His smile falls away, and he keeps plucking feathers. “It’s just a hunk of metal, Marthe.”
I don’t want to fight again like we did about Bastille Day. Could I just lie to keep him safe? Maybe. I could pretend to be sick and beg him to care for me. I could seduce him and make him late. I could lie to him and keep secrets from him like I’ve learned to keep them from Anna . . .
But I don’t want to, and I hope I don’t have to. So I take a risk and tell him the truth.
When I’m done delivering Sam’s warning about the ambush, Travert throws the chicken down on the wood table. Then he lets out a string of curse words that would scandalize a whole brothel.
“The last thing we need is Frenchmen fighting Frenchmen,” I say.
“Tell that to your maquisard friends!”
Travert shakes his head, teeth gritted. Then he grabs his policeman’s coat and cap.
I grab his arm. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll let you know when I decide,” he says, slamming out the door.
I’m not sure if I should stay or go. At a loss, I sit down and finish plucking the dead chicken, a morbid task for my hands while watching the clock. Then I peel the precious potatoes he’s saved for the occasion, tensing up at every chime, waiting, waiting . . .
For all I know, he’s gone off to make arrests. Travert is willing to take risks for people—not for things. He’s made that clear. Telling him the truth might have been a big mistake, and I should be worrying about Sam. But deep in my gut, I’m worried most for Travert. It’s strange to feel fear like this again—I didn’t think it was possible after Henri.
Travert is nothing like Henri, of course. He’d rather be gulping wine in some bistro or playing cards in a smoke-filled hall than going on a camping trip, hayride, or midnight swim. He doesn’t know anything about medicine or baseball or Hollywood movies. And Travert is nothing like Anna either. He’s not fashionable or sophisticated or brimming with perky new ideas and good cheer. But he’s good at repairing things. Automobiles, sinks, leaky roofs. I look around his neat little house, with its patched-up stonework, and think that Travert’s a simple man in the best possible way.
And all I ever do is complicate things for him.
It’s long after dark—almost midnight—when the door bangs open. Travert’s cheeks are pink from the cold and he thunks down a heavy black box. “Merry Christmas.”
It looks like an automobile battery, and I gasp. “You sabotaged the transport truck?”
He nods. “It was the best I could come up with on short notice. It’s one thing to ask subordinates to look the other way. Another to make them accomplices. This way everybody but me can be an honest man.”
I feel a twinge of guilt, but still ask, “Did it work?”
He puffs up, affronted. “Of course. It was more than two hours before a replacement battery could be found, so we were late to pick up the statue . . . and by the time we got to Le Puy, it was already gone.”
My blood rushes with triumph. “Gone?”
He shrugs. “A band of men in police uniforms claiming to be from my gendarmerie had already come to get the statue and made off with it. Now I have to worry how the Resistance came by police uniforms.”
“Who cares?” I go and throw my arms around Travert’s neck. “Merci!”
“Don’t thank me,” he says, still scowling and grumpy. “I only did it to protect my gendarmes . . . and because I’m a sentimental idiot about that statue because of our wedding night.”
I grin and try to kiss him, but he gruffly fends me off. “We have to go to midnight mass now. We can’t do anything different—anything that might cause remark.”
Reluctantly, I agree. He’s helped make me a better criminal, and I almost regret that I’m making him into a better criminal too. I also want to go to midnight mass for Anna. Since the baron’s arrest in the summer, we learned he was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp; the baroness is traveling across France, working her contacts to see if she can at least get him transferred to a different prison. Without any of her family, it’s going to be a lonely Christmas for Anna.
By the time we get to the Church of Saint-Roch in Chavaniac, today’s news is on everyone’s lips. About how the area’s Resistance, now calling themselves the Secret Army of Lafayette, spirited the statue away. The Germans are reportedly furious—spending their Christmas Eve in the cold forests, searching for a statue, with threats that they’ll be searching every home and building.