She ran her hand over his face, mapping his features with her fingertips: the bushy eyebrows, the deep eye sockets, the big nose, the shot-off ear, the sensual lips, the lantern jaw. “Do you have hot water?” she said suddenly.
“Yes, it’s a swanky room. There’s a basin in the corner.”
She got up.
He said, “What are you doing?”
“Stay there.” She padded across the floor in her bare feet, feeling his eyes on her naked body, wishing she were not quite so broad across the hips. On a shelf over the sink was a mug containing toothpaste and a wooden toothbrush that she recognized as French. Next to the glass were a safety razor, a brush, and a bowl of shaving soap. She ran the hot tap, dipped the shaving brush in it, and worked up a lather in his soap bowl.
“Come on,” he said. “What is this?”
“I’m going to shave you.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
She covered his face with lather, then got his safety razor and filled the tooth mug with hot water. She straddled him the way she had when they made love and shaved his face with careful, tender strokes.
“How did you learn to do this?” he asked.
“Don’t speak,” she said. “I watched my mother do it for my father, many times. Dad was a drunk, and toward the end he couldn’t hold the razor steady, so Ma had to shave him every day. Lift your chin.”
He did so obediently, and she shaved the sensitive skin of his throat. When she had finished she soaked a flannel in hot water and wiped his face with it, then patted him dry with a clean towel. “I should put on some face cream, but I bet you’re too masculine to use it.”
“It never occurred to me that I should.”
“Never mind.”
“What next?”
“Do you remember what you were doing to me just before I reached for your wallet?”
“Yes.”
“Did you wonder why I didn’t let you go on longer?”
“I thought you were impatient for… intercourse.”
“No, your bristles were scratching my thighs, right where the skin is most tender.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Well, you can make it up to me.”
He frowned. “How?”
She groaned with mock frustration. “Come on, Einstein. Now that your bristles have gone..
“Oh-I see! Is that why you shaved me? Yes, of course it is. You want me to..
She lay on her back, smiling, and parted her legs. “Is this enough of a hint?”
He laughed. “I guess it is,” he said, and he bent over her.
She closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 28
THE OLD BALLROOM was in the bombed west wing of the chƒteau at Sainte-Cecile. The room was only partly damaged: one end was a pile of debris, square stones and carved pediments and chunks of painted wall in a dusty heap, but the other remained intact. The effect was picturesque, Dieter thought, with the morning sun shining through a great hole in the ceiling onto a row of broken pillars, like a Victorian painting of classical ruins.
Dieter had decided to hold his briefing in the ballroom. The alternative was to meet in Weber’s office, and Dieter did not want to give the men the impression that Will was in charge. There was a small dais, presumably intended for the orchestra, on which he had placed a blackboard. The men had brought chairs from other parts of the building and had placed them in front of the dais in four neat rows of five-very German, Dieter thought with a secret smile; French men would have scattered the chairs any which way. Weber, who had assembled the team, sat on the dais facing the men, to emphasize that he was one of the commanders, not subordinate to Dieter.
The presence of two commanders, equal in rank and hostile to one another, was the greatest threat to the operation, Dieter thought.
On the blackboard he had chalked a neat map of the village of Chatelle. It consisted of three large houses- presumably farms or wineries-plus six cottages and a bakery. The buildings were clustered around a cross- roads, with vineyards to the north, west, and south, and to the east a large cow pasture, a kilometer long, bordered by a broad pond. Dieter guessed that the field was used for grazing because the ground was too wet for grapes.