When they reached 7 Krensig, the windows were dark. Frau Gruber was not one to stay awake past ten, even on such an occasion. Connie ran around to Benita’s side of the car and held her door as she climbed out. Then, as she stood there against the still-warm body of his car, he leaned down and kissed her—lightly and skillfully, one hand tilting her chin. It was entirely different from Herbert Schmidt’s rough advances or Torsten Finkenberg’s awkward kisses, and she felt her whole body thrill at the feel of his smooth-shaven chin and the height from which he approached. She leaned into the spicy clove scent of his aftershave and the pressed wool of his suit.

“Can I see you again?” he asked. “I leave tomorrow, but if you say yes, I will come back in two weeks.”

“Yes,” she said, leaving aside strategy and coyness.

“Then it is decided,” he said, “and I will wait until you are safely inside.”

With that, Benita made her way up the narrow path and into the ugly, comfortable squalor of her childhood home, forever changed. She was a maiden who had met her prince.

CHAPTER FOUR

BURG LINGENFELS, JUNE 1945

The little boy sitting on the counter in front of Marianne was a miniature version of his father. Same startling blue eyes, high cheekbones, and straight, elegant features. His demeanor was different, though, certainly from that of his father as a man, but also from what he had been like as a boy. This Martin was solemn, impassive, and self-controlled where that Martin had been exuberant, bright, and spontaneous. This Martin’s face was a closed door. God knows it had good reason to be—Marianne would never forget her first sight of him, peering, wan faced, out the window of that awful Nazi orphanage.

“Does this hurt?” Marianne asked as she straightened the battered leg they had come inside to repair.

No, he shook his head.

“Or this?”

He shook his head again. But this time he flinched.

“Well, then, we will wash and bandage it, and it will be good as new.”

Marianne dipped a rag into a bowl of water and then pressed it against the bloody gash. She could feel the grit in his broken flesh. But the boy did not cry.

It was a bad fall. He and Fritz had been playing some sort of game in the rafters of the old horse stable. Fritz’s idea, of course. Her son could not stay out of trouble. It was as if all the hasty actions, zany ideas, and ill-considered nonsense he’d suppressed during their stressful journey west from Weisslau had returned to him doubled. Where had he come by his incautious streak? Neither she nor Albrecht had been impulsive or disorganized as a child. Even Elisabeth, for all her willfulness, was at least careful.

Luckily the floor of the stable was still the original packed earth. And Martin had landed like a cat. He seemed to have inherited the gift of luck from his father, who’d always had it in spades . . . until he didn’t.