The Widows of Champagne

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The Widows of Champagne Page 21

by Renee Ryan


  For how long?

  Gabrielle saw her sister’s hand reach out, then rest on the arm of a local boy hired to work the party. Paulette appeared fond of him, but not as much as he was of her. It seemed the only quality the young woman looked for in a suitor was his admiration of her.

  Not a very high bar.

  “Your sister is in high spirits this evening.”

  “She enjoys parties.”

  “I think—” he divided his gaze between Paulette and the local boy, then considered the group of Waffen-SS soldiers that had previously surrounded her “—she is very free with her affections.”

  A cold, deadening sensation filled Gabrielle’s lungs. How did she respond? With the truth. “Paulette is a happy, popular, well-liked young woman.”

  “Evidently.” The absence of any emotion in that single word hit like a punch, the pain was that sharp and unexpected. “You will want to speak with your sister before she brings unnecessary attention to herself. And, by association, the rest of your family.”

  Gabrielle didn’t appreciate the warning, spoken in that calm, cool tone. It felt like a trap, a way to lure her into believing he was doing her a favor. She didn’t think any further than that. She simply began to step away from him, desperate to distance herself from what she heard in his voice. Not a warning, after all. A threat.

  “I will speak with my sister right away.” Her voice came at her as if from a great distance, sounding tinny in her own ears. “If you will excuse me, Detective.”

  “By all means.” He stepped aside and let her go without another word.

  Gabrielle entered the château just as her mother approached Paulette. Good, she thought. This was good. They would join forces.

  Together, surely, they would speak sense into the girl.

  Chapter Thirty

  Josephine

  As German occupation crept on, Josephine’s sense of time fragmented into a spattering of unrelated moments. She spent hours examining the contents of her memory, too many times coming away empty. The champagne house continued meeting the impossible quotas set by the weinführer, but Josephine left the particulars to her granddaughter and spent more time in her room, or in Marta’s company.

  This arrangement suited her. She tired easily and rarely ventured out of her bedroom during waking hours. She tried not to wander too much at night, though there were moments when she would find herself in a dark part of the château, confused and frightened, unsure how she’d ended up there.

  Some good came from her moments of confusion. Von Schmidt had grown tired of her ramblings. He’d banished her from the evening meal. Tonight, however, he’d demanded her presence. She couldn’t think why. Perhaps for no other reason than to throw her off-balance and relax her guard, as deceptive and cunning as the serpent in the garden.

  He’d compiled the usual coterie of guests at his table. No Frenchmen, of course. Only Germans, and only men who served his upward mobility within the Third Reich. They brought their well-groomed, heavily jeweled companions. It appalled Josephine to see so many local women taking Nazi lovers. Some did so for survival, others for more selfish reasons. How dare they prefer their comfort over their pride.

  Hélène lifted her glass and made a toast in honor of one of the couples at the table, a woman not much older than Paulette and a German officer close to von Schmidt’s age. “To your engagement,” she said, raising her glass a bit higher. “May you find eternal happiness as husband and wife for many years to come.”

  Josephine and Gabrielle shared a horrified look. Hélène appeared truly pleased by this abominable union. She also appeared perfectly comfortable in her role as hostess at the right hand of her own German. There was truth and there was deception, Josephine thought. Hélène’s relationship with von Schmidt appeared to fall somewhere in between.

  Josephine’s fault, she knew. She’d encouraged her daughter-in-law to make herself indispensable to their oppressor.

  Or had the idea come from Hélène? Josephine couldn’t remember which of them had broached the subject first. She needed to remember. She thought, maybe, the distinction was important, a clue as to whether or not Hélène could still be trusted. Or if she’d become...

  No assumptions, not yet.

  Josephine would check her journal later, when she was certain the rest of the household slept. In the meantime, she had her own role to play. That of a woman with a frail mind. The charade was not so far from the truth.

  “I have a desire for duck tonight.” As she glanced around the table, she pretended to slip deeper into a state of confusion. “Perhaps in a lovely orange sauce. Marta does such a fine job with sauces.”

  “Grandmère,” Gabrielle said gently, her hand coming to rest on her forearm. “We already ate the main course. You praised Marta’s culinary skills, several times in fact.”

  Had she? Josephine went quiet, thinking maybe...yes. Her granddaughter was correct. She’d already eaten the fish. Not duck, but a lovely sea bass. You know this, Josephine. Taking her glass, she tried to drink, but the water turned acrid in her mouth and she choked on the sip.

  Von Schmidt expelled an impatient breath and stared at her through hard, unforgiving eyes. She knew the look. He was preparing to give her a harsh insult.

  Hélène forestalled the reprimand. “I believe we can all agree that the sea bass was cooked to perfection. The cherries jubilee will be even better. It is one of your favorites, is it not, Helmut? As it is mine.”

  He reached out and closed his hand over Hélène’s in a gesture that spoke of a shared intimacy that made Josephine heartsick.

  “You and I, my dear, are of a similar mind in this, as we are in so many areas.” He brought her hand to his lips. “It is always a pleasure to have your exquisite presence at my table.”

  His table. The swine.

  Josephine had to lower her head to hide the snarl of contempt that formed on her lips, but not before she caught Hélène’s stricken expression. That look told her much and she thought of an Oscar Wilde quote. Truth is rarely pure and never simple. Josephine sighed. She wanted to be anywhere but at this table.

  When the dismissal came, she was happy to escape to her room.

  Time passed. She didn’t know how much. She sat alone, dressed for bed in a warm robe, the air scarred by the grating of her breath. When had she changed out of her evening gown? Had Marta helped her?

  Her feet were cold.

  They were always cold. Josephine glanced down. She still wore the shoes that matched her dress. She tapped her toes on the floor, tap tap tap, and tried to recall when she’d slipped them back onto her feet. Or had she never taken them off?

  She tried to stand. Her ankle twisted, sending sharp pain up her leg. Stupid, stupid shoes. She reached down to remove them. They were too heavy and clumsy in her hands. She dropped them to the floor with a thud and gave them a little kick. That felt good. She kicked them again. Then went on the move, pacing from bed, to window, to dressing table, faster, faster, faster, her mind whirling, her bare feet circling within the same path. She hated this confusion in her head.

  A familiar spurt of fear tangled with the first stirrings of anger. Not anger, rage. So much of it. She wanted to howl in frustration. This world, it was too much for her. A sob burst from her throat. I want to come home, Lord.

  But her blood still pumped. Her failing, traitorous body still coursed with life.

  Let me come home. It’s time.

  There was no response from the Father. No sound but the shuffling of her feet between bed, window, dressing table. Bed, window, dressing table.

  Bed, window. Her feet stopped. She shoved aside the heavy blue curtains. Blue? No, that wasn’t right. They were supposed to be green with gold brocade. Josephine had chosen the pattern not long after her wedding day. Had someone replaced them?

  Had she?

  Outside
, the dark of night was not so black anymore. The pearly light of the moon had married with the hazy mist of dawn. She’d been pacing all night. And her journal was in her hand. She didn’t remember retrieving it.

  She stared out across the vineyard.

  Through the fog, she could see a movement, the gauzy sway of something black against the gray. She blinked, squinted, trying to see past the stingy light, determined to separate the foreign from the familiar. Two shadows came together, merging into one big smudge inside the fog. They separated and then joined again. Josephine rubbed her eyes.

  A chill of foreboding galloped through her blood as she glanced at the strange, moving images. Neither dark nor light, but a dingy ash. She rubbed at her eyes again, her vision slowly clearing. The details were more visible now. They made more sense.

  The two figures, easier to distinguish apart from the fog, came together and separated a third time. She identified the taller, larger form. A man. The shorter, smaller belonged to a woman. Young, old, she couldn’t tell. Arms entwined, heads moving together, bodies pressing closer. A lover’s embrace.

  Josephine gasped, suddenly empty of the ability to breathe. She forced herself to watch, when all she wanted to do was look away. To pretend she wasn’t witnessing the ugly truth playing out before her eyes. Her suspicions were realized in a moment of painful clarity.

  And then, it was over.

  The man stepped back from the woman. She reached to him, but he turned, shoulders set at a proud angle, and walked away, melting deeper into the mist. Even before he disappeared, the woman placed a hand to her heart. Lifted her fingertips to her lips, touched her heart again.

  The image froze in Josephine’s mind. She stood suspended in a moment of disbelief, her hand itching to write down what she’d seen. How could she put this terrible reality on the page?

  She must.

  She did.

  When she was through, a breath went out of her in a hard exhalation of ragged sound and air. She was shocked, of course. But part of her experienced only acceptance. Part of her had expected nothing less from her granddaughter.

  After all they’d sacrificed, all the risks each of them had taken, part of Josephine couldn’t shake the notion that this one, selfish act would result in her family’s doom.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Gabrielle

  Gabrielle read the journal entry, her eyes racing over the page, anguish covering her heart. All her attempts to talk reason into her sister had been for nothing. Paulette had done as Paulette always did—whatever she wanted.

  Until this moment, Gabrielle had convinced herself her sister was nothing more than an outrageous flirt playing with her admirers’ affections.

  She’d been lying to herself.

  Deep down, she’d known a forbidden romance was inevitable. Of course she’d known, because here she sat, receiving the news of her sister’s indiscretion without the slightest hint of shock. Anguish, yes. Fury. Alarm. But, no. Not surprise.

  Paulette was too impulsive for her own good. Gabrielle read the entry a second time. She had questions. Her grandmother’s comments were not very detailed. Looking up from the page, she asked, “Did you recognize the boy?”

  Josephine shook her head. “It was foggy. The light was poor, and they were too far away for me to distinguish more than their shapes.”

  Gabrielle had a moment of desperate hope. “You are sure the woman was Paulette?”

  “I know my own granddaughter.”

  “Of course you do. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” She thought for a moment. Her mind hooked on an image from the party. Paulette’s hand resting on that local boy’s arm. “He’s probably one of her schoolmates. My guess is the boy from the party last week, the server Maman hired.” The boy’s life she’d saved.

  It was the most logical explanation, the only one Gabrielle would entertain. Surely, Paulette would not fraternize with the enemy with this level of intimacy. Besides, where would she have met him? As soon as Gabrielle had the thought, another image from the party materialized. Paulette surrounded by German soldiers. One in particular had been especially persistent. A lieutenant with the Waffen-SS. Very good-looking, very attentive to her sister. But not a boy, a man in his twenties. He’d since dined at von Schmidt’s table.

  Gabrielle hated the ugly suspicion filling her mind. But she had to admit this theory fit every detail, including—especially—the need for secrecy, and the need for Paulette to break curfew. She had to speak with her sister.

  The clock told her Paulette was already in bed for the night. Gabrielle could wake her. No, her sister was still a teenager and all that implied. Confronting her in the middle of the night would only result in deflection and angry denials.

  Her mother, then. She would go to Hélène with this. Later tonight, or early tomorrow morning. When she was sure the other woman was in her room and Gabrielle herself was back from her own midnight errand. She glanced at the clock again.

  If only Josephine had told her about this sooner. Already, time worked against her. She would have to leave soon to meet Max. She passed the journal back to her grandmother and kissed the older woman’s cheek. “I’m glad you showed me this.”

  “The girl must stop this foolishness at once,” Josephine said, the manifestation of the family matriarch in her stiff posture. “I’ll speak to her myself.”

  “I think we should leave this to Maman. She has the greatest influence with Paulette.” It was the right move, the only move now that Gabrielle considered the situation with a bit more perspective.

  “Perhaps you’re right. But see that it’s done quickly.” Josephine closed the journal and secured the leather strap. “I have a bad feeling about this relationship.”

  Gabrielle did, too.

  Later, when she exited the house, mounted her bicycle and blended with the night, she put aside her worry for her sister and focused on the more immediate task before her. Another dangerous mission, her role small but important. The midnight air still held the bite of winter and nipped at her exposed skin with needle-sharp precision.

  A hawk swooped low, silent and deadly and practically clipped Gabrielle on the shoulder. She swerved, hit a rut and nearly lost her grip on the handlebars. She righted herself before disaster struck. What was she doing, condemning her sister for taking risks when she herself took more than her share?

  Not unlike her sister, she put her family in danger every time she broke curfew. She considered ending her resistance work, then immediately rejected the idea. What Gabrielle did for France was necessary, important.

  She kept pedaling.

  Tonight, she risked her life a third time for the British airman that still lived in Max’s wine cellar. The contact from their network hadn’t shown last week. There’d been no explanation. Until yesterday. He’d been arrested for derailing a large shipment of champagne meant for Berlin.

  They would try again tonight, with a different plan and different players, except for Max and Gabrielle. Despite the cold stiffening her muscles, she pedaled harder, putting her farther from the safety of her home and deeper into danger. The Waffen-SS encampment came into view. She increased her speed. Soon, the camp was out of sight and she was breathing normally once again.

  Max was waiting for her at his usual spot. He didn’t look good. His calm, careful façade was nonexistent. Gabrielle scrambled off her bike and let it drop to the frozen ground. “What’s wrong, Papa?”

  Sadness came into his eyes, and then regret. Or was that fear? “The strain is too much, Gabrielle. I grow weak under the stress. We must have success tonight. We must get this man away from my home.”

  The desperation was not like Max.

  “We will.” She let the air out of her lungs in a long sigh. “Our plan is a good one.”

  They’d decided the railyard was too risky, especially now that an SS unit patrolled th
e area. A local vine grower authorized to conduct business in the Free Zone had agreed to smuggle the Brit across the border in one of his wine barrels. She didn’t ask the man’s name, or if he was local, and Max didn’t supply this information. Anonymity was always best. “Am I still on watch during the transfer?”

  “Oui. You will keep an eye on the main road. If you see anything suspicious, you will blow into this whistle three times. Three. No more, no less.”

  She took the bird whistle he held out. The paint had chipped away from the mouthpiece but, after a careful inspection, it appeared to be in good working order. Just to be certain, she tested the sound with a hard, fast blow and sighed in relief. The whistle would suffice.

  It would work. It had to work. For the airman’s sake. And her father-in-law’s.

  “I’ll alert you when all is clear with the same signal.” Max showed her a second, identical whistle before shoving it in his coat pocket. “Once you hear the three chirps you will know it’s safe for you to return to your bed. Do not come back here. Go straight home.”

  There had to be more she could do. When she said as much, Max refused to entertain the idea. “I already put you at too much risk. Now, go. Godspeed, Gabrielle.”

  They embraced. She mounted her bicycle and slipped soundlessly into the night just as a delivery truck rumbled down the drive. She did not look in the driver’s direction and prayed he didn’t look in hers.

  The temperatures had dipped since she’d left the château and the air carried the scent of snow. Gabrielle hardly noticed as she pedaled past Max’s house, through the courtyard and out onto the road. She swung her bicycle in the direction of the SS encampment, then came to a stop and waited for the signal from Max.

 

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