PROLOGUE

MARTHE

Chavaniac-Lafayette

August 1939

It always comes back to the castle.

From my perch in the ballroom’s window seat, I watch the party latecomers arrive in gleaming coupes, cabriolets, and roadsters, chauffeurs honking to get ahead of the jam. Under the violet haze of the setting sun, a crush of bejeweled women is already storming the entryway and spilling up the spiral staircase in a cloud of Chanel No. 5—all of them hoping to see historical relics of the French general who was born here.

Everybody else is so eager to get into this old pile of rocks, when all I want is to get out . . .

I’ve lived between these storied walls since infancy, having been rescued from the streets of Paris by the American charity that runs the castle. With other children who lost one or both parents during the Great War, I came of age here—a little French orphan speaking English, playing baseball, chewing gum, and watching Hollywood silent movies. I was lucky enough to get a first-rate education—not to mention hard-won lessons about how to fight bullies on the playground—but I’ve never been farther away from the castle than the two-hour drive to Clermont-Ferrand, where I took my exam for my teacher’s certificate.

Maybe it’s selfish to want more from life than an isolated French village in the mountains can provide, but at twenty-three, I’m dying to see more of the world. And that’s where a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris comes in.

The first time I applied for the Lafayette Memorial Foundation’s scholarship, they said I was too young. The next time, the board reminded me the scholarship was really envisioned only for the boys who grew up in the castle’s orphanage or attended its prestigious school. The year after that, they hinted I was getting too old for consideration anyway and really ought to be thinking about marriage. But I’ve never thought of myself as the marrying kind, and tonight’s my last chance at a scholarship, so I’m stealing surreptitious glances at my artwork on display, trying to gauge the reactions of the guests and board members to the bust I sculpted of the less famous Lafayette.

Oh, I’d have loved to sculpt something more avant-garde than a musty old Revolutionary hero’s saintly wife, but an artist has to eat. And the board members aren’t going to give me a scholarship unless I press their patriotic buttons. My competition—guys like Samir Bensaïd, a French Algerian wearing a tuxedo and fez tonight—made predictable submissions. Dioramas of General Lafayette’s battles, maps of his travels, essays about his philosophies. I wanted to set myself apart, which is why I used a rare portrait of Lafayette’s wife to model a sculpture.

I thought it was just the ticket. My ticket out of these mountains, that is. But now I’m worried that I made La Femme Lafayette’s eyebrows too prominent and her eighteenth-century hedgehog-style wig too . . . hedgehoggy.

While I’m worrying, Henri Pinton kisses me for good luck. We’ve been sweethearts of a sort since he was in short pants and I was in pigtails—though sweet is really his thing, not mine. Now he’s all grown up in tuxedo and tailcoat, looking like he stepped off the set of a Frank Capra movie. “Relax, blondie,” he says. “Just breathe.”

“I don’t know how anybody can breathe in a dress like this,” I complain, fiddling with the straps of my glitzy white gown—a purgatorial designer getup that cost more than I can afford on a teacher’s salary. Normally, I’m a trousers-and-saddle-shoes kind of girl, but I’ve got to impress the wealthy patrons who make this establishment possible with fundraising galas like this one.

Though this is more of a good-bye party, truth be told. Glancing down at the courtyard where the tricolor of France and the American Stars and Stripes droop for want of a breeze, I remember that everybody at the castle used to say: These flags fly together or fall together. But isn’t that a laugh? With all the talk of war, the Americans who bought and renovated this old castle are leaving. The Moffats, who lived here all my life, are long gone, and Madame Beatrice—the colorful founder and president of the institute—left a few weeks ago. She said she helped drag America into the last war, and she’ll do it again if she has to.

In the meantime, the preventorium will be left to the supervision of the Baroness de LaGrange, who is currently explaining to a dizzying array of diamond-bedecked middle-aged women sipping at rose-hued vermouth cocktails that this ballroom, the so-called philosopher’s salon, has been lovingly restored to its eighteenth-century splendor with tall gilded mirrors and a freshly polished parquet floor. Meanwhile, her husband, the baron, is cloistered with the board’s most prominent members—cigar-chomping government officials and pipe-puffing French industrialists, all ranting about the communists and fascists and whether we’re ready for a war with Hitler.

All this war talk makes the spirit of the party faintly desperate—people talking too fast, eating too much, and laughing too hard, as if we might never get another chance . . .

“This is over-the-top,” says our friend Samir, gesturing at the lavish buffet, buckets of champagne, and rose garlands hanging from the gilt-edged carved doors. “But I guess the moneyed class wouldn’t trek into the mountains for a bake sale, so while they’re here we’d better soak them for every penny, pound, and franc.”

I smirk. “You sound like a communist, Sam. Keep talking like that and I’ll tell the baron.”

Sam grins. “You’re not that competitive, are you, Marthe?”

“Orphan’s motto,” I remind him. “Always look out for me, myself, and I.”

He laughs, but I mean it. We’re pals, so I know Sam wants this scholarship, but I want it more. I can already hear Parisian professors pronouncing my name with French sophistication instead of in the clumsy American way that sounds like Marta. I can already feel the fizz of excitement in visiting the Louvre for the first time, I can almost taste the espresso I’ll drink at cafés with a view of the Eiffel Tower, and my fingers are already itching to sketch by the river Seine. My exciting new life starts tonight!

At eight, between bites of crudités, I force myself to listen patiently to speeches about the charitable endeavors here at Lafayette’s chateau, where the orphanage I grew up in has been shuttered in favor of an advanced medical preventorium for malnourished and tubercular children.

At nine, Henri tells me I look like Greta Garbo, and dancing with him to “Tomorrow’s Another Day,” I feel like Cinderella.

Then at ten sharp they announce the winner of the scholarship, and my coach to a better future turns out to be a big fat pumpkin . . .

By eleven I’m drunk and brooding on a bench in the rose garden with a half-empty bottle of champagne, a pilfered tray of hors d’oeuvres, and my bust of Lafayette’s wife. Having stolen her off her pedestal display, I now glare at her like a critic. “I admit this isn’t your best look . . .” But those fat eyebrows give a little interest to a sculpture. The judges should have appreciated that.

Philistines.

I take another gulp of champagne straight from the bottle because I’m not drunk enough yet to go back inside, where the party roars on without me. I’m feeling sorry for myself. In the blackest of moods. Ungrateful too. “Oh, don’t look at me that way,” I say to the stone marquise, like her doe eyes can see into my guilty heart. “You had the world handed to you on a silver platter. Title, riches, castles . . .”

I trail off, hearing footsteps. Merde. I didn’t think anyone noticed when I slipped down the back stairs. The rose garden should be the last place anybody would look for me—anybody but Henri Pinton, who’s known my hiding places since childhood. Now he asks, “Who are you talking to?”

“La Femme Lafayette,” I confess, cradling her stone head. “She’s a good listener.”

Henri chuckles, fishes a cigarette from his pocket, and lights up. “Listen, I know you’re bent about losing the scholarship . . .”

I’ve always liked his habit of using French-accented American slang, but it annoys me now because I’m more than bent. And he should know it. We grew up here together—went to school together, even before the foundation could afford separate classrooms for girls. He’s always known that I dreamed about being more than a schoolteacher—a profession to which I’m singularly ill suited, which I prove by stealing the cigarette right out of Henri’s mouth.

He lets me do it but asks, “Trying to get fired?”

“Wouldn’t that just be another kick in the pants?” I ask, taking a puff.

Teachers here at the preventorium’s school are expected to set a good example. That means no smoking or drinking for unmarried young women like me. Even forward-thinking Madame Beatrice expects me to at least pretend to be ladylike. Unfortunately, that train left the station a bottle of champagne ago. “Do you think the marquise de Lafayette will rat me out?”

“I think the old hag will keep quiet if you put her back before anybody notices she’s missing.” Henri takes a bite of pastry, then pops the rest into my mouth, which keeps me from saying that I can throw my sculpture off the castle roof if I want to—and I do. I’m forced to chew, listening to the muted oompah of the bass, the wail of the saxophone, and the sultry song of the chanteuse from the house while Henri says, “At least it wasn’t Sam who beat you.”

“I wish it was Sam,” I say in a spray of crumbs.

I could at least feel a little happy for a pal. Instead, the scholarship went to a dull fellow who wants to study engineering, and I overheard one of the board members whisper, “Marthe’s talented, but there’s no use for artists if there’s a war . . .”

Henri clears his throat and says, “I’ve got an idea that might cheer you up . . .”

I hope he means stealing another bottle of champagne, but he’s the wholesome outdoorsy sort who thinks problems can be solved with a camping trip, a hayride, or a midnight swim, so I warn, “I’m in no mood for a jump in the fishpond.”

He takes off his tuxedo jacket, slipping it over my bare shoulders. “Let’s jump into something else together.” I’m too drunk to take his good manners for a tip-off and I sit there like an imbecile as he roots around in his pocket. Then he comes out with something that glints in the moonlight. “How’s this for a consolation prize?”

A ring? Grateful for alcohol-numbed emotions, I laugh but give him a little shove. “I’m in no mood for jokes either.”

He’s not laughing, but he can’t be serious. Whereas I’m an orphan without any family at all, Henri’s a ward of the nation, because his father was killed in the Battle of Verdun. He has a mother and a struggling family farm to support while he finishes his medical studies; it’s his dream to work as a physician in the preventorium one day, so marriage isn’t in the cards for a long time, if ever, and we’ve both been frank about that. Nevertheless, now he clears his throat and begins, “Marthe Simone—”

I stop him before he can go all the way down on one knee. “Do you want to give your mother a heart attack? God knows she doesn’t think I’m good enough for you.”

“She doesn’t think anyone is good enough for me,” he admits, holding the ring up to the moonlight until I recognize it. And I gasp, covering my mouth, because now I know he’s serious. It’s his mother’s ring. When we were young, I’d see that distinctive diamond wreathed in a matte gold halo nearly every month when Madame Pinton came to visit Henri here at the castle . . . visits I used to envy.

Like Henri, some of the kids we grew up with had a surviving parent or grandparent who could take care of them after the war. Most of the others eventually got adopted. But nobody wanted a smart-mouthed rough-and-tumble little girl like me. Oh, some couples expressed interest, one even returned for a second visit, but they never came back. And so I taught myself not to expect anybody to come back for me—taught myself not to need anybody.

Now Henri squints, trying to gauge me. “Maman gave her blessing when I reminded her that I could be called to join a regiment anytime . . .”

I exhale a long ribbon of smoke in frustration that Henri has gotten caught up in the blather of politicians that’s come to nothing for four years, and a good thing too, because France still hasn’t recovered from the last war. “You probably scared your mother to death with talk like that. You’re not going to get called up!”

“Marthe,” he says, brows furrowing, “Hitler rolled over Czechoslovakia. Poland is next, and if that happens, France will fight.”

He’s crazy. Our leaders talk tough to Hitler, but that’s all. France isn’t going to fight to save Poland—a country most of my students couldn’t even point out on a globe. I can see Henri is genuinely frightened, though, so I try to knock the frown off his face. “C’mon. You wouldn’t even be thinking of marriage right now if it weren’t for your father.”

Henri shrugs. “Maybe not. But if I die at war like he did, I’d want to leave something of me behind. If not a baby, then at least a pretty widow . . . So, what do you say? Who needs an art scholarship when you’ve got a wedding ring?”

I wince because the question cuts me. How did he get the idea that studying art is just something I want to do until a husband comes along? Now I’ve got two things to brood about. “You’re a real romantic . . .”

“You’re the one who hates sentiment,” he reminds me, stealing the cigarette back. He’s right. I do hate sentiment. But I still get a little misty when he holds up his hand and says, “Marthe, I’ve loved you ever since that math class when Sam dipped your pigtail in an inkwell and you turned to stab him with a pencil in revenge, but missed and stuck me instead. See? I’ve still got the lead spot on my palm—the prick of Cupid’s arrow.”

We both laugh, and he glances nostalgically at the castle where it happened. It’s lit up beautifully tonight. Even the mismatched square tower—a newer addition the Americans built when they bought this place—looks like less of an architectural abomination with spotlights setting it aglow. The castle has been a sanctuary for both of us, but maybe Henri’s always loved it more because he had somewhere else to go.

Though I have no idea who my parents were, Henri used to insist that my father must have also been a soldier and that our heroic patriarchs would have made a marriage match of us, if they’d lived.

I’m sure of it, Henri would say. Henri is very sure of everything, which is his most endearing and irritating trait, because I’m not sure of much.

He means well, but his timing stinks. I do love Henri. He can be one of those saccharine saintly sorts, but he’s a good kisser, my best pal, and the closest thing to family I’ve ever known. Now he’s offering me a chance to make a real family . . .

I guess I’d have to be crazy to turn my nose up at that, but what would it mean to get married with everything so unsettled? He’s not a doctor yet, so how would we afford anything on my teacher’s salary? At least now I live in the staff quarters rent-free. I recoil at the sudden thought that he might expect me to get knocked up, move in with him and his mother on the family farm, and spend the rest of my life milking goats, but maybe it’s time to face facts and give up unrealistic dreams about living an artist’s life in Paris or anywhere else. War seems like a lousy reason to get hitched, but in my drunken state, I can’t think of a better one.

Now Henri tosses the ring up and catches it again. “So, what do you think, blondie?”

“I think I need to be sober for this conversation. Give me a little time?”

But as it happens, time is something we don’t have.

On the first of September, Germany invades Poland, France declares war, and the call comes for full mobilization even though it’s harvesttime and wheat is still bundled in the fields. Henri and Sam are both called up, and I go with them to the train station in Paulhaguet.

To see them off, I’ve styled my pageboy hair with peekaboo bangs, and I keep up a steady stream of stiff-upper-lip chitchat that’s supposed to keep spirits high, but I’m almost numb with shock, watching men and their wives embrace in tearful farewells on the platform.

None of this feels real. Like it’s all some drunken dream, and I just need to wake up and get on with the hangover . . .

Sam’s girl sends him off with a box of his favorite Algerian pastries. I’ve got only cigarettes for Henri, who tells me, “The war shouldn’t last long. A few skirmishes and we’ll make the Germans come to their senses, no?”

I nod, though it’s difficult to imagine Henri soldiering. Oh, I’ve seen him with a hunting rifle, but he’d rather be healing creatures than hurting them. Now he kisses the top of my head and looks into my eyes. “Will you keep your nose out of trouble and hold down the fort while I’m gone?”

I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but swallowing over the knot in my throat, I promise. I’m trying not to worry as the conductor shouts for passengers to board. I’m also trying to ignore the voice in my head shrieking that when I was a baby, someone left me in the streets of Paris and people have been leaving me ever since. Friends at the orphanage got adopted or grew up and moved away. Teachers and nurses and administrators at the Lafayette Memorial came and went. Even Sam took off for a few years before returning to the castle to work as a valet. Henri’s been my only constant, and now he’s leaving too . . .

What a prize idiot I’ve been.

As the train starts whistling, I splutter, “Is it too late to say I’ll marry you?”

Henri breaks into a broad grin. “Just in the nick of time!”

Already boarding, Sam calls to Henri, “Pinton, hurry up, will you?”

“I’m getting engaged,” Henri shouts back, fishing in his shirt pocket. I can’t believe he has the ring, but he does. And he laughs at my surprise. “I knew you’d see it my way, Marthe. I just didn’t think you’d wait until the very last minute to say yes.”

I want to cry, but I’m not the crying kind. “I’m sorry it’s too late to get hitched and get lucky.”

Henri laughs. “Gives me something to look forward to.” He slides the ring onto my finger, then we kiss as the train starts to move. Reluctantly Henri pulls away, breaks into a run, and hops on the moving train as it chugs out of the station. And I’m left with a lingering kiss and a ring on my finger, feeling alone and aimless. Men hear the drum and march off, but what’s a girl like me supposed to do in a world at war?