“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.
“I thought I’d have trouble finding you once I got here, since you never sent an address.”
“You cannot fathom how busy I’ve been, and the post takes so much longer to circulate these days.” Ellie took a long drag from her cigarette. Smoke curled out from the corner of her mouth. “How did you find me?”
The wary note in Ellie’s voice hung in the air like a curtain of iron. The wrong answer—or any answer involving their father—would bring it crashing down. Sir Alfred Whitford’s arm was long reaching, but his money and connections knew no boundaries, including using his university friends at Scotland Yard to track down his youngest daughter.
“I asked the concierge to point me to the hottest ticket in town. Who would have thought that meant a Brit?” Kat’s throat ached on a forced laugh. Turning, she cast an appraising eye over the room. “And in such a swanky place right in the heart of the 7th arrondissement. Trѐs chic.”
A woman with platinum-blond hair swished by as she attempted a tango with a bottle of sauvignon. A frightened waiter chased after her with a cork.
“Eric would have nothing less than the best,” Ellie said, uncaring for the safety of her white rugs. “The district was once for le Faubourg, so it’s only fitting that we claim it for