At the Edge of Summer

Even in lovemaking, Luc was shy, tentative, apologetic. As I slipped off his clothing, as I kissed him down into the bed, he kept murmuring excuses and warnings. “You don’t really want to do this,” and “Clare, I’m too broken,” and “I’m sorry, I should’ve made the bed.” Nonsense that I ignored.

I just kept touching his hair, his face, his body, his everything, until he stopped protesting and a kind of wonder crept into his eyes. “My Luc,” I whispered into the side of his neck, into his knotted shoulder. His arms tightened around me and held me safe against the world. I’d found him again.

The light slanted lower through the windows, but he didn’t talk, didn’t let go until the room grew dark. We dipped in and out of contented sleep. In the corner, something rustled within a covered birdcage. He stood to find a light, and as he did, said, “Don’t leave?” I wasn’t sure if he meant at the moment or forever.

I shook my head. “I won’t.”

He lit candles, fat candles stuck in cracked holders all over the room.

“No electric light?” I asked.

He shook his head, but I saw the bulb on the ceiling. He pulled a linen towel from the washstand and over his shoulders.

I thought I understood. “You don’t have to light them, if you don’t want.”

Wrapped in his thin towel, he sat on a wooden chair, his knees tight together. “It’s fine.” He swallowed. “I don’t mind.”

“You do. You’re as nervous as a duck.”

He cracked a smile. “Ducks aren’t nervous.”

“Have you been in a brasserie lately? French ducks are.” I propped myself up on my elbows, the sheet sliding down to my waist

“So are French rabbits.”

“Luc, come back over here.”

And he did.

It wasn’t until after the second time that he let me uncover his shoulders and look at him, really look at him, in the candlelight. I couldn’t see him blush in the dim.

“I suppose my dreams of the Championnat de France are well and truly past now,” he said ruefully. “I can barely hold up a paintbrush, much less a tennis racket.”

“How did it happen?” I asked, running a finger up the side of his arm. He tensed, then curled the arm around me. At least he could still do that.

He sucked in a breath. He seemed to be considering. “Do you remember me talking about Stefan Bauer?”

I felt icy cold. “You played tennis with him.” I let my hair swing loose over my face. “You used to write to me who was winning.”

“In the end, he did.” He closed his eyes. “Bauer was in a group of German prisoners being held near our camp.”

“Good,” I couldn’t help but say.

He passed a hand over his eyelids. “You were right about him, you know.” I took his hand, but he didn’t open his eyes. “I let myself get too close,” he said. “Even though you warned me, I still trusted him.” A shudder ran the length of his body.

“You couldn’t—”

“I deserved to be attacked.”

“Look at me.” His eyes were dark in the candlelight. I spoke to him and to myself eight years ago. “You didn’t deserve anything.”

He shook his head. I’d had eight years to convince myself. He’d had a fraction of that. “He was a prisoner,” he repeated. “Bauer manipulated me, like he always did on the court. I had a weapon with me and I just…let myself get too close.”

I touched the line of scar along his shoulder. “Knife?”

“Bayonet. And across my face.” He hesitated and put a finger to his jaw. “And a hobnailed boot.”

I pulled the blanket up, over us both. “Luc,” I asked softly. “Who is Michel?”

Beneath me, he tensed. “Why do you ask?”

“While you were sleeping, you said his name.”

He rolled from under me. “I never called him Michel.”

I followed him across the little room, to where he fussed with a gas ring and a coffeepot, to where he gave up and filled two mugs with cognac instead, to where he fell against the table and tipped one over before even taking a sip.

I pressed myself against his back and wrapped my arms around him. “Tell me.” He leaned back into me. “Tell me about Michel.”

Cognac pooled at the edge of the table. “Clare, I…”

I kissed the hollow between his shoulder blades.

He shivered.

“Here.” I brought the blanket from the bed.

He drank a whole mug of cognac before he coughed and cleared his throat. “Michel Chaffre. Bastard was the best friend I’ve ever had. Never had a bad word to say about anyone. Never thought of himself.”

I remembered the boy who’d given over his weekends to cheer a friendless Scottish girl. “A good man.”

“The best. But he…” He leaned heavily against the table. “Damn him.”

I moved the empty mugs to the washstand and refilled them. The cognac was cheap and smelled like paint thinner.

“Clare, he killed Chaffre.”

I took a sip from my mug. It burned. “Who did?”

“Stefan Bauer.”

He spat the name. I lit another candle.

“Chaffre was guarding the cellar where the prisoners were. He let me in—he shouldn’t have, but he trusted me.” He turned to face me, eyes dark and deep. “Bauer took my bayonet, attacked me, left me for dead on that cellar floor and…” He swallowed, reached for the cognac, swallowed again. “And he killed Chaffre.”

I knew this wasn’t the only night he’d spent drinking in the half-dark. All these months, he’d been punishing himself for someone else’s crime. He was punishing himself for trusting Stefan Bauer.

I’d spent too many years doing the same. Telling myself that I’d been stupid and weak and that I’d let myself be led into that brothel bedroom, into a situation I might not have gotten out of. I spent more time blaming myself than the one really at fault. I understood. So I said, “It’s not your fault.” I said, “Bauer betrayed you.” I knew something about that.

“No.” He slid down the wall to the floor. “I betrayed Chaffre.” Beneath the blanket, he shuddered. “Clare, he killed Chaffre with my own bayonet.”

“Bauer betrayed you,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say. I knelt and took his hands. “You didn’t give that bayonet to him. You didn’t tell him to kill your friend.”

“But he did.” He stared at the floor, that haunted look again in his eyes. “And all because I was weak enough to think that an enemy might…might still be my friend.”

This was it. Not his cheek, not his shoulder, not his lack of a job. This right here was the reason he kept his distance, why he refused to be close to anyone. Why he’d take temporary comfort when he could, but shy away from anything that could make him feel.

“But you understand all of that, don’t you?” he said. He pulled his hands back and crumpled them in his lap. “You understand…him.” His gaze was penetrating. “That night, in the cellar…he told me what he did to you.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t know how to answer.

He spoke in a rush. “Believe me, Clare, if I’d known then that he’d hurt you, I—”

“He didn’t hurt me.” I said it quickly, to wipe the anguish from his face. “Though he…tried, he didn’t touch me.”

His eyes went to my hand, where I still had a thin pink scar from that hat pin. “Ah.” He caught it in his and turned it over. “And to think I once thought you were the one who needed protecting.” He brushed a kiss onto the scar. “Clare Ross, you’re stronger than I could ever be.”