“Huh.” Lia was looking at the three Degas dancers on the wall as if she was willing them to speak. To spill their secrets. “Well, whatever your aunt was doing here in Paris after 1939, I don’t think it had anything to do with the Foreign Office or translation.”

“No,” Gabriel agreed faintly. “I don’t think so either.” He put the photo of Millbrook on top of the others with exaggerated care.

“I think she might have been a spy.”

Chapter 10

Chapter
10

Sophie

Hampshire, England
4 March 1943

Sophie was wakened by a blow to the head.

It wasn’t hard, not enough to cause any real damage, but it left her momentarily stunned as she was dragged from her bed. She blinked against the harsh light that flooded the room, trying to get her bearings.

“Move!” The command was issued in German. She stumbled, the floor freezing beneath her bare feet.

Rough hands grasped her upper arms and propelled her forward with bruising force. Sophie twisted her head, trying to get a glimpse of the men who held her, and was rewarded by a backhand to the side of her head. “Eyes front,” one of her captors barked.

Sophie was half carried, half dragged through the hallway outside the bedroom and then down a flight of stairs. She was manhandled into a darkened room, empty save for a single chair and a bare bulb that flickered feebly above. The men shoved her into the chair, yanked her arms behind her, and tied her wrists with rope. Then, without a word, they turned and left.

Sophie forced herself to take a deep, calming breath, trying to slow her pulse and her breathing. She had not heard the men come into her bedroom, and there was a distinct regret in that. But for right now, she needed to focus on what she could control. What she could see, hear, smell, touch. What she could use.

The room was freezing, and her thin nightdress offered little in the way of warmth. She could see nothing but blackness beyond the pitiful pool of light that surrounded her. The room smelled of damp and mildew, though cigarette smoke and the rank scent of an unwashed body nearby lingered underneath. Farther away in the darkness, someone coughed. There were at least two people down here with her, unseen and unknown.

Sophie casually shifted her weight, and the chair groaned and creaked, its legs wobbling beneath her. The thin spindles of the chairback pressed against her spine. Unsure who might be watching, she surreptitiously tested the bonds around her wrists next. Not as tight as they should have been. By curling her fingers, she could already feel the knot slip. Sloppy, sloppy.

“What is your name?” The sharp question came out of the darkness.

Sophie kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. “My name is Sophie Beaufort.”

“What are you doing in Paris?”