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one position for too long. She had no control over her lower limbs. She felt completely numb from the waist down when the chauffeur gently sat her in her wheelchair when she got out of the car. Rupert was waiting for her when she arrived. He had come down the day before, to speak to the children. He wanted them to be nice to her, and not give her a hard time. He told them how brave she had been, and that she had even been in a concentration camp for five months, two years before.

“Did she meet my mummy?” a little girl with freckles and no front teeth asked him with interest.

“I don't think so,” he said kindly, as the twins threw bread balls at each other and he told them to stop. “You're going to have to do better than that when she's here,” he told them, scowling and trying to look fierce. But they knew him better than that and paid no attention to him. When he was at the estate in Sussex, they crawled all over him like puppies. And Rebekka, the little redhead, always wanted to sit on his lap and have him read her stories. She spoke no German, only English since she'd been six months old when she arrived. She was now six. But several of the others, who had been older when they got to England, still spoke German. He had told Amadea he thought she should speak German to them at least some of the time. When their parents came back, if they did, some of them would be unable to speak to their own children. He thought that keeping up their German would be a good thing. He had tried it himself, but he always got distracted and wound up speaking to them in English, although his German was as good as Amadea's, for the same reason, their mothers. “She's a lovely young woman, and she's very beautiful. You're going to love her,” he had told the children almost proudly.

“Are you going to marry her, Papa Rupert?” twelve-year-old Marta inquired. She was fair and long and gangly and looked like a young colt.

“No, I'm not,” he said respectfully. “Actually, before the war, she was a nun. And she's planning to go back to the convent after the war.” He knew he had only waylaid her temporarily to help with his kinders. And he really did need her help. But he couldn't think of anything more pleasant now than coming home to the children and her.

“She was a nun?” Ten-year-old Friedrich stared at him, looking worried. “Is she going to wear one of those big dresses and the funny hat?”

“No, she's not. She's not a nun right now, but she used to be. And she's going to be again.” Rupert didn't like it, and thought it a waste, but he respected it, and expected them to do the same.

“Tell me how she broke her back again?” Rebekka asked with a worried frown. “I forgot.”

“She blew up a train,” he said as though it were something sensible people did every day, like throw out the trash or walk the dog.

“She must be very brave,” Hermann, the oldest boy, said in a hushed tone. He had just turned sixteen and had begun to look like a man and not a boy.

“She is. She's been in the Resistance in France for the last two years.” They nodded. They all knew what that meant.

“Will she bring a gun?” a studious-looking eight-year-old boy named Ernst asked with interest. He was fascinated by guns, and Rupert had taken him hunting. They all called him Papa Rupert.

“I hope not,” Rupert said, laughing at the image. And a few minutes later Amadea arrived. Rupert went out to greet her, as she looked around the grounds in awe. The ancestral house and grounds looked very much like her father's family's château in Dordogne. It was less formal than she had feared it would be, but impressive nonetheless.

He rolled her into the living room after greeting her with a kiss on the cheek and a warm welcome. The children were all waiting for her in their best clothes, and Mrs. Hascombs had set up a long table in the library with a proper tea. Amadea hadn't seen anything so lovely since before the war. And the children were beautiful as she looked at them. And a trifle scared. A few of them looked worried by the wheelchair as she smiled at