[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris Fliss Chester (essential reading .TXT) 📖

The drizzle was getting heavier and Fen could feel the splash of water off the pavement chill her ankles and calves. If she had been wearing Nylons, she’d be cursing the state they’d be getting into, but as it was, it was her woollen trousers that were taking a soaking from the now rather damp pavements.

Where are you heading to? she wondered as Henri took a sudden left-hand turn off the Quai Voltaire away from the river. She kept back a pace or two as Henri slowed. They were passing more art galleries, much like his and the ones on the Rue des Beaux-Arts where Rose’s apartment was. In actual fact, with all her criss-crossing of the river tonight, she was now only a few streets away from the École des Beaux-Arts and her temporary home in Paris.

Henri veered left into another narrow road, but by the time Fen had trotted along the pavement for the last few yards before the turning, and then subtly poked her head around the corner, he was gone. There was no sign of him at all. Instead, she found herself staring at the entrance to the elegant Hotel de Lille. It was a double-fronted building, with a large door in between windows; one on the left-hand side and two to the right. Fen sheltered under one of the canopies out front as the rain had become persistently heavier.

The Hotel de Lille… why did its name ring a bell? Fen puzzled it over, knowing that she’d heard talk of it recently, while also trying to peer into one of the windows to see if it was where Henri had ended up.

The inside of the window had started to mist up, and Fen could barely make out the internal layout of the reception area of the hotel. She peered closer and caught movement inside and wondered if it might be Henri and if this was her chance to see what he was up to with the painting-shaped parcel. She took a deep breath and decided to go for it – she’d come this far and there was no point standing out in the rain wondering who or what was going on inside. If Henri caught her following him she’d just have to think on her feet.

Fen pushed the hotel’s door open and cringed slightly as the bell above it gave a little tinkle, like entering a boutique. She quickly took in the scene. There was a desk in front of her and to the left, with a few sofas in front of it and a well-dressed receptionist sitting behind it, and disappearing up the staircase behind the desk, Fen caught sight of the tail of Henri’s overcoat.

‘Dash it all.’ Fen stood, dripping wet. She pulled off her beret and then looked apologetically at the receptionist as water dripped off it, and the parcel of clothes for Magda, onto the patterned tiles of the vestibule.

Fen turned to leave, she couldn’t very well follow Henri up the stairs without a very good reason to give both him and the receptionist, and was just about to pull the beret firmly back onto her very damp and frizzy curls when she saw two people she could have sworn should be the other side of Paris.

James and Simone were sitting on a velvet sofa in the bar area of the hotel, half shielded from view by a higher bar table and the stools around it. Simone’s cheek was leaning into one of James’s hands as he stroked her hair with the other.

Fen flushed and gave an involuntary gasp, which had the unfortunate effect of alerting James to her presence.

He looked up from where he was about to kiss Simone and then narrowed his eyes and withdrew from her. ‘Fen?’

‘Oh gosh, so terribly sorry. Had no idea, can’t think what I’m doing here now. Must dash. Cheerio, carry on, etcetera!’ Fen could feel the blush in her cheeks reddening as she wedged the hat down onto her head. She was out of the door and running through the rain before you could say ‘caught in the act’ and once again thanked her former self for knowing the route back to the Rue des Beaux-Arts so she could at least get home and dry quickly, if not ever shake off the embarrassment of catching James and Simone smooching in the bar of what must have been – she remembered why she knew it now – his hotel.

Thirty-Six

Fen woke the next morning still feeling as embarrassed as she had been the night before. She slipped her hand up from under the eiderdown and touched her own cheek and wondered if the heat she felt was pure shame or if running around in the rain had brought on a fever.

She thought back to last night and how she’d left James and Simone in a flurry of apologies and blushing and had run out onto the street. Fen couldn’t be sure, but she thought she might have heard her name being shouted down the road behind her, but she had absolutely not been about to turn round and have that conversation with James. The one where he would ask her what the blazes she thought she was doing spying on him and then she’d have had to bluster her way through some sort of explanation that would eventually result in her having to admit that she was jealous of the time he was spending with Simone.

For that, she realised, was a little to do with all of this. Not because she had any sort of feelings other than platonic ones for James himself; she was still in mourning for her Arthur, after all – but because she had liked having a friend and James reminded her of Arthur in some ways. They looked completely different and there was no way that Arthur had been hiding a title and various country houses under his hat, but they were both intelligent, decent men who had bravely fought for