Dedication

  For my mom. We made it.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Acclaim for J’nell Ciesielski

  Other Books by J’nell Ciesielski

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Paris

  1941

  “Bloody lipstick.” Kathleen Whitford yanked a handkerchief from her handbag and rubbed off the uneven line of Sequin Red curving over her lip. Angling her gold compact mirror to the streetlight, she swiped the red tube over her mouth again. “Can’t meet the Nazis with smeared lips.”

  Slipping the mirror back into its place, she raised a shaking hand to pull the silk scarf from her head and tuck it safely in her beaded handbag. She looked up at the pristine white-brick building posed as the grand dame of Rue de l’Université. Light, laughter, and music spilled out of the open windows on the top floor, chilling her to the bone despite the late-July air.

  “Relax. It’s only a party. You’ve been to a million of them before.”

  Her wooden voice bounced off the gleaming oak front doors and smacked her in the face with irony. Yes, a million parties filled with dukes, lords, ladies, and even the king for her presentation at court. Curtseying before His Majesty had been a cakewalk compared to this. Buckingham Palace hadn’t been filled with German officers. Or their mistresses.

  Her heart panged. Ellie.

  Throwing her shoulders back, Kat covered her pain with a bright smile and a gentle sweep of her lashes, just the way Mother had taught her, and marched in. Her black velvet pumps ticking across the gray marble foyer drowned out the hammering of her heart as she climbed the sweeping staircase all the way to the top.

  Following the music to the door on the right, she took a deep breath and raised her hand to knock. Before she could, the door burst open. Out tumbled a uniformed German soldier with a woman in a gold dress in his arms.

  “Entschuldigen uns.” The man laughed, grabbing the woman around the waist before she slid to the floor.

  Red lipstick smeared the woman’s lips as she twisted her head to grin up at Kat. She thrust a half-full bottle of champagne under her nose. “Vouloir quelque?”

  Kat pushed the bottle away and shook her head. “Non, merci.”

  “Ce est bien.” The woman wagged the bottle, sloshing the golden bubbly down her dress.

  Kat leaned back out of range of flying drops. “Non. I’m saving my appetite for the water.”

  “Water?” The woman scrunched her nose for a second before delight lit up her hazy eyes. “Oh! You joke!” She swiveled back to the man, grazing her red lips against his neck. “Did you hear that, cherie? She wants water.”

  “Yes, I heard,” he said in rough French. “A jest, surely, as no one drinks water in France. Come on, schatz. Our night continues elsewhere.”

  With her welcoming party skidding their way down the stairs, Kat pushed into the flat. The temptation to turn and run hit her like a wall of ice. A crush of German soldiers in gray uniforms and women in their finest evening attire stood cream wall to cream wall. Overhead, a chandelier dripping with crystals reflected off the mirrors and gilded frames lining the walls while deep-blue brocade drapes swathed the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the street and Ming vases filled with white lilies stood in each corner of the spacious room.

  “Madame?” A waiter appeared at her elbow, offering her a tray of champagne, wine, and cognac.

  Kat shook her head and edged around him. The last thing her roiling stomach needed was spirits. Her feet sank into the thick carpet as she dodged between couples dancing to the warbling tunes of Edith Piaf blaring from a gramophone. Enduring elbows, the crushing of her toes underfoot, and champagne splashed on her red satin dress, she made it to the other side of the room. She braced her back against the archway dividing the front room and the dining room loaded with food and scanned the crowd through the haze of cigarette smoke.

  Her fingernails dug into the glossy white trim of the doorway. If Ellie weren’t her baby sister, there would have been no power on Earth strong enough to drag her willingly into a room full of Nazis. Then again, if Ellie had learned to temper her impulses, she wouldn’t be in this horrible predicament to begin with while leaving Kat to sweep up the chaos.

  As always.

  Another waiter popped up in front of her with a tray of canapés. His eyes dropped to her clinging hands. “Madame? May I escort you to a chair?”

  Breeding surged to the rescue. Letting go of the wall, she clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. “Non, I was just looking for the hostess. Have you seen her?”

  “Madame Eleanor?” His brow scrunched as he glanced across the smoke-laden room. “She had gone to get new records.”

  A clatter of trays echoed from the double doors at the back of the dining room. The doors flew open, and out breezed a petite blond on a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Just sweep it up and get me new ones,” she called over her shoulder in scratchy French. “Charles Trenet or Rina Ketty. Someone upbeat. The last thing I need is this party to drag from dull music.”

  The pebbles that had plunked into Kat’s stomach since the second she stepped on occupied soil dropped like a boulder. Gone was the innocent girl she had known, replaced by an unrecognizable woman. A woman who radiated happiness, not misery like she’d expected to find. Air wheezed in her throat. “Ellie.”

  Her sister stopped dead in her tracks, her long silver cigarette holder dangling precariously from her fingers. Her cherry-red mouth formed a perfect O. Seconds dragged by as Kat waited for German hands to grab her and toss her out. This was a mistake. She should have waited until morning to drag her wayward sister back across the Channel without the whole of the Third Reich watching. She should have—

  Ellie’s feet moved, delight springing to her blue-green eyes. She launched herself at her sister. “Kitty Kat!”

  Kat barely caught her little sister before she bowled them over into a stack of crackers, foie gras, and bullhead cheese on the gleaming mahogany dining table.

  “Oh, Kat, you’re here! Really here. I can’t believe it.”

  Wrapping her arms around her sister, Kat squeezed her tight as a flood of relief washed away months of worry. Ellie was all right.

  “Can’t breathe.” Ellie coughed, tapping her on the back.

  Warmth rushed to Kat’s cheeks as she stepped back. “Sorry.”

  “Take one foot off the island, and suddenly your stiff upper lip is no more.” Ellie laughed and brushed a wrinkle from Kat’s shoulder. Her bright smile faltered. “What are you doing here? Nothing bad has happened?”

  Other than you running off to occupied France to become social secretary to the Nazis?

  “Do I need a bad reason to miss my sister?” Kat smiled in an attempt to capture the runaway with honey rather than the vinegar eating her up inside. One false move and the girl would spring like a deer from the crosshairs. She raised a hand to Ellie’s rouged cheek. “It’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen you. How fine you look.”

  Ellie beamed and reached up to touch the diamond comb sweeping the blond curls up on one side of her head. Independence radiated from her every move. “Yes, I quite think the French air agrees with me.”

  Kat’s smile twisted. It wasn’t French anymore. The Germans patrolled the Louvre and Champs Élysées as if they marched in the Rhineland. If the fighting went their way, they would soon goose-step through Piccadilly Square. She took a deep breath to calm the acid burning its way up the back of her throat. The Germans weren’t her priority. She’d traveled here to bring back her sister. Hopefully the process didn’t involve binding, gagging, and throwing her into the back of a waiting car.

  “I thought I’d have trouble finding you once I got here, since you never sent an address.”

  “You cannot fathom how busy I’ve been, and the post takes so much longer to circulate these days.” Ellie took a long drag from her cigarette. Smoke curled out from the corner of her mouth. “How did you find me?”

  The wary note in Ellie’s voice hung in the air like a curtain of iron. The wrong answer—or any answer involving their father—would bring it crashing down. Sir Alfred Whitford’s arm was long reaching, but his money and connections knew no boundaries, including using his university friends at Scotland Yard to track down his youngest daughter.

  “I asked the concierge to point me to the hottest ticket in town. Who would have thought that meant a Brit?” Kat’s throat ached on a forced laugh. Turning, she cast an appraising eye over the room. “And in such a swanky pl
ace right in the heart of the 7th arrondissement. Trѐs chic.”

  A woman with platinum-blond hair swished by as she attempted a tango with a bottle of sauvignon. A frightened waiter chased after her with a cork.

  “Eric would have nothing less than the best,” Ellie said, uncaring for the safety of her white rugs. “The district was once for le Faubourg, so it’s only fitting that we claim it for our own. The new nobility for the new world.”

  Eric. The name spoken with such intimacy screamed like a siren in Kat’s head. Her baby sister, living with a man. The situation was sickening at best. As always, instead of heeding the warnings all around her, the girl had run straight into the fantasy she had conjured for herself. Only instead of boys, dance halls, and bathtub gin, she had thrown herself into the arms of a vile ideology and a man she knew nothing about. Except that he offered an escape from the crushing grip of their parents.

  Hooking her arm through Kat’s, Ellie guided her back into the crush of guests. The crowd parted for her like Moses and the Red Sea. “As the new queen of Paris, I shall introduce you to all my friends. You’ll love them.”

  I bet. “I don’t know if I could hear introductions over this din.” Kat pointed to the gramophone now blaring “C’est si bon.”

  “What? Oh, no. These aren’t my friends. They’re mainly Eric’s.” Ellie took another long pull from her cigarette before tapping off an inch’s worth of ash into the nearest Ming vase. “I talk to them, too, of course, but my dearest friends couldn’t make it tonight.”

  Too busy attending a book burning? Dread curled in Kat’s stomach before she dared the question out loud. “Who is this mysterious Eric?”

  Light sparkled in Ellie’s eyes as her lips curved into a dreamy smile. “The most wonderful man, with the most beautiful blue eyes you’ve ever seen. Everywhere we go, men clamor to shake his hand and women purr for his attention, but he belongs to me.” Her eyes clouded for a moment. “Or at least he will soon.”

  Kat pulled them to a stop behind the powder-blue settee. On the other side, a game of stacking empty wineglasses on the Queen Anne end table was well under way. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing at all. Darling, where are you staying?”

  Kat bit her tongue. Prodding further into this Eric character would lead to nothing good. She had a big enough headache already. “The San Regis.”

  “Not anymore. You’re staying right here with me, and we’ll stay up all night chatting just like we used to do.” Wetness glistened in Ellie’s eye. She bit the corner of her lip. “I’ve missed you, Kat.”

  A lump bobbed in Kat’s throat. “I’ve missed you too. We all have.”

  “We?” The wetness blinked from Ellie’s eye. Yanking a fresh cigarette from the bodice of her gown, she jammed it into the holder and lit it. “That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it? The Firm sent you to drag me back. Well, I’m not going. I’m staying here, so you’ve wasted a trip.”

  “I came because I haven’t seen or heard from you in over a year.”

  “As you can see, there’s nothing to worry about, because I’m doing quite well here. Free to do whatever I like for the first time in my life.”

  “I didn’t know that back in jolly old England.” Where you left me. Kat took a deep breath, pushing down the stab of betrayal. Different as night and day, they were still sisters. They’d shared secrets, giggled until all hours of the night, gone ice-skating together, and shopping. Their memories were wrapped together in shared childhood, but it hadn’t always been easy. Kat adhered to the rules while Ellie lived to break them. Kat followed the well-ordered path the family laid before her while Ellie traipsed into the grass without a backward glance, abandoning her.

  Sisters weren’t supposed to abandon each other.

  Whatever sense of betrayal that radiated in Kat’s heart did not show on her sister’s polished face. For all her grown-up airs, the past year hadn’t taught Ellie to consider her actions’ effect on others. Now wasn’t the time to raise those hurts, nor was it something a well-bred lady would bring up. If Kat represented anything, it was a lifetime’s lessons of good breeding. “How about a glass of that famous French champagne for your dear parched sister?”

  Ellie raised a slender eyebrow. “Parched for champagne? And here I thought tea was the only thing running in your veins.”

  “When in Rome—or in this case Paris.”

  “Kathleen Whitford, the living prodigy to duty, dips her standards to partake with the sinners. Will wonders never cease?”

  “You above all others know I’m no saint.”

  “Sure, and I’ve got a halo hanging in my closet.” Never one to hold a grudge for too long, Ellie snorted and waved a waiter over. Grabbing two glasses from his tray, she handed one to Kat. “To Paris.”

  Raising her glass, Kat clinked it to Ellie’s. “To sisters and their halos. Or lack of.”

  A large man with a white apron and beads of sweat dotting his forehead poked his head around the dining room wall. Scanning the room, his eyes stopped on Ellie. “Miz Eleanor.”

  “Are those macaroons done yet, Pierre?” Ellie drained her champagne glass.

  “Oui, but it is not the macaroons you need to worry about.” With the corner of his apron he wiped away the sweat dropping down to his ear. “Jean-Claude has delivered the oysters, and well, Miz, they are less than expected.”

  “What do you mean?”

  More sweat popped out on his head. “They are less.” He held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake. I told him only yesterday to—Never mind, it’s done now.” She set her glass on a shelf next to Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Chanel’s latest fashion of 1936. “Kat, you can entertain yourself, can’t you? Have another drink and mingle. Most of them don’t know English, but their French is passable. Oui, oui, Pierre. Je viens.”

  Mingle. Dread crawled down Kat’s spine as gray uniforms danced before her eyes like a kaleidoscope of drab horror. Throwing herself into a pit of vipers would be more bearable. Grabbing another glass of bubbling champagne, she skirted around the dancers and pushed through the double doors out onto the balcony.

  The smell of sweet freesia mingled with the night’s gentle breeze. Kat gripped the wrought-iron handrail, the cool metal a relief against her warm palms. She dropped her chin to her chest. If appearances didn’t need maintaining, she’d drop her cheek down to the smooth rail for a brief respite from the abomination of merrymaking behind her while the people of the country cowered in terrified submission to their oppressors. And her sister in the middle of it all.

  An ache groaned up inside of her. How wrong she’d been to imagine a tear-streaked Ellie falling into her arms with a desperate plea to whisk her back home. Back by Tuesday—wasn’t that what she’d said to her parents as they waved her off at the train station last Saturday morning? Her naivete had crashed down around her ears with the starry-eyed look from Ellie. Her sister was in pure bliss, like a fawn unaware of the prowling wolves.

  A knot twisted in Kat’s stomach. Father would be furious if she gave up and allowed the family name to be smeared through the German mud. He’d never trust her to accomplish his purposes again.

  Taking a deep breath, she lifted her head. She’d dreamed of visiting this city of lights with its tree-lined avenues, museums, and smoke-filled cafes, but tonight the magic was doused beneath blackout curtains. Except Ellie’s, of course. An eclipse couldn’t shadow her sister’s sparkle. It was a trait Kat had failed to grasp when weighted with the responsibility of family duty, but one that whispered wistfully to her. Perhaps when the war was finally over and Ellie safely at home, she could come back and enjoy the city in her own time. No rules and no one else deciding which parks she should stroll through or how many crêpes she shouldn’t eat. Pure bliss.

  Metal twanged.

  Kat peered over the rail to the empty street below. The cobbled gray thoroughfare was deserted, with every window shuttered and door locked tight. Even the mice had succumbed to Nazi rule after dark.

  Scuffling. More metal slapped, like something heavy hitting a wall. Kat leaned farther over the rail, inching sideways down the balcony as the scuffling drew closer. Her pulse pricked. What if one of those legendary sewer rats had escaped in search of midnight delicacies? Like the cave-ripened brie perched on the edge of Ellie’s buffet table.