Victoria trusted the old wizened servant to know what he was talking about. He was an astonishing fount of information, a consolation and a lifeline to her during her months of confinement. Self-taught despite his servant status, the man would have done honor to any number of disciplines taught in the Sorbonne. There was also the surprise that Alois possessed a hidden radio tuned to the BBC around which they gathered nightly for news of the war. She’d sought him out in the kitchen one morning when the walls had begun to close in. She’d wanted to ask him about the history of the chateau and the count and his family. Before long, they were breakfasting together every morning and meeting for a glass of wine in the evening. She helped him cook their meals, learning his culinary secrets, and worked with him in the garden.

Whichever military court tried Derrick, Victoria vowed that she would return to France in Derrick’s defense. She’d get the boys to speak for him and Major Renault to present intelligence documents as proof of his aid to the OSS. She’d place ads in newspapers pleading with those whose escapes he’d arranged to come forward and testify on his behalf, even enlist her family’s own battery of lawyers to represent him if need be. She could not—would not—let him die. Imprisonment, yes, but not death.

Late that afternoon, she peeked out a front window at the crunch of auto tires turning into the car park and immediately took off to her room. Minutes later, she was called out of hiding at Alois’s announcement that the French policeman who had called at the chateau was there to see her and insisted on speaking with her. “A matter of great importance,” he said.

Victoria answered the summons apprehensively. The detective with the apologetic air and sharp eyes who had visited her at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français was standing as if he hadn’t time for a visit when she joined him in the drawing room. “Ah, Mademoiselle Colbert, a pleasure to see you again,” he said.

“I’m not sure I can return the sentiment, Detective. Why are you here?”

“I come at the behest of SS Colonel Derrick Albrecht,” he said. “He has asked that the Paris police provide an escort to see you safely delivered into the military care of your countrymen. You are an American, I believe. The duke has told us all about you.”

“You have come? But…I don’t understand. He told me to expect a United States military escort.”