“This is a wonderful studio,” Marie-France remarked, gazing around with apparent fascination.

Gritting her teeth, Charlotte tried to keep her expression neutral. “Yes, it is,” she agreed, her eyes fixed on the canvas. She wished her subject would hold still for even a moment.

“So large.” Marie-France clasped her hands together, shifting in her seat. “And with so much light!”

Charlotte stifled a sigh and reminded herself that she had photographs to refer to later. “Because the main window faces north.”

Marie-France continued to fidget, her eyes darting around the room. She seemed oblivious to Charlotte’s growing irritation—but the truth was, her annoyance with Marie-France’s constant movement and chatter only compounded a deeper and more personal frustration. A tired sigh escaped her as she turned and stared out the window. A full two floors in height and wide enough to drive a car through, huge didn’t begin to describe it. French doors opposite provided even more light, along with much-needed ventilation. As much as she hated to admit it, Klaus had designed the space perfectly. The realization that she loved being here only added to her frustration. She was annoyed with him for taking the liberty, annoyed with herself for loving it, and especially annoyed with Marie-France for making it impossible to enjoy.

Marie-France threw her arm over the side of the chair, lolling to the side in a startlingly accurate impression of Marie-Antoinette. Although the equally massive queen had brought her own chocolatier from Vienna to Versailles, preferring hot chocolate infused with almond and orange blossom to Marie-France’s own breakfast of bourbon. Reaching down to her glass, she brought it to her lips and drank before issuing a satisfied grunt. “North is best, then?”

“In the northern hemisphere,” Charlotte replied, her voice tightly controlled. “The light changes the least.”

“Huh.” Producing a compact from somewhere, Marie-France checked her lipstick with a dramatic flourish. “Is he going to let you keep painting?”

Charlotte selected a new brush with deliberate precision. “Of course.”

The awful, squirming woman pursed her lips. “Professionally, I mean.”

Drawing a deep breath, Charlotte counted to ten. This was their last live session, she reminded herself, a chance to evaluate how well she’d captured her subject before commencing the the final round of glazing. Squeezing out more cadmium yellow from the tube, she lost herself in mixing a delicate shade of lime. In simple terms, the technique of using green as the foundation for skin was based on a fundamental principle of coloration. Green was the complimentary color of red; placed side by side, each made the other stand out. Like her and Klaus, she supposed: two polar opposites who, together, formed a new and better whole. “Klaus supports my career,” she stated firmly, her patience wearing thin. “And—

“Not many studios are heated,” Marie-France cut in, as though she hadn’t spoken.

Charlotte looked up, her eyes narrowing. “I know.”

“And this garden!” Marie-France pointed at the lilacs outside, which on Klaus’s order had been dug up and transplanted and which were now dormant for the winter. “You have so much space! There’s room for a second house back here.” Her tone was accusing, her lower lip jutting out as though the poor bushes had somehow offended her. “Our home is cramped.”

“Louisburg Square is the nicest address in Boston,” Charlotte pointed out.

Marie-France issued a sharp sniff of disapproval. “You don’t live there.”

Charlotte nodded, feigning innocence. “We’re not important enough.”

Marie-France shot her a sidelong glance. Charlotte’s statement was technically true; Beacon Hill was reserved for the top brass, and Klaus was only a captain, whatever his family’s importance. That being said, Boston’s brownstones were famously narrow—to the point of, in some cases, feeling like glorified train cars. Out of respect for Marie-France’s lasting dissatisfaction with everything, Charlotte chose not to mention that Klaus thought their own house was small.

“You and Zelda get to escape bride school.” Marie-France’s glower darkened.

Loading her brush again, Charlotte—rather generously—deepened the shadows under her subject’s chin. “Bride school isn’t, strictly speaking, a requirement.”

“For important people,” Marie-France grumbled.

Charlotte was beginning to wish she’d finished the portrait with photographs. Instead, she put her brush down and regarded the other woman steadily. “It’s too bad,” she conceded. “Give her a week, and Zelda would have all the girls reading Sister Outsider and The Feminine Mystique.”

Marie-France waved her hand dismissively, as if to brush off that ridiculous suggestion. “The Sturmbannführer wouldn’t approve.”

“I disagree.” Charlotte’s tone was even but firm. Yes, August clearly had the upper hand in that relationship; he made the decisions, and Zelda did as she was told. She respected him as a leader, but he, just as equally and obviously, respected her as a human being. Her feisty nature was, to him, part of her charm—which was more than Charlotte could say about most husbands.

“What about you?” Marie-France probed, once again ignoring that Charlotte had spoken. “Do you feel prepared for married life? Even without support, encouragement, or the first clue about how to run a household?”

“As much as anyone can,” Charlotte assured her, resisting the urge to point out that she’d run her own household just fine before Klaus came along, and through an invasion. “Besides,” she added, “the biggest challenge isn’t learning to form meatloaf but adapting to each other’s idiosyncrasies.”

“You do live together.” Marie-France made this observation like she was pointing out a wart. “What about the wedding itself, though? You were raised Christian, with certain expectations and traditions.” A crease appeared on her forehead as she leaned forward, studying Charlotte intently. “Do you think you’ll still feel married, without them?”

Charlotte, who’d chosen the man and not his religion or his politics, changed the subject. “What was your wedding like?”

But Marie-France refused to take the bait. “All that pagan nonsense of his isn’t a religion,” she complained, personally aggrieved that Klaus’s beliefs didn’t match her own. “And it’s not ancient, either, whatever its practitioners tell themselves. These are grown adults playing at Lord of the Rings in the woods!” Washing down her disgust with the rest of her drink, she gasped. “The real Vikings slaughtered a goat before the wedding ceremony, collecting the blood in a jar and flicking it onto the happy couple as they exchanged their vows.”

Charlotte’s stomach twisted painfully, a reminder of her still-healing wounds—and of how exhausting enduring daily life still was. She eased into a different position, trying to get more comfortable, but her movements were slow and constrained by lingering soreness. Marie-France didn’t notice; she was busy waving her arm in the air, demonstrating the imagined sacrifice with morbid enthusiasm. Marta’s knife glinting in the sun flashed in Charlotte’s mind, and she pressed a hand to herself, drawing a slow and measured breath.

“You’ll only have to shed his blood,” Marie-France divulged with that same low enthusiasm. “During the handfasting part. You cut him first, then you give him the knife, and he cuts you.” She barked a harsh, knowing laugh. “I hope you’re not squeamish.”

“Right.” Charlotte forced a tight smile in response. She was squeamish, and she’d also been trying to wean herself off the pain medication Dr. Bennett had prescribed, afraid of growing too reliant on its numbing effect. But Marie-France had managed, singlehandedly, to transform that task from unpleasant into nigh on unbearable.

“Right across the palm.” Marie-France slashed an imaginary dagger across her own with particular gusto. “You can leave out removing the symbols of maidenhood beforehand.”

Charlotte bit back a crude retort about the irony of Marie-France slut-shaming.

Marie-France, ever oblivious, dithered on. “The sagas describe the groom doing a little light grave robbing, breaking into his ancestor’s barrow to retrieve a sword. That’s the one he’s supposed to use at the ceremony, during the exchange of swords with his blushing and presumably virginal bride.” She hesitated, as a new thought occurred to her. “Where’s Klaus getting his sword?”

“From his family’s armory,” Charlotte told her flatly.

“He’ll emerge from his father’s luggage, reborn!” Marie-France threw her arms skyward.

At that, the ghost of a smile curved Charlotte’s lips.

“The one he gives you is for your firstborn son,” Marie-France concluded, immediately souring her mood again. “But what sword are you using, as I doubt your father was buried with weapons?”

Charlotte forced herself to relax her grip, worried her brush might snap in half. “A sharp one.”

Her subject’s interminable lesson continued. “You giving Klaus a sword is supposed to symbolize the transfer of duties—your father’s becoming your husband’s! Klaus is really accepting ownership, and all the responsibilities that that entails. You might as well be a goat!”

A goat, Charlotte reflected sourly, could bite Marie-France without getting lectured.

“Is he giving you a kitten?” Marie-France wondered aloud. “That’s the traditional gift to a bride.”

“I don’t know!” Charlotte exploded, her frustration boiling over.

Marie-France reared back, shocked at the sudden outburst. “You’ve already given him a pig,” she mumbled, somewhat defensively. “So I was wondering! Speaking of which, where is Bessie?”

“Still living across the street,” Charlotte replied, more calmly. She considered adding a gigantic wart to Marie-France’s nose.

Marie-France lapsed into blessed silence. The studio was filled with the faint, familiar scents of turpentine, linseed oil, and new canvas, an oasis where Father Time held no dominion. Outside, though, the world was changing. A brisk breeze rustled the lilacs, their once vibrant leaves now a brittle brown, whispering that snow would be here soon. Charlotte’s brush strokes were a soothing counterpoint to her frayed nerves and, for a few precious moments, she lost herself in her work. Yet the deepening fall served as a stark reminder that this summer, so momentous for all of them, had well and truly slipped away, and winter was sinking its gnarled talons in.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Klaus won’t be in the SS forever,” Marie-France announced abruptly. Her tone had shifted from one of gloating satisfaction to what almost sounded like concern. “He’ll resign his commission, because he’s ambitious. Then he’ll go into politics, like his father.” Heaving herself upright, she ambled over to the sideboard and fixed herself another drink. “He’ll make you leave Cambridge, move to Berlin, just like his father made Ingrid leave everyone and everything she loved behind.” There was a pregnant pause as Marie-France hesitated, her hand hovering over her glass. “And Julia before her,” she finished pointedly.

Charlotte imagined lighting Marie-France on fire. Turpentine was highly flammable, and so was acetone. Mineral spirits, damar varnish, and Liquin all risked both chemical burns and breathing problems, but nearly everything in her studio could be lethal if ingested in large enough quantities. Glancing at a jar of mastic resin, she recalled a remark that Klaus had made about its conveniently low melting point. But Marie-France didn’t seem to think that Charlotte would share this conversation with her own fiancé, the sanctimonious hag.

Well, she’d better hope Charlotte didn’t.

“He’ll make all the decisions about your children,” Marie-France mused, more to herself than to Charlotte. Glassy-eyed and swaying slightly, she might’ve actually forgotten that anyone else was in the room. “How to discipline them, where they’ll attend school. And the law will be on his side! Ask for a formal separation, and you’ll never see them again, if he even grants it.”

Klaus had shown Charlotte, the last time he’d stopped in to bring her lunch, how to put someone’s eye out with a brush.

Marie-France’s martini was almost straight gin, but she knocked it back like water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before sloshing more alcohol into the glass. “And if Klaus decides, when he’s done with his bohemian phase, that it’s unseemly for a politician’s wife to have a career…?” She turned. “You’re meant to be the queen of your own lesser sphere, never venturing into his. He doesn’t want a wife who’s his equal, or even know what that would mean.”

Charlotte’s mouth worked, but she didn’t respond.

Her shoulders sagging slightly, Marie-France risked a wan smile. “I know, I know. I’m an overbearing shrew, my daughter tells me, a vapid and insufferable bore, and a lot more that I can’t repeat in polite company. Fred would never tell me to my face that he agrees with her, but I know I embarrass him.” She went over to the window, next, and stared out. “Everyone enters into marriage feeling hopeful, except perhaps your sister. But Charlotte…even if you do love Klaus, and continue to love him for the rest of your life, you’ll have to make peace with the fact that you’ll always come second—to Heinz and to everyone else in his stupid cult. He’s an SS man first and everything else second, and you’d be a fool to forget it.”

And if Charlotte shared even half of what Marie-France had just said with Klaus, she wouldn’t care if she had eyes at all.

“Regret is undoubtedly easier to bear,” Marie-France opined, “from within one’s husband’s castle. Schloss Drachenburg, isn’t it? Or his villa in Bonn, or his chalet in Gstaad. Wonderful shopping there, or so I’m told. Loads of upscale boutiques where discarded wives can entertain themselves.” Her giggle was an odd, discordant sound. “You’re sitting there, thinking all the same things that Gretchen does. But I was in love, once, a long time ago.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “With Fred?”

“No.” Marie-France’s tone was subdued and sad as she watched a pair of squirrels run across the lawn. She let the word hang in the air, rubbing at her temples while she considered how to proceed. “Our wedding was a disaster,” she admitted finally. “Fred’s and mine. We had the same neopagan nonsense, and I was so scared—scared of going to Hell—that I lost control of the dagger and left a huge gash across his palm. I thought he’d need stitches and so did he, but he kept reassuring me that he was fine. That was all he cared about, how I felt….”

Knitting her brows together, Charlotte waited for Marie-France to continue.

“These rituals meant nothing to me.” Marie-France returned to her chair and all but fell into it, staring into space as she remembered. “But Fred’s father had been in the SS, during the war, and Fred cared more about not disappointing him than whatever I believed. The SS has its own marriage rites, too, it’s really its own religion. I suppose, in sparing me that, Fred already felt like he was compromising.” She let her words taper into nothing, tapping a fingertip softly on the leather. “No SS man gets married in a church, not if he values his career.”

August’s first wedding had been at St. Michael’s Church in München, but mentioning that risked derailing Marie-France’s train of thought; Charlotte wanted to learn where this story was headed before the other woman lost consciousness. “Who is he?” she prompted, wondering if Marie-France was confessing to having an affair. “This other man?”

She favored Charlotte with a small, lopsided smile. “His name was David.”

Charlotte caught the emphasis on the word was, along with something else she’d never heard before in Marie-France’s voice. “Tell me about him?”

Marie-France’s smile spread slowly, became real. “He was serious, with dark hair and dark eyes. Not like Klaus, though, not cold but warm. He was—delicate is the best word, soft. He was quiet, too. Bookish, I called him. He had a job teaching at lycée. He was so smart.” Resting her head on her hand, she savored the vision she’d brought to life. “I know I’m not smart, but he didn’t care. He loved that I made him laugh, that’s what he told me, that I saw the world so differently than everyone else. And I, in turn, didn’t care that he was a Jew.”

Charlotte breathed in sharply. She had no problem with loving a Jewish man, but it shocked her to discover that Marie-France was capable of such free thought. “What happened to him?”

But Marie-France was lost in her own world, her gaze fixed on something no one else could see. “David wasn’t religious. His father had gone into hiding as a child, himself, changing his name from Moses to Johann. This was in Lyon,” she clarified, to no one in particular. “Johann apprenticed as a baker, later on, and that was how he met David’s mother. Heloise was Catholic.”

“Did she know the truth?” Charlotte asked, her voice hushed.

“This was his wife!” Marie-France issued a derisive snort. “He obviously assumed that he could trust her and that she loved him, the woman who’d agreed to make a life with him, as a human being. But….” Thunderclouds gathered in her eyes as she pressed her lips together, understandably disgusted. “Just after David was born, she left—him and Johann both.”

Charlotte only wished she’d expected different. “When was this?”

“David was born in 1945.” Marie-France rested her head against her hand. “A lifetime ago.” Her tone was wistful. “Johann and David moved to Paris when David was a child. I’m from Paris, naturally, and David and I met on the street when I literally walked into him and knocked him over.” She let the silence stretch again and, for a long time, there was no sound save the wind. “He told me the truth, because we loved each other. No one else knew, or so we thought. No one except his mother,” she added. “And abandoning him was bad enough, but turning him in? She hadn’t, for all that time, and we assumed….”

“That even if she didn’t want him in her life,” Charlotte finished, “she didn’t actively wish him ill.”

Marie-France nodded. “Whatever stunted instinct she possessed, it’d kept him safe this long. But then a neighbor with a bone to pick remembered that he remembered Johann’s parents and that Johann was actually Moses. He denounced Heloise to the Gestapo for race defilement.”

“Race defilement?” Charlotte repeated, stunned.

“Heloise herself was facing prison,” Marie-France pointed out. “A woman will do what she needs to do to survive, and the Gestapo is its own master class in manipulation. Two facts to which Zelda, no doubt, can attest. Although the third truth your sister’s learned, that she’ll also do anything to protect her child, seems to have been somewhat lost on Heloise. Then again, she’d decided against motherhood a long time ago. David and I were having dinner in our flat when someone started pounding on the door. I opened it, and a man flashed his warrant disc at me.”

Charlotte’s hand flew to her chest, her fingers curling against the fabric of her apron.

“I didn’t know if David was alive or dead after that,” Marie-France murmured, “or how to find out. No one would tell me anything, other than to go home, forget about him, and be glad I wasn’t in trouble. Even I grasped that threat, but I couldn’t just… stop.” A tear rolled down her cheek, dropping onto her clasped hands. “There was an officer—I’d seen him sometimes getting coffee in the mornings. He was in the SD but, despite that, he had a reputation for being… understanding. And that group of maniacs is about the only one the Gestapo doesn’t intimidate. So I went to him, and I asked for help.” She swallowed, hard. “I was prepared to offer… whatever he wanted in exchange, and I made that clear.”

Marie-France’s admission stirred something deep within Charlotte. She herself hadn’t wanted a romance; she’d wanted to survive and now here she was, telling herself and everyone else that everything was fine. Except no matter how much time passed, she’d never escape the fact that she’d accepted Klaus’s invitation to that dance, not from desire but desperation. Yes, she’d grown to love him, but the bitter truth was that it didn’t matter. Even if his touch repulsed her, even if she laid under him at night and gritted her teeth waiting for him to finish, she’d still be trapped. She’d become his, the moment he’d decided that she was.

Getting up, she poured Marie-France a glass of water.

“I was taking a risk,” Marie-France conceded, accepting it with trembling hands. “He wouldn’t have been the first soldier, the first man, to take what he wanted and then go about his business. But he didn’t, he was… decent. He tried to find out where David was, what’d happened to him but….” Her face crumpled, a wail ripping through her as she collapsed in on herself.

Charlotte placed a hand gently on her shoulder, feeling the sobs wrack her form. “David deserved better. You both did.” It wasn’t enough, but words were all she had—along with a profound sense of kinship. Despite their outward differences, she and Marie-France had both been ensnared in the same web of circumstance; each had tried to find light in a world that had robbed them of so much. In Marie-France’s sorrow, Charlotte saw a mirror reflecting her own lost hopes…and for the first time, she truly grasped the depths of the other woman’s pain.

Marie-France blew her nose, the raw vulnerability in her eyes slowly giving way to a more familiar hardness. She glanced around the studio, her gaze settling on nothing in particular. “The Gestapo didn’t leave me alone,” she sniffled. “Once you’re on their radar…you know? I received several visits, each worse than the last. Then, one night, my officer came to see me. He was being promoted and reassigned, and he wanted me to come with him.”

“The officer was Fred,” Charlotte stated. It wasn’t a question.

“He could protect me.” Marie-France contemplated her handkerchief with red-rimmed eyes. “Give me some kind of life. I told him I didn’t love him, that I wasn’t sure if I ever would or even could.” She shook her head slowly. “He told me not to worry, that he was in love enough for the both of us. So after that, for his sake and mine, I was a perfect Schutzstaffel wife.”

Charlotte, perching on the armrest, rubbed Marie-France’s back in slow circles.

“Bride school was by far the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” Marie-France issued a wet chuckle, a trace of her old acerbity reasserting itself. “Which is saying something. I should tell Gretchen the truth about that and everything else, but how? How can I explain that her father, a man I both feared and resented, made me spend six weeks doing calisthenics and apprenticing as a maid?”

Gretchen might, Charlotte suspected, take the news better than Marie-France realized.

“Whenever we had a free hour, which wasn’t often, I walked down to the lake and asked the swans what I was doing.” Pulling herself together, Marie-France still sounded exhausted. “You commit and then hope for the best, I suppose, no matter how you meet.” Looking up, her eyes locked with Charlotte’s. “Maybe, for you,” she ventured, “things will work out.”

“I hope so,” Charlotte replied quietly.

Marie-France’s gaze sharpened, the edge returning to her voice. “You want to ask if I regret it.” Her eyes turned slightly owlish, a belligerent glint kindling in their depths. “I don’t regret my daughter, which is ironic since I never wanted children. After her, though, I told Fred I was done producing for the Reich. He didn’t mind, or so he told me, but I’m sure he’s fathered other children.”

Charlotte blinked, taken aback at Marie-France’s casual attitude toward adultery—and at the suggestion that Fred, of all men, might have a mistress. “Excuse me?”

Marie-France shot her a withering look. “Those babies you’re planning on adopting, where do you think they come from? Do you think the Lebensborn clinics grow them out back, like cabbages? From the lowliest enlisted on up, they have to go—everyone in the SS. They’ve got an obligation to pass on their supposedly superior genes and with the shortage of men, not every woman can be guaranteed one. So if she needs help fulfilling her duty to the Führer, she can sign up to carry a stranger’s child—and be paid handsomely, I might add, for the privilege.”

Charlotte wondered if Marie-France would remember this conversation later.

She hoped not.

Burping, Marie-France fell back into her chair, her earlier vulnerability now hidden behind a mask of indifference. “Then desirable couples like you and Klaus, couples who can’t have children, can take these mass-manufactured substitutes and pretend they’re your own.”