“Wonderful,” Benita said. “The bride wore a gray suit and the groom his best lederhosen.” She laughed aloud at the image of Herr Kellerman in a pair of short pants. “No, but really it was nice. Ania looked happy—at least secretly.”

Franz handed Benita a steaming cup—thick white china, the kind one could buy at any market now, so different from Marianne’s fine Meissen. Benita would miss those when she became Frau Muller—their refinement and air of bygone elegance. But she held no more illusions; she could eat off fine china, but she would never be an aristocrat.

“Franz,” she said, hooking her foot around his leg as he started back for his own cup. “Franzl.” She loved calling him that—it was such a boy’s name, so inappropriate for the man before her. “When will you make me a good woman? Have you been looking at flats?”

His face slackened, and immediately Benita wished she had not teased. Franz would find one when there was enough money—she had no doubt. And then they would be married. It was only a question of time.

“Not yet,” he said as if breaking terrible news. “I’m sorry—I think it will be another month.”

“Hush—never mind. I’m only teasing.” She ran her stockinged foot farther up his leg. “But now you must stop teasing me.”

Slowly, Franz leaned down and took the cup of tea from her hand, placing it on the side table. Then he pulled her to her feet. She pressed her breasts against his chest, delighted by their regained roundness in her new brassiere—a white lace shelf that created real décolletage. It was the first piece of lingerie she had owned since before the war. In it she felt young again and excited by her own beauty.

“That’s better,” she murmured against his lips and unbuttoned her dress.

They made love four more times during the twenty-four-hour visit. It was never enough.

Benita had always cultivated her seduction skills—Connie was not her first—and her husband had benefited from her experience. There was Heinrich Kohl and Karl Josef before him, handsome, fresh-faced village boys with whom she had practiced, with the explicit intention of gaining expertise. She was a dreamer, but she was not naive. She had always known that it was not her brains that would get her out of Frühlinghausen. And so she had learned how to slip her tongue into the rim of a man’s ear just so, how to graze her nipples against his chest, a titillating reminder of their presence as she slid one hand down over his belly to the ridge of his hip.

With Connie, all this had come together in an impressive bit of theater that he had loved. For a man of experience—which Connie Fledermann certainly was—he had been oddly enthralled by her simple games. And she had used that to every advantage. But for her, the benefit was only his addled affection, never any pleasure of her own.

With Franz it was different. There was no pretending. After Berlin, sex was something she had never thought she would want again. Yet somehow she did. She wanted him. And around him, she had no shame.