She was not a beauty with her strong, almost mannish features and high cheekbones (a falcon face, Benita had once said to Connie and been thoroughly scolded). But she was compelling, and in moments, her face achieved a kind of graceful symmetry that was striking. It was a face you could not easily forget.

At the salons and weekend parties Marianne and Albrecht hosted in the beginning of the war, Benita had watched the handsome barons and counts and noble youths of Germany’s most aristocratic families hang on Marianne’s every word. They had jousted playfully in a style of speaking that made Benita feel stupid. Were they joking or serious? Teasing her or mocking one another? In the presence of Connie’s fancy friends, Benita had found language an obstacle rather than a bridge to connection, but for Marianne it seemed a smooth and direct road that always rose to meet her feet.

“Why, you’re still in your nightclothes!” Marianne exclaimed, glancing up from the vegetables she was unloading. “Did you find the clothing I left in your room?”

Benita blushed. She had risen in such haste and completely forgotten to dress. “I’m sorry—I was rushing.”

“Sorry! Posh. Nothing to be sorry for. It just doesn’t seem like you. But then of course no one can be expected to be like themselves anymore, can they?” Marianne lifted the cart by its handles and pushed it back out the kitchen door. “As long as you have what you need.”

At that moment, Marianne’s two daughters appeared in the doorway, carrying a bucket between them.

“Just in time,” Marianne cried. “We have milk for you, Tante Benita!”

Benita was not sure which surprised her more—the presence of milk or the title Tante, “aunt.” Somehow lowly Benita Gruber, last of a long line of toiling Westphalian peasants, had become Tante to the von Lingenfels girls.

“Say hello, girls, and introduce yourselves,” Marianne instructed.

The girls approached—dark haired and tall, maybe ten and twelve. Katarina and Elisabeth. And Benita remembered their two little heads peering down at the guests from the landing on the stairs at the countess’s party. She had wished so fervently to have a daughter like them, a sweet girl to dress in dirndls and christen in delicate, frothy white. It seemed quaint now—an innocent dream. Who would want to introduce a girl to this world? Thank God Martin was a boy.

“Here,” said Katarina, the younger of the two, as she dipped a cup into the bucket and extended it to Benita. “It’s delicious.” She had a sweet, shy manner about her, with long, thick eyelashes and awkward coltish limbs.

“Where is Martin?” the older girl, Elisabeth, asked. She was the sharper of the two in both look and tone.

“Out in the courtyard—you didn’t see him?” Benita sprang up to look. The puddle was now abandoned. “He was with Fritz, playing—”

She started toward the door but was stopped by Marianne.

“Let him be,” Marianne commanded. “It’s good for a boy to be free.” Taking in Benita’s face, she softened her voice. “All is very safe here, Benita. Really.”