“I promise you, this will never happen again. These men are pigs. They have grown up in barnyards, most of them, and they have absolutely no idea how to behave. The next time I see one of them do something like that, I will shoot him.” He was white with rage as he spoke, and Emanuelle was still shaking. Sarah felt nothing except fury for what had happened, and she turned to him with her eyes blazing just before they reached the cottage, where Henri was in the garden, playing with the baby. They had warned him to stay away for fear that the soldiers might go after him, but he had come anyway, to see his sister, and she had asked him to stay with the baby, while she went to pick berries.
“Do you realize what they could have done?” Sarah waved Emanuelle away, back to the house. She faced the commandant alone and addressed him. “They could have killed my unborn child,” she screamed at him, and his eyes didn’t waver.
“I realize very well, and I sincerely beg your pardon.” He looked as though he meant it, but his good manners did nothing to mollify her. As far as Sarah was concerned they should never have been there.
“And she’s a young girl! How dare they do a thing like that to her!” She was suddenly shaking from head to foot and she wanted to beat him with her fists, but she had the good sense not to.
The commandant felt bad about Emanuelle, but he was most upset by what they had almost done to Sarah. “I apologize, Your Grace, from the bottom of my heart. I realize only too well what could have happened.” She was right. They might very well have killed her baby. “We will keep a tighter watch on the men. I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman. I assure you, it won’t happen again.”
“Then see that it doesn’t.” She stormed at him, and then marched into the cottage, somehow managing to look both beautiful and regal in her blanket as he watched her. She was an extraordinary woman, and he had wondered more than once how she had come to be the Duchess of Whitfield. He had found photographs of her in William’s study, which was his room now, and of both of them, and they looked remarkably handsome and happy. He envied them. He had been divorced since before the war, and he scarcely ever saw his children. They were two boys, seven and twelve, and his wife had remarried and moved to the Rhineland. He knew her husband had been killed in Poznan in the first days of the war, but he hadn’t seen her again, and the truth was that he didn’t really want to. The divorce had been extremely painful. They had married when they were very young, and they had always been very different. It had taken him two years to recover from the blow, and then the war had come, and now he had his hands full. He had been pleased with the assignment to France. He had always liked it there. He had studied for a year at the Sorbonne, and he had finished his studies at Oxford. And through all of it, in all of his travels, in all his forty years, he had never met anyone like Sarah. She was so beautiful, so strong, so decent. He wished they had met in other circumstances, at another time. Perhaps then things might have been different.
The administration of his convalescent hospital kept him busy enough, but in the evenings, he liked to go for long walks. He had come to know the property well, even the far reaches of it, and he was coming back one evening at dusk from a little river he had found in the forest, when he saw her. She was walking slowly, by herself, awkwardly now, and she seemed very pensive. He didn’t want to frighten her, but he thought he should say something to her, lest his unexpected presence surprise her. She turned her face toward him then, as though she sensed someone near her. She stopped walking and looked at him, not sure if his presence was a threat, but he was quick to reassure her.
“May I assist you, Your Grace?” She was climbing bravely over logs, and little stone walls, and she could easily have fallen, but she knew the terrain well. She and William had come here often.
“I’m fine,” she said quietly, every inch the duchess. And yet she looked so young and so lovely. She seemed less angry than she usually was when she saw him. She was still upset over what had happened to Emanuelle the week before, but she had heard that the men were truly jailed to punish them for it, and she was impressed by his sense of justice.
“Are you well?” he asked, walking along with her. She looked pretty, in a white embroidered dress made by the locals.
“I’m all right,” she said, looking at him as though for the first time. He was a handsome man, tall, fair, and his face was lined, she could see that he was a little older than William. She wished he weren’t there, but she had to admit, he had always been extremely polite to her, and twice now, very helpful.
“You must get easily tired now,” he said gently, and she shrugged, looking sad for a moment, thinking of William.
“Sometimes.” Then she glaced back at Joachim. Her news of the war was limited these days, and she had had no word of William since the Occupation. There was no way his letters could reach her. And she knew he must be frantic for news of her and Phillip.
“Your husband’s name is William, isn’t it?” he asked, and she looked at him, wondering why he asked. But she only nodded.
“He’s younger than I. But I think I might have met him once when I was at Oxford. I believe he went to Cambridge.”
“That’s right,” she said hesitantly, “he did.” It was odd to think that the two men had met. Life did strange things sometimes. “Why did you go to Oxford?”
“I always wanted to. I was very fond of all things English then.” He wanted to tell her that he still was, but he couldn’t. “It was a wonderful opportunity, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
She smiled wistfully. “I think that’s the way William felt about Cambridge.”
“He was on the soccer team, and I played against him once.” He smiled. “He beat me.” She wanted to cheer, but she only smiled, suddenly wondering about this man. In any other context, she knew she would have liked him.
“I wish you weren’t here,” she said honestly, sounding very young, and he laughed.
“So do I, Your Grace. So do I. But better here than in battle somewhere. I think they knew in Berlin that I am better suited to repairing men than destroying them. It was a great gift to be sent here.” He had a point there, but she wished that none of them had come. And then he looked at her with curiosity.