“Frau von Lingenfels,” Peterman barked in his jocular way. On his lips von Lingenfels always sounded comical to her ears, the g hard and the syllables flat.

“Lieutenant,” Marianne replied.

Behind Peterman, she noticed another man—tall, thin, and wearing a ragged Wehrmacht uniform with the insignias removed. He stared down at his boots. A German prisoner of war. There were thousands of these in the British and American internment camps. “Have you found one of my fraus?” Marianne asked Peterman lightly. It was the same joke he had made when she gave him her list of names. So look for any of these names with Frau in front? he’d asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Peterman said. A shadow swept over his face. Clearly he had not given the list a thought. “But I’ve brought you someone to help out around the castle.”

Marianne looked from Peterman to the other man, who met her eyes for an instant. His own were a pale, almost transparent shade of blue, and he had a broad, unexpectedly handsome face. “Herr Muller is one of the detainees from our camp. And I figure you could probably use an extra set of hands around here. Muller is handy. Worked on a farm before the war, right?” he asked, turning to the man. “Bauernhof?”

The man looked from Peterman to Marianne questioningly.

He was not a farmer, Marianne understood.

“That’s all right.” She frowned. Marianne did not like the idea of relying on an ex-Nazi prisoner of the Americans for help. God knows what sort of person he was, what sort of soldier he had been. And on top of this, he was her countryman. “We don’t need any help.”

“I beg your pardon, Frau von Lingenfels, but—” Peterman stepped back and surveyed the castle edifice. “You have broken windows up there and missing slates. And”—he looked at her—“winter is coming. You’ll need wood.”

Peterman turned to the man again and pantomimed an ax. “You can chop wood—Holz. Right?”

The man nodded in assent.

“So?” Peterman asked, squinting at Marianne. “Will that suit? I’d hate to have you freeze up here, especially with so many trees around.”

Marianne sighed. “You make it hard to say no.”

“All right,” Peterman said. “Next Thursday then. You have an ax?”

Dinner that night was their usual nearly unpalatable meal of soup. Marianne had never learned to cook. As a girl, she had been spoiled—the bright and favorite daughter of a wealthy widower who believed in women’s education over domesticity. She had read Goethe and Schopenhauer and Schiller, rather than cookbooks.

“We are going to have a slave here? In our house? Once a week?” Elisabeth demanded.

“Oh, stop it. Certainly not a slave,” Marianne snapped. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Well, he is.” Elisabeth harrumphed. “That’s what prisoners of war are. I heard Herr Koffel say so. Slave labor. Against international regulations. How is that different from what we did when we were in charge?”

“ ‘We’?” Marianne echoed, appalled. “We were never Nazis. Don’t forget that.”