“What?” I cried. “This isn’t the sort of gift—”
“It’s to remind you that you aren’t trapped,” Max said. “Whatever is mine is yours. You can go whichever direction you like. If you don’t like it, I’ll sell it before I go back.”
Even as he urged me behind the wheel, I protested, “I couldn’t accept. This is ostentatious!”
“I can afford it.” I can afford you, he meant. He didn’t want me to cling to my marriage for financial reasons, and I was unutterably grateful. “Beatrice, I’m not a secretive man by nature. I tire of hiding our relationship . . .”
“I know,” I said, aching to reassure him. “I’m not free. Not yet. Not only because I’m still married, but because . . .” I feared to sound vain, but then decided I must express it. “The work I do for the war—it has relied upon my husband’s name and, just as importantly, my good reputation.” Max winced, so I hastened to add, “Not that I consider our relationship to be any stain on my character. It’s only that—”
“You were young and naive when you married Mr. Chanler. Under such circumstances, a divorce shouldn’t be held so much against you.”
I’d been neither as young nor as naive as he wished to believe, and I was suddenly too ashamed to tell him otherwise. “People can be petty.”
“If so, what do we care? After the war, we will be living our quiet private life in our sleepy white house . . .”
Did I want to live a quiet private life? “The war isn’t over yet,” I said.
He chuckled a little, ruefully. “We need even petty people to win this war. Is that what you’re saying? That until you have gilded Lafayette’s old domain, it’s our patriotic duty to keep our love a secret.”
My cheeks warmed at what I took for mockery. “I feel a weight of responsibility. Especially with orphaned children like Marthe depending on me.”
His smile fell away. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I want to be with you, and a man at war is desperate to make plans for the future.”
Yes, of course I could understand that. At the start of the war, I had despaired that I might never feel loved again. Now I did. What sort of woman would turn it away? “Of course I want to be with you too.”
He kissed me, again with absolute adoration. “That is settled, then. I have to go back to France now. My mission here is over. But when I go back, I’ll know I’m fighting to keep you and your boys safe, and to end this war, so we can be together.”
“Oh, Maxime . . .”
Very seriously, he pressed a photo of himself into my hands. One from before the war, when he was a civilian in an elegant Edwardian suit. “Keep it by your bed, won’t you?”
When I clutched it gratefully to my heart, he added, “No more crossings until after the war, madame. You’ve done your part. You’ve no idea the anxiety it gives me every time you step on a ship. I don’t want you to even think about seawater. When I’m being deafened by the guns, I want to know you’re safe here on dry land. The minute the shooting is over, I’ll rush to you, even if I have to row the boat myself.”
I laughed at the image. “Then I’ll see you after the war, Captain.”
“After the war,” he promised.
FORTY-SEVEN
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
November 11, 1942
All France is occupied now.
It’s Armistice Day, and Nazi soldiers are everywhere; even here in the mountains, where every tree by the side of the road is covered with red and black swastikas and tacked-up posters of the new rules we’re forced to obey under penalty of death.
The threat of American invasion scared the Germans into crossing the demarcation line. So much for the Marshal and his Vichy government. I’d say good riddance, but now all France is at the mercy of soldiers who shout Heil Hitler, change our clocks to keep German time, seize even our hunting weapons, and requisition buildings and supplies.
There are whispers some fat Wehrmacht general wants Lafayette’s castle for his headquarters, and I’m sick to my stomach when the baron calls a staff meeting. It’s the baroness who rises to speak, and she gets directly to the point. “All contact with the United States has been cut off. We can’t get word to the foundation in New York at all.” Which means we won’t be getting any more help from Madame Beatrice or the American Red Cross. “Given these circumstances, we’ve been advised to close down the preventorium, and I know many of you wish to return to your homes and look after your families.”