The Dressmaker's Secret by Lorna Cook

Author:Lorna Cook [Cook, Lorna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-12-02T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

1941

The porter knocked on the door to the suite so urgently Adèle thought it must be a matter of life or death.

‘Letter for you,’ he said and then turned and walked away down the corridor. There was a look in his eye that housed barely disguised disgust. Was she marked as a collaborator because she lived under the watchful eyes of Nazis? She was so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. She was just like him; she was staff. But it made no difference to the porter clearly. How quickly Paris had turned into a city of lies and distrust.

She looked at the letter, said good morning to the housekeeper who was already hard at work and crossed the corridor to her bedroom to read it undisturbed. There were no postage marks and the envelope so crisp that it must have been hand-delivered. There were only a few lines.

I’m so sorry.

Forgive me.

Theo

x

Adèle’s first instinct was to smile. She knew her heart was in trouble. She held the letter close to her chest and then held it out, looking at his words again.

The argument they’d had by the Seine was still so fresh in her mind. The things he’d said to her. All night long she’d dwelled on it.

But he had apologised, asked for forgiveness. He could have just as easily forgotten about her, moved on, got on with saving lives in the hospital and smuggling downed pilots over the border.

For a man who’d professed he had been too close to Nazi attention yesterday, he’d braved delivering this to the hotel. He’d taken a risk even coming to the ball at the hotel yesterday. That he had done so when invited was the real idiocy. And if anything awful had’ve happened to him because of her, then that would have been her fault. He had said Chanel had been running with the wolves but Theo and she had come too close yesterday. Too close. That kind of thing must never happen again.

Adèle didn’t tell him she was coming. She simply boarded the Metro and made her way to Neuilly. Inside the hospital she saw the nurse who’d instructed she and Theo not to enter the office all those weeks ago.

The nurse greeted Adèle and smiled at her knowingly as she introduced herself and asked for Doctor Dixon. Did the nurse know what Adèle had done for Mélodie? And did she in turn know that Adèle knew the kind-hearted nurse had been harbouring downed airmen?

The risks being taken in this building, Adèle mused as she walked the corridor alongside the nurse.

‘How do you still have stockings?’ the American nurse asked suddenly.

‘I’m down to my last two pairs,’ Adèle replied. ‘Then it’s a case of painting a line on, I think. I’ve not worked out which would be best.’

‘You could lower your hemline?’ the nurse suggested kindly. ‘I’m not sure that’s too fashionable though, is it?’

‘No, I don’t think it is, sadly,’ Adèle said. She could only imagine what Mademoiselle Chanel would have to say about that.

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