Page 27

He hadn’t called her Corinne again, not since that night when he’d talked about the book burnings. She hadn’t expected him to even come back after that, honestly. And if he did, she’d expected the return of the strict Nazi officer, going about his business.

Yet he’d returned four days later. And five after that. And then within three. Less to search, she’d definitely come to realize, than to talk about whatever book he’d been reading, and to ask her about hers.

She pulled the bread knife from its block and moved to the baguette.

Juste ciel , it had been far too long since she’d actually sliced a loaf of bread.

She never got a whole one these days, always forced to share with someone else, and she never even bothered cutting it.

Tearing hunks off to eat with a few grams of cheese sufficed most days. “Do you know Karl Gustaf?”

He put a plate before each chair. “I don’t think so. Should I? Is he a writer?”

A snort escaped before she could stop it. “Everything’s books with you, isn’t it?” It came out too teasing.

He shot her a grin. “Guilty. So if not a writer...?”

She settled the knife an inch from the end, sliced on the diagonal. She’d been careful, so careful to let him think her a student. The less any Nazi knew about her, the better.

But one Nazi—the one who mattered—already knew. “He’s...from the Ministry of Education, apparently. He audited one of my classes today.”

The professor’s hands went still, and his frown went deep.

“I knew they were sending men for the job—I thought I’d know them.

Foolish, I suppose. There are many universities other than my own in Germany.

” He reached for the silverware. “Are you merely unsettled by his presence, or did he do something in particular?”

The words sounded careful to her ears. Too casual.

His movements too precise. She sliced another piece of bread.

“Both. He first praised my teaching, insisting I must be at least part German—and then all but apologized for the evils of the city forcing me to work instead of finding a husband as is fitting.”

“Teaching?” Silverware clattered to the table. He spun to face her.

She expected outrage. Disapproval, like Gustaf had shown. Anger, at least, that she’d never mentioned it before, despite his regular visits over the last few months.

She saw only...delight. Absolute, pure delight. He grinned. “I ought to have known. What do you teach? Which class was— dummkopf !” He slapped a hand dramatically to his head. “ You are Dr. Bastien, not your mother!”

The secretary in the registrar’s office had already admitted that he’d come looking for Maman, and that she’d nearly pointed him Corinne’s way instead, but he’d barreled out too quickly. Claire had meant to apologize for it.

Corinne had assured her no harm was done, that he already knew she was Yvonne Bastien’s daughter.

Now, she lifted one shoulder and cut another slice.

“He visited my class on German literature.” No point in hiding that either.

It would soon be in whatever files they kept on her. “We’re translating Goethe’s Faust .”

He leaned onto the table, laughing softly. “Of course. You speak German. I shouldn’t be surprised, given your neighbors.” His grin was crooked. It made him look closer to Kraus’s age than his own. “What is your doctorate in?”

“Linguistics.” She paused. Cut. “The first one. My second is in philosophy.”

“Two doctorates.” He straightened, and though he shook his head, he was still smiling. “I’m outranked. May I be terribly rude?”

This time she turned to face him, abandoning the bread for a moment. “Rude?”

“How old are you?” He lifted his hands. “I know, I know. One should never ask a lady such a thing, but...I thought you no more than nineteen or twenty when we first met, and I’ve been recalculating every time we have a conversation. I can’t decide if you’re eighteen or eighty.”

She smirked and returned to her work. “Eighty, naturally. Don’t I look marvelous for my age?”

“That part was never in question, whatever your answer.”

Only narrowly did she avoid slicing into her thumb.

Had he meant it as the compliment it sounded like?

Probably not. He was simply a kind, polite man, despite his uniform.

His mother—no doubt a proper German hausfrau who never worked a day outside the home in her life—had probably taught him always to compliment a woman. “I will turn thirty-one next month.”

“ Danke Gotte . If my new best friend was fifteen years my junior, I was going to have a good cry.”

This time she set down the knife to avoid risk to life and limb. She had no name for the torrent of emotions churning inside her. Disbelief, fury, joy, panic—all of them and none of them. “We are no t —”

“Relax, Doctor.” It wasn’t right that a Nazi should have a smile like that. Teasing and self-deprecating and twinkling and wise. “It is just between us and the books. Hush-hush.”

She yanked another plate from the cupboard and arranged the bread on it. “Do I get no say in this?”

“You’ve had plenty of say! You said that Don Quixote was an exploration of Cervantes’s alienation, that St. Augustine hilariously inspired you to steal as a child instead of warning you of the evils of it, that Kant’s moral imperative changed the way you thought of both morality and Kant.”

Her cheeks were on fire. Had she really said all that? So many of her thoughts—her true, inmost thoughts?

She had. Of course she had. Because they’d just been discussing books, that was all, and she’d never trained herself to withhold her thoughts on such subjects. She’d rather trained herself to explore them, express them, and defend them.

“Don’t look so woebegone.” He’d moved to her side and reached now for the plate of bread, nudging her playfully. “I didn’t say I was your best friend. You’re free to keep hating me if you like, but I feel no such obligation.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and let him call the younger two in to eat.