Luckily Iris was right. After the bungled court-martial, SHAEF PR did have to change the way they let women into France. Every woman who wanted it was issued permanent orders to go to France, and those orders were valid for an entire month. Jess hugged her papers to her chest, unable to hide her smile even from Warren.

His attempt to dampen her spirits by telling her she had to wait a week for transport didn’t make a bit of difference. Besides, he looked cowed for once, as if all the fighting and the losing was wearying him. Jess was hopeful that, once she was in France, she wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore and he would let go of their feud and they could both just do their jobs.

She used the week before embarkation to say goodbye to Victorine and to visit her friend from boarding school days, Amelia, with whom she had continued to exchange letters. Amelia had been begging Jess to visit since discovering she was in England.

“Jessica May!” Amelia said when Jess arrived on the doorstep of a grand country home in Cornwall. “I couldn’t believe it when you telephoned. Come in.”

Jess hugged Amelia, who looked as devastatingly pretty as she had in school. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Oh, but I have.” Amelia waggled her left hand at Jess. “I got myself married, remember.”

“I can’t imagine you a married woman,” Jess said as she followed Amelia into a masculine drawing room adorned with stags’ heads and other hunting souvenirs.

“I can’t imagine myself a married woman either,” Amelia said with a grin, before commanding a maid to bring them champagne. “I’m having to work very hard to behave myself.”

Jess laughed. On the rare occasions Jess was actually in school in Paris, she and Amelia had, most weekends, snuck out of the boarding house and into the jazz clubs of Montmartre, where they’d refined their drinking and kissing skills even though they were only sixteen.

“Luckily he’s a corporal or a colonel or an admiral or something in the Navy—I can never remember all of those ranks—so he’s on a ship somewhere and I’m here hosting house parties.”

Jess’s hand tightened on her champagne glass. “Aren’t you worried about him?” she asked. For Victorine’s sake—at least she thought it was for Victorine’s sake rather than her own—Jess worried about Dan every morning when she woke and every night before she slept.

Amelia laughed. “He’s a friend of Daddy’s and almost as old so let’s just say that the war is very convenient.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“For freedom, of course.” Amelia stared at Jess as if she were being obtuse. “Married, I have the money and the means to live life as I choose. I wanted a military husband. I well know from having a military father how little time they spend with family. It suits me perfectly; I don’t have to behave all that much,” Amelia finished with a wink. “You’re lucky I’m even awake. Last night’s party didn’t finish until dawn.”