Read Chapter 27: A Sister Discovered

The café was called Chez Berthe, a cramped little place tucked between a tobacconist and a cobbler’s shop two streets back from the Fontainebleau market square. Evie had been there since half past eight, nursing a coffee that had long gone cold and watching the door with the hungry vigilance of a cat at a mouse hole. The note she’d slipped into Lily’s costume had been brief—*Thursday. Chez Berthe. Nine o’clock. Trust me*—and she had no way of knowing if the woman she’d seen spinning in a flamenco dress had even read it before the Baron had cut their moment short.

At ten past nine, the door opened.

Lily came in wearing a plain grey coat and a scarf pulled low over her forehead, the sort of disguise that drew more attention than it deflected. She scanned the room once, twice, then crossed to Evie’s table and sat down without a word. Her hands were shaking. She clasped them around a sugar bowl to steady them.

“You came,” Evie said, surprised at how hoarse her own voice sounded.

“I didn’t think I would.” Lily’s eyes were the same pale blue as Evie’s own, a fact that had struck them both at the garden party like a slap. Up close, standing in the crowded café, the resemblance was impossible to deny. They had the same sharp chin, the same slight gap between their front teeth. “I told myself I wouldn’t. I told myself it was a trick, or a trap, or some cruel game the Baron likes to play. He does that, sometimes. Sends someone who looks familiar, just to see how I’ll react.”

“I’m not from the Baron.” Evie leaned forward. “I’m from New York. I came across on the *Périgord* last spring. I came to Paris to sing.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Lily. Look at me.” Evie waited until her sister’s eyes met hers. “I have a locket. Silver, oval, with a flower engraved on the front—a lily of the valley, actually. My mother gave it to me before she died. She said my father had given it to her, and that I was to keep it with me always.”

Lily’s breath caught. Her hand went to her own collar, and she pulled out a chain that had been hidden beneath her grey dress. At the end of it, a small silver oval swung into view. The engraving matched Evie’s own, down to the curl of the stem and the three tiny bells hanging from the flower.

“She gave me hers,” Lily said quietly. “Our mother. Before she—” She stopped, swallowed. “Before she was sent away.”

Evie felt the words land like stones in her chest. “Sent away where?”

“They told me she died. Then, later, someone else told me she’d been committed to a hospital. I never learned which one. The Baron—” Her mouth tightened around the name. “The Baron owns the house where I stay. He owns everything in it. He owns me.”

“You’re not property.”

“I’m exactly that.” Lily’s voice was flat, emptied of tone. “Étienne Valcourt bought my contract from my last employer for a sum that keeps my mother’s family in comfort back home—I don’t know the details, only that if I run, he’ll foreclose on them. And the Baron, he—” She broke off, looking down at her hands. “The Baron knows things about me. Things that would destroy any chance I have of returning to society.”

“What kind of things?”

Lily shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters if it’s why you can’t leave.”

For a long moment, Lily was silent. Then she reached up and unclasped the chain from around her neck, holding the locket out to Evie. “Open it.”

Evie took it carefully, turning it over in her palm. The clasp was stiff with age, but she worked it free. Inside was a tiny photograph, faded and creased, of a man in uniform with a thin moustache and a sharp, intelligent face.

Lily pointed to it. “He was an officer with the French expeditionary force in Indochina. He met our mother in Hanoi, where she was working for the telegraph office. They had an affair. He was already married—married to a Frenchwoman back in Paris. When she became pregnant, he sent money. Then he stopped. Then his family found out about the child and threatened to cut him off entirely if he acknowledged her.”

“My mother never told me any of this.” Evie stared at the photograph. The man’s eyes were pale, like theirs. “She said my father was an artist who died before I was born.”

“Maybe she wanted you to believe something less painful.” Lily took the locket back and clasped it around her neck again. “I found this in the Baron’s study two years ago, hidden in a drawer. He keeps records of his performers—births, deaths, debts, all of it. When I saw my own name listed with a note about my true parentage, I... I was foolish. I stole the locket. I thought if I could find my father and appeal to him, he might help me escape.”

“Did you find him?”

“He died in 1919. The influenza.” Lily’s smile was bitter and brief. “But I learned his name. His family is still prominent, Evie. His widow is old now, but she has two sons. An elegant château near Tours. A reputation that would be ruined if the world learned that her husband had fathered children on a colonial telegraph girl.”

Children, Evie noticed. Not a child.

“The Baron knows,” she said.

“The Baron knows everything. And the Baron’s younger son—” Lily paused, her hands tightening around the sugar bowl. “The Baron’s younger son is Étienne Valcourt. The man who bought my contract. He is my half-brother.”

The word hung between them like a struck bell.

“He doesn’t know,” Lily said, answering the question Evie hadn’t yet asked. “Or perhaps he does. Sometimes I think he knows and enjoys the cruelty of it. He keeps me at La Clairière, dressed in costumes, performing for his friends, gloating over his possession of something he can never legitimize. And if I leave, he will destroy me—and the reputation of the father who abandoned us—without a moment’s hesitation.”

Evie’s mind raced. The Baron de Saint-Loup. Étienne Valcourt. A father who had sired daughters on a woman in Indochina, abandoned them, and left a legacy that now trapped them both in a web of blackmail and silence.

She reached across the table and took her sister’s hand. “If we can get you away from La Clairière—if we can get you somewhere safe, somewhere he can’t reach you—would you go?”

Lily looked at her, hope and fear warring in her pale eyes. “He’ll come after me. He has men, Evie. He has money. He has the law on his side—I signed a contract, whatever I understood of it. And the Baron will bring his influence down on anyone who shelters me.”

“We’ll find a way.” Evie squeezed her hand. “The man I came with, Julien, he’s a pianist. He knows people. He has connections.”

“You barely know me.”

“You’re my sister.” Evie said the words simply, without qualification. “I came to Paris to find you. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, not at first. But I know it now.”

Lily’s eyes glistened. She blinked hard, once, twice. “I have no plan,” she said. “I have nothing. Just this locket and the fear that he’ll find out I’ve left the villa grounds today.”

“Then we’ll make a plan together.” Evie glanced at the café’s clock. “Can you be away again tomorrow? There’s a place in the forest, a clearing with a broken stone bench. About fifteen minutes’ walk from the north gate of La Clairière.”

“I know it. I walk there sometimes, when they let me take air.”

“Meet me there at dusk. We’ll figure out the rest.”

Lily hesitated, then nodded. She rose, adjusting her scarf, and paused at the table’s edge. “Evie. Thank you. For believing me.”

“Thank me when you’re free,” Evie said.

Lily’s smile was small but real, and it transformed her face in a way that made Evie’s heart ache with recognition. Then she was gone, swallowed by the bustle of the market square.

Evie sat for a long moment, staring at the door. Then she rose and went to find Julien.