He seemed to start. “No.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “It’s just I’ve never seen…that is to say I…you look different,” he finished awkwardly.

“Different?”

“That’s not—” He stopped. “You look really pretty, Allard.”

Estelle glanced down at the couture dress. She couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge the compliment. If Jerome wasn’t standing in the middle of her bedroom, she would have yanked the dress off right there. “Do you know that there is an entire suite at the Ritz full of stolen paintings and drawings and sculpture?” she asked instead. “I saw them tonight.”

Jerome exhaled. “All due respect, Allard, but those are just things. There are bigger problems at hand than art.”

“I know. But I looked at all of those pieces in that room, and I wondered how much tragedy was attached to each of those objects. What the acquisition of each of those pieces cost. What I saw in that room was a great mass of lives torn apart, stacked up, awaiting shipment to some vague destination from which they won’t return.” She leaned her head against one of the bedposts. “How much history will a family or a country lose when they lose the things that unite them? That tell the stories of their pasts?”

Jerome came and sat down carefully beside her, the mattress dipping farther under his weight.

“I am not an Allied general with troops and tanks and guns at my disposal,” Estelle whispered. “I don’t even have an ambulance anymore.” She wrapped her hands around her middle. “I am a single woman with fancy clothes, a highborn pedigree that opens any door in society that I damn well please, and a carefully crafted reputation that makes my willingness to dance and drink this war away expected. Those are the only weapons I have.”

“They are formidable weapons. After all, you fooled me, a man with no excuse not to have known better.”

“Are they? Because it doesn’t feel like it. I endure the officers who fill up the cabarets and hotels every night, giggle at their jokes, keep my lipstick bright, and try to avoid being touched. I sing when they ask me to and play dumb when they speak to each other in German. And I wait. And hope. For those moments when inebriation or just plain arrogance loosens tongues enough to compromise discretion. All the while knowing that the little crumbs of information that I collect might not make any difference in the end.”

“Everything makes a difference. Everything. You never know what crumb might turn a tide.”

“Crumbs aren’t enough anymore, Jerome. I need to do more.”

“How much more?”

Estelle twisted in surprise at the gravity of his question. “What do you mean?”

He held her eyes with his. “How much would you be willing to risk?”

“Anything. Tell me what else I can do.”