Echoes Page 0,125

they both understood what they had to do. They had to pretend she was their mother, and call her “Maman.” Even if scary soldiers questioned them. She promised them that she wouldn't let anything bad happen to them, and prayed she was right.

They left right after breakfast the next morning, in Jean-Yves's uncle's car. She knew she could make the trip in six or seven hours. She brought food with them so they didn't have to stop anywhere. They passed one checkpoint, and she handed the soldiers her papers. They looked at her, glanced at the children, handed the papers back, and waved them on. It was the easiest mission she'd been on so far, and the children slept in the car, which gave her time to think. She felt better than she had in a while, and she was glad she had agreed to do it. They were sweet children, and she felt sorry for them. She was taking them to meet a member of a cell in Dordogne, and he was going to deliver them to the safe house that had been provided. He had said Amadea could spend the night there before she went back. It was a long trip.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived in the rolling countryside that seemed not to know there was a war on. It looked lush and green and luxuriant. She drove to the address she'd been given, and found it easily. There was a young man waiting for her, who was as blond and blue-eyed as she and the children. He looked as though he could have been their father as easily as she could have been their mother. He thanked her for bringing them down.

“Do you want to come with me, or stay here?” he asked. The children looked panicked at the thought of leaving her. She was the only person there they knew, although they hadn't known her for long. But she had been nice to them. She tried to reassure them, but they both started crying, and she looked at the man she knew only as Armand.

“I'll come.” He got into her car with the three of them, and told her where to go. Five minutes later, they were driving past an imposing château, and he told her to turn into the courtyard. “Here?” She looked surprised. “This is your safe house?” It was a beautiful old house, with many outbuildings, stables, and an enormous courtyard. “Whose house is this?” she asked, suddenly curious. They were not far from her father's boyhood home, although she wasn't exactly sure where it was either.

“Mine,” he said, and she stared at him, as he laughed. “One day. In the meantime, it's my father's.” She smiled in open admiration as she looked around and they got out. The children were staring up at the château in wonder. After two years in a basement on the outskirts of Paris, this was like going to Heaven. She knew they had papers for them that attested to their aristocratic birth. They were allegedly distant relations of the châtelain.

An old housekeeper led them away to get them dinner, as an older gentleman came down the steps of the château. Amadea assumed he was Armand's father. The distinguished-looking man shook her hand and was very pleasant to her, as Armand introduced them. All he knew of her was the name on her most recent set of papers. Philippine de Villiers. Which was how he introduced her to his father, whom he then introduced to Amadea. “May I introduce my father,” he said politely, “Comte Nicolas de Vallerand.” Amadea stood staring at him, and as she did, she saw the resemblance, although he was older than her father had been the last time she saw him. Her father was forty-four when he died, and would have been sixty now. As she looked from Armand to his father, she looked shocked, but said nothing. Armand could see that something had disturbed her severely, as the count invited her inside. They had prepared a meal for her, and served it elegantly in the dining room, as the two men joined her. She was quiet as she looked around, and the count noticed her pained silence but didn't comment.

“It's a beautiful old house. It was originally built in the sixteenth century. And rebuilt about two hundred years later. I'm afraid it's badly in need of repair these days. There will be no one to do it