on the tip of his bronzed finger that she realized tears were rolling unchecked down her face.

She looked at him in mute dismay, then dashed her knuckles across her cheeks to wipe away the tears.

They kept falling. Now that she was aware, she could feel the hot wet slide of them against her skin.

“Here we are,” Otto said as the Citroën rolled to a stop in front of the side entrance to La Fleur Rouge, which from the outside was as dark as the rest of the city now that curfew was upon them.

Max got out and came around to open her door, then leaned in to say to Otto, “Go back and get Berthe and take her to the hotel.” He helped her out of the car, supporting her weight and doing his best to shield her from the rain by tucking her against his side, then leaned back inside the car to say, “There’s a body shoved up the chimney in Genevieve’s dressing room. Later, when everybody’s gone, go back and dispose of it.” She guessed from his lowered voice that she wasn’t supposed to hear that, and she really didn’t hear what Otto said in response. But Max’s reply was a terse “Touvier,” so she assumed Otto had asked who the corpse was.

The thought of Touvier, coupled with this new information about what Max had done with his body, made her dizzy all over again. It was too much. And Pierre...

Don’t think about it, she ordered herself fiercely. Any of it.

She concentrated on pulling herself together as Max shut the door and the Citroën pulled away.

Inside, the brothel was in full swing. Music, laughter and a cacophony of sound bombarded Genevieve from the moment she stepped through the door. Max’s arm was around her still, but she walked steadily toward the lift. Her throat was tight with grief, her stomach was knotted with it and she had to keep dashing away the tears that stubbornly continued to fall. But she walked without needing to lean on him for support, and that was something.

Until the music that was coming at her from the lounge changed to her own voice singing “J’attendrai” from the recording she’d made for Odeon Records the year before.

The images of herself on the swing, of Pierre falling, of his body lying still and broken in front of her spun in a kaleidoscope of horror through her mind. She would have collapsed in a shivering heap right there if Max hadn’t had his arm around her.

“Genevieve?” He looked at her in consternation as she sagged against him.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her throat was choked with sobs that she refused to let escape. But she could do nothing about the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

“It’s all right. I’ve got you.” He scooped her up in his arms as easily as if she were a child. Sliding her arms around his neck, she buried her face in the warm hollow between his neck and shoulder as he carried her to the lift.

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