But that had been summer, always summer, when the air was sweet with the scent of roses and jewel-toned light fell through the old stained-glass windows, dappling everything with color. Try though she might, Aurélie could find no sense of presence here now, either human or divine. Where was the Lord, to have visited such horrors upon them? The children of the village grew wasted, frail. Where were her ancestors, as Germans reveled in their keep, shaming their shades? Where was her father, keeping her in ignorance when she burned to do something, anything?
She felt lost, deserted by everyone on whom she had relied.
Everyone except the one person she had the least reason to trust.
Love. It was absurd to think of love at a time like this. She shouldn’t be thinking it. It made her chest hurt and her head ache.
“It was a Tuesday in May,” he had said, sounding sure, so sure. No wild declarations of passion, just that calm certainty.
So sure in his love for her.
For her.
Jean-Marie loved her, Aurélie knew, but he loved her because it was expected. He loved her because their families had known each other for generations. He loved her because it was less bother than finding a wife for himself.
But Max had no obligations to her, no ties of family or history. If he loved her—Aurélie made sure to stress that if—it was purely because of some quality in her. Because there was something about her that called to him. Or something he thought called to him.
She had to keep telling herself that, because if she were to allow herself to believe that he saw her, truly saw her, as he had seen her in the corner of her mother’s salon, away from the throng, impatient with their philosophies, and still loved her anyway—that was heady and dangerous stuff, and she shouldn’t be allowing herself to consider even the possibility of it, not with a German, not when she was all but promised, never mind that she’d never felt any more passion for Jean-Marie than he felt for her.
Certainly nothing like the passion she’d felt on Christmas Eve, in the churchyard, with Max von Sternburg.
Aurélie rested her forehead against the cold stone of the countess’s pet dog, praying for clarity, for a sign, for anything.
The cold wind whistled through the cracks in the windows. And then Aurélie heard a noise that wasn’t the wind at all.
She froze against the stone, her body chilled and alert at the same time.
There was a flutter and a cooing noise. Slowly, Aurélie lifted her head—to see a white pigeon perched on the breastplate of Sigismund the First.
For a moment, all disbelief fled. Here was fairy tale, indeed. A sign from her ancestors. A dove bearing—a metal canister?
Sense returned with a vengeance. This wasn’t a metaphor or a message. Not that sort of message, in any event. This was a carrier pigeon, banned on pain of death, bearing intelligence, and if Hoffmeister found it here, they’d all pay for it.
“Hello,” said Aurélie to the pigeon. “If I may?”
The pigeon submitted to having its cylinder removed. Inside was a tiny scrap of foolscap, rolled into a scroll thinner than a knitting needle. Aurélie was just about unroll it when a shadow fell across the nave.
Hastily, Aurélie placed herself between the intruder and the pigeon, as though that would make any difference.
“Father! Thank goodness,” she said. “I thought—”
“The German dogs would never come in here,” said her father dismissively. He wasn’t, Aurélie noticed, as well groomed as usual. His valet had gone for a soldier back in August, and Victor, while enthusiastic, was hardly skilled. There were nicks on her father’s chin, clumsily covered with sticking plaster. But his manner was as imperious as ever. He held out a hand. “I believe that message is intended for me.”
Aurélie didn’t surrender it. “You should be more careful. What if someone else had found it?”
“Who else comes here? Monsieur le Curé?” Her father gave a snort. “He prefers to practice his devotions in the comfort of the green salon. That pig of a major? He doesn’t want the stench of papistry on his skin.”
“He’d risk it if he knew what you were keeping in here.” The pigeon was pecking at the count’s breastplate as one who had pecked there before. A bell tower with no bell, close to her father, under the Germans’ very nose. “You are keeping the birds here, aren’t you? I ought to have guessed it before. I’m amazed no one else has.”
“Why would they?” There was a warning in her father’s voice. “Are you planning to inform him?”