Page 52

Twenty

Though her feet itched to run straight from campus after her final class of the week, Corinne knew she couldn’t.

At least, not if she meant to keep her position.

She hadn’t kept her office hours as much as she should have been, she was behind on grading essays, she’d failed to attend the faculty meeting a week ago—it had been on Friday, while she was still wearing a blood-soaked dress and counting tic-a-tac s with her prayers.

Her students deserved better. The university did too.

She knew it—but still, everything in her strained toward Boulevard Arago, toward the three fellows who would be waiting for her.

Christian was sitting up now. Eating a bit.

The doctor had finally been willing to grant that, barring infection, he should eventually make a full recovery, though it would take months.

Months. Glorious, beautiful, unfettered months when he could just be there.

There, in her flat. Playing with Felix. Talking to Oncle Georges.

Smiling up at her. Months when his enemies thought him dead so wouldn’t be watching him.

Months when they wouldn’t have to guard their every look and thought and word.

“Careful,” Liana said as she swooped to her side, linking their arms together with a laugh. “If you don’t wipe that look off your face, everyone will think you’ve fallen in love.” She bumped their shoulders together, winking.

Georges was the one who had brought the entire Moreau family to dine with them last night.

“It is important not to trust many, mon chouchou ,” he had whispered into her surprise.

“And just as important to trust a few implicitly. The Moreaux are good people. Good allies. Good friends to watch after you whenever I’m not in Paris—even now. ”

She’d think later about when next her uncle would leave.

For now, she bumped Liana back, letting her lips mirror the smile.

“Me? No one would believe it. They’ve all given up hope for me, after trying for a decade to set me up with their every nephew and son and brother and cousin and friend from church. ”

Liana laughed again and reached to hold her beret down against a sudden gust of November wind. “If only Josef had offered to make introductions to his godson ages ago, though, eh?”

“If only.” But time was too precious to waste any on could-have-beens. They had now . Months, at least, before they’d have to decide what came next. Time to heal and discover and learn what it would be like to be a family.

“Maman’s worried, you know. About the propriety.” Liana tried, and failed, to tamp down another grin. “She’s already doing up Gigi’s old room for Felix. And Martin’s for Chris.”

Corinne nearly stumbled over a seam in the walkway. “She—what?” Babette wanted to steal them from her, when she’d only had them for a week, three days of which Christian had been unconscious and at death’s very door?

“Relax—though also be forewarned.” Liana winked and reclaimed her arm. “She is only concerned for your eternal souls, after all. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust you. And she knows the poor man can scarcely move right now.”

Corinne blew out a breath as her friend hurried off to her next class. Another something to worry over later—because the poor man could indeed scarcely sit up for more than thirty minutes at a time, and her uncle was there more than he wasn’t. There was no threat to her virtue.

Even if she had snuck a kiss from him this morning that made her toes curl in delight when she remembered it.

A glance from the corner of her eye showed her Gustaf striding along the path toward her, an arm raised, but she pretended not to notice—she wasn’t quite ready to face Christian’s sole Nazi friend just yet.

She couldn’t exactly stop him from seeking her out, but she could hope that if she made him work for it, he’d decide he didn’t have time quite yet if he meant to observe a class.

Then perhaps, perhaps she’d be gone for the day before he came and found her.

One of her colleagues held the door to their building open for her, giving her a nod and a smile. “Good to see you looking more yourself again, Dr. Bastien. That nasty flu gone for good, finally?”

“So it seems. Thank you, Dr. Guilliams.” She fished in her bag for her key, hurrying in before Gustaf could shout loud enough that she couldn’t pretend oblivion.

After her office hours, she would go to Maman’s office under the guise of tidying up.

Really, to soak her in. She hadn’t words enough in their encoded language to tell her what had transpired in the last week, even though her soul ached with the need.

Maman had been her whole world for so long.

Her confidante. Her best friend. She wanted so much to curl up with her on the sofa, steaming coffee in each of their hands, and just talk to her.

Tell her everything. Confess that finally, finally she understood how Maman had felt for Papa.

How it had torn her apart to watch him lie there, dying. How it had given her heart wings when he beat death back. How the future could both look grim as the dark and sparkling as the stars when you faced it with someone you loved.

They’d spoken yesterday afternoon, as they had each Thursday since Oncle Georges received the wireless.

In Father Serres’s office, that time. Too briefly, too simply.

Too little said. All she’d been able to manage was, “Do you remember our old friend with the horrid plaid chair? I met his godson. I want you to meet him someday.”

Enough to let her mother know there was someone special, and even, vaguely, who. Not even close to enough to unburden her heart.

She reached for her knob, scattered thoughts gathering. Focus snapping. Instincts curling. Shoulders hunching.

Her door was ajar. Ajar, when she knew very well she’d closed and locked it before class that morning, because she’d dropped her keys twice in her hurry to get out on time.

Goosebumps prickled on her arms. Someone had been inside, and for what? Why? Who?

Suddenly she wished she hadn’t outpaced Gustaf. When another colleague sauntered by, toward his office, she reached out to snag his arm. “Claude—I wanted to ask you something about the meeting I missed. Do you have a minute, after you put down your things next door?”

Claude was six foot four inches of good-natured burl, old enough to be her father and always happy to play that protective role on campus.

Better still, he sounded every bit as intimidating and huge as he looked.

He smiled amiably. “Of course, Corinne. I’ll be right over.

Five minutes? I need to jot something down before I forget. ”

“Five minutes is perfect.”

If her things were just gone through, that would be time enough to sort out what and right it. But if someone were inside, they’d know better than to jump her. One scream, and this man with his deep, booming voice would come running from his office next door.

And thank you, Lord, for sending him.

She toed her door open, giving it enough force to swing through its full arc and hit the wall.

It didn’t. It stopped at forty-five degrees. As if someone were standing behind it.

She could have called for Claude. Would, if she had to.

But indignation burned in her veins where fear should have lived, and instead she dropped her bag into her hand, ready to wield it like a club if necessary—and with the five books in there, it would pack a wallop.

She stepped inside, to the side, away from the door.

Reached for the Greek carved walking stick that a student had given her after they’d studied the Iliad three years ago.

Used it to catch the door and swing it shut again, then held it before her like a sword.

Oberstleutnant Ackermann stood there, smirking at her. Not so much as flicking a gaze at her improvised weapon. “Good afternoon, Doctor ,” he said in German, making her title sound like a slur.

She eased her bag off her shoulder and onto the ground and got a better grip on the stick. “These are my office hours, Oberstleutnant, but they’re for students. Not for you.”

“Office hours.” Smirk still in place, he stepped away from his hiding place, but not toward her.

No, toward the framed diplomas on her wall, studying them each with a click of his tongue.

“So well educated you are. And yet still so, so stupid. Thinking you can demand a position that isn’t your right to hold.

Thinking you can make a mockery of the proper order, just because you don’t like it. ”

He reached for the frame holding her doctorate in philosophy, fingers curling around the wood.

She was there in a heartbeat, using the end of her stick to hold it in place. “Perhaps taking other people’s things without asking is acceptable in Germany. But in France, we call it theft, and it’s against the law.”

He chuckled, turned so that her stick pressed against his chest. But he also dropped his grubby hands from her diploma. “You are a spirited one, aren’t you? Good. I like spirit in a woman. Once you learn to direct it into the right place, that is.”

He wanted to be casual, mocking? She could play that game too.

She rolled her eyes, lowered the stick, and moved backward to perch on the edge of her desk.

“Do tell, Oberstleutnant. Because I have certainly never heard this speech before. What, pray tell, is this ‘right place’? The home?” She feigned surprise.

“Shocking! I have never guessed at such a theory! Had I but known, I would have abandoned my dreams long ago and accepted the proposal of the first misogynist to come along.”

From the flicker in his eye, he wasn’t familiar with that term, despite being one himself, from all appearances. And he didn’t like that. He stepped closer, lowering his chin, broadening his shoulders. Menace and might.

“You should watch how you speak to your betters, Corinne.”