“Last year, if you’d told me this would happen, I wouldn’t have believed you. We were in love.” Martha blinked, hard. “Then when I told him I was returning to Europe, he said to me, ‘Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?’ ”

Two opposing choices. A binary the world seemed determined to force upon the women who wanted something more inclusive, limiting them to this single moment of a shared embrace, a shared pain, a broken heart and the uncertainty of what was to come when they declared that an either/or choice was not enough.

Into the silence following Martha’s words, Jess heard her name spoken by the men at the next table, accompanied by uproarious laughter and she knew that the bar at the Savoy was not a place she wanted to spend any more time in. And nor should Martha, especially if her husband was here too. “Let’s go to Italy.”

“Not so fast.” Warren Stone shifted into the seat beside Jess.

Damn. She’d waited in London too long and now Warren’s leave was obviously over, or he’d been recalled. And he was cockier than ever. Why?

“You haven’t heard?” Martha said sardonically to Jess.

“Heard what? That a nude painting of me is on display at the Tate Gallery or something equally ridiculous?” Jess said, smiling sweetly at Warren.

“You know they show the men a picture of a naked woman painted in camouflage colors at the infantry training school to arrest the men’s attention when it wanders,” Warren said as he sipped his whiskey.

Jess knew she was gaping, open-mouthed. “That’s a lie,” she insisted.

“It’s not,” Martha said sadly.

“And it’s not what’s important right now,” Warren said, a grin spreading wide across his face. “There are a lot of shiny new women being sent here and they’re very inexperienced. We want to protect you all. So every female correspondent is quarantined in London for now.”

Jess knew that half of what Warren had said was true. As well as wanting to have reporters on the ground if the rumored invasion really was imminent, the American newspapers had seen the success among readers of Ruth Cowan’s pieces on the WACs in North Africa, Iris Carpenter’s reportage of the Blitz, and Martha’s by-line, albeit hidden behind the “Mrs. Ernest Hemingway” title. Which had meant the arrival in England of a dozen more unblooded female reporters, raising the latrine business and the cloakroom question—as the British more politely put it—to bar-room conversation status. And if they were quarantining women already, then it confirmed the invasion was not a rumor, but an action soon to be taken.

“How long are you going to keep us here?” Jess asked, provoked by his comments into breaking her pact not to deliberately antagonize him. “And you can’t keep us here. I’ll speak to your boss.”

“But I am my boss now. Feel free to congratulate me on my promotion,” Warren said.

Jess and Martha looked at one another in disbelief.