Chapter 1
Paris
1941
“Bloody lipstick.” Kathleen Whitford yanked a handkerchief from her handbag and rubbed off the uneven line of Sequin Red curving over her lip. Angling her gold compact mirror to the streetlight, she swiped the red tube over her mouth again. “Can’t meet the Nazis with smeared lips.”
Slipping the mirror back into its place, she raised a shaking hand to pull the silk scarf from her head and tuck it safely in her beaded handbag. She looked up at the pristine white-brick building posed as the grand dame of Rue de l’Université. Light, laughter, and music spilled out of the open windows on the top floor, chilling her to the bone despite the late-July air.
“Relax. It’s only a party. You’ve been to a million of them before.”
Her wooden voice bounced off the gleaming oak front doors and smacked her in the face with irony. Yes, a million parties filled with dukes, lords, ladies, and even the king for her presentation at court. Curtseying before His Majesty had been a cakewalk compared to this. Buckingham Palace hadn’t been filled with German officers. Or their mistresses.
Her heart panged. Ellie.
Throwing her shoulders back, Kat covered her pain with a bright smile and a gentle sweep of her lashes, just the way Mother had taught her, and marched in. Her black velvet pumps ticking across the gray marble foyer drowned out the hammering of her heart as she climbed the sweeping staircase all the way to the top.
Following the music to the door on the right, she took a deep breath and raised her hand to knock. Before she could, the door burst open. Out tumbled a uniformed German soldier with a woman in a gold dress in his arms.
“Entschuldigen uns.” The man laughed, grabbing the woman around the waist before she slid to the floor.
Red lipstick smeared the woman’s lips as she twisted her head to grin up at Kat. She thrust a half-full bottle of champagne under her nose. “Vouloir quelque?”
Kat pushed the bottle away and shook her head. “Non, merci.”
“Ce est bien.” The woman wagged the bottle, sloshing the golden bubbly down her dress.
Kat leaned back out of range of flying drops. “Non. I’m saving my appetite for the water.”
“Water?” The woman scrunched her nose for a second before delight lit up her hazy eyes. “Oh! You joke!” She swiveled back to the man, grazing her red lips against his neck. “Did you hear that, cherie? She wants water.”
“Yes, I heard,” he said in rough French. “A jest, surely, as no one drinks water in France. Come on, schatz. Our night continues elsewhere.”
With her welcoming party skidding their way down the stairs, Kat pushed into the flat. The temptation to turn and run hit her like a wall of ice. A crush of German soldiers in gray uniforms and women in their finest evening attire stood cream wall to cream wall. Overhead, a chandelier dripping with crystals reflected off the mirrors and gilded frames lining the walls while deep-blue brocade drapes swathed the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the street and Ming vases filled with white lilies stood in each corner of the spacious room.
“Madame?” A waiter appeared at her elbow, offering her a tray of champagne, wine, and cognac.
Kat shook her head and edged around him. The last thing her roiling stomach needed was spirits. Her feet sank into the thick carpet as she dodged between couples dancing to the warbling tunes of Edith Piaf blaring from a gramophone. Enduring elbows, the crushing of her toes underfoot, and champagne splashed on her red satin dress, she made it to the other side of the room. She braced her back against the archway dividing the front room and the dining room loaded with food and scanned the crowd through the haze of cigarette smoke.
Her fingernails dug into the glossy white trim of the doorway. If Ellie weren’t her baby sister, there would have been no power on Earth strong enough to drag her willingly into a room full of Nazis. Then again, if Ellie had learned to temper her impulses, she wouldn’t be in this horrible predicament to begin with while leaving Kat to sweep up the chaos.
As always.
Another waiter popped up in front of her with a tray of canapés. His eyes dropped to her clinging hands. “Madame? May I escort you to a chair?”
Breeding surged to the rescue. Letting go of the wall, she clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. “Non, I was just looking for the hostess. Have you seen her?”
“Madame Eleanor?” His brow scrunched as he glanced across the smoke-laden room. “She had gone to get new records.”
A clatter of trays echoed from the double doors at the back of the dining room. The doors flew open, and out breezed a petite blond on a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Just sweep it up and get me new ones,” she called over her shoulder in scratchy French. “Charles Trenet or Rina Ketty. Someone upbeat. The last thing I need is this party to drag from dull music.”
The pebbles that had plunked into Kat’s stomach since the second she stepped on occupied soil dropped like a boulder. Gone was the innocent girl she had known, replaced by an unrecognizable woman. A woman who radiated happiness, not misery like she’d expected to find. Air wheezed in her throat. “Ellie.”
Her sister stopped dead in her tracks, her long silver cigarette holder dangling precariously from her fingers. Her cherry-red mouth formed a perfect O. Seconds dragged by as Kat waited for German hands to grab her and toss her out. This was a mistake. She should have waited until morning to drag her wayward sister back across the Channel without the whole of the Third Reich watching. She should have—
Ellie’s feet moved, delight springing to her blue-green eyes. She launched herself at her sister. “Kitty Kat!”
Kat barely caught her little sister before she bowled them over into a stack of crackers, foie gras, and bullhead cheese on the gleaming mahogany dining table.
“Oh, Kat, you’re here! Really here. I can’t believe it.”
Wrapping her arms around her sister, Kat squeezed her tight as a flood of relief washed away months of worry. Ellie was all right.
“Can’t breathe.” Ellie coughed, tapping her on the back.
Warmth rushed to Kat’s cheeks as she stepped back. “Sorry.”
“Take one foot off the island, and suddenly your stiff upper lip is no more.” Ellie laughed and brushed a wrinkle from Kat’s shoulder. Her bright smile faltered. “What are you doing here? Nothing bad has happened?”
Other than you running off to occupied France to become social secretary to the Nazis?
“Do I need a bad reason to miss my sister?” Kat smiled in an attempt to capture the runaway with honey rather than the vinegar eating her up inside. One false move and the girl would spring like a deer from the crosshairs. She raised a hand to Ellie’s rouged cheek. “It’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen you. How fine you look.”
Ellie beamed and reached up to touch the diamond comb sweeping the blond curls up on one side of her head. Independence radiated from her every move. “Yes, I quite think the French air agrees with me.”
Kat’s smile twisted. It wasn’t French anymore. The Germans patrolled the Louvre and Champs Élysées as if they marched in the Rhineland. If the fighting went their way, they would soon goose-step through Piccadilly Square. She took a deep breath to calm the acid burning its way up the back of her throat. The Germans weren’t her priority. She’d traveled here to bring back her sister. Hopefully the process didn’t involve binding, gagging, and throwing her into the back of a waiting car.