“Would you like me to come help you at the market?”

“No, Maman. It’s fine. Once the fog lifts, it’s going to be a beautiful day. I’ll come back for you later.” She disengaged the sidecar and drove away on the scooter. When she was well away from the bridge, she took a detour. Leaving the scooter concealed amid the old vines shrouded in fog, she ran to the borie to see Hank.

He grinned and opened his arms when she burst in. “Hi there, sweetheart,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you until later.”

“I’m supposed to be at the market,” she said, “and I saw a chance to slip away.” She covered his face with kisses, and when they made love, her ardor was so intense that it brought tears to her eyes. Yet in the aftermath, there was a kind of peace she had never felt before. To be held in the arms of a man who loved her, to know they’d created a new life together, was the sweetest blessing she’d ever felt.

Although she longed to tell him, she didn’t dare. Not yet, anyway, with the future so uncertain. And there was a very small, dark place in her mind where she had to allow that the baby could in fact be Didier’s.

“What is this?” he asked softly, gently touching the dark bruise on her breast. “How did you hurt yourself?”

“It’s nothing,” she said, the lie spilling easily from her lips. If Hank found out about Didier’s cruelty, he would hunt her husband down and get himself killed in the process. “I must have bumped myself while getting Rocinante into his harness.”

He leaned over and kissed the bruise. “Be careful. I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt.” He rolled a largish, rounded stone toward her. “I made you something.”

She sat up, pulling her shawl around her. He had carefully chiseled a phrase in the stone—Journey Without End.

“It’s beautiful, Hank,” she said, tracing a finger over the letters.

“It means I’ll never stop loving you, no matter what,” he said.

“I have to leave it here,” she said, placing it near the opening of the hut.

“We can bring it back to Vermont after the war.”

She pressed her cheek against his bare chest. “Vermont, eh? You are taking me to Vermont?”

“I am. And your dear parents, too, and if your Nazi-loving husband tries to stop me, he’ll be damned sorry.”

They lay in each other’s arms, not speaking, only dreaming, and she knew it was the same dream. She hovered on the verge of tears, because she wanted to tell him about the baby. Instead, she slowly extricated herself from his arms and got dressed. “I must go back to the village now.”

He put on his trousers and showed her his moves on the crutches. “I’ve been practicing. I’ll be dancing the fox-trot with you one of these days real soon.”

She was about to burst with her news. Throwing caution to the wind, she said, “Hank, mon amour, I have something to tell you.”