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She couldn’t write the article they wanted, the one that would encourage French people to embrace the new regime, to bow to it.

Someone would though. Someone would think “Well, it’s a paycheck” and scribble some nonsense onto paper.

And the magazine would run it, and her neighbors would read it, and while some would huff, others would think, Maybe this is the only way. The way we survive.

If she’d wondered how far she could trust the Moreaux, though, the question was answered after dinner when Hugo led them all into the sitting room, where a radio held the position of honor on a marble-topped table.

He switched it on—and shot a look at his wife when the words of Radio Paris greeted them.

Babette laughed. “Someone came to the door earlier—what was I to do, leave it on the BBC when I didn’t know who was calling?”

Given that the Nazis were attempting to make it a capital offense to listen to anything but their own new propaganda station, Corinne had taken to leaving her own wireless set tuned to Radio Paris too, though she listened to it only enough to scoff and stay up-to-date on what the enemy wanted her to think.

To hear what Pétain, whom she’d once respected as the great victor of Verdun, was peddling now on behalf of his Nazi overlords.

Liana motioned for Corinne to sit beside her on one of the twin settees. They listened in silence for a while, concentration on the three faces of the Moreaux as the English program finished up.

“Do you speak English?” Liana asked after a few minutes—perhaps she’d noticed the lack of pucker to Corinne’s brow. “I can translate for you, if not. A bit, anyway. Sometimes they speak too quickly for me to follow.”

Corinne smiled. “I do. My father was English—he was injured and left for dead in the last war. My maman nursed him back to health, and he decided to stay here.”

She hadn’t told anyone that story in years. Not since Papa had died. She didn’t know why, exactly, other than that it felt like a part of him she could hold tight to. Protect. But she wanted to share it with these new friends who had welcomed her so fully into their own secrets.

They trusted her. With no reason to. They chose to trust her, because God had crossed their paths.

She would choose the same.

Liana’s lovely brown eyes went wide. “How romantic!”

“So you are half British?” Babette frowned at that. “You’ll want to keep that quiet, I think—I know several English ladies who have been arrested already and sent who knows where, just because of that.”

Stepfather. She should have said stepfather , but she never thought of Papa that way.

He was just... Papa . She ought to correct them now, but the more important part seemed to be Babette’s concern.

“Not necessary. He...Papa was ill for so long, unable to even speak his name, if he could even remember it. My mother started calling him Pierre, just to have something to call him. He eventually managed to whisper ‘Bastien’ as his name. One night when he seemed near death, she called the priest in to give him last rights, and that’s what Father entered into his records—Pierre Bastien.

” She shrugged. “It became his name, after he got well. He kept it. With all the confusion of the war, all the records lost in our town, no one questioned it. He was simply issued new papers and given a French passport.”

Babette looked relieved. “Good then, that no one knows.”

“But he taught you English?” Hugo put in.

Corinne nodded. “He did. He said that knowing several languages would serve me well. He taught me English, German, Greek, and Latin.”

“Gracious.” Liana winced. “Cruel man.”

“Learned man,” her father corrected. The gaze he settled on Corinne was different now, somehow. “A very learned man, I should think. Though perhaps that shouldn’t surprise me, if your mother is also a professor.”

“It was Papa who encouraged her to go to university and eventually become a professor, though she was older than most students.” Until him, Maman said she’d thought no further than the border of their village in the Somme region. About nothing bigger than finding food enough for her and Corinne.

But when he’d seen the yearning for knowledge in her mother, he’d done something he’d sworn he’d never do. He reached out to the family he’d let think him dead for nearly a decade. Reclaimed just a bit of the world he’d abandoned to stay with them. So that he could give them an education.

“So very romantic,” Liana said on a sigh.

But then she snapped back to attention when the broadcast switched to a more familiar voice—one of the French broadcasters who had traveled to England to remain on the air, speaking directly to those still in France, sharing the news the Nazis wanted to keep from them.

Corinne fell silent too, taking in every word.

She said her farewells after the broadcast so she could get home before the curfew the Germans had instituted, assuring the trio of concerned Moreaux that she would be perfectly fine venturing through the city on her own, that she did it all the time.

And with summer’s long days, there was still daylight in the sky even now.

More, she promised to join them again for dinner next Saturday, every Saturday, and she and Liana had set up a time to meet for lunch at a café near the Sorbonne on Tuesday too.

The Métro ride did nothing to disturb the sense of peace from her unexpected new friends, and the streets between the stop and her flat were blessedly clear of Nazis.

When a wisp of music made its way to her from some open window, she let the notes carry her feet into a few swing steps as she opened the door and headed straight for the letter boxes.

A twist of her key, and there—another answer to prayer, this time to one she’d actually prayed. A book-shaped parcel, wrapped in brown paper, addressed in a familiar hand. “Praise God.” She kissed her medallion and then the book from Maelie.

Her elation lasted exactly twenty-two more seconds—the time it took her to dart up the stairs to her floor.

Then it came crashing down in a million shards of broken crystal. Because the professor—the Nazi professor—sat in front of her door.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, she considered spinning around and running for it. But before she could act on that impulse, much less think it through, he stood.

With his hands out. And his shoulders drooping. And an expression on his face of...what? Apology?

It rooted her to her place, one step from the landing.

Her fingers clutched the book. The book that would have markings in the margins.

The book that, if he looked at it now, before she’d had a chance to erase the pencil marks, could land her in prison.

Executed. Could bring their fledgling intelligence network crashing down before they’d had a chance to do anything worthwhile at all.

He didn’t reach for the book. Didn’t come any nearer. “Forgive me for intruding. I only...” He winced, letting his arms drift back down to his side. “I wanted to warn you, and I couldn’t risk doing it when Kraus was nearby.”

“Warn me?”

“This was stupid,” he muttered in German, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, dislodging his spectacles to do so. No doubt he assumed she couldn’t understand him.

She did. And his clear second-guessing of whatever he’d come here to warn her about made something relax. One degree. No more. “Warn me of what, Professor?”

He drew in a breath, puffed it back out. And looked up. “First—introductions. I’m Christian Bauer, professor and head librarian at the University of Berlin, and it was rude of me to use your name the other day without permission. I apologize.”

He didn’t stretch out a hand to shake, but it felt like he did. Verbally, he did.

So...to shake, or to slap it away? She crossed her arms over her stomach, holding the book tight against her. Because he surely wouldn’t think such a thing odd, given that he’d cornered her outside her flat. “Corinne Bastien.” It wasn’t forgiveness, exactly. But it wasn’t exactly not .

He nodded, taking it as the truce it was. Not peace—but a momentary ceasefire. “And again, I am sorry for...” He waved at her closed door. “I don’t mean to intrude. And certainly didn’t intend to startle you. I only...”

Color rose in his cheeks, which was what made it click into place. Her lips almost, nearly curled up. “Are you here to warn me about your friend with the lecherous eyes?”

“He isn’t my friend .” Another wince. “He’s my commanding officer. And yes.”

“All right...noted.” She took the final step. “Though given that the one time our paths have almost crossed was in a section of the city where I only go rarely, your warning is a bit unnecessary, non ?”

His look was long, even. Waiting. “My commanding officer, mademoiselle . That means he could well decide to drop in any moment next door to check on my progress. Or he could mention the lovely young woman with blonde curls he saw in the hearing of Kraus, who could say we have a neighbor matching that description.”

She rolled her eyes. “An argument that makes sense only because you know the connection. I am hardly the only woman with blonde curls in Paris, and Kraus would have no reason to assume I’d have been on the Champs-élysées tonight with my friend’s father.”

Moreover, what good would the warning really do if the man did come here? She couldn’t exactly hide in her flat all day every day. Classes would be starting back up soon, which would keep her away from home most of the day, yes, but she’d have to come and go.

Bauer granted the point with a curt nod. “As you say. An overreaction on my part. I only felt guilty, being the one to inadvertently draw his attention to you. I apologize for that too. I was only surprised to see you there.”

Because she belonged here , in the 13 th arrondissement , peopled more by professionals and academics, writers and the stray artist here and there, rather than that part of the city, where only the wealthy and elite dined and shopped.

She granted it with a tilt of her head. “I appreciate the concern.”

He nodded once more and then moved toward the stairs, circling in a way that kept three feet between them at all times. Which shouldn’t have made her soften another degree but did.

He went down two steps, then stopped with an “Oh” and pivoted to face her again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slender wooden disc, about an inch thick, and held it up to her.

She just stared at it. “A...coaster?”

He motioned with it toward her door. “For the leg of the table. It’s a better solution than the cardboard, which will compress over time. And the same thickness as the book. I checked it to be sure.”

He’d checked a coaster’s thickness against the book he confiscated?

And, what, had been carrying the thing around in his pocket?

Corinne reached for the wood slowly, waiting for any trap, any ultimatum, anything to make sense of the Nazi officer in charge of ruining one of the most precious things in her world being unnecessarily kind to her, when she’d shown him nothing but disdain.

The moment her fingers closed around the side nearest her, he released it. Touched the brim of his cap in farewell. And spun away.

Corinne waited until his footsteps faded, until she heard the door open to the street and close again.

And then she drew out her key, let herself inside, and sagged against the door.

The book, with whatever secrets were penciled into its pages, she set on the nearest flat surface.

And she closed her eyes and tried to make sense of the world.