over with, to know if Isa had anything to hope for or if she was just another woman, like Rosalie, whom Edward couldn’t love.
If he said nothing . . . or turned away with a jest . . .
“Two?”
She nearly sighed with relief. So at least he would face it. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Rosalie . . . and me.”
“You, Isa?”
She wanted to scold him or run away because he surely knew but was making her say it anyway. “You know I love you, Edward. It’s why I came back.”
“You came back for my mother.”
“And you.”
“And Jonah.”
“But it was you. Really.”
Another long moment, as if that invisible barrier allowed neither one to move or to touch the other.
“Is this the wrong time for love?” she asked. “Because of the danger? Because it would make us less careful? Is the paper all we should devote ourselves to? Maybe you believe loving someone now would make the loss too great, unbearable, if one of us were caught.”
“All of that is true. And more. It would be unbearable if one of us were caught, especially if we planned some sort of future together. What kind of future could we have, anyway? We’re not at all fit for one another. You with your family, me with my university burned to the ground.”
Edward stepped closer, breaking that barrier between them. “But I do love you, Isa. Your faith, your courage, even your stubbornness.”
She looked up at him, pulse racing, light-headed. Caution tried to stop the race. “You—you love me? How? In what way?”
For a moment she was sure he would take her in his arms, finish this confession of love in the way she’d dreamed of often enough, with a kiss. Instead, he turned away, stepped back to the attaché, and put his fingers to the locks. “I love you. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?”
She’d barely heard the words between her heart thumping all the way up to her ears and his quiet tone. This was hardly what she’d waited so many years to hear.
“We can’t leave it at that, Edward. Not until you define the kind of love you’re talking about.”
Suddenly he turned to her again and clutched her shoulders in a way that was anything but romantic. “I’m asking you to forget this, Isa. To wait. To go on as we were before.”
“So you’re rejecting me in the same fashion as you must have rejected Rosalie.”
“What? Exactly what did she say to you?”
“Only that you won’t let yourself love someone because it’s too dangerous and now is not the time to lose your head.”
“True, every word, and I have no right to let either one of us get carried away with anything but caution and concern for the paper.”
She shook her head. “So I’m supposed to forget this? forget that you love me? that I love you?”
The pressure on her shoulders increased. “Isa, I saw sixteen men—good men—die at the hands of German soldiers. I should have been one of them. Since then I’ve seen a dozen people arrested, all because of this paper. Yet here I am, free. Why? Am I supposed to live as if something like that isn’t just around the corner for me, too? ignore the danger, hope for a brighter future, when there isn’t supposed to be a future for me?”
“How can you not deserve a brighter future? You’ve been careful. You were stronger than those who died because of the work camp. God has protected—”
“Stop! Isa, just stop.”
And so she did, but she was no less confused than a moment ago. “I don’t understand. You love me and yet you want me to forget that you do?”
“Nothing’s as it should be; you know that. Before the war, you wouldn’t have entertained notions of marrying someone like me, bound to be a professor of all things. And I . . . how could I ever fit into your family, with parents who waste all their time at parties and a brother who thinks I’m barely fit to tie his shoes? We’re not facing any of that living the way we do now, but it won’t be any less real when this war ends. And it will end. So we’ll forget all of this until the last German has marched out of Belgium.”
“No, Edward.” She pulled on the sleeve of his cassock. “I won’t ever forget your telling me you love me, even if this war did ruin the way it should have been said.”
Then it