and a broad smile I recognize from the society pages of the newspaper. “Elsa, you remember …” I hold my breath, waiting for the woman to deny our having met in London.
But Elsa Maxwell, accustomed to traveling in wide circles and knowing people less often than she is known, sweeps me into a firm hug that has none of the airiness of the kisses so often exchanged here. “Darling!” Celia watches, eyes wide, apparently having bought the subterfuge. Elsa releases me. “If you’ll excuse me, I must get everyone started on the game.”
“Game?” But she has already moved on, leaving a burst of Chanel in her wake.
A moment later a bell rings and Elsa appears on the landing of the broad staircase in the middle of the foyer, commanding a presence well beyond what her rather plain appearance suggests. The din in the room instantly dulls, but there is still too much noise for me to hear well. She makes an announcement, holding up papers of some sort. A whisper of excitement blows through the crowd. Then she throws the papers into the air with a flourish and they scatter like confetti.
I turn to Tante Celia, confused. “A scavenger game,” she exclaims excitedly, scrambling to grab one of the sheets. “It’s a treasure hunt,” she explains, placing great importance on each syllable.
She scans the paper, then passes it to me. It is a shopping list of the oddest sort: a pair of opera glasses, a man’s swimming costume. Some of the items are phrased in riddle. “I don’t understand. How are we to buy these things if the shops are closed?”
She titters with superiority, staring toward the door. “We don’t buy them. We find them,” she replies, gaily as a child. Are we seriously to run around the streets hunting in the darkness?
“I don’t …” I start to beg off, following her outside. But Celia has already formed a foursome with two Swedes and together they set off toward the dense trees of the Bois de Boulogne.
As I start toward the massive park, my ankle twists, a sharp but fleeting pain. Celia turns back impatiently. The heel of my shoe, which caught the cobblestone, is cracked and, sensing my moment, I pull intentionally until the heel snaps. “It’s broken,” I lament, trying to fill my voice with disappointment. “You go on.”
Celia hesitates. “If you’re sure you’ll be fine.” Not waiting for my response, she follows the Swedes, who have already run off into the night, intent on the errand of finding a newspaper that is more than a month old. As she disappears into the trees, I sigh. I do not begrudge her excitement when she has so little to call her own. And she would not have left me if I was in real distress.
I limp back toward the house. The party has faded, the salon empty except for a rowdy group of men in the smoking room, a couple kissing shamelessly on one of the settees. I find the butler and ask him to call a taxi.
It is nearly midnight when the cab reaches Versailles. I pay the driver and step out, then peer across the road toward the Hôtel des Réservoirs, where lights still burn on the ground floor despite the late hour. Curious, I walk down the street. In a first-floor library, a man works intensely behind a desk, head low, bathed in yellow light. It is the German naval officer who picked up my scarf. I watch him, transfixed. He looks to be about thirty. He lifts his head and catches my eye, holding my glance for a second longer than he had earlier at the arrival. Then he stands and walks from the room. I step back into the shadows. How rude of me. He obviously minded the intrusion. But then the front door to the hotel opens and I see him silhouetted against the light.
“Can I help you, mademoiselle? We are not a zoo.”
I flush, seized with the urge to run. “No, of course not.” Then I take a step forward, out of the shadows. “It’s fraulein, actually.” I am quick to identify myself as a German out of the earshot of others, as if our kindred citizenship might excuse my watching him. I shift my weight awkwardly to my right foot. “I mean, Margot. Margot Rosenthal.”
“The professor’s daughter?” I nod. “I’m Georg Richwalder. I’m the military attaché to the delegation.”
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I broke my heel and was just pausing.” I hold up the shoe as evidence, take a step through the gate. He walks down the steps toward me. He is taller than I thought and I crane my neck upward to meet his eyes rather than stare at his chest as we speak.
“May I?”
I hand the shoe to him.
“I can fix this, I think.”
I eye him skeptically.
“You learn to be handy in a great many ways when you’re at sea. Would you like to come in for some tea while I try?”
I hesitate. The library behind him looks warm and inviting, the quiet and solitude a welcome contrast to the Maxwell party. But it wouldn’t be proper. “No, thank you. I’ll just be on my way.”
“Wait here,” he instructs firmly, a man who is used to giving orders. I shiver at his commanding tone. “I’ll bring the tools—and some tea—outside.”
I sit down on the step. A few minutes later he emerges with two cups of tea and a small kit. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” I say.
“Not at all.” He smiles and in that instant seems not at all the terrifying soldier I’d glimpsed during the delegation’s arrival. A chink in the armor. “After so much time on the train, the fresh air is refreshing. The trip was exceedingly long. We sat at one point for eighteen hours for some reason known only to the French.” He is wearing the same dark blue uniform as earlier today, but the jacket is unbuttoned, the shirt loosened at the collar.
I run my hand along the step, the stone hard and rough beneath my fingertips. “And the hotel … is it quite dreadful?”
“It’s not bad, really. I mean in its heyday I’m sure it was quite grand. But I spent the better part of the four years on a ship, so I may not be the best judge of comfort.”
“You were in the navy, weren’t you?”
“I was on the SMS König, the crown jewel of His Majesty’s High Seas Fleet.” The pride in his voice is reminiscent of the prewar days, taking me back to the parades down the Unter den Linden, young girls pressing sandwiches and sweets into the hands of newly minted soldiers as they made their way to the station. “Even as a senior officer, my quarters were no bigger than a closet. The hotel has reasonably clean linen and fresh water and I’m not awakened to the sound of gunfire each morning.” He smiles. “It’s paradise. And the library is wonderful. I shall enjoy working there at night after the rest of the delegation has retired. They’re mostly older, and we don’t have much in common. But it’s not a social occasion.”
“And your family—did they mind being left back home?” The question comes out more prying than I intended. “I mean only that I’ve heard some of the men lamenting that their families couldn’t enjoy Paris.”
“No.” An image pops into my mind of a Frau Richwalder, elegant and well coiffed, keeping the house running back in Germany. “That is, there’s no one. I’m not married. Not so much to enjoy here these days, anyway.”
“I suppose not.” The German delegation was almost entirely confined to the hotel except for sanctioned meetings and a lone excursion.
“There.” He hands me my shoe, neatly fixed.
“It’s
