Duchess (28 page)

She pressed her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Armed soldiers surrounded a group of stocking-footed men, women in bathrobes, a small child, most of them crying as they watched the house burn. And standing in the middle, his face tight, handcuffed, blood trickling down his forehead—

Rolfe.

“It used to be the most beautiful hotel in Austria. Built for the Vienna World Exposition, it's filled with atlantes and statues of women, massive Corinthian columns. And there is a glass floor.”

Sophie stood on the edge of the
Morzinplatz
, her hands in her pockets, staring at the Hotel Metropole, a four-story magnificent building that meant death for anyone who entered it. A giant flag with a Nazi swastika, as Sophie called it, fluttered in the crisp air, as if waving.

No, taunting.

“Since the Anschluss, the Nazis have turned the Metropole into Gestapo headquarters. Rolfe is in there,” Sophie said.

Rosie wore a headscarf, her mink collar lifted around her ears. The other coat she'd let Ava keep and had the woman secured in her hotel suite at the Imperial Hotel.

She experienced too much satisfaction as she'd walked Ava right past the German dignitaries lodged at the Imperial, there, turning her into her German nanny, while she, Roxy Price, toured Austria.

She'd garnished a few curious looks, every gaze falling on her and conveniently sliding right past Ava.

Suddenly, Rolfe's plotting made sense. Even if it had come to a fiery end.

“They wouldn't kill him, would they?” She'd finally stopped trembling when Hale gave his report of Rolfe's whereabouts. He'd been shipped off to Gestapo headquarters with the rest of the Jews who were labeled as political prisoners.

“I don't think so. Not if he tells them who he is. I think he could say he didn't know his tenants were Jews and they might release him. The problem is, they found the travel papers, fake documents intended to scurry them out of the country. Even if he escapes, the rest of them are headed for Dachau.”

She frowned.

“A concentration camp in Germany. Some say it's a death camp.”

Death
camp?

She had glanced toward the closed door of her suite, where Ava tended to her child, probably singing her to sleep.

Sophie had asked about her husband, and the poor women simply burst into tears.

Rosie wanted to do the same thing. She'd spent the night pacing. Writing a story in her head.

Conjuring up her own script.

But it all hinged on her leading man, Otto Staffen. Subordinate Chief of the Gestapo in Austria, Head of Department IV, Section B4, the department that oversaw the management of the “Jewish problem.”

“Staffen handles the Schutzhaft, or what they call ‘protective custody',” Hale had said. “And he's as loyal as a Schnitzel. I can guarantee that Staffen is
not
Rolfe's contact.”

“I saw them together in Vienna, when we left the day the Germans marched into Austria. Rolfe gave him something, and he let us pass. If Rolfe was transporting Jews from Austria and Otto knew it, why didn't he search the train?”

“Perhaps they're friends. Rolfe had to cultivate many faux relationships for his plan to work.”

She refused to believe she belonged in that category. “
I don't need you anymore
.”

But, see, he did.

“I still think this is crazy,” Sophie said now as they stood across the street. “What if you're wrong? You can't just go in there and ask Otto to release him.”

“I'm not going to ask him to release Rolfe. I'm going to ask him to a party.” She turned to Hale, whose mouth tightened into a dark line.

“This will work. I know it will.” Oh, please. “After all, I'm Roxy Price, aren't I?”

Sophie let a smile tip her lips. Swallowed. Nodded.

Rosie hid her shaking hands in her pocket as she crossed the plaza toward the hotel. This wasn't a movie. She had no script to guide her. But if she wanted to free Rolfe, she had to play her role perfectly.

She untied her scarf as she entered the doors, shook out her hair, and sashayed into the reception area, a cavernous room with glass tiles in the marble floor.

She flashed a starlet smile at the youngster at the desk, clean-shaven, short-clipped blond hair. He looked about fifteen. “I'm here to see Commander Staffen, please.”

The boy looked at her. She smiled, knowing she'd spoken in English. She leaned down, resting a hand on his desk. “Tell him that Miss Roxy Price is here.”

He swallowed, his eyes wide, and he nodded as he picked up the phone.

The reception area housed two long, wooden benches along the cavernous hallway, a bust of Hitler perched between them along with more draped Nazi flags. Her gaze connected with two women sitting on the bench, disheveled, fatigue lining their faces.

They stared at her with such grief she had to turn away.

Please, God, let this work.

She hadn't told Sophie and Hale everything—how could she? Even to her own ears her story sounded impossible. Her brother, who'd run away at the age of seventeen to the Great War somehow ends up as a Gestapo commander in Hitler's Third Reich?

But, what if…

Her courage nearly failed as she stood at the desk, despite her fur coat, Dash's pearls around her neck. She could hear the faint echo of noise beyond the wooden doors, and the stench of fear and smoke still coated her nose.

Thirty-six people had lost their lives last night, thousands more imprisoned in schools around the city. She feared their destination.

She heard boots against marble, and then the door opened.

She expected Otto, his blue eyes, some smile of familiarity. Instead, another guard greeted her, this one small with shiny black hair, a pinched face, too much seriousness in his eyes, about the age of Finn. He glanced at the receptionist and nodded toward her.

She followed him down the hallway. Portraits of Nazi leaders hung on the walls in between more flags. A stream of light through the paned, arched windows played checkerboard on the floor. In the massive hall, even the clopping of her shoes cowered.

He led her to a door then inside to an office. He gestured for her to sit, but she couldn't. Not and have any hope of standing again.

He pursed his lips then knocked on the inner door.

She heard a voice, tried to test it with her faint memories. Did it sound like Jack's? She couldn't be sure.

And suddenly, she stood before him as the man who could be her brother rose from behind his desk and held out his hand.

“Miss Roxy Price. We meet again,” he said in English, his German accent thicker than she remembered. Oh, maybe she'd simply convinced herself differently.

She couldn't breathe as she met his eyes, took his hand. Indeed, he looked a younger version of Bennett, with his blond hair, thick and wavy on top. And Finn, just a hint of spark in his blue eyes. “Hello,” she said. “I—I wondered if you could help me.”

“Let's see,” he said as he sat down.

He had a desk the size of Austria itself, expansive and polished oak. She feared asking to whom it had belonged before the Anschluss. Now, he smiled, almost kindly, as he folded his hands on his desk.

“I think there's been a mistake.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I—I, well, see, in last night's raid, my—producer was arrested.”

He suggested no hint of understanding.

“The Duke, Rolfe Van Horne? He is the producer of the upcoming film
, Red Skies over Paris
. It's a Great War epic, and we spent the last year filming. Surely you remember the Austrian minister of diplomatic affairs granting us permission?”

He narrowed his eyes just enough for her to add a smile to her words. Oh yes. Smile. Be brilliant.

“The problem is, Mr. Staffen—”

“Otto, please.” He smiled again, and the effect of it jolted her. Otto? Really? Why not Jack?

“Yes, Otto. Thank you. See, the problem is that our premiere is tomorrow night, and we need his help to prepare. He was wrongly imprisoned with tenants of a flat he owns here in Vienna, and we would like his release before tomorrow night's gala event. We wanted to invite you and your officers, of course.”

There, it was out.

Otto simply blinked at her. Then, quietly, “I can't release Mr. Van Horne.”

She had slid her hand to the armrest and now released it, forcing her body to relax. “Why not?”

“See, those weren't just tenants, Miss Price. They are Juden. And not just that, but political dissidents—”

“They're men and women, children and families. They are simply trying—”

She closed her eyes. Calmed her breathing. Opened them and smiled to his dark expression. “I beg your pardon, but I was under the impression they were simply families renting his rooms.”

He leaned back, steepled his hands. Considered her. “And after we release him, after you show your movie, then what?”

She blinked at him, frowned. “Then we go to Paris, and show it there. And maybe even Amsterdam.”

“And Berlin.” His eyes darkened, fixed on her, sent a chill down her spine.

Oh, how could she have been so terribly wrong? This man couldn't possibly be the brother who climbed into her wardrobe with her, hiding with her those nights when her parents fought, who turned her life to sunshine with his laughter and teasing. Who made her feel whole and beautiful.

“Yes,” she said softly, thankful suddenly of Rolfe's revised ending. “Of course.”

“I'm sorry, Miss Price, but I don't believe you.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Lifted her chin. “What don't you believe…Otto? That I wouldn't dare show a movie about courage and triumph and hope in the middle of a Fascist Germany?”

“Careful,” he growled. “Besides, the movie is a reminder of what happens when Germany is defied.”

At least the version he saw. She hid a smile.

She stood. Tugged on her gloves. “Think again, Mr. Staffen. I've had enough of bullies and lies. Our movie will premiere tomorrow night. And when it does, if Rolfe Van Horne is not on the premises, the entire world will know that he's been taken by the thugs of the Third Reich!”

She turned, strode to the door, grabbed the handle, shaking, her chest so tight she thought she might weep right there.

“You haven't changed at all, have you, sis?”

Her breath caught, even as she pressed her hand against her mouth, even as she turned.

He was on his feet, his eyes slick with moisture. He swallowed hard, his smile tremulous. “I feared you'd recognize me when I saw you at the New Year's party.”

The words pulsed between them, in the thickened silence, and suddenly, he turned away, his hand tented over his eyes.

She closed the gap between them. “Jack?” She touched his arm.

He nodded, and when he turned back to her, he ran his fingers under his eyes, catching the moisture there.

Jack.

He'd aged yes, and somehow endured a terrible wound on his jaw, but the handsome scamp that wooed every girl on Fifth Avenue remained in his blue eyes, the wide shoulders, the regal cut of his jawline. “Jack.”

He caught her up then, his arms around her waist, pulling her to himself. She could feel him tremble, even as he pressed his face into her neck. “I never thought I'd see you again.”

She closed her arms around his neck, breathing in the wholeness of him. The strong, bold, courageous even brash Jack she knew, the reality of her brother, here embedded—

“You're a Nazi.” She untangled her arms from his neck, backed away. “You're a
Nazi
. A Gestapo commander. What—?”

He pressed his hand over her mouth. “Shh. Listen. Of course I am—it's been the plan all along.”

“What plan all along?”

“The one that Army Intelligence conjured after they liberated me from a German labor camp.”

“What?”

“Yes. For me, the war had just begun. I had picked up the language so well, and…I felt I had nothing to go home to. So, we invented a story for me and I returned to the string of captives, this time as a German. I continued to live as a German and feed information to the army for the past twenty years, working my way into the military, up the channels, and by God's providence, I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.”

“But you're responsible for— People
died
last night, Jack.”

“And I'm trying to keep people alive. That's why I arrested Rolfe and his tenants—if I hadn't, mobs would have found them and who knows what might have happened? Of course I know what he's doing. I'm helping him.”

“I knew it.”

He smiled. “I couldn't believe it when I saw you that night. I knew you were in Europe, but I never thought we'd cross paths. How did you meet Rolfe?”

“Mother set us up. Or, well, it's a long story.”

But his face had fallen on her mention of Jinx. “How is she?”

“She's married to Bennett.”

His lips formed a tight, dark line.

“You have to forgive her, Jack. You know what she lived through—what we all lived through with Father. And Bennett is a good man. Nothing like Father.”

He turned, staring out the window. “I believe that I was supposed to be here, for this moment in history. But getting here seems more painful than it had to be.”

“Maybe it was the only way to get you here,” she said quietly, her words landing on the own soil of her heart. “Maybe you wouldn't have stayed if you felt you could go home.”

He said nothing.

“And you're not the only one who has suffered. Mother cried herself to sleep for years. She still holds out hope that, someday, you'll come home.” She touched his back. “You have to tell her you're alive.”

He tensed. “I can't. Not yet.”

“Jack—”

He rounded on her, his eyes cracked with red. “You don't understand. I can't leave. I am here for a reason, and if I leave, who else do they have?”

“But if you're found out—”

“I'm very careful.” A smile slid up his face, something of recklessness that she recognized from long ago. “You're not the only one in the family who can act.”