Earlier, as they’d laughed over the chestnuts, he had seemed happy enough; but now, without the gaze of the others upon him, his mask of contentment fell away.

“Whenever I close my eyes, I see that night,” he whispered. She knew without asking which night he meant. “I see the blood on your face. The look in your eyes. How can you ever forgive me? If we had been caught—”

“We weren’t. Those men were the enemy. They were set on raping me and Rosa, and that was the least of it. If Meier had opened our bedroom door and found the people hiding there, he and his friend would have killed us all. And what if Zwerger had learned of it?”

“If there had been any other way . . .”

She touched his face, her fingertips tracing the arches of his brows, letting them linger on the lines of worry at the corners of his eyes.

“The day I left Venice was one of the worst days of my life,” she whispered. “I had to say goodbye to my mother and father, to my home, to everything that was familiar and comfortable and safe. It was truly awful—and yet one part of it was good. The part when I met you.”

“If only—”

“Hush. This is the life we have. This is all we have, and I don’t want to waste a single moment on doubts. No more ‘if onlys.’ I am glad I met you. I am glad to be here. And if my life were to end tomorrow, I would still think myself the most fortunate of women.”

He pressed a soft kiss to her brow. “You honor me.”

“I only speak the truth. I never thought I would meet a man as kind and decent as my father, but you are. I know it, and I think my father knew it, too. And that is why he sent me away with you.”

Chapter 16

22 January 1944

It was Saturday, cleaning day, but with Carlo and the girls in bed with bad colds it had fallen to Nina and Rosa to deal with the house. Nico had come up to help with the mattresses, but the rest of the upstairs cleaning—sweeping, scrubbing, dusting, and changing the bedsheets—Nina had done on her own.

She hadn’t minded, for the children had kept her company while she cleaned their rooms, and after four months of practice she was able to sweep and wash the floors as quickly and neatly as Agnese and Angela. Even the bedsheets took her no time at all to change, excepting the delay as she persuaded Carlo to vacate his bed for a few short minutes.

“It’s soooooo cold,” he moaned, even though she’d wrapped him in his blanket and put him in his brothers’ big bed.