Springtime of the Spirit (6 page)

“I will see you soon,” Jurgen whispered, then leaned close, hesitating only long enough to catch her eye and smile before pressing his lips directly to hers and letting them linger.

Annaliese watched him alight, staring after him until the doors to the truck had been shut. Leo went with him, and so when the truck lurched forward on its way back to her flat, with Huey driving, she was left alone in the back.

She let her fingers brush her lips. Perhaps what would happen between her and Jurgen was inevitable. They’d been moving toward each other ever since the day she’d heard him speak. Certainly she’d imagined being with him before today. She knew what would happen if she followed her desires and let herself into the flat he shared with Leo instead of going up to her own apartment. Leo would surreptitiously disappear. And then Jurgen would kiss her again . . . and more.

Why shouldn’t she want such a thing to happen? She was a woman now, able to face her desires, make her own decisions. Decisions that could be made without childish embarrassment, her parents’ cautions, or the faith they’d tried to instill in her.

She wasn’t going to run away from what she wanted anymore.

* * *

“Sign here. I’ve printed your name below, as you can see.”

Christophe eyed the man behind the desk inside the butcher shop. He had a German education, after all, and if they’d done anything right before the war, it had been education. Why would he need help filling out the most basic form? If this party offered anything of value, even the soldiers, workers, and peasants they claimed to represent would continue to be offered free education.

He signed his name.

“I’m interested in speaking to a leader in the party.” Christophe held out a leaflet. “This woman in particular. Annaliese Düray.”

“Contact with members of the party is available through letters of support,” the man said, producing an envelope from a pile on the desk. Just the size of a German
Mark
, no doubt to encourage donations as well as letters.

Another man Christophe had casually noted in the shadows stepped forward. He was large, taller than Christophe himself. Bulkier. Missing a few fingers, but still formidable.

“What is your business with her?”

“I am a friend of the family.”

“She has no family.”

Christophe smiled, though inside he cautioned himself. He hadn’t seen so many guns in such a small room since he’d been in a bunker at the front. “Everyone has a family,” he said. “I do. Don’t you?”

The man looked in no mood for friendly discussion. He folded massive arms on his massive chest, the gun tucked under his arm, and stared at Christophe as if contemplating the fastest way to crush him.

“Where are you from?” he asked suspiciously. “The Communists?”

Christophe had only a vague familiarity with the multitude of political arguments raging through Munich these days, but he wondered what prompted the question. Were his clothes so tattered? He’d given away his coat and hadn’t shaved in a few days, both good reasons he might be associated with such a group.

“I just signed a paper to join
this
group—”

“And why is that? To meet a pretty girl?”

“I’ve spoken to a number of people who attend these rallies on a regular basis—” six, not counting the first, Frau Haussman—“and not one of them claimed to know Annaliese by anything other than her first name. They verified only that this picture was she. How could I have known her full name if I’m not acquainted with her family?”

“What is your name?”

“Christophe Brecht.”

“I will tell her you support our cause, and if she knows your name, she will leave word here when you can see her. Come back tomorrow.”

Christophe didn’t protest. He’d had four years of confrontation and wasn’t going to risk another for politics . . . or for a young woman who might not want what he had to offer—her parents’ attention. Obviously Annaliese was healthy and not in any danger—at least beyond the danger she chose to put herself in by being a leading figure in a politically volatile world. The Socialists were the ones in power for the moment.

But if she was willing to risk her life for German politics, he doubted she’d be interested in fleeing to America. At least not anytime soon.

6

How many times had she been in Leo’s flat since she’d come to Munich? Too many to recall, usually to share a meal or to discuss the election or the needs of the people. They often met in the dining room, not for a banquet of food but for a smorgasbord of ideas.

The lines between individual liberty and security of the masses, both personal and financial, might be gray in some circles but not here. No topic was banned, though most often they discussed such things as the real meaning of freedom, the ideals of universal unity and fairness, or the pitfalls of capitalism and hazards of profit in light of those ideals.

Annaliese had kept silent during some of the early conversations, though she’d come to Munich with many of her own opinions about the menaces of greed and the evils in capitalist businessmen. She soaked up the knowledge and passions around her and somehow, with less and less coaching about what she should say, not only were her street speeches drawing more and more attention, she’d joined in a few of the discussions in this very room. Unlike Bertita, Huey’s wife. She was the only other woman who lived under this roof. Bertita quietly did the cooking and the cleaning, the laundry and the mending, but Annaliese knew she kept an ear on what happened. Perhaps as avidly as Annaliese herself. More than likely Bertita knew, at this moment, that Annaliese waited for Leo and Jurgen to return.

But Bertita couldn’t know that the politics discussed in this room was the last thing on Annaliese’s mind right now. She sat alone on one of the chairs near the window so she would spot the truck when it pulled up to bring Leo and Jurgen home.
If
Leo came along; she suspected he might find something else to do this evening.

Which might pique Bertita’s curiosity, if she knew Annaliese and Jurgen would be alone in the same way Leo often left him with a woman of choice.

Annaliese’s mind raced. She
had
been alone with Jurgen before, but never like this. Expectations of the evening thrilled and frightened her all at once. Right or wrong no longer mattered, not the way it once might have. What mattered now was what she wanted. Her only question was if allowing herself this freedom would help or hurt her future.

She wasn’t naive enough to think what happened between her and Jurgen tonight would mean anything to him. Though she had met him less than two months ago, she knew his taste for the women he’d been with rarely lasted. Lovemaking, to him, was like creating one of his poems—flaring up with passion, loving the words into place, only to have other words, other women inspire him. She couldn’t envision his desire for her to be any different. She would face the same fate, a similar season of favor that would bud, flower, and fade.

Surely since she was aware of that, expected each step of the pattern, she wouldn’t end up with the remnants of tears on her face every time she saw Jurgen after he no longer wanted her.

A rumbling in the street caught her attention, and the heart that had been dancing about in her chest all evening now whipped to and fro, unfettered. He was here.

She’d expected only one set of footsteps on the stairs, but as she neared the door, she heard two. So, Leo must not have believed she would go through with it, after all.

When she opened the door, it wasn’t Leo at Jurgen’s side. It was Ivo.

Jurgen walked past her, casually removing his hat and jacket as if coming home to her happened every night. When she looked at him, secretly uncertain—should she greet him with a kiss?—he only cocked his head Ivo’s way.

Ivo looked surprised to see her. He removed his hat and didn’t meet her eyes. “I came to tell you there was a visitor at the center today, looking for you.”

She waited. That was nothing new.

“He knew your full name. Annaliese Düray. Claimed to be a friend of your family’s.”

“Oh?” Now her heart started beating in a new way, pounding painfully. Anyone who knew her family was probably not a friend—to her or to the cause she’d picked up in Munich. “Did he leave a name?”

“Christophe Brecht.”

Her knees might have been wobbly from the moment the truck pulled up to the door, but now they nearly failed her. Christophe! Looking for her, after all this time? Her gaze went beyond Ivo to the hall, foolishly hoping he might have followed them all the way here, demanding to see her. But of course there was no one in the hall.

“You know him,” Ivo stated, watching her.

“Yes.”

He looked from her to Jurgen, whose back was to them. Then he twisted the soft hat in his hand and looked once more at Annaliese. “I told him to come back tomorrow, that you would leave word with me. Do you want to see him?”

Of course! Yes! He’d come calling for her. For
he
r
! Yet she pulled the reins on her wild thoughts. Christophe couldn’t be the same person she’d dreamed about as a child. Hadn’t his letters to Giselle taught her that? All she said was “Yes, Ivo. Did he say when he would return?”

“No. I told him only to come tomorrow.”

“Tell him I’ll be there at one o’clock—if he comes before then. Otherwise . . . I will be there myself, won’t I?”

He nodded and his gaze stayed on her a little longer than necessary, as if curious about something on her face. What did he see? That the name had ignited all kinds of emotions—so many she couldn’t easily sort them out? That not only had Christophe been the first boy who’d ever filled her mind, both day and night, but he’d also been the first who’d ignored her? Who’d wanted her sister instead of her?

Who had played a part in Giselle’s death, whether he knew it or not?

She shouldn’t see him. She should leave word that she never wanted to see him or speak to him. Leave word that he was less than welcomed, he was hated.

But suddenly even the lines between love and hate seemed blurry.

Ivo closed the door behind him, and Annaliese rubbed one hand over the other, staring at the doorknob. What could Christophe possibly want?

“Would you like a glass of wine,
mein Herz
? I have a bottle I’ve saved.”

She looked over her shoulder, momentarily surprised not only by the question but by Jurgen’s presence. He held up a bottle that was already half-empty, along with a glass. Suddenly everything was fuzzy, not just how she felt about Christophe Brecht or her memories of him. What she was doing here, now, was every bit as confusing.

And wine certainly wouldn’t help to make anything clearer. “No . . . thank you.”

He laughed and filled the glass anyway. “I think you need it. Here, take it.”

She did but did not drink it.

“Jurgen,” she said slowly, watching him fill a glass for himself. She was grateful, for the moment anyway, that he would be busy consuming the beverage instead of demanding anything from her. “Why do you want me? Instead of the others, I mean?”

He laughed again. “I knew you would want to talk,
mein Herz
, which is why I cut short the meeting before I tired of talking. Although you will excuse me if I hope we do not discuss things for too long?”

“But my question, Jurgen. Why do you want me?”

He lifted his brows. “How could I not? We work side by side, with the same passions and goals. I find you lovely, and a man cannot ignore that forever.”

“Those reasons have more to do with you than me. Why do you want
me
?”

He neared her and with his free hand stroked her cheek gently. “Because I cannot resist you. Isn’t that enough?”

Her mind went back to another day, when she was little more than a child and Christophe sat beside her on a park bench, overlooking one of the lakes in their village. He’d told her what it was like to be in love, to see someone in a crowd and feel linked—an invisible bond but immovable, unchangeable, impossible to deny. Everyone else could disappear with a single exchange of glances, like magic, leaving two people alone together even while surrounded by others. It was part of the connection, the excitement that came with learning, then knowing, such mundane things as a beloved’s favorite food or book, with dreaming together and . . . What else had he said? Praying together? Such an intimate thing, he’d claimed.

That was when she’d hoped Christophe would love her like that someday, but he’d been talking about Giselle.

And none of what he spoke about, not even a trace of the love Christophe had described, was here in this room tonight—even without the distraction of any other people present. She and Jurgen might have a bond on the platform, but it was the same bond she shared with every other listener.

“I need to go upstairs now, Jurgen. Alone.”

“What?”

Annaliese settled the wineglass on the table nearby, turning away from him and walking toward the door. With one quick movement he slid his wineglass onto the table somewhere near hers—a dull clink sounded when the two collided—and before she’d reached the doorknob, he stood between her and it.

“Why do you want to go? Have I said something wrong?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t what you said. It’s what I’m remembering.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have waited here tonight, to make you think I might do something I cannot do, after all.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, and she was grateful his touch was light. “It’s why you need the wine,
Liebchen
. To relax you.”

“I’m not ready, Jurgen. You wouldn’t want me to do something I might regret. Wouldn’t that make you regret it too?” She touched his chest, where his heart would beat beneath her palm if she rested it there long enough to feel it. She did not. “You have a good heart. I know you want what’s best for others. And what’s best for me is to go upstairs.”