This man who sacrificed his reputation and friendships, who risked his life for the sake of freedom.
Her throat clamped shut. She broke off the kiss and pressed her forehead to his shoulder, dislodging her hat a bit. “Oh, Paul. What you’re doing—it’s dangerous.”
He sighed and rubbed her back. “I know. From the start, I’ve made provisions for Josie. Now I need to consider you too.”
In the purple night, she raised her face to look him in the eye. “I would never ask you to stop. I wouldn’t.”
Paul kissed her nose. “Nor I you. And you’re in danger too.”
“Barely. It’s all designed so I look innocent. Even ignorant.”
He groaned, long and deep, and he clutched her tight. “Oh no.”
“What?” Her voice muffled in his suit jacket, and her hat tumbled down her back.
“We can’t do this again.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“We can’t date. We can’t take romantic walks, can’t even sneak away to meet each other.”
She squirmed in his embrace, not understanding, not wanting to. “I don’t see why not.”
Paul pressed both hands to her cheeks. “Think about it. To do what I do, who do the rocks have to think I am? A collaborator. An industrialist who only cares about making a buck.”
Lucie shook her head in his grip, glaring into his intense eyes.
“And to do what you do?” His voice gentled. “Who do you have to be? A darling, ethereal soul who cares only for art.”
She kept shaking against the pressure of his hands. Of his words. But those words sank in regardless, sank into a dark void. “No ...”
“That’s what we have to be to each other.” His thumbs massaged her cheekbones. “Oil and water. If I get caught, nothing must point to you. Nothing.”
Her heart sank into that void too. “And vice versa.”
Paul squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. “We can’t be seen together except at the store and at church. Polite but cool. Nothing more.”
Lucie clutched at the fine wool of his jacket, grasping for some other way, finding none. “I—I hate this.”
“I do too.” He straightened up and gazed around the meadow. “But no one’s around.”
“Hmm?”
“Right now the wise choice would be to walk you home and say good night at arm’s length.” He pressed his forehead to hers, his voice throaty, and his hands burrowed back into her hair. “Or the foolish choice.”
The foolish choice—to make the most of the moment, knowing it might be the only moment they’d ever have.
Lucie chose the pain and kissed him, full of longing and dread, with all the wonder of their first kiss and all the poignancy of their last.
27
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER15, 1941
On the factory floor below Paul, the workers went through their Monday morning routine, nervously glancing at blue-uniformed French policemen and gray-uniformed members of the German industrial commission.
Gerhard Schiller looked up to Paul on the balcony. In greeting, Paul raised a hand but not a smile.
Moreau told him the saboteurs had erased all signs of clandestine activity. Paul prayed they’d been thorough.
