But just as I open it, there’s shouting from the staff room, and Sam bursts into the stairwell. When he sees me, he calls, “Marthe, the Japanese attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbor!”
We don’t walk but run down the stairs to join the staff in the salon, where everyone gathers round the baron’s squawking radio in its tall wood console, tuned to a shortwave station to get the news that, at long last, America is in the war.
It’s not a cheer that goes up—not exactly. It’s a chorus of sympathetic sighs and gasps and worried hiccups. It could mean France will be liberated and we’ll get our country back. Or it could mean the war will drag on, without end, across our cities, farms, and villages . . .
That night I’m smoking in the attic, and Anna joins me there. We share my last cigarette; it’s stale, but we savor it. “Britain was almost beat,” she says. “This is terrible, but I almost hoped they’d be beat, because they were supposed to be our allies, but left my husband behind at Dunkirk . . .”
She’s not the only one to have the bitter thought that the British seemed willing to fight to the very last Frenchman. It’s been hard to think of them as allies since Churchill bombed our fleet to keep it out of German hands. But they’ve been taking it on the chin ever since, and to hope for their defeat . . . that would mean cheering Hitler.
Anna must see that I’m horrified, because she just shakes her head as if to bring herself back to her senses. “I just miss him.”
“I know,” I say. I know.
“We were practically newlyweds when the war started, and now I can barely remember what it was like to be kissed, or touched, or . . .”
I go hot and cold wondering why she’s telling me this, worried that she knows I wanted to kiss her. Wondering if she knows I still do. My stomach clenches because I realize it’s been so long since I saw Henri last that I’m starting to forget his voice, his smile, his scent. Maybe the reason I feel the way I do about Anna is just because I’m lonely, so I say, “Me too. I miss Henri, I mean.”
Anna stares at me intently, lowering her voice to a slightly scandalized whisper. “Did you and Henri ever . . .”
“Not all the way.” Maybe that’s another reason I’m drawn to her. She’s experienced. She’s been married. She’s had sex. And I’ve wanted to ask her about it, but now I don’t dare. “I mean, I would have let him, but Henri always had to be a gentleman in the end.”
Anna exhales, nodding with less judgment than I had feared. “Sometimes I feel like this war has hijacked my whole life. Do you ever feel that way?”
“Exactly that way.” I was twenty-three when it started, an age when you can still be a little wild and adventurous and stupid. I’m almost twenty-six now, and it’s long past time to grow up . . .
“And this castle,” Anna is saying. “It’s like someplace out of time. Like nothing that happens to me here while I’m apart from my husband is real. Everybody is so happy that the Americans are coming into it, but is it so wrong that a part of me just wants this war to be over so I can get my life back and the man I love can come home?”
“No,” I admit, getting the message loud and clear. She’s not thinking about me. She’s thinking about him. Worrying about her man the way I should be worrying about mine. I rub my hands together against the cold, dreading the idea of Henri spending another Christmas in a German cage. If the United States stood with France at the start of the war, it would’ve made a difference, but now I’m not sure they can win. And some of us don’t want them to.
Certainly not Faustine Xavier, who over the course of the next week makes a point of reminding us that Japan destroyed the fleet at Pearl Harbor. She seems almost as gleeful as the Führer himself, who declared war on the United States before they got a chance to declare war on him. Apparently the Reichstag erupted in thunderous applause, welcoming the fight. Everyone wonders now whose side Vichy—and France—will be on. But I know what side I’m on, even if it means Henri rots another year in that POW camp. Even if it means that I can’t tell anyone my secrets.
Because I want to live in a world where I don’t have to keep them.
TWENTY
ADRIENNE
Paris
June 1782
The stacks of invitations we received every day since Lafayette’s triumphant return from America astonished our nearly five-year-old daughter. We were invited to the opera, garden parties, and receptions of every sort, including one hosted by the graying marshals of France to pay tribute to my husband. “A busy social life is the price of your papa’s glory,” I told auburn-haired Anastasie, as I was too happy to begrudge my husband a single honor. Anastasie adored the father she had scarcely known. And now, as we made ready to meet our carriage, which had been brought round into the drive, Gilbert stood wearing his ceremonial sword of honor with a gilded hilt, which had been presented to him by Dr. Franklin and was his most prized possession. Anastasie tugged at it with impunity to get her father to hoist her up into his arms.