I snort. “There’s plenty to worry about.” And I am worried. I can’t go to Germany, and not just because I’m afraid to get bombed by the Allies. Your papers are in order, Madame Simon said, but what if they’re not? What if the Germans find out something about me that I don’t even know myself? They’re making people undergo medical examinations for Jewish lineage, using calipers on noses. And I’ve caught myself staring in the mirror, looking for signs—if there really are such things.
But while the rest of us are afraid, Faustine Xavier laughs it off. “Marthe, if you don’t want to go, just get married. It’s high time you found a man to make an honest woman of you.”
I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe it’s her smug expression, or the fact that I slugged back four shots of the baron’s whiskey in secret before coming out here. But before I can stop myself, I pitch my half-eaten apple like a baseball at Faustine’s face. It bounces off her cheek—and after that, it’s pandemonium, and I’m shouting, “If you want me to be honest, you won’t like what I have to say!”
Faustine hops up in red-faced fury, wiping apple pulp from her nose. “You mongrel!”
“Don’t call her that,” Anna says, stepping between us. “Don’t you dare. Marthe just lost the man she loved, and what you said was cruel.”
Faustine’s eyes narrow to slits. “I might have known you’d take her side, madame. There is something between you two. Something unnatural.”
“Hey,” Sam barks, shouldering forward, ready to defend my honor. But the word is already in the air.
Unnatural. There it is, bald and ugly . . . all it would take is someone like Faustine Xavier to denounce us for sexual deviance, and we could end up in jail or worse. I’m frozen in fear, my throat constricting in panic as Faustine says, “I intend to report this to your father, madame.”
Anna doesn’t flinch. “It’s countess to you. Or Madame Secretary-General—your superior either way. Remember that when you make your report.”
Leaving the bitch sputtering in our wake, Anna hurries me toward the stone stairway into the castle. Once inside, I follow her into the privacy of the dark wood-paneled breakfast room, and I’m so exultant I want to grab her and kiss her on the mouth. Anna stood up for herself, she stood up for me, maybe she even stood up for us. “You were amazing—”
“You have to tell her you’re sorry!”
“I’m only sorry I didn’t knock her on her ass.”
Anna takes me by the arms. “You have to get hold of yourself, Marthe. You shouldn’t have to. If I lost my husband the way you lost Henri, I’d want to scream and burn down the world, but—”
“But that’s just my personality on a good day,” I say with a jaunty grin.
She frowns. “I can smell the alcohol on your breath, you know. Papa knows someone’s been taking bottles from his liquor stash. I told him it was me. We’ve agreed to keep it our little secret, but if you keep acting this way, so distant, crazy, and angry, you’re going to get denounced. It’s not bad enough people spread these ridiculous, disgusting rumors about us? You have to give Faustine Xavier another excuse!”
I pull back and stand there blinking. Disgusting. That word brings me back to the painful reality. The reality in which there’s no us to defend. The reality that I have a crush on a married woman who loves her husband. I need to accept that we can’t ever be together. Really accept it this time. Even if I have to walk away from this castle and leave her behind . . .
“Are you trying to get fired?” Anna asks, and that’s another slap of reality. Because I can’t walk away from the castle, even if I could afford to. I promised Henri that I’d hold down the fort and I promised Madame Simon that I’d look after Gabriella Kohn, and now I need to get her siblings admitted too.
“Okay,” I say in resignation. “I’ll—I’ll keep out of sight for a while and not antagonize Madame Xavier.”
This gives me an excuse to go back upstairs and get back to work on the forged identity cards. Fortunately, the third time is the charm. The impression my new stamp leaves is the crisp round mark of the prefecture in Haute-Garonne. I chose it because the stamp is simple—no stars, no wreaths, no coats of arms, no fascist hatchets. Certainly no Lady Liberty, like the one from the prefecture of the Haute-Savoie that some hapless official has probably been forced to retire in a drawer for fear it might remind us what we used to stand for.