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“How is one partly a peer?” Emmie asked, just to have something to say. “I thought you either were or weren’t.”

“That depends on who you ask,” said Captain DeWitt. He turned slightly toward her, his eyes green and brown like the moat. “My father is what they call a soap-and-pickle peer—still with the stink of the shop about him.”

“What’s wrong with soap and pickles?”

Captain DeWitt looked at her quizzically, as if trying to figure out if she really meant it. “They’re common. Trade. When I was at Harrow, it was considered a great joke to try to brand me with a burning biscuit.”

Emmie sat up straight, making the bench bounce. “That’s ridiculous! Think of the joy you’ve brought to people with your biscuits. What have any of them ever done for anyone?”

Captain DeWitt smiled wryly. “Bunk with William the Conqueror? Affright the French at Agincourt?”

“You’re allies with the French now, so that’s not much use, is it? Affrighting the French, I mean. I’d far rather have tea biscuits.” Struck by a sudden thought, she tilted her head up at him, studying his face. “Is that why you were masquerading as the Scarlet Pimpernel? I thought you wouldn’t tell me your name because it was something awful—like Algernon.”

“There’s that too. And no,” he added, with the hint of a smile, like sunlight on the moat, “it’s not Algernon.”

“It can’t be more awful than mine. Imagine going through your life named Emmaline. I tried to get my governess to call me Lily, but my mother found out and put a stop to it.”

“Why Lily?” He rested the flat of his hand against the seat of the bench, his arm brushing the back of Emmie’s jacket.

“Well, you know, flowers and all that.” Emmie hunched her shoulders, looking away, feeling all the old awkwardness descend on her. She had thought it sounded delicate and feminine, the name of someone who floated rather than clomped and didn’t wear dancing slippers the size of boats. But she didn’t want to admit to any of that.

“The lilies of the field that toil not?” offered Captain DeWitt.

“Oh, do we toil,” said Emmie with feeling, trying to make a joke of it. “I’ve spent the week in the freezing cellar stringing gifts on bits of fishing line for the children.”

“Why fishing line?”

“Because we didn’t have yarn to waste. We wanted to make it all more special for them, not just handing each child a gift, but making, well, a bit of a production of it. We’ve made a sort of screen and labeled the gifts according to age, and each one will get a go with the fishing rod—”

Captain DeWitt was listening to her ramble on, listening as if every word meant something, and Emmie realized how silly it must all sound. The ruins of the outbuilding reproached her, falling ceilings and missing walls. There were men dying only a few miles away. And here she was, going on about toys and fishing line.

She looked hopelessly at him. “It all sounds very trivial, doesn’t it, in the midst of all this? But we just wanted to give them, oh, I don’t know. Something to make up for all those years without. Something . . . wonderful.”

“I think it sounds wonderful.” He was looking at her in a way that made her feel like she’d just come out of the gloom into strong sunlight. “I think you’re wonderful.”

“No, I’m not—oh goodness, you have no idea. I wish—” Emmie had to clamp her lips shut to keep it from all pouring out, Margaret and Courcelles and the snowstorm. All the mistakes she’d made, all the dangers she’d brought on them.

Very gently, Captain DeWitt asked, “Is something the matter?”

Any excuse, Kate had said. The British would take any excuse to evict them from the war zone.

Emmie blurted out, “Is it true that you’re taking over our zone from the French?”

Captain DeWitt sat back. She could feel him move away from her, sitting very still and straight. “Where did you hear that?”

“Here and there,” said Emmie vaguely, wishing she hadn’t said anything, that they could go back to talking about fishing line and how wonderful she was.

Captain DeWitt leaned his head back, staring up at the hard silver sky. “So much for secrecy. I’m sure the kaiser has it down on his calendar already.”

“Does that mean yes?”

“Possibly.”

That meant yes. Emmie stared down, folding and refolding her hands in her lap. She couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with her thumbs, of which she suddenly had ten. “They say you don’t believe in women in the war zone. The lot of you, I mean. Not you personally.”

Captain DeWitt waited a moment before speaking; she could feel him weighing his response. “As a rule, yes. If we have to rally around and protect you, we lose valuable time and resources.”

Which was just what Kate had been saying. Emmie looked at him with alarm. “But we don’t need you to rally around and protect us. We’re not those sort of women. Really, we’re not.”