The Nightingale(131)

“My son,” Vianne said, standing beside him, moving in close enough to touch them both. She didn’t say “Daniel” in case Ari corrected her. “And my daughter, Sophie.”

“I do not remember Hauptmann Beck mentioning two children.”

“And why would he, Herr Sturmbannführer. It is hardly noteworthy.”

“Well,” he said, nodding crisply to Sophie. “You, girl, go get my bags.” To Vianne, he said, “Show me the rooms. I will choose the one I want.”





TWENTY-EIGHT

Isabelle woke in a pitch-black room. In pain.

“You’re awake, aren’t you?” said a voice beside her.

She recognized Ga?tan’s voice. How often in the past two years had she imagined lying in bed with him? “Ga?tan,” she said, and with his name came the memories.

The barn. Beck.

She sat up so fast her head spun and dizziness hit her hard. “Vianne,” she said.

“Your sister is fine.” He lit the oil lamp and left it on the overturned apple crate by the bed. The butterscotch glow embraced them, created a small oval world in the blackness. She touched the spot of pain in her shoulder, wincing.

“The bastard shot me,” she said, surprised to realize that such a thing could be forgotten. She remembered hiding the airman and getting caught by Vianne … She remembered being in the cellar with the dead flier …

“And you shot him.”

She remembered Beck flinging the hatch door open and pointing his pistol at her. She remembered two gunshots … and climbing out of the cellar, staggering, feeling dizzy. Had she known she’d been shot?

Vianne holding a shovel covered in gore. Beside her, Beck in a pool of blood.

Vianne pale as chalk, trembling. I killed him.

After that her memories were jumbled except for Vianne’s anger. You are not welcome here. If you return, I’ll turn you in myself.

Isabelle lay back down slowly. The pain of that memory was worse than her injury. For once, Vianne had been right to cast Isabelle out. What had she been thinking to hide the airman on her sister’s property, with a German Wehrmacht captain billeted there? No wonder people didn’t trust her. “How long have I been here?”

“Four days. Your wound is much improved. Your sister stitched it up nicely. Your fever broke yesterday.”

“And … Vianne? She is not fine, of course. So how is she?”

“We protected her as best we could. She refused to go into hiding. So Henri and Didier buried both bodies and cleaned the barn and tore the motorcycle down to parts.”

“She’ll be questioned,” Isabelle said. “And killing that man will haunt her. Hating doesn’t come easy for her.”

“It will before this war is over.”

Isabelle felt her stomach tighten in shame and regret. “I love her, you know. Or I want to. How come I forget that the minute we disagree about something?”

“She said something very similar at the frontier.”

Isabelle started to roll over and gasped at the pain in her shoulder. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and eased slowly onto her side. She’d misjudged how close he was to her, how small the bed. They were lying like lovers; she on her side looking up at him; he on his back staring at the ceiling. “Vianne went to the border?”

“You were in a coffin in the back of the wagon. She wanted to make sure we crossed safely.” She heard a smile in his voice, or imagined she did. “She threatened to kill me if I didn’t take good care of you.”

“My sister said that?” she said, not quite believing it. But she hardly believed that Ga?tan was the kind of man who would lie to reunite sisters. In profile, his features were razor sharp, even by lamplight. He refused to look at her, and he was as close to the edge of the bed as he could be.

“She was afraid you’d die. We both were.”

He said it so softly she barely could hear. “It feels like old times,” she said cautiously, afraid to say the wrong thing. More afraid to say nothing at all. Who knew how many chances there would be in such uncertain times? “You and me alone in the dark. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“Tours already feels like a lifetime ago,” she went on. “I was just a girl.”

He said nothing.

“Look at me, Ga?tan.”

“Go to sleep, Isabelle.”