“Part of the surprise. Enjoy the ride,” he answered.

Because it would be her last? Victoria glanced at his profile, stoic, unreadable. Perhaps it was the civilian clothes, but he seemed a different person from the man she knew, a stranger, even. She much preferred him in his military uniform, a cobra out in the open rather than a rattlesnake camouflaged in the bush. He held his head slightly back, his face tilted to the sun, and did not speak as the car sped along, seemingly interested only in the pleasure of the sunlit day.

After a five-mile drive, her heart rate increased when Karl turned through a pair of majestic gateposts flanking the entrance to a road that wandered darkly through an evergreen forest. A few hundred meters later it forked off between a storybook chateau atop a far hill and a stone folly in the opposite direction. Karl took the road toward the folly.

The colonel spoke for the first time. “Count Darold Archambault’s country estate. He and his family have retired to Switzerland for the duration of the war.”

Haven’t they all? Victoria thought and wondered numbly if the duke had confiscated it for his own use. Ancestral strongholds like the count’s held dungeons.

In Victoria’s experience, follies were usually erected by people who wished it known that they had money to waste on nothing. This one at least had value in that it overlooked gently rolling acres that reminded her of the green splendor of English downs. It was enclosed except for its front and back entrances and came equipped with a stone slab table with benches on either side and a fireplace stacked with wood.

“Karl, if you will do the honors,” Colonel Albrecht instructed in German, gesturing toward the trunk, and offered a hand to Victoria to help her from the back seat. “A perfect place for a picnic, no?” he said in French.

“A picnic?”

“Of the American variety. I had it prepared especially for you. Fried chicken and potato salad. Apple pie for dessert, a taste of home.”

“That’s the surprise?”

“Yes. Are you pleased? You looked…frightened when I first suggested a surprise. What did you think—that I had something else of a more nefarious nature in mind? Now why ever would you assume that?” There was a light in his eye—playful, ironical. Was he toying with her? Victoria felt another roll of unease. Something definitely was going on here.

“Can you blame me? I never know what to expect from you, Colonel Albrecht.”

“Derrick, please. Have we not agreed to first names, and have I not assured you that you have nothing to fear from me? Come, let us walk while Karl prepares the fire and table.”