“Did I claim I was taking a shower alone?” Rowland hesitated, gave him a rueful smile, then lowered his voice. “Look, this is a little embarrassing. I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mention it to Genevieve. Office gossip, you know. It’s just—well, this is Paris, and my secretary’s with me. I’m a married man. I’m sure you understand…”

For a moment he thought it had worked. He saw doubt register on Lamartine’s tense face, then hope, then scorn. Rowland, watching these reactions, felt a sense of dislocation. Another spin of the wheel, and this man could be himself. Lamartine was almost as tall as he was; he had a similar build, had the same color hair, was approximately the same age: the emotions he saw in Lamartine’s face now would have been his own under these circumstances. Rowland felt rivalry but also kinship: we are alike, he thought, then tensed: Lamartine was about to hit him. He saw the preparatory move, braced himself to make the counterblow, then, as the blow never came, he saw one last facial change. Upon Lamartine’s features came an expression of love and pain that only one person could have evoked. In acknowledgment of that expression and its claim, Rowland dropped his arm and quietly stepped aside.

Gini had put on a bathrobe, he saw, but her feet were bare. She was standing about fifteen feet back from the door, her eyes fixed on Lamartine’s face.

“Don’t lie anymore, Rowland,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t let you do that. It’s wrong.”

There was a silence like glass, then Lamartine walked into the room, passing Rowland without a glance. He came to a halt in front of Gini. He neither touched her nor raised his voice. Speaking in French, he suggested that Gini get dressed and leave at once. He would wait five minutes, and no longer than five minutes, by the elevator, in the corridor, and he would be grateful if she would hurry, since it was evident—and here he glanced at Rowland—that they had matters to discuss.

Under extreme stress, he was quick-witted, Rowland thought. At the door he paused, and their eyes met.

“Are you married?” Lamartine said sharply.

“No,” Rowland replied, and before the door closed, he watched Lamartine take in the implications of this.

Chapter 15

“DON’T SPEAK TO ME—wait,” Pascal said, pulling Gini into the elevator after him. They descended eight floors in silence, not touching, polite as strangers. Even so, the other passengers could sense their emotions, Gini knew; she caught their stares, their quickly averted glances. She stumbled blindly through the press of journalists already assembling in the lobby, and into the cold, damp air. She began speaking then, some incoherent plea, but Pascal would not listen. He grasped her arm and began pulling her across the street, then across the first bridge they came to, making for the Left Bank, beyond the wide, sluggish gray expanse of the Seine.

He looked almost concussed, Gini thought, her own vision blinded with tears. He seemed scarcely to see or to hear the traffic bearing down on them. Once on the Left Bank, he drew her along the quay, then into a tiny narrow street, the rue St. Julien le Pauvre. She realized then where he was taking her, where he must have spent the previous night; a small hotel in which they had stayed together twice the year before. She hung back with a low cry of pain, but his grip on her arm tightened. He led her inside the old building, up the narrow stairs, and into a room with an oblique view of the river and Notre Dame.