“Late for what?” She stepped out into the alcove, closing the door behind her. Mr. Hough towered over her by at least six inches and smelled like sandalwood and soap. Blast Chandler for making her look at his picture online. Lucas Hough was even more handsome in person.
“Perhaps I should have given you more information.”
She crossed her arms. “Starting right about now.”
If he was willing to answer a few questions, she might go with him—for Chandler’s sake—to hear Mr. Knight’s story in person.
“I can’t say much, Miss Vaughn. It’s my job to protect my clients.”
A brick wall, that’s what he reminded her of. A fortress of pride and aristocracy that had blocked out the lower classes for centuries, as if the lowers might corrupt them.
“Is your client’s friend a man or a woman?” she asked.
“A woman.”
“His lover?”
When Mr. Hough shook his head, Quenby leaned back, propping her bare foot on the trim behind her. “You don’t think I can find her, do you?”
Doubt flickered in his eyes. “I think the best investigators in London have tried for decades to no avail.”
“Is she hiding from your client?”
He glanced at his phone again. “Her last known address was near Tonbridge, on the property of Lord and Lady Ricker.”
Goose bumps prickled her arms. No one knew what she was working on except the syndicate and her contact at the archives. Had Mr. Hough somehow discovered her secret, or was it mere coincidence that Mr. Knight’s friend lived at Breydon Court?
“Did your client know the Rickers?”
The man’s phone vibrated. Instead of answering her question, he checked his text, then glanced back up. “The plane is ready.”
She tilted her head, her cool demeanor waning. “What plane?”
Finally he smiled. “You didn’t think we were driving, did you?”
Chapter 4
Belgium, August 1940
Cowbells echoed through the valley, somewhere along the border between Germany and Belgium—at least that’s where Dietmar thought they were. The evening smelled of wild chamomile, and phlox painted the narrow path a pale-pink color that reminded him of the flowers along the Elzbach near his home.
Brigitte stumbled on a rock, and he reached out to catch her. But she kept walking, her bare toes crushing the summer blooms. The sun had freckled her cheeks, burnt her nose. Her eyes were often red too, tears blurring her vision as they trekked west together.
In her thin arms, Brigitte clutched a cookie tin filled with gold and silver coins. Dietmar carried her shoes and kerchief in the makeshift knapsack he’d tied together from a sheet, but she refused to let him carry her father’s box or even to hide it when they slept on the forest floor. The toy princess she kept in the pocket of her cardigan.
The cache of coins in the cookie tin had been useless on their journey, but the box wasn’t really about money for Brigitte. It was a piece of her parents, the only piece she had left. He would never ask her to leave it behind.
Dietmar kept telling her that they would see their parents again soon. That it was all a terrible misunderstanding. And as they plodded west, he kept trying to believe his words were true. That one day they would all return to Moselkern.
Herr Berthold had been arrested that same afternoon as his parents, their family’s cottage ransacked like the Roths’ sitting room. The scene scrolled painfully through Dietmar’s head again and again as they walked in silence through the fields and forest.
He never should have coaxed Brigitte away from their tree house that terrible day, back to her home. He’d never imagined that the Gestapo had come for her father too.
He’d wiped up the blood in her kitchen while she was upstairs, calling for her father, but even though she was young, Brigitte was smart. Smart enough to know where her father had hidden their family’s money from the Nazis. While Dietmar gathered blankets and a bit of food from the house, she dug up the tin box with a trowel. Herr Berthold had buried it under the pink stars flowering on a magnolia tree, hidden among the threads of roots that crept away from the trunk.
Dietmar had taken Brigitte to his classmate Heinz’s house on the other side of Moselkern. After Heinz hid them in the back shed, he explained that the Gestapo was rounding up anyone suspected of feeding the Jewish people still hidden in the area. Someone thought Brigitte’s father—a Lutheran minister—was helping them. While Heinz didn’t have any information about Dietmar’s parents, villagers knew Herr Roth was once an outspoken critic of Hitler and his party of Nazis.
Fear had silenced his father from speaking publicly against the Führer in the past year, but Dietmar heard his parents’ whispers at night, his ear pressed against their bedroom door. They thought Dietmar too young to trust with their secrets, but he hadn’t said a word to anyone about their work. Nor would he now.
“What’s wrong with helping the Jews?” Brigitte asked Heinz. “My friend—”
“Hush,” Dietmar said, squeezing her hand.
He hadn’t wanted to be harsh with her, but the way Heinz looked at her, then back at Dietmar, sent chills down his spine. His classmate’s eyes were full of suspicion. Scorn. In that moment, Dietmar knew that neither he nor Brigitte would be safe anywhere in Moselkern.
“Wait here,” Heinz had said as he backed out of the shed. Then he closed the door.
In the dim light, the image of Dietmar’s bruised mother flashed through his mind. And he heard her silent plea for him to run.
He peeked out the crack in the door and saw Heinz glance at the shed before slipping into the house.
Dietmar had to protect Brigitte, but even the shield of a knight, forged in fire, wasn’t strong enough to ward off the Gestapo. If someone like Herr Darre found them, he’d force Brigitte to join the Jungmädelbund—League of German Girls. And he’d probably send Dietmar to a labor camp.
From the moment they stepped out of the shed, Dietmar never looked back. For almost a month now, he and Brigitte had been running, following the path of the afternoon sun toward England.
They were far from home, yet he knew Germans had infiltrated the land between here and the wide channel that separated Belgium from Great Britain. But if he and Brigitte could get across the water, they could find his aunt in London. Surely his mother’s sister would help them.
The sun was beginning to settle behind the trees that flanked them. Soon they needed to find something to eat and a place to rest.
“Are you hungry?” Dietmar asked.
Brigitte shook her head.
“You must be thirsty then.” They’d turned away from a stream yesterday and had yet to find more water.
“A little.”
“We’ll find our way home. One day.”
The fading light caught the blue in her eyes and made them shimmer. “As long as we’re together—”
He reached for her hand and gently squeezed it. “I’m not leaving you.”
The cowbells rang again, their song melding with the breeze, and he scoured the mantle of dark shadows and tall pine trees beside them. A knight may fight with sword and shield, but his greatest duty was to fear God and live by honor. To defend the weak and keep the faith.
“We need some milk,” Dietmar said, guiding her toward the melody of bells.
She followed him into the shadows, the pine needles snagging their stained clothing and matted hair. He’d never milked a cow in his life, but how hard could it be? They’d been subsisting on river water and berries and the sausages from Brigitte’s house. Sausages they’d finished three days ago. Milk would give them the strength to continue until he found more food.
A parade of light broke through the trees, and on the other side, a dozen tan-and-white cows grazed in a circular pasture before them. Two of the cows glanced up at the children, curious, but then they bowed their heads to return to their feast.
His stomach rumbled from hunger, and he eyed Brigitte’s tin.
Would she let him use it to catch the milk?
Before he asked, she pointed toward a pail hanging on a post. Quickly he retrieved it and walked toward a lone cow near the trees. Kneeling beside the animal, he eyed the swollen udder and then tugged on the teat.
Nothing happened. The cow didn’t even look back.
Brigitte stepped up beside him, an unruly-looking halo bunched on the top of her head. “You’re pulling too hard.”
He glanced up. “Have you ever milked a cow?”
Her chin inched up. “A princess would never milk her own cow.”
“Then it’s good I’m not a princess,” he tried to joke, but she didn’t smile.
He tried milking again, lighter this time, and a few drops of liquid dripped into the bucket. Brigitte clapped her hands.
Someone called from across the pasture. Turning, he saw a man running toward them, a wiry fellow with blotched skin, waving a straw hat over his head. He shouted something again in a language Dietmar didn’t understand.
Dietmar sprang to his feet, ready to sprint, but he didn’t run. He couldn’t leave Brigitte behind.
In seconds the man was beside them, studying their mud-spattered clothing and wild hair. Dietmar stood tall, and Brigitte stepped in quietly behind him. He was prepared to defend her. Prepared to do whatever he must.
Instead of reprimanding them, the man simply asked a question, this time in German. “Are you hungry?”
Dietmar didn’t reply.
A stone farmhouse stood beyond the pasture, its sloping roof made of thatch. Smoke puffed out of the chimney and clouded in the orange-tinted sky. He could see the fence around a large garden, the dark leaves ready to harvest. Perhaps they could buy some food from the man.
The farmer pointed back toward the house. “My wife is making a rabbit stew for dinner.”
Dietmar didn’t see ridicule in the man’s eyes, like he’d seen with Heinz. Only curiosity and perhaps compassion.
“You can sleep in our attic tonight.”
The stew would strengthen Brigitte—strengthen both of them—as would rest in a safe place. If this house was safe.
“We will eat some stew,” Dietmar said.
Brigitte took his hand, and they followed the farmer to the house.
Inside, the man’s wife was bent over a copper pot on the stove, a worn apron with a patchwork of colors tied around her wide girth. Dietmar’s mouth watered as the spicy aroma from the pot permeated the room. He’d once thought he couldn’t eat rabbit, but he had no qualms about eating one now.
The woman’s forehead was creased with wrinkles, and sweat trickled down the sides of her graying hair. She spoke to the man in the foreign language as she tugged on the fraying edge of her apron. Dietmar knew some English from his mother, but he didn’t recognize any of the woman’s words. Perhaps it was Dutch.
“Are we in Belgium?” Dietmar asked.
“Ja,” the man replied. He opened a cabinet and retrieved two chipped bowls. “You are fifteen kilometers from the German border.”
Dietmar knew Germans occupied Belgium, but he didn’t know about the Gestapo. Perhaps he and Brigitte would be protected here.
The farmer filled the bowls with steaming stew and placed them on the kitchen table along with two steins of honey beer. Then he and his wife slipped into another room.
Brigitte sat in the wobbly chair beside Dietmar, silently folding her hands for a blessing before tasting the food. Dietmar forgot that he was eating rabbit. Forgot that he was in a strange house in Belgium. He almost forgot that he was running away.
The stew tasted like the beef soup his mother used to make, full of carrots and potatoes and chopped leeks. It warmed his belly. Reminded him of home.
After supper, the farmer showed them a bathing hut outside. He filled the zinc tub with water, and while Brigitte bathed, Dietmar dragged two straw pallets from the barn and positioned them on the wooden floor in the attic, above the kitchen. Then he took a short bath, not wanting to leave Brigitte alone for long.
Brigitte was already asleep by the time he lay on his pallet. It felt good to have clean skin, to rest his head on a mattress even if it was made of straw. He hadn’t slept well in the forest, keen to the noises and shadows around them, but as his eyes closed, he hoped he could rest tonight.
When he woke again, Brigitte breathed peacefully on the pallet beside him. Moonlight slipped through the dormer window, its fingers reaching back into the dusty corners filled with crates and broken furniture. The attic was silent, but someone spoke below them, the voice muted by the floor. He crawled across the rickety floor and quietly opened the door before descending the steps. Near the bottom, he could hear the whispered urgency of a woman’s voice even if he couldn’t understand her words.
Who was she talking to?
As he peeked around the corner, Dietmar saw the fat hips of the farmer’s wife, draped in a green robe that looked ghoulish in the kerosene light. She was alone in the kitchen, the telephone cradled against her ear as she spoke to someone in Dutch.
Then she switched to broken German. “There is a boy here,” she explained. “And a girl.”
His heart seemed to stop at her words. Last night, he’d thought the woman frightened or vexed at having to share her food. He’d never guessed her to be malicious.
Did the farmer know?
Probably not—judging by her whispers. Either she didn’t want her husband to find out or she didn’t want to wake their guests. Then again, if the police offered a reward for runaways, perhaps the farmer knew exactly what was happening. Instead of being concerned, he might have used the bait of stew to lure Dietmar and Brigitte into the house.
Dietmar never should have allowed his stomach pains to dull his good sense.
The woman slammed the phone onto the receiver, mumbling something to herself in Dutch. Dietmar turned swiftly and tiptoed back upstairs. Then he shook Brigitte’s arm. After the farmer’s wife left the kitchen, they snuck down the steps, clinging to each other in the darkness until he unlocked the front door.
Hours later, as he was shoveling leaves and moss into a mound for their bed, Brigitte stared up at the moon above the forest, the bright orb webbed by tree limbs.
“Dietmar?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why must we keep running?”
He stopped and looked at the moon with her, hoping their parents could see the light wherever they were.
She tugged on his arm, repeating her question. “Why do we have to run, Dietmar?”
He put his arm around her to keep her warm. “Because my mother told us to.”
CHAPTER 5
_____
A pearl-gray castle was pleated into the island’s jagged cliffs, the same color as the oyster shells swept along the shoreline below it. From the air, Quenby couldn’t tell where the seams of the castle were stitched into the fortress of rock—it all appeared to be one grand monument built by a collaboration of God and man.
The private jet circled above a copse of stone spires on the castle and cast shadows over the white-capped bay and a roof of solar panels implanted on a greenhouse. Beyond the castle, the island was thick with forest, like a layer of moss clinging to stone.
Samantha, the flight attendant, slipped a china cup off the table in front of Quenby. “We’re about to land,” she said, raising the soft leather seat Mr. Hough had occupied during takeoff. “You’ll want to buckle up.”
Quenby scanned the hill behind the castle for some sort of landing strip but didn’t see a break in the trees. “Where exactly are we landing?”
Samantha zipped her thumb and finger across her lips. “Sworn to secrecy.”
Quenby rolled her eyes. “Mr. Hough won’t hear you.”
“Don’t bet on it,” he mumbled from behind them.
Glancing back between the seats, she saw Lucas Hough stretched out on the couch, exactly where he’d been for most of their flight across the Atlantic and then the expanse of Canada. His eyes w
ere closed, his tweed blazer hanging neatly in a closet near the galley. Dark stubble peppered his chin.
According to the profile she’d found online, he was thirty-one years old, only three years her senior. He might call her Miss Vaughn, but she was an American by birth and no one in the States called their peers mister or miss. From now on, she was calling him Lucas.
The plane jolted in their descent, and she turned toward the front again.
Samantha winked as she passed by one last time. “It’s more fun than a roller coaster.”
“I never thought roller coasters were fun,” Quenby replied, leaning back on the headrest.
In London, ten hours ago, Lucas had given her fifteen minutes to shower and throw a few things into an overnight bag. She might have done it in fifteen minutes if he weren’t so bossy. Instead it took her a full half hour to get ready.
After she reluctantly agreed to a plane ride, the driver had carried them off to London City, straight to the waiting jet. No security checkpoints. No lines. When she saw the private jet, a Global 6000, she stopped pestering Lucas with her questions. Time, she decided, would answer the most pertinent ones.
Minutes after they departed, Samantha had served eggs Benedict drizzled with the best hollandaise Quenby had ever tasted. Then there was the blueberry parfait with sprigs of fresh mint and the London Fog lattes made with Earl Grey tea and lavender. She’d tried to pretend she wasn’t impressed by the gourmet breakfast or pristine cabin but failed miserably.
Lucas had told her to sleep—and she’d tried—but the golden petals of sunrise trailed them across the ocean, drifting over the snow-crested peaks and fjords of Greenland, lingering on the horizon. The beauty of it was like some sort of mirage. Almost like this Mr. Knight had hired the light to perform for them.
They’d crossed over the entire continent of North America and, according to the GPS on her phone, were now preparing to land on an island in the horseshoe between the coasts of Canada and Washington State, in steel-blue waters called the Salish Sea.
Catching the Wind Page 3