“I suppose you’re right.” But Jess knew she’d much prefer to work alongside Dan and his men, GIs she already knew and cared something for. So the only thing to do was to drive out there and hope he’d forgiven her and not think about where she’d go if he hadn’t.

Soon she and Marty were on their way downstairs with their bags. In the lobby, they found a huddle of correspondents and PROs, obviously waiting for someone. Jess soon found out it wasn’t what had happened in battle overnight that had got everyone so excited; it was what had happened at the Hotel Scribe right under their noses.

“If only I were blonde,” one said loudly as Jess walked past.

“You’d need nice long legs too,” another added.

“Don’t forget the breasts,” Warren added.

Jess stopped. “I assume you’re making some kind of point directed at me?”

“You got access to the front. We’re just interested to know how you did it,” a reporter for a third-rate paper smirked.

“Yes,” said Jess. “It is interesting, isn’t it? Now I have the same access to the war as you do. No more, no less. I have no extra privileges. But it’s taken me a year to earn the rights you were handed the minute you turned up. So the only reason you might be so concerned is because you think I’m going to get better stories than you, and get them first. If that’s the case, then I don’t know why you’re sitting in the bar. War’s out that way, fellas.”

Jess pointed to the doors and strode off, tongue having got the better of her again.

* * *

When Jess and Martha pulled into the driveway where Dan’s division had been billeted, not far from Reims, they both found themselves uncharacteristically speechless. Before them stood a fairytale chateau—it actually had a turret. Yes, it showed some signs of misuse from German occupation but even the circling of khaki tents spread throughout the once manicured grounds and across the fields stretching down to the canal couldn’t diminish the splendor. Lieu de Rêves: Jess saw the chateau’s name on a sign before them and knew it had been appropriately named. It really was a place for dreaming.

Her eyes took in the overgrown maze that she imagined must provide the GIs and WACs the perfect opportunity to become lost together, the plane trees that stood proudly above the tangled branches of chestnut trees, and the vibrant splashes of color provided by the wild orchids that had just begun to flower, and the still-lingering butterflies. Hiding here and there were contorted dwarf beech trees that had lost most of their leaves, branches covered with moss, looking haunted. Jess knew from her parents that legends abounded that the trees—Les Faux de Verzy, as they were known—were either blessed or cursed: there were stories that woodland trolls had caused the stunting, or a monk had cursed them, or that to dance beneath the canopy of leaves might grant one both love and fertility.