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His lips turned up, but it was more grimace than smile.

“Honestly, I thought I’d be arrested and killed long before now.

But I said I would, after a year. That was the plan—before we knew that France would be occupied territory by then.

I was going to request a leave, a holiday, and come here.

But then war made everything uncertain, and.

..” He shook his head. “I thought it was all over when they called me in. Schwerin had been brought in for questioning a month before, when he was caught treating Jews—I thought they’d found us out, somehow.

That I’d be sent to one of those camps.”

“Camps?”

“They call them concentration camps—prison camps. They had to build them when the prison system was overburdened with political prisoners. Now...they’re everywhere.

They send the Jews, the Gypsies, the homeless, anyone who gets on the wrong side of the Gestapo.

” His eyes had gone unfocused. He took his glasses off, tossed them to the table as he always did.

“I thought I’d never see my boy again. And then. ..this.” He motioned to himself.

To his uniform. Corinne had to shake her head. “I still don’t understand why they gave you this position if you’d been in such trouble with them before.”

He moved his head slowly from side to side, gaze still on the past. “Different divisions. Usually their files are impeccable though. I have heard so many stories of people brought in for questioning, their whole lives seeming to be laid out in their files, things they couldn’t think how the Gestapo knew.

Yet when I sat before them, they had none of it.

None of the inflammatory lectures I’d given were noted.

None of my arguments over Felix. My file was clean .

Glowing, even. As if I’d always been an enthusiastic Party member. ”

She squeezed his hand. “The work of this friend of yours?”

“That’s my best guess.” He snorted and turned his hand under hers, so that their fingers wove together.

“He kept telling me to leave, to go to Paris while I still could. He warned me that when the army took over, my chance would be gone. That Josef would do what he promised and take Felix to safety. But I was so afraid—so afraid that if I moved too soon, I’d lose him forever.

And I was convinced that the mighty French army could hold Hitler at bay. ”

“We all thought so too.” When was the last time a man had held her hand?

Papa had, of course. And Oncle Georges. Once in a while, their mutual friends from the library would give her fingers a squeeze or a pat.

But they never held her hand like this, fingers entwined through hers.

And never had she let a man her own age do so.

She hadn’t been ready for such a distraction.

But it didn’t distract, not as he held on as if she were an anchor in a storm.

It focused. “However it happened, you are here now, and so is he. Together. And for now, meeting here should work. I’ll have Josef bring him by every day, say I’m helping him in the afternoons after class so he can attend his own business, so that you and they aren’t always coming only on the same days.

But we should make long-term plans—plans to get you both out of here. ”

She could call on Oncle Georges for help. Send them to Maman and Papa’s family in England, perhaps. If such things were possible—if England could keep Hitler at bay. Get them false papers, so they wouldn’t be sent to the Isle of Man or forbidden entry in the first place.

“Maybe.” He sat forward, not letting go of her hand but using his free one to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t know. I will have to consider everything carefully.

The uniform does grant me certain privileges.

..but I’m still just a lackey. I have no authority outside of the libraries and literary circle.

And Ackermann watches me carefully. I know well that Kraus reports everything I do to him.

” For the first time since they sat down, since he started his tale, he looked her in the eye.

“I can’t risk losing him forever. I can’t.

..I can’t bear it. Staying here, playing the game—if that charade will keep him safe, then I’ll wear this blighted uniform forever.

If trying to escape it would put him at risk, then so be it.

God knows who I am beneath the insignia. It will have to be enough.”

She wanted to say it wasn’t—that being a secret godly man wasn’t nearly good enough, that he ought to shuck the dressing of evil, hold his child close, and run for freedom.

But how could she tell this broken father to put his son at even greater risk?

She had a feeling that the Nazis wouldn’t deal kindly with one of their officers trying to defect to England.

He was right about that. If he was caught—the chances of which were higher than she wanted to think, if what he said was true—then they’d likely execute him. Him, and Felix with him.

She blew out a long breath. And could admit, silently at least, that it was a selfish thing, to want him free of that uniform.

Because she liked the feel of his fingers wrapped around hers.

She liked the way he was looking at her, as if he hadn’t just let her begrudgingly into his secrets, but as if he welcomed her there with joy.

With relief. Because it would be so easy to really like this man, now that she knew what was true and what was facade.

But she didn’t want to be one of those women.

One of the collaborators who smiled at their Nazi paramours and ignored the voices of their own people condemning them for it.

She didn’t want anyone to think she was like that.

To catch her looking at him like she knew well she was doing right now—wondering what would happen if he leaned forward just a bit more, over, and pressed his lips to hers—and brand her with the same iron.

She didn’t want to fall in love with a Nazi—even one who hated the Nazis as much as she did. Yet if he defected, left Paris, how would that be any better? She couldn’t leave, not if she meant to see through the role she’d assigned herself in this war, gathering the information from her students.

But was that effort even worthwhile? Or was it just delusions of grandeur? Would the information they gathered do a lick of good anyway? Maybe she was a fool to risk so much for it all. She was no better than Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

Maybe...maybe, if he were free of the uniform, it would be worth the sacrifice. Maybe...

Perhaps he read those thoughts in her eyes as clearly as he seemed to gauge all her others.

He pulled his fingers free, cleared his throat, and stood up.

“I appreciate your willingness to help in all this—but I won’t hold you to it.

Think it through. Weigh the options. I know you won’t want the neighbors to talk, to assume things, and.

..how long will they really believe I’m only coming to search for books? ”

Should she have felt rejected? She could imagine Liana assuming he didn’t want to spend more time with her and was making excuses.

But Corinne had seen more of the world, more of people than Liana had.

She knew very well that Christian spoke from his sense of honor, not from his own desires.

She smiled. “Oh, they were already suspicious of that. I had to tell them that poor Kraus was all but illiterate, and that it seemed you mostly stopped by to spar over books. Which debates, of course, I let you win, because you occupiers are notoriously bad-tempered when you lose.”

There—a hint of a smile. “Let me, do you? Strange. I don’t think Corinne Bastien has ever purposefully lost a single argument in her life.”

She lifted a shoulder in a shrug and stood too.

“There are many things about Corinne Bastien that you have yet to discover. But.” She stepped closer, into his space.

Just to test—to watch the way his eyes shifted, his pupils dilated, his breath hitched.

“It seems you’ll have the opportunity to learn a bit more, at least. Because I’m not going to change my mind about the offer. ”

His breath whooshed out. “Has anyone ever mentioned that you’re impulsive? And that such tendencies can lead one into trouble in this day and age?”

She chuckled. “Trouble and I are old friends. When she doesn’t come to call often enough, I go out and seek her. Such an interesting companion, after all.”

He didn’t smile, didn’t laugh. Just regarded her long and evenly. “I don’t want you to regret this. To land yourself in danger for us—veritable strangers, after all. Who you never would have met were it not for this horrible war.”

“Strangers?” Incredulity seeped into her words now, and she gestured toward the building next door.

“Your godfather is like family to me! You think if the war had held off, if you’d come to Paris in a few months like you originally planned, that we wouldn’t have met?

You think if I’d realized all this time that you were the Little Chris they speak of so fondly, I wouldn’t have treated you differently from the start? ”

She wanted to ask about the moniker—but she already knew the reason.

His father, too, had been Christian. But when she’d heard the men talking about Little Chris over the years, she’d assumed he was still a teenager, a student.

She certainly hadn’t realized he was older than she was, that he’d been married, widowed, was raising a child.

She’d had no way of making the connection between their favorite “upstart intellectual” whose surname she’d never learned and the Nazi officer who’d taken over their world.

Abraham could have told her. But no doubt he knew how precarious was the line Christian was walking. What was at stake if any of them slipped. She wouldn’t begrudge them, any of them, their secrets.

How could she, when she had her own?

Again his eyes shifted, this time turning soft.

“That is a happy thought, isn’t it? That for the past seven years, my friends have been yours.

That when they left me, they found you. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem so odd anymore that I knew immediately that I liked you better than anyone else in Paris. ”

Ciel. She eased back a step, lest she do something stupid like wrap her arms around him. “You did not. You thought I was an impudent teenager hiding her mother’s books.”

“I’ve dedicated my life to impudent teenagers.

” He smiled, but it faded. His gaze dropped.

“I thought...I thought I could make a difference there, with them. That if I could just help them see that these ideas are mad, convince them to keep their minds open... Perhaps if I hadn’t been so distracted with my own family problems. Perhaps I’d have done a better job of helping them see how dangerous the path they’d chosen is. ”

“Don’t.” Her fingers reached out again before she could stop them, found his. “You cannot shoulder the burden of this. It is so much bigger than you. Rooted in bitterness and discontent that fed generations before you ever got up to try to teach them.”

He nodded, his eyes flicking to the copy of Marianne still sitting on the table, under his glasses. She hadn’t had the heart to toss it out—she kept opening it up to that article, rereading the words. The France which cannot be invaded.

Had he read it? Suddenly she suspected he had.

Especially with the way his larynx bobbed as he swallowed.

“There is a Germany that cannot—has not—been invaded too. I must believe that. I have been living for seven years in an occupied country, but the madness of the loud and the few and the violent will not be our legacy forever. It cannot.”

Oh, forget all the reasons she shouldn’t.

She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his waist. “It won’t.

We’ll win, somehow. We’ll win this war. We’ll keep fighting, keep resisting, keep thinking and believing and praying—and someday, you’ll go back there and help rebuild.

You just have to survive until someday, Christian.

You and Felix and Abraham and Earnst and Josef. ”

“Until someday.” He sighed, but his arms came around her. It wasn’t an embrace of passion or desire or attraction. It was just two tired people who realized they were allies after all, holding each other up. His chin rested on her hair. “How I pray we’ll all live that long.”