Love by the Morning Star (18 page)

After that, though, for me. Oh, entirely for me!

Dinner with the other servants was a torment, and afterward Anna kept her up in her room, primping to an extent unusual for one about to sleep. Anna said nothing about the flowers, and Hannah asked no questions, but they exchanged sly, knowing looks. Hannah was surprised to find Anna receptive to Hardy's advances, but she was happy for her friend's success and hoped they'd manage to overcome their differences. If Anna deigned to meet him in the hothouse, it was likely that most of the hurdles were already cleared.

Finally Anna dismissed her with a dreamy look, and Hannah gave herself exactly ten seconds in her room to primp before dashing out into the darkness. She made a beeline for the twin yew trees and curled up in her accustomed cozy nook to wait.

She heard the crunch of gravel on the winding path, and then there he was. She wanted to rush into his arms, to lift her face for him to kiss. She wanted to dispense with the demure offering of herself altogether, stand on tiptoe, grab him by his chestnut hair and
take
the kiss she desired. But she only stretched out her hand, groping until he caught it in his own, and sighed with the simple pleasure of his touch and proximity.

“I'm sorry I didn't write to you more often,” he said at once in German. It was their nocturnal language, freeing them from all fear of eavesdroppers.

“Did you write at all?” she asked. Maybe the letter had been lost, or stolen by Lady Liripip.

“Tease! We were frightfully harried, though. Pretending to be students by day, motoring out to the countryside by night to make contact with people who might muck things up for the Nazis if it comes to war, then trying to appear fresh-faced eager students again come morning, after two hours of sleep. Maurice took it rather better than I—he amuses himself at those private dance halls that never seem to shut down, and then sneaks back into Oxford and blooms fresh as a dandelion by matins. We think he's going to dissolve at thirty, but for now he holds up amazingly. I, on the other hand . . .” He gave a prodigious yawn.

“Did you find my parents?” she asked, unable to control herself any longer.

He was silent for a long time, and she braced herself for tragedy. “It's very . . . disorganized in Berlin right now,” he said at last. “Among your people, I mean, or your father's people.”

“But you looked for them? You remembered their names?”

“I asked wherever I could, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Rabbis, musicians, actors, anyone I thought might know of them. Anyone I could ask without arousing suspicion, that is. I couldn't draw attention to myself by going through official channels. I might well be back there under cloak, with dagger, so the fewer people in power who know my face, the less likely Hans the precocious farm boy is to be unmasked as a British spy.”

Hannah pulled his hand to her breast.

“All those people you asked, they knew nothing?”

“They seemed never to have heard of your father.”

“But that is impossible! Everyone in Berlin knows the name of—”

Before she could say her father's name, they heard a low thump and a sharp muttered curse in fishwife patois. They both froze until the person passed.

“Someone is in love with Hardy the under-gardener,” Hannah said. They heard the distant hothouse door open and close.

“I did my best to find them, darling,” he said when the danger of discovery had passed. “People have become suspicious and close-lipped, and understandably so. They might just be refusing to speak of him for some reason. Maybe they don't trust me. Maybe he's gone underground, doing secret work.”

“Maybe he's being tortured in Buchenwald. Maybe he's being interrogated by the Gestapo. Maybe he's dead.” Her tears fell onto their clasped hands.

“I'll be going back soon. I graduate in May. I'll be able to come to Starkers for a day or two and then fly to Germany again . . . presuming things remain as they are. I'll look for them again, I promise.”

“And my mother, you heard nothing of her either?” She told him about her mother's troubling letter with its muted undercurrents of disaster.

“Nothing. She's in no danger, though, I'm sure. It was mostly men being taken, it seemed. Unless there's reason to think she's working as a spy or saboteur?”

“Mother? Good Lord, no. Unless, of course, my father was in danger. She'd sink the entire German fleet to save him. Oh, Teddy, you should see how they love each other. No force on this earth could keep them apart. Not war, not death, I think. Do you know they changed their religion so they could imagine themselves together after death?”

“She converted?” he asked.

“Ah, no. They were both essentially atheists, you see, though he was brought up Jewish and of course she had the Church of England thrust on her as a child. As atheists they couldn't believe in an afterlife, and though they knew their molecules would mingle for all eternity—you know how they say we're breathing bits of Marc Antony every day—it wasn't quite as satisfying as getting to hold hands in paradise. So they became agnostics. Not believing, not
not
believing. This way they thought that if there was someone in charge, perhaps he wouldn't be offended and would let them into whatever good place he had available. And of course my father donated to the synagogue, which might be like slipping money to the maitre d'—you get a seat in heaven even if you don't have a reservation.” She added solemnly, “It is quite a big thing to change one's religion for a beloved.”

Teddy laughed. “I'm not sure our bishop would see a switch from atheism to agnosticism as a conversion.”

“It was! A veritable road to Damascus. It is as much a comfort to them as an actual religion is to most people. They do not need liturgy and law, only a little wiggle room on the matter of an afterlife.”

“And what do you believe?” Teddy asked.

She stroked the back of his hand. “In this. I stepped on the road to Damascus when you pulled up in your car, though I didn't know it.”

“And when did you love me?”

“Did I ever say I love you?” she asked archly.

“With every word.”

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you,” he echoed. “Come out so I can see you.”

“You can't see in the dark, darling
Dummkopf
.”

“But I can feel you. Let me hold you. I won't do anything more, I promise.”

“Ha! And what if I do the more, eh? You might be able to control the fiery passions of youth, but I cannot. If I leave this yew bole I am lost, a fallen woman.” She spoke with levity, but she was serious, too. She didn't know if she could control herself, and it wouldn't be right to give in to desire when her parents' whereabouts were unknown. It felt almost wrong to be in love when they were in danger . . . but there was nothing she could do about that.

Another thing held her in check, kept her hidden inside her cave so that all he could possess was her hand.
Men love with their eyes
, Waltraud had said, and when it came to men, she trusted Waltraud's judgment absolutely. In all the time they'd spent together—and it was little enough, though it felt like so much more—Teddy had been looking at her for only a fraction of the time.
I can charm him with my words, with my voice and wit
, she thought, but she didn't know if she could charm him with her body and face. She liked this utter darkness, where they were just two souls in their own paradise, unencumbered by physical form.

She compared herself to the brazen, buxom laundry maids of whom Teddy was said to be so fond, and to the statuesque goddess Anna, whom she had feared once but no longer, thanks to Hardy's cocky presumption.
If Teddy holds me in his arms, he'll remember I'm not like those girls. He'll hold a sharp little stick of a creature and wonder what he ever saw in me
.

“No matter,” he said, caressing the little scar on her thumb, which had become his favorite square inch of skin in all the universe. “Tomorrow I'll claim the first dance with you, and then you won't be able to escape my embrace.”

“Will it be a waltz?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Do you know the waltz was once considered the most degenerate, corrupting dance? It was banned for ages, simply because the couples touched at more than the fingertip.”

“Fingertips aren't nearly enough,” Teddy said, tracing each one of hers.

“They must be, for now.” And then, like the painful debriding and cleansing of a wound, she made him tell her about her beloved Berlin.

“It is both a reassurance and a kind of betrayal to know that the river Spree still flows despite what is happening in my natal land,” she said afterward. “You would think it would stop itself in protest. Did you go to the Neues Museum? Did you see Queen Nefertiti? When I was a child I used to stare at her for hours, wishing that one day I might be as elegant as she. Alas, I'm not the right height. She always struck me as being sublimely good and just. If she had legs and was not a mere bust, she would storm out of the museum and out of Berlin and out of Germany until it came to its senses.”

“Where would she go?”

“I don't know. She needs some new world to rule.” A spirit of mischief took her and she said, “Perhaps she could come here and be the next Lady Liripip. She looks like one who could keep the servants in their proper place.”

Very softly, so she had to strain to hear, Teddy murmured, “I rather have someone else in mind for the job.” He drew her hand out of the bole and kissed her knuckles, her scar, the tip of her pinky.

“You must not wear gloves to the ball tomorrow,” Teddy insisted. To which Hannah readily agreed, for she had none.

They talked until the owls hushed and the song thrush started its morning melody. When Venus began to brighten the sky, peeping through the overcast haze to warn the world that sunrise was nigh, Hannah said, “I've done it now. I'll be too tired to dance tomorrow night.”

“Tonight, you mean. Go to bed straightaway and sleep all day. I'll do the same, and we'll both be daisies by evening.”

“I doubt Cook will be so understanding.”

“Let my mother worry about our menu,” he said, thinking Lady Liripip had co-opted her for household management chores. “I want you gay and chipper when we dance, not yawning in my face. Though your tonsils are one part of you I'm longing to see. I bet yours are the most appealing pink.”

Hannah chuckled. “Another intimacy that must wait for another day. Good night, my own Teddy.”

“I am your own,” he said. “Your very own, forever. Let me walk you inside.”

But Hannah, who was feeling a little faint with giddiness over his last remark, said, “No, you go. I believe I'll stay here and sing before the household rises. They really don't like me to sing indoors. Apparently the walls of Starkers reverberate in a most distressing way when they hear a contralto.”

“My family's musical tastes run more toward the hey-nonny-nonny faux country ballad. Shrill virgins and all that. But I love opera, and if I didn't, I still love you, so the house will ring with arias. Will you sing for everyone tomorrow at the Servants' Ball?”

“I just might,” she said coyly, “if your mother doesn't object.”

“If she does,” he said, “I'll tell her she can stuff a sock in it.”

He listened to her serenade him as he walked off, dreaming of the moment he could take the tall, luscious blond woman he adored into his arms and kiss her sweet mouth.

“T
HERE YOU ARE
,” W
ALTRAUD HUFFED
when Hannah dragged herself into her bedroom in the rosy pinkness of morning. Hannah had gone straight from the garden to the kitchen, doing her early chores before running up to her room to bathe her tired eyes.

Waltraud was immaculate in her starched black uniform, which she wore against orders (blue was for morning, black for evening), claiming chicness as her defense. “And whose bed were you sleeping in, if not your own, as if I didn't know, or presume, or hope. If you have stolen Corcoran from me I will never forgive you until after lunch, because frankly he is becoming a bit of a bore, and his formidable whiskers are giving me an irritation just here.” She caressed a place that women would not generally expose in public for another fifty years, and even then . . .

“I was in no one's bed,” Hannah said a bit primly.

“Oh, Hannah, why did I not take pains to instruct you better? Never, positively never do it out of doors. It sounds so romantic, but you'll end up with bites and scratches—not the good kind—and a sore body—though not in the right places. Never become attached to a man who cannot provide a comfortable bed. Even the lowest prostitutes manage to get a bed for an hour.”

“Traudl!” was all she could manage.

“Let me guess,” her friend went on. “You talked. All night.”

“In fact we did.”

“Well, I hope it was worth it . . .”

“It was.”

“ . . . because you missed your Christmas present. You missed your Hanukkah present too, for that matter, but since you're neither this nor that, I'm sure you don't mind in the least if I give your present to the deserving poor. And that is me. But alas, it would not do for me, not anymore.”

“I have nothing good to give you,” Hannah admitted as she went to her chest of drawers and took out the little parcel for Waltraud. “I would like to give you a strand of pearls, but they are my mother's, and when my parents come to England we might need them.”

“You will,” Waltraud said. “There is an exit tax now, you know. One percent.”

“Oh, that's not too bad.”

“One percent is what a Jew is allowed to keep when she leaves Germany, that is, if she can hide it well enough.” She hugged away Hannah's worried look. “They were probably whooping it up in Paris last night, kissing under the mistletoe at the Ritz. You'll get word soon enough. Keep your pearls,
Liebchen
. I'm quite happy with these violet mints and the toffee,” she said as she tore open the package. “Though what I got you is slightly, just ever so slightly better, I'm afraid. But because you were a naughty girl who stayed out all night with a most unsuitable boy, you may not see it now. Ah, but wait until it is time to dress for the ball tonight, and you will see! My gift is my seamstress skills. I've altered the . . . No, I won't tell you which one, after all. It must be a surprise. And the dress is yours now, for I had to take four inches off the bottom.”