Elise breathed a sigh of relief as he sank down to the floor, his eyes shut and his breathing heavy. She rose to her feet and reached down a hand for her sister, hauling her up beside her. She was so tired that she felt like her eyelids were drooping; her feet like lead as she moved.

“We did the right thing tonight, Elise,” Addy whispered, staring down at the two men.

Elise embraced her, dropping a kiss to her hair, and wondered if she’d been too soft in opening their door to them, despite what her sister thought. But if she’d turned them away just because she was scared, she would never have forgiven herself. And she doubted Adelaide would have ever forgiven her, either.

CHAPTER SEVEN ADELAIDE

CHAPTER SEVEN

ADELAIDE

The past year had brought so much pain with it; such soul-deep, gut-wrenching pain that Adelaide had often wondered how she’d ever survive beyond it, but today she’d seen pain on another level. Today she’d seen men massacred when they should have been taken prisoner, and she’d also witnessed the aftermath of injuries that would have challenged even the strongest of constitutions.

“What are we going to do with him?” Addy asked her sister, tucked up beside her in bed. It was cold, and they were both feeling so uncertain about what had happened, not to mention the fact that there were two strange men sleeping in their home, that they’d decided to curl up in bed together. They were propped up with pillows behind them against the metal headrest, blankets pulled up almost to their chins, and despite the warmth, Adelaide still had a regular shiver run through her.

“I don’t know,” Elise said, angled to face her now, so close that their knees were bumping under the covers. “If he keeps blabbering on about surrendering and trying to leave, we can’t exactly stop him, can we?”

Adelaide blinked away tears at the thought of giving him to the Germans. “What if he does surrender, and they just shoot him like they did all the others?”

“I know. I keep thinking that they expected all of them to be dead. I mean, they massacred those soldiers, so they certainly didn’t mean to leave any witnesses behind, did they?”

Addy gripped the blanket and pulled it up even higher, snuggling deep into it. Witnesses. That word terrified her, because that was exactly what they were; they’d witnessed the entire thing from start to finish.

“I tend to think that he’s not right in the head, or perhaps that he’s just in a state of temporary shock,” Elise said. “But I don’t know how to stop a grown man from doing something, other than by forcibly restraining him.”