The Last Night in London by Karen White (reading list .TXT) 📕

to meet the king and queen for tea at the palace. Her kid gloves and Precious’s box purse were, as Precious had said, the exclamation point at the end of a sentence. As she twirled for the second time, Eva knew exactly what Precious had meant.

“You look stunning,” Mr. Danek said, pulling out a chair for her. “But I hope you saved some money for food.”

Eva laughed, but Mr. Danek didn’t join her. It was then that she noticed the other man at the table, nearly hidden behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Two dark eyes stared out at her from a round face, the skin ruddy with pockmarks. The man’s tailored jacket fit his large shoulders and thick, muscled arms expertly. He hadn’t stood as she’d approached, and he regarded her with only mild interest, as one might eye a bug crawling within range to crush.

“Eva, meet a countryman of mine, Jiri Zeman.”

He looked at her, his gaze neither menacing nor friendly. He didn’t offer his hand.

“Eva Harlow,” Eva said, forcing a smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Jiri said, his voice lighter than she’d expected. He moved his chair to make room. “Anton here has been telling me all about you.”

Eva smiled again without commenting, focusing on arranging her skirts on her chair, not wanting to admit that Mr. Danek had never mentioned him to her at all.

Mr. Danek shouted something in Czech to the man behind the counter, and a steaming cup of coffee was set on the table in front of her. “I’d compliment you on your makeup,” he said, “but there is something else that is making your face glow, I think.”

“I’m in love,” Eva said a little too loudly. She certainly hadn’t planned on announcing her news in front of a stranger. But she didn’t care. For the first time in her life, she understood what all the fuss was about in the movies she’d watched at the cinema.

Jiri said nothing, only continued to watch her, an odd smile playing on his face. Mr. Danek sat back in his chair and put his cigarette to his lips. He had beautiful hands, Eva thought. She’d first noticed them as he’d applied makeup to one of the models. They were the hands of a pianist or a painter. She’d said that to him once, and he’d looked at her with such sad eyes that she’d wished she hadn’t said anything. It was only later, when they were packing up his makeup cases, that he’d told her he had trained as a pianist at Charles University in Prague but had had to leave his piano and his ambitions behind when his wife had died. Alone, he’d come to England. When she’d asked him why, he’d told her only that he’d left while he’d still had the chance to choose.

“Ah,” Mr. Danek said. “That explains why your cheeks are flushed so prettily.” His face darkened. “It is satisfying to know that love can still exist today when such horrible things are happening in the world.”

Now Eva noticed the crumpled copy of the Daily Mirror on the table. She turned it around and read the bold black headline: hitler arrives in prague. She looked back at Mr. Danek, wishing that she had paid attention to the BBC announcers for more than just to imitate their accents. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about world events; she did. It was just that it all seemed so far away and separate from the happiness she was feeling for the first time in her life. Eva pointed to a line in the lead paragraph. “It says here it was a bloodless invasion.”

A short, dark man at a nearby table stood abruptly. “Bloodless?” He blew out a puff of air from his lips. With a heavy accent like Mr. Danek’s, he said, “You mark my words: This is just the beginning.” He pointed a stubby finger at Eva. “Your Chamberlain and his Munich Agreement, saying it meant ‘peace in our time’ to give the Sudetenland to Hitler.” He shook his head in disgust. “All it did was feed a tyrant a little piece of my country, and that made him hungry for more. Now he’s taken the rest of Czechoslovakia, and he’s still hungry. What’s next, hmm? Look what he’s done to Austria, how the Jews have been thrown out of all professions, and their synagogues and homes burned. He means to take over all of Europe until there are no more Jews.”

He leaned closer to Eva. She could smell coffee and cigarettes on his breath. “Hitler won’t stop until he’s moved into your Buckingham Palace. And that won’t be bloodless. I tell you that.”

The man threw money on his table and stalked out of the café, the door slamming shut behind him. Stunned by the odd noise next to her, Eva turned her head, realizing it was Jiri. He appeared to be laughing. Except it wasn’t the sort of laugh she was used to, the sound of joy. This was a brittle, choking sound, as if he had just swallowed something bitter.

Leaning over to crush his cigarette in the ashtray, Jiri said, “There will always be some who are uneducated and ignorant. They will not see two sides of a story.”

Eva found she couldn’t look at him. Her eyes focused instead on the coffeepots—an eclectic collection of all sizes, shapes, and colors—displayed on a long shelf over the counter. The man who’d stormed out had seemed not ignorant but passionate about his beliefs and more knowledgeable about a situation she hadn’t considered very important because it hadn’t affected her. Her eyes stung with embarrassment, and she waited until her vision had cleared enough to read the stick-on-letter wall menus before turning back to Mr. Danek.

“Is it true? Is everything as dire as that man said?”

“Jiri and I were discussing just that thing. Weren’t we?”

Jiri lit another cigarette, his movements blunt and decisive. “Is that what you call doing all the talking?” He