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her suit, tried to smooth her rumpled skirt, wiped futilely at smudges of road dust and grime. Not the entrance she’d planned. She tried a smile. “I’ll be fine.”
    Adele pulled out a white starched kerchief from her purse. She slipped it to Claire, her expression kind. “You are a beautiful woman. He will be happy to see you.”
    Claire’s eyes misted over as she took the kerchief; her fingers traced the elegant AO embroidered in one corner. Nothing had been said, but somehow Adele knew a man had brought Claire to Paris. The woman handed her a slip of paper as she planted a light kiss on each cheek.
    “Merci beaucoup,” Claire said carefully, with great conviction, and accepted her case and hatbox from Martin. She glanced down at the paper as she stepped out into the street, an address was written in firm script by Adele’s careful hand. Claire felt markedly alone on the busy cobble street. Not for long, she told herself.

Chapter 2
    THE ADVANCE

22, rue d’Artois, Paris. May 13, 1940.
    C laire didn’t mind the walk through Paris streets. The brick sidewalks lined with precise-shaped trees. Elaborate stonework on grey buildings created an older, more fanciful world. Patisseries and newspaper stands. Cafés with small tables pulled out on the sidewalk. Even in her crumpled suit, men’s heads followed as she walked by. Crossing the river Seine on the pont de l’Alma, Claire was struck by the sight of the Eiffel Tower above a line of leafy green treetops. The graceful curve of metal lace stitched into the fabric of pale blue sky. She couldn’t help but think of how much Mama would have loved to see this, just once.
    It was late afternoon when she turned onto rue d’Artois and sat on a bench in the shadows of Laurent’s building. She wiped down bare skin with Adele’s kerchief as she stared up at the windows and tried to ignore the anxiety tightening her throat.
    Laurent had made plenty of promises in New York, his face buried in her breasts, in her soft stomach, in the heat between her thighs. It was amusing then because she recognized something in him she knew very well. A price tag.
    After all, it was well established in the society pages that the Harrises were old money. A now rare but still distinguished lineage. What little matter would it be for a Harris to leave her industrialist husband’s vulgar new money? Laurent offered so much pleasure for a taste of dusty old treasure. How wrong he was.
    Claire stared up at the building’s stonework, worn with the years but still showing the artistry of its birth, the depth of its history. Black iron railings curved out from balconies overflowing with plants. Beautiful, as Laurent promised, in a city drenched in beauty.
    She shivered in the sunlight. It wasn’t the Germans that concerned her. In fact, the confusion from the invasion might buy her a few more weeks. The truth was the problem. Soon enough Laurent would guess the truth. Or a shade of it.
    Harris was a name, read from a dusty obituary in the recessed stacks of the New York Library on Fifth Avenue. Just a name, as her husband had learned three nights previous, picked out years ago by the runaway daughter of an Oklahoma dirt farmer.
    A wave of weariness swept over her. Eleven years ago, she’d gone to New York and stood in the breadlines like all the rest. But she didn’t stay with them. After she’d married Russell, she thought she was done with the struggle. Damn, but she thought she’d won. A shadow moved against the glass in the fifth-floor window. Claire caught her breath and straightened. Laurent.
    That simple county girl was dead. She never really was alive, was she?
    Claire smoothed her jacket and straightened her skirt. Head held high, she marched up the shallow brick steps to the carved wooden door. Past the lobby, a small metal stairwell curved enough to make her hold fast to the railing. Five flights of stairs then a heavy door with the snarling mouth of a tired-looking bronze lion as