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“You aren’t supposed to see that.” The British officer stepped between her and the map, nearly trampling on Miss Cooper in the process. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“If we’re that much in the way, we’ll move,” said Kate. She bent down next to Miss Cooper, prepared to lift her. “You needn’t concern yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant.” The British officer drew in a deep breath through his nose. There was rage in that voice, spilling out through the cultured vowels, the carefully controlled words. “This is no place for untrained amateurs. Not in this office, not in this hospital, and certainly not at Grécourt! Go see the Louvre. Walk along the Seine. But don’t get in the way of the real business of the war. You have no idea what you’re playing at.”

Emmie peered up at the angry officer. Her eyes were a very light blue, as faded as her pale lashes. They always made her look nearsighted, even though she wasn’t. “Were you a professional soldier before the war?”

The Brit checked, choking on his words. “Well, no—but that’s different. It’s not as though I had any choice in the matter.”

Emmie sat back on her heels, politely curious. “Were you constrained to enlist?”

“Was I—no!” He looked like he’d been slapped. Then the mustache quirked. “I’d hardly admit it if I were. But no. I volunteered. More fool I.”

“And so did we,” said Emmie quietly. Her hands moved gently against Miss Cooper’s hair. “We all do what we can. We know we haven’t much experience, but we mean to learn.”

He stared at her, wordlessly. Some of the tension seemed to drain away from his shoulders, leaving him looking gray and impossibly weary.

When he spoke, his voice was completely without inflection. “France is a dangerous schoolroom. If you’d take my advice—go home. Go home now. And forget you ever saw any of this.”

Emmie cocked her head at him. “It’s not the sort of thing one can just forget, is it? And, having seen it, how can one go home and do nothing?”

He gave a sharp laugh. “Quite easily. You’d be surprised how little one can do when one sets one’s mind to it.”

On the floor, Miss Cooper stirred, making a faint noise.

The British officer nodded at her. “I’ll send a nurse to you—for your fallen comrade.”

And he was gone, his footsteps echoing along the hall.

Miss Cooper moaned. Emmie bent over her. “Miss Cooper? Margaret?” To Kate, she said, “I think we tell the others that—that we needed to answer a call of nature.”

“Your friend is sending a nurse to us,” Kate pointed out.

To her surprise, Emmie’s cheeks turned a faint pink. “He’s not my friend. Just a . . . helpful stranger.”

“Helpful?” Kate had found him rude beyond bearing. “Or do all British men act like they own the earth?”

“Well, they do, don’t they? Own it, I mean,” said Emmie. Kate had forgotten Emmie’s inability to recognize a rhetorical question. She always considered them solemnly, as though they were the prompt for writing a theme. “The pink bits of it, at least. Now, Margaret, don’t fret, we’ll just get you a bit of water and you’ll feel right as rain in a minute. . . .”

Miss Cooper was still a bit gray about the gills when they made it back to the hotel on the Quai Voltaire.

“You shouldn’t feel bad, you know,” said Miss Englund quietly to Miss Cooper as they walked from the tram to the hotel, “about today. Every time I looked at those pictures, I saw my brother’s face.”

“Is he . . . here?” asked Emmie, trotting alongside with one arm protectively through Miss Cooper’s, mothering with all her might.

“With the 11th Engineers.” Miss Englund paused to let Maud and Liza brush past her. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe it will be all over by the time our boys are moved to the front.”

“Maybe,” echoed Kate, glad she was behind them, glad Miss Englund couldn’t see her face.

That map they’d seen, the map they weren’t supposed to see. The American flags had been planted right behind the front lines. She was shamefully grateful that her own brothers were still too young to join up.

Her mother’s real family.

“I, for one,” said Maud loudly, turning back as she pushed open the door of the hotel, “think we ought to be doing something for our soldiers, not going off to milk cows for French peasants, don’t you? And I mean to tell Mrs. Rutherford that. Oh! Mrs. Rutherford! I didn’t see you there. . . .”

If Mrs. Rutherford heard what Maud said, she didn’t let on. She did, however, sit them down and proceed to issue a series of rapid instructions. Their trucks would, at best, take another two weeks. In the meantime, there was work to be done and purchases to be made.

Emmie was put in charge of acquiring six cows, a bull, three pigs, one hundred chickens, eighteen pairs of rabbits, and, if time and budget permitted, possibly some goats.