“Thank you,” she said cautiously. “You don’t have to do that.” He didn’t owe them anything. They were the forces of the Occupation.

“I’m not going to eat, while you starve.” His cook had made a wonderful Sacher torte for him the night before, and he was planning to take the rest of it to her himself that night, but he didn’t mention it as they walked slowly back to the cottage. She seemed to be slowing down, and he noticed that in the past week, she had gotten considerably larger. “Is there anything else you need, Your Grace?”

She smiled at him. He always addressed her by her title. “You know, I suppose you really could call me Sarah.” He already knew that was her name. He had seen it when he had taken her passport. And he knew that she was about to turn twenty-four years old in a few more weeks. He knew her parents’ names, and their addresses in New York, and how she felt about some things, but he knew very little else about her. And his curiosity about her knew no bounds. He thought about her more than he would have admitted. But she sensed none of that, as she walked with him. She sensed only that he was a caring man, and as best he could, given his position here, he wanted to help her.

“Very well then, Sarah,” he said it carefully, like a great honor, as he smiled at her, and she noticed for the first time that he was actually very handsome. Usually, he looked so serious that one didn’t notice. But as they came out into a sunny part of the woods, for just a moment, he had looked years younger. “You shall be Sarah and I shall be Joachim, but only when we are alone.” They both understood why and she nodded. And then he turned to her again. “Is there anything you need from me?” He was sincere, but she shook her head anyway. She would never have taken anything from him, except the extra food he left her for Phillip. But she was touched that he had asked, and she smiled.

“You could give me a ticket home,” she teased. “How about that? Straight to New York, or maybe to England.” It was the first time she had joked with anyone since they’d arrived, and he laughed.

“I wish I could.” His eyes grew serious then. “I imagine your parents must be very worried about you,” he said sympathetically, wishing that he could help her. “And your husband.” He would have been frantic if Sarah had been his wife, and she was behind enemy lines, but she seemed to take it very coolly. She shrugged philosophically, as he longed to reach out and touch her, but he knew that he couldn’t do that either.

“You’ll stay safe, if I have anything to do with it,” he reassured her.

“Thank you.” She smiled up at him, and then suddenly stumbled on a tree root that crossed her path. She almost fell, but Joachim quickly reached out and caught her. He held her in his powerful hands, and then she steadied herself and thanked him. But for just that instant he had felt how warm she was, how smooth the ivory skin on her arms, and the dark hair had brushed his face like silk. She smelled of soap, and the perfume her husband loved. Everything about her made Joachim feel as though he would melt when he was near her, and it was an increasing agony not to let her know that.

He walked her back to the cottage then, and left her near the gate, and went back to work at his desk for the rest of the evening.

She did not see him after that for a full week. He had to go to Paris to see the ambassador, Otto Abetz, to arrange for shipments of medical supplies, and when he came back, he was so busy he had no time for walks or air, or pleasant things. And four days after his return there was a terrible explosion at a supply depot in Blois. They brought more than a hundred wounded in, and even the staff they had was inadequate to help them. There were wounded men everywhere, and their two doctors were running from one critical case to another. They had mounted a small operating theater in the dining room, but some of the men were so badly burned that no one could help them. Limbs had been blown off, faces torn away. It was a hideous scene of carnage, as Joachim and his staff surveyed the crowded rooms and one of the doctors came to demand more help. He wanted them to bring in the locals to help him.

“There must be some people with medical skills here,” he insisted, but the local hospital was closed, the doctors were gone, and the nurses had gone to military hospitals months before, or fled just before the Occupation. There were only the people from the farms, most of whom were too ignorant to help them. “What about the châtelaine? Would she come?” He was referring, of course, to Sarah, and Joachim thought she might, if he asked her. She was very human, but she was also very pregnant, this would hardly be good for her, and Joachim felt very protective of her.

“I’m not sure. She’s expecting a baby at any moment.”

“Tell her to come. We need her anyway. Does she have a maid?”

“There’s a local girl with her.”

“Get them both,” the doctor ordered him curtly, although Joachim outranked him. And a few moments later, Joachim sent a handful of his men out to the countryside to speak to the women at the farms, to see if anyone would come to help them, or order them to if they had to. And then he got in a jeep himself, and drove down to the cottage. He knocked firmly on the door, the lights went on, and a few minutes later, Sarah appeared, looking very stern at the door in her nightgown. She had heard the ambulance and the trucks coming all night long, and didn’t know why, and now she was afraid that the soldiers had come to taunt them. But when she saw Joachim, she opened the door a fraction wider, and her face eased a little.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he apologized. He was wearing his shirt, and had taken off his tie, his hair looked rumpled and his face looked worn, and he had left his jacket in his office. “We need your help, Sarah, if you’ll come. There’s been an explosion at a munitions depot, and we have an incredible number of wounded. We can’t manage. Can you help us?” She hesitated for an instant, looking into his eyes, and then she nodded. He asked her if she would bring Emanuelle, too, but when she went upstairs to ask her, the girl insisted that she wanted to stay at the cottage with the baby. And Sarah met Joachim downstairs alone, five minutes later.

“Where’s the girl?”

“She’s not well.” Sarah covered for her. “And I need her to stay here with my son.” He didn’t question her, and she followed him to the jeep in an old, faded blue dress and flat shoes, with her hair neatly braided. She had scrubbed her hands and face and arms, and had covered her hair with a clean white scarf, which made her look even younger.

“Thank you for coming,” he said as they drove back, and he glanced at her with a look of gratitude in his eyes, and new respect. “You know, you didn’t have to.”

“I know that. But dying boys are just that, whether they’re English or German.” It was how she seemed to feel about the war. She hated the Germans for what they’d done, yet she couldn’t hate the ones who’d been hurt, or even Joachim, who was always so decent to her. It didn’t make her sympathetic to his cause, only to those whose need was greater than her own, and she nodded as he helped her from the car, and hurried inside to help the boys she’d been called for.

She worked for hours in the operating room that night, holding bowls filled with blood, and towels soaked with anesthetic. She held instruments, and assisted both of the doctors. She worked tirelessly until dawn, and then they asked her if she would go upstairs with them, and for the first time, as she entered her own bedroom, filled with wounded men, she was suddenly aware of where she was, and how odd it was to be here. There were cots and mattresses on the floor, at least forty wounded men were lying there beside each other, shoulder to shoulder, and the orderlies were barely able to step over them to get to the next one.

She did whatever she could, applying bandages, cleaning wounds, and it was bright daylight again by the time she made her way back downstairs to what had once been her kitchen. There were half a dozen orderlies eating there, some soldiers and two women who looked at her as she walked in, and said something to each other in German. Her dress and hands, and even her face, were covered in young men’s blood, her hair hung in wisps around her face, but she seemed not to notice. And then one of the orderlies said something to her. She couldn’t understand what they said, but it was impossible to mistake the tone of respect, as he seemed to thank her. She nodded, and smiled at them as they handed her a cup of coffee. One of the women pointed to the baby then, and seemed to ask if she was all right, and she nodded and sat down gratefully with the steaming coffee. It was only then that she began to feel her own exhaustion. She hadn’t thought of herself in hours, or her baby.

Joachim came in a moment after that, and asked her to come into his office. She followed him down the hall, and as she walked in, she felt strange here too. Even the desk and the curtains were the same. This was William’s favorite room, and the only thing that had changed was the man who lived there.

Joachim invited her to sit down in the chair she knew so well, and she had to resist the urge to curl up, as she always had when she and hers husband had long, cozy conversations. Instead, she sat politely on the edge of the chair, and sipped at her coffee, reminding herself that in this room, she was now a stranger.

“Thank you for all you did last night. I was afraid it might have been too much for you.” He looked at her with worried eyes. He had passed her frequently in the night, working doggedly to save someone’s life, or just closing some boy’s eyes they had lost, with tears in her own eyes. “You must be exhausted.”