Lukas waved her and Barclay forward, shouting something in Flemish. She smiled as if she understood. Which she did, given that Lukas had hopped up into the wagon bed and taken a seat on a bale of hay. And she’d caught the word Brussels, she thought.
Willa ran to catch up, accepted Barclay’s hand up into the wagon. And sighed. She wasn’t sure it was God directing their steps. But she was glad to be saved a few thousand of them.
They would be in Brussels by nightfall.
Twenty-Five
Margot hadn’t slept—not really—in a week. She napped during the day sometimes, when she deemed it less likely that Lukas would show up. But she couldn’t sleep at night. One of these nights, he would come. It only made sense that he would sneak in under cover of darkness, when all the streets were empty with curfew, all the houses dark.
It could be weeks yet before he came. He may not receive the first message. Or the next, or the next. The paper might never reach him, if she were honest. But statistically, it should. Eventually. He had obviously found the older Allard brother in London. She had found the younger here. It was a solid connection, and that increased the statistical probability greatly.
And so, she couldn’t sleep. Not until he came.
She had gone to bed as normal, of course, but then she had changed into tomorrow’s clothes and taken her seat at the window. She had counted soldiers who walked by—nine. Cats she had heard meow—four, she thought, though perhaps only three. Madame Dumont had retired, and Maman would be padding down the hall at any moment.
“How dare you!”
Or perhaps not. Margot flew to her feet and out the door whose hinges she had oiled three days ago, in preparation for sneaking out. Her heart thudded, but she kept her feet silent. If Gottlieb were trying to hurt her mother—but she’d been sure he wouldn’t.
She stopped in the hallway outside the parlor, out of sight. Gottlieb stood by the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Maman’s shadow stretched across the floor from where she must be standing before the sofa.
His face flickered with some emotion Margot couldn’t see clearly enough to name. “You act as though I am proposing something indecent.”
Maman’s breath hissed out in that way of hers. “Are you not? Why else would you invite us to join you in Antwerp?”
His cheeks went red. “It is marriage I am proposing, not . . . what you assume.”
“Marriage.” Maman sounded no less insulted. “You think I would marry you?”
Margot’s fingers knotted in tomorrow’s dress.
Gottlieb’s knotted in his uniform jacket’s hem. “No. Not for any reason of affection. But perhaps for logic. We both know you are not a Dumont, madame. I can protect you—you and Margot. We can detour to Louvain, so I can claim to have checked the rubble of your house there and verified that all your husband’s work was destroyed. With your son shot and killed, what other protection do you have? For yourself? For your daughter?”
Would her mother’s face flicker? Contort? Would fear be pulsing through her at the realization that he knew who they were?
Would it make her agree to the unthinkable?
She said nothing. Her shadow made not the slightest move.
Gottlieb sighed. “Consider it, at least. For Margot’s safety, if not for your own. Even if you do not want to leave with me tomorrow, you need only send for me, and I’ll come back for you.”
Tomorrow? He was leaving tomorrow, and he’d said no farewell to her that evening? Margot edged back along the banister, sidestepping the squeaky board. Back toward her room. He’d kept it a secret from her. Yet asked her mother to marry him and go with him. What was he about?
And what would he do when she refused? Turn them in?
Hurry, Lukas. Hurry. Please, God, bring him soon.
She slid back into her room and whispered the door shut. A bare moment later, she heard Gottlieb’s step on the stairs. Then Maman’s traveling to her room across from Margot’s. Her door closed with what was nearly a bang. Then all went silent.
After five minutes of such, Margot moved back to the window. Another patrol of soldiers was marching by. It would take only a shout from Gottlieb to have them inside, arresting them all. A shout he could have made any time, could yet make.
He had said he wanted to protect them. And perhaps, in a way, he did. But if spurned, what then? And what if it was all a ruse to get them peaceably to Antwerp, where he intended to make a show of capturing them before the governor-general?
The hours ticked by with her questions. By three o’clock, she’d given up trying to understand human nature and had taken to studying the stars instead. There was a pattern to them. God created things in such beautiful order. Perhaps from her perspective, her longitude and latitude and the earth’s very position in the solar system, she couldn’t quite tell what the actual pattern was. Something more than the pictures of the constellations though.
Counting them would be easier with a telescope. Were they at home in Louvain, with the house intact, she would have had one.
Of course, were she at home in Louvain, the house intact, she wouldn’t be up at three o’clock counting stars.
Something below caught her eye. Shadows, but darker than the rest. And moving. Quickly. Finding the side of the house and merging into it. Lukas!
But not just Lukas. There were three of them.
Margot frowned. He must have recruited help in some form or another. Because it had to be Lukas. Had to be. Either Lukas or boys breaking curfew and using their little garden as an alleyway. Or thieves out to steal the half loaf of bread still in their cupboard. It couldn’t be Gottlieb’s men, for the shadows didn’t move like the Germans.
She paused mid-reach for the bags she had packed a week ago and stashed under her bed. Then shook off her traitorous thoughts and reached the rest of the way. It was Lukas. Gottlieb wouldn’t set his soldiers on them while he thought he stood a chance of convincing Maman to marry him.
She shouldered both bags—hers and Maman’s—and pulled her door slowly open. Two normal steps, one long one, switch to the other side and hug the wall until she reached her mother’s door without stepping on any squeaky boards.
Light glowed from underneath it. Evidence that Gottlieb’s words were keeping her awake, because usually her mother was asleep long before now. Margot scratched at the door.
The squeak of the bed’s ropes, and then the door opened. Maman was still in yesterday’s dress, though her hair was braided for sleep. And she had apparently been knitting for hours, given the progress on the scarf on the bed behind her that she’d only started that night. “Margot.” Her voice was quiet itself. “What are you doing up? And what do you have with you?”
Margot gripped her hand. “Lukas is here. Follow me.”
Maman’s eyes went wide. “I need to pack a few things.”
She didn’t question her. Not for a moment. Pure love welled up, and Margot grinned and patted one of the bags on her shoulder.
Maman gave her that familiar What will I do with you? look but said nothing more. Just went in, blew out the single candle she’d had lit—how did she knit with so little light?—and hurried back out into the hallway.
Margot led the way around the loudest of the floorboards, Maman doing a fine job of mirroring her movements. They paused long enough for Margot to draw out the notes she’d already prepared for the kind Madame Dumont, Claudette, and Mr. Allard. The Madame would see Claudette got the second two, and Claudette would deliver the one not for her to the newspaperman. Margot slid all three under the Madame’s door. Then they crept soundlessly down the stairs.
She held her breath as they turned at the landing, away from the front door and Gottlieb’s room. Toward the back hall that led to the kitchen. Please, God. Please, God. Eight, sixty-four, five hundred twelve, four thousand ninety-six . . .
A faint noise reached her ears once they were in the kitchen. Almost like a key in the lock, but not quite. It wasn’t a simple slide
and turn, but more of a . . . well, a pick. Naturally. How else would he get in? She ought to have come down each night and unlocked the door for him, but she hadn’t thought of that.
More important—when did Lukas learn to pick a lock?
“Margot.” Maman grasped her by the arm and pulled her back. Whispered directly into her ear. “I assumed he was waiting here—how do you know that is him outside? Did you see him?”
Before she could answer, the knob turned and the door swung open on its silent hinges.
It wasn’t him. Not the one with the pick, anyway—that person was still crouched down. But his was the face directly behind.
His name wanted to tumble from her lips in a squeal, but she bit it back and hurled herself at him instead, nearly knocking over the one with the picks—a woman. That didn’t matter. Margot threw her arms around her brother and held on so tightly he would probably complain that he couldn’t breathe.
That didn’t matter either. He was here.
He held her close, chuckled softly, squeezed her right back. “Margot.”
“Shh. An officer lives here. He is sleeping in the downstairs bedroom.”
“No, actually. He is not.”
Maman gasped at the familiar voice, and the rest of them spun toward the corner just as a match was struck and touched to the wick of an oil lamp.
Gottlieb’s motions were smooth and calm, his face betraying nothing. He was, for the first time she’d seen, not in uniform, and his hair was sleep rumpled.
Lukas tried to push Margot behind him, but she shrugged away. “Generalleutnant. We were just—”
“I know what you are doing, spatz.” He had no weapon. He wasn’t marching toward the door and calling for reinforcements. He was just standing there, with his hands resting on the worn top of the kitchen table. “So this is your brother. I have long been a fan, monsieur. Though to be sure, I only recently realized you were related to these ladies I have had the privilege of getting to know this autumn.”
The other two with Lukas were edging farther into the room, clinging to the shadows. One whispered something to the other, but she couldn’t quite catch what. It seemed to be in . . . English? She had heard it so little since Papa died and her lessons stopped. But of course that would make sense. Lukas had been in Wales.
Lukas eased farther into the room too, putting himself between Gottlieb and Maman. “Thank you, Generalleutnant.”
“Though I confess, I am very surprised to find you in this kitchen. Word around the army, you see, is that you were shot and killed some two months ago.”
Maman wove her arm through Lukas’s. “It is what we heard too, Generalleutnant.”
“Further.” Gottlieb lifted one finger of one hand. “Further, this is not the De Wilde house. So I am very curious as to how you found them.” His gaze went straight to Margot though. “I am suddenly suspecting our trip to the bookshop was not so innocent as it seemed.”
And what would he do to the proprietor if he was suspected of aiding the resistance? Margot shook her head. “The bookshop was just the bookshop. I am cleverer than that.”
His smile looked like it had that day, though, when she’d agreed to play Go with him without holding back.
She’d beaten him in a mere two hours. And he had laughed the brightest laugh she’d ever heard from him.
“That I know. Well.” He straightened and drew in a long breath. “I am glad I heard that noise outside and came to investigate. I would have hated to have awoken and found you gone without explanation. I would have worried.”
Everyone remained still. It almost sounded like—but that couldn’t be.
He lifted his brows. “Go on, then. I can hardly turn you in now, when I have known for weeks that I have the most sought-after fugitives in Belgium under my very roof and have done nothing about it. I would be court-martialed. You are safe from me, I assure you.”
Margot huffed. “You could always claim that you suspected Lukas would show up and were waiting to arrest us until you could get him too. Or make a big show of it in front of your new superior to win back the favor you’ve fallen out of.”
Lukas and Maman both spun on her. “Margot!”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s not stupid. He would have thought of it already.”
That bright smile settled on his lips again. “I believe that is the highest compliment I have ever been paid. But the standard belief is that your brother is dead. Who am I to resurrect him?”
Maman rushed forward and stretched up to press a kiss to his cheek. “We are in your debt, Wolfgang.” His name came off her tongue awkwardly, as if she’d never said it before. She probably hadn’t.
But his eyes gleamed. “I only wanted to keep you safe, Madame De Wilde. But I know there is no choice when the other option is your son. Perhaps someday, when this war is over, we will meet again under better conditions. But for now, you all had better hurry—and be cautious. You have only a few hours of darkness left and much city to get through.”
One of the English shadows stepped forward a bit. Margot couldn’t fully make out his features in the dim light, but what she could see she rather liked. “Is everything all right, Lukas?”
Lukas studied Gottlieb a moment more and then nodded. “It would seem he is a—a friend.”
Margot took a second to work through the English and then nodded along. And forced her tongue to try a bit of it, to be polite. “We are ready. Come, Maman.”
Her mother hurried back around the table and took one of the bags from Margot’s shoulder.
“Wait!” Gottlieb, too, spoke in English. “The book I got for the two of you. Would you at least take that? To remember me? I can fetch it in only a minute.”
The Englishman shifted, and his face said he didn’t like the request one bit. “With all due respect, sir, I’d feel better if you stayed right where you are.”
“It does not matter.” Margot patted her bag. “I already have it packed.”
He didn’t move—perhaps because of the Englishman and whatever he might have in that hand he kept behind his back—but he held out a hand toward Margot. Sideways, to shake. Like an adult.
She slid her palm against his. “Thank you, Gottlieb.” That name didn’t trip strangely off her tongue, even though she’d never called him by anything other than his rank.
He smiled. “Good luck to you, Margot. Perhaps we will have another game of Go someday.”
She smiled back, then turned away. The Englishwoman was at the door now, holding it open and herding them all through. She had an interesting face—it looked nothing like the man’s, and yet it did. In the eyes. The way she looked into the night and took it all in. Even more interesting, though, was the way Lukas edged around her through the door, going out of his way to avoid touching her.
Which was not like Lukas at all. She was looking forward to figuring out who this woman was.
And asking her if she would teach Margot how to pick a lock. It seemed like a skill worth knowing.
It had been too easy. Willa knew it. And distrusted it. It made the palms of her hands itch and the hollow spots inside her chest echo with each thud of her heart. She wasn’t sure if it was that man in the kitchen of the townhouse that caused the unease or something else, but trouble was brewing. She hadn’t a doubt about that.
The De Wildes didn’t seem to think so. As the sun came up, they visibly relaxed and even began chatting in Flemish as they walked the road back to Antwerp.
She hung back a step behind the family, beside Barclay. “If they are the most sought-after fugitives in Belgium, then . . .”
“I know. Someone will be looking. We have to get them off the roads.”
Lukas turned to glare at them. “I was gracious enough to tell you what was said at the house—now please, no more English,” he said in English.
Willa had a snarl ready, but she wasted no time on it when the sound of distant thunder cut through the morning. “Off the road. Now.”
This part of
it thankfully had a few trees growing alongside and didn’t just cut through open fields like so much of it did. They darted between the trees and all ducked behind a low stone wall a few seconds before the first of the horses cantered by. Followed by what looked like an endless stream of marching soldiers.
She could see them through a crack between the stones, and the others had found similar viewing spots. Lukas hissed out a breath.
She couldn’t blame him. Had she seen a foreign army marching through her countryside like that, she would have felt it keenly too.
If she stretched out her hand just a few inches, she could brush his fingers with her own. Give a breath of comfort, maybe. A single note in a major key amid so much minor.
Or maybe it would just remind him of her betrayal and he would jerk his hand away—how was she to know?
“Maman, regardes.”
Willa turned her head toward the direction of the whisper, at the girl she still hadn’t gotten a proper look at in full daylight. Margot De Wilde was pointing at the advancing ranks.
Willa sucked in a breath as she peered through the crack again. An automobile puttered along in the middle of the convoy, its top open. And sitting inside it was none other than the man from the kitchen—Gottlieb. “What is he doing here?”
Lukas’s sister was the one to turn her way and whisper back, “He is transferring to Antwerp. And apparently taking his men with him.”
She didn’t like it. Not one bit. Why, of all the roads in the country, did this man who knew who they were have to be on theirs? Did he know where they were going? Did he mean, as Margot had suggested, to make a show of capturing them, thereby securing himself favor?
As she watched, the man turned his head their way. He couldn’t see them—he couldn’t—but he was scanning the wall, the area behind them.
Barclay nudged her, nodded. “Down there. Hurry.”
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