The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester

Author:Natasha Lester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Flying boat,” Sam said the next morning, with the same disbelief Estella’s voice had carried when she’d discovered exactly how she, Alex, and Lena were getting to Paris. “Do you think you’ll come back alive?”

“I don’t think the flying boats are the worst danger,” Estella said.

“You’re going to a war zone with a man you hardly know…”

Her stomach turned over and the sidecars and whiskey of the night before made her feel nauseated, sweaty, fearful. You’re going to a war zone with a man you hardly know. But what she did know, she realized, was that, despite his reputation, his womanizing wasn’t directed at her. Lena must have tamed him.

Lena. Who’d grown up with Harry Thaw while she, Estella, had not. Through some accident, through some quirk of fate, she’d had her mother, while Lena had had Harry. Like it had done all night as she’d lain awake in her bed at Alex’s home outside Sleepy Hollow, terror squeezed her heart. What if Jeanne Bissette wasn’t her mother? By going to Paris, Estella would have to ask her mother that question.

Before her panic became too overpowering, Estella thought of the man stuck in Paris, hiding from the Germans. The agent Alex had said was one of his best. The agent who could help so many of her countrymen and -women if he was free. Estella must go to Paris. Her fists clenched. Once she’d helped Alex, she would take Lena to see her mother and they’d ask her to tell them everything. Otherwise, Estella’s fear of whatever secret her mother had kept from her would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“I’m also going with a woman who might be my sister,” Estella said to Sam now. “She’s there to protect my reputation. I’m doing some translating for Alex; his French is shocking.” It wasn’t true of course but it was the story he’d asked her to tell—that he had legal work to do for some American clients in Paris and she was there to help him with the language. “And I can see my mother. That’s worth anything.” And it was, no matter what she learned. Her final words were sober and Sam squeezed her hand.

“Besides,” she said, forcing a smile, “I seem to remember traveling out of a war zone last year with a man I hardly knew and look how well that turned out.”

“Come here,” Sam said gruffly and she stepped in closer and found herself enveloped in an enormous hug. “Estella,” he began.

At the same moment, the door to Sam’s apartment flew open and Janie rushed in, holding out her hand. “Look at this!” she shrieked. “I’m engaged. Nate asked me to marry him. And I said yes. Isn’t it huge?”

“It really is,” Estella said, leaning over to examine the proffered finger, then reaching out to hug her friend as if she could, without words, say everything she wanted to which was: Don’t get married. Stay exactly who you are. But nobody ever stayed who they were.

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