“There’s nowhere else,” Elise told her gently. “We’ll find a way through this that keeps us all safe.”

“But that’s the problem, I just can’t see a way through it,” Cate said. “I can’t believe we’ve been left behind, that so many troops might not have made it home.”

“Worrying isn’t going to make you feel better,” Elise said. “What you need is a nice long sleep. Everything will seem better in the morning.”

It was an outright lie, a fib mothers told their children to get them to bed, although she supposed that if the problem were small, it usually did feel better when the sun rose the next day. But the truth was, she had no idea how to keep them safe. Cate was one thing; they could get away with one lie, for a woman, for someone who wouldn’t be so hated by the enemy. But two British soldiers? She wasn’t even going to think about what would happen to them, to all of them, if that secret were uncovered when they were in the midst of enemy territory.

“Come on, let’s get you settled,” Addy said, her arm around Cate as she helped her up. “My mother’s bed is the comfiest in the house.”

Cate stopped moving then, turning back to Elise. “What happened to her? To your mother?”

“She died of a broken heart, I suspect,” Elise said.

Cate didn’t ask any more questions, and for that Elise was grateful. She waited for them to leave the room and then sank down into the pillows, knowing that she was about as far from sleep as possible. Her mind was racing, trying to figure it all out, trying to think what Louis would have done, or what her father would have said.

Just take it one day at a time. She listened to her brother’s words in her mind, knowing that he would have been so calm, refusing to listen to her worries. She’d always been the worrier and he’d been the free spirit, the one who’d say yes to anything just because he loved living so much.

Elise refused to cry, pushing up to her feet and going downstairs. Sleep was for the dead; Louis would have said that, too.