“How long have you been doing this?” she finally asked.
Josephine shrugged. “Officially? A few months. Unofficially, all my life, practically. My father is a general in the Army and works regularly with intelligence. It is how I know so much about the struggles of building a reliable network right now. He’s been training me for years without really knowing it. Only in the past year has he started openly teaching me. He knows it will be up to people like us, if war breaks out again, to do what needs to be done.”
“Do you think it will come to that?”
“I’ve no idea, but we need to be prepared if it does.”
Evelyn nodded in agreement, falling silent again. It was comforting to find that she was not the only woman to concern herself with affairs that most of the population believed were the province of men like their respective fathers. Her lips twisted. While she had no doubt that there were many others like them, Evelyn felt a kindred solidarity with the dark-haired woman at her side. They were two women who had fought against the brutal arm of the Nazi regime today and come out ahead. It was just one battle, to be sure, but it was a start.
They came to a small group of people and Josephine stopped, turning to face her.
“This is where I leave you,” she said with a smile. A bus was lumbering towards them, still a few blocks away. “I hope you consider what I’ve said, and everything that happened today. And please give Bill my regards.”
“Of course.” Evelyn held out her hand. “Thank you for everything.”
“You can thank me by getting back to Paris safely,” Josephine told her, shaking her hand.
“I’ll do my best,” she assured her.
Josephine nodded and released her hand.
“I wish you luck, my friend. Farewell.”
She turned to leave as the bus pulled to a stop before the small group on the pavement. Evelyn watched her walk away, wondering if she would ever have cause to see the extraordinary young woman again. It seemed strange to leave when Josephine had risked so much to help her escape. Somehow, she felt like she was leaving behind a guardian angel of sorts.
Shaking her head, she turned to climb onto the bus. Aside from everything else, this entire day had been one of revelation. When she told Bill she would happily help in any way needed, she’d no idea just what that would entail. This was a whole different world from the one she was used to, or even the one she had been led to believe existed outside the safe circle of her social world. As she seated herself next to a window, Evelyn felt her lips twist. Just twenty-four hours ago, she had naively believed that the threat posed by the Nazis was something distant, confined to greater Germany. Now she knew that it had already spread.
Her lips tightened as the bus jerked into motion, her eyes focused on the street. The threat to the continent in Europe was not just a threat, but a reality for people like Karl and Josephine. They lived and breathed the material truth that a dangerous shadow was gathering, growing stronger with each passing day, and spreading beyond the confines of Germany.
How was she supposed to simply walk away and go back to her parties and luncheons, knowing there were other Josephines and Karls out there fighting a threat that most of Europe refused to acknowledge even existed? And yet, how did she expect to make a difference?
A violent tremor went through her as she thought of the look on the man’s face in the library just before she hit him. It had been terrifying, filled with such hate that the memory made Evelyn’s heart thump in her chest. In that instant, she had seen firsthand the determination of years of anger. They would not be stopped.
And who was she to try?
Chapter Nine
Evelyn jogged lightly up the steps and nodded to the butler standing with the front door open.
“Welcome back, mademoiselle.”
“Thank you. Are my cousins home?”
“I believe Mademoiselle Gisele is in her bedroom getting ready for dinner,” the man replied, closing the door as she entered the house. “She asked to have you go up as soon as you returned. May I take your hat?”
“No, that’s quite all right, Marcel,” she said, going across the large hall to the stairs. “I’ll go right up.”
She went up the wide curving steps quickly, her purse dangling from one hand and the other resting lightly on the smooth banister. Evelyn glanced down as she went and saw the straight back of Marcel disappear towards the back of the house. She exhaled in relief. If he thought it at all odd that she was running upstairs with her hat still on her head, he was far too well-trained to make any comment. And, after all, she was English. The French already thought the English were a little strange.
Reaching the upper floor, Evelyn moved down the hallway towards her bedroom, ignoring Gisele’s request to go straight to her. Marcel hadn’t commented on the hat still perched on her head, but Gisele definitely would.
She had almost reached her room when a door behind her opened and she exhaled in resignation.
“Evie! There you are!” Nicolas exclaimed, coming out of his room. “Gisele’s been driving me mad wondering where you’d got to.”
She turned to face him.
“The drive took longer than I was expecting,” she said. “I didn’t realize Strasbourg was such a distance.”
“Strasbourg!” he exclaimed, coming towards her. “What on earth were you doing there?”
“An old friend of my father’s lives there. He asked me to take a basket of goodies to him because he’s
