Lia nodded miserably, looking down to where their fingers joined. “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be. This is a lot. For anyone.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” The words slipped out before she could stop them. It was the truth but not something she should be saying to a man she had only just met.

“Me too.” If he found her confession inappropriate or strange, he hid it well. “We’ll figure this out.”

Lia nodded again and withdrew her hand from his, trying to regain her composure.

Gabriel seemed to hesitate. “Is there anyone else…is anyone else helping you? Sibling? Parents?”

“No siblings,” Lia told him. “And when I told my parents about the apartment, they were more relieved that they were not required to return to France than interested in what it might contain. This is my problem.” She looked up at him and made an effort not to embarrass herself further. “Honestly, I’ll be fine. I’m used to dealing with things on my own.”

“You’re not on your own.” He held her gaze, his grey eyes giving none of his thoughts away. “Whatever side your grandmother may have been on, we’ll figure out the truth together.”

Chapter 6

Chapter
6

Estelle

Paris, France
12 September 1940

The Ritz Hotel had been divided into two when the Germans had marched into Paris. In truth, it was already two edifices long before the red-and-black flags had unfurled over the city but the physical had also become the social when the Nazis commandeered the Parisian landmark. The Ritz went from simply a catch basin for the wealthy and the royal, the artistic and the intellectual, to the official headquarters of the Luftwaffe.

The side of the hotel that had once been the residence of princes and dukes, facing the stately Place Vendôme, was now the residence of high-ranking German officers, including the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring. On the other side of the palatial hotel, facing rue Cambon and separated by a corridor filled with shops that boasted the most expensive, most luxurious, and most unusual wares that might be purchased in Paris, lived the civilians. Or at least those civilians carefully approved by the Third Reich.

The appropriation of the hotel by the Luftwaffe did not come without its inconveniences for the longtime residents who were evicted to smaller, less glamourous rooms. Some patrons left and didn’t return at all. Those who stayed endured the frantic renovations that preceded the Luftwaffe’s occupation, the greatest of which were the changes to the Imperial Suite that Göring had selected for his own use. Though if any of the civilian residents had complaints, they did not share those in front of Estelle. Or the Luftwaffe.