Free The Ambassador's Daughter by Pam Jenoff Page A

an idea than a person. I hate feeling this way. And he needs me.”
    “A sense of obligation is no way to start a life,” she presses.
    “Loyalty is important.” My voice sounds tinny and weak.
    “So is happiness. Would you want someone to marry you for such a reason?”
    “No, of course not.” But I am not lying wounded in a hospital bed, with no prospect of a future. I am suddenly annoyed. I barely know Krysia. Why is she asking me such things? “I should go.” I stand and put on my coat. “Thank you for the coffee.”
    I half wish she will try to stop me, but she nods, rising. “Thank you for calling. I hope to see you again soon.”
    Outside it is warmer now, the late-morning sun taking away some of the chill. The sidewalks are now lively with pedestrians, merchants and deliverymen unloading crates from lorries. As I make my way toward the metro, Krysia’s questions about Stefan prickle at me. I hear her voice, exhorting me to see the world now, while I still can. A thousand objections roar through my brain: I can’t leave Papa. I can’t travel alone.
    Nothing has changed—my problems loom as large as ever. But despite my earlier annoyance, it felt good to share my fears about Stefan and a life together with Krysia, to verbalize to somebody the thoughts and feelings I’d barely dared to acknowledge to myself for so long. And Krysia confiding her story of Emilie helped, as well. Learning that someone as strong and self-assured as Krysia also wrestles with the past and the right thing to do makes me feel somehow less alone. She seems to enjoy my company, though perhaps I am simply a proxy for the daughter she so desperately wants to know but cannot. Squaring my shoulders, I start down the street with a lighter gait than I’ve had since before the war.
    Forty minutes later, I reach our suite at the hotel. I open the door and stop. The curtains are drawn and only faint daylight filters in. A rustling noise at the desk startles me and I jump. Papa is here, hunched over the desk in the darkness, when he should have been at the ministry. “Papa?” Alarmed, I rush forward. He does not move. I put my hand on his shoulder, fearful that it is his heart and the worst has happened. “Papa, are you well?”
    He straightens but his expression is dazed as though he does not see or recognize me. Before him on the desk sits a newspaper. “There’s been an attempt on Clemenceau’s life.” I pick up the paper. My breath catches as I take in the photograph of the would-be assassin. The dark-eyed boy from the La Closerie des Lilas stares back at me.
    “The attacker possessed information from the conference that was not public, information that prompted him to act.” Papa drops his head to his hands once more. “And I’m afraid they’re going to blame it on me.”

Part Two
Versailles, April 1919

Chapter 4
    I peer out the window down the road at the Hôtel des Réservoirs. The six-story building, with its aged yellow facade and arched doorway, stands behind hastily erected barbed wire, giving it the feel of a fortress or prison, depending upon whether one is to be kept in or out. Either way, it looks as if the German delegation is to be quarantined, defeat a virus that no one wants to catch. Apple blossoms frame the hotel in a defiant lush pink.
    The road leading to the guarded hotel gate is lined three deep with onlookers, reporters and photographers and townspeople and those who had packed the trains down from the city. There is no official party as there had been when Wilson arrived, no military band or other pageantry to herald the Germans’ arrival—just hordes of the genuinely curious, waiting to see those who are to be held responsible for the world’s suffering.
    I turn back into the room where Papa sits working at his desk, oblivious to the spectacle taking place across the road. Our apartment in Versailles is located not in a hotel, but a tall row house that has been converted into apartments to