A Jewel In Time; A Sultry Sisters Anthology

by Barbara Devlin

  “And yet, marry they did, and had,” Hitler paused, consulting a sheaf of notes at the side of the soft cloth on which he’d laid the book. “Ten children? Yes, here it is. Ten children. All of whom lived to adulthood. All of whom were marriageable and made good marriages.”

  He consulted another page, and a neatly dressed man moved up to Hitler’s right side with a set of notes. She had barely noticed this man, so unobtrusive was he. He’d been here all along, however. He’d greeted them when General Freisenstadt delivered her to the lodge. The little man returned to sit to the side. On the table next to him lay a copy of Debrett’s.

  “This indicates good stock,” he said, waving the pages. “All good marriages. No deformities. The sons did well, the daughters married well.” He made it a statement, so she didn’t deny it as Von Manselm translated.

  “Yes, our family has been fortunate.”

  “No, they are strong,” Hitler enthused. “Their roots in the Fatherland give them strength. The combination with the English bloodlines is important. It links our nations.” There was a fervent light in Hitler’s eyes when he turned back to her. “This is the key, Fräulein Corvedale. Linking nations of pure blood, making nations strong. Eliminating the weak, the malformed. Yes, yes,” he said, staring off for a moment. “This is key.”

  When he refocused, his snapping eyes were sharp, and his mouth firm. “Let me see the jewel.”

  “Jewel?”

  “The jewel, Fräulein.” He flicked his gaze to Von Manselm and she felt the general’s hand clamp down onto her shoulder.

  With reluctance, she tugged on the chain at her neck, pulling the gem-encrusted gold brooch out from under her blouse. Hitler snapped his fingers, holding out his hand.

  Before she could pull it over her head, Von Manselm’s hands were at her nape, unfastening the catch. Revulsion shot through her. The touch of his bare skin on her neck made her want to retch.

  “Danke, Vicktor,” Hitler said absently, taking the jewel into his hand. Another man, who had been standing by a small table by the window, brought a jeweler’s loupe when Hitler snapped his fingers.

  Saying nothing, Hitler put the loupe to his eye and began a minute examination of the brooch. Every whorl of every lotus blossom, every facet of the rubies and of the massive sapphire were studied in the heavy silence that blanketed the library.

  “Magnificent. Egyptian work, no doubt of it,” Hitler breathed, and he sighed like a man waking up from a dream as he laid the brooch on the soft cloth next to the book.

  Once again he turned his gaze to her. “The book, and the story I have heard, say the brooch only works for one woman in a generation. Is this true?”

  “As far as I know from the legend,” Grace answered truthfully. She’d never actually thought about it. “The wearer must keep it with her once the gem comes to her.”

  That was true, according to her Aunt Grace. Not only was it of immense value, but supposedly, if it was ever lost, very bad things would happen to whatever branch of the family held it in trust. So many generations had passed from that first woman to possess it, Grace had no idea how many of her cousins, near and distant, those very bad things might apply to if it was taken from her.

  “Ah, I see. So it could not be passed from girl to girl, to find her ideal partner?” he asked, keen interest making him lean toward her, as if to compel an answer.

  “No,” she answered, forcing herself to be truthful. “Again, the legend says bad things happen if it leaves the designated daughter too soon.”

  “Hmmm, hmmm,” Hitler hummed to himself. “So, you have had the dreams?”

  Startled by the change in subject, Grace denied it.

  “Not yet.” She forced a shrug, and stuffed down the memory of the vivid images, and the panic that wanted to choke her at the thought. “The previous wearers,” she indicated the journal, “said that once you meet the person of your destiny, then the dreams begin.” She shrugged, forcing a simple, innocent smile. “Supposedly this is how you know. My Aunt, who passed the jewel to me, said the dreams are different enough that you know.” She reached for the journal, but he moved it away. “The diary, if you’ll read some of the entries, tells the girl not to take the images too literally. Sometimes the images are...metaphors,” she finished carefully, for lack of a better word choice.

  He peppered her with more questions. Sticking to the truth as much as she could, Grace weathered what amounted to an interrogation ranging from her personal sleeping habits--questions she haughtily did not answer--to which members of Hitler’s staff she had met so far. He then circled back to what she knew of the diary.

  The discussion had an insidious quality, Grace realized. The man was, at points, charming, affable and genuinely amusing, which could lull anyone, including Grace, into thinking he wasn’t zeroed in on that which he wanted. Then a question from out of nowhere would come, spot on, to hammer at her and drag more information from her.

  “I have allies in your country, you know,” he said, in the most casual tone, after just having baited her about her loyalties to the crown, her actions in Paris, and her supposed flirting with the vintner she now suspected of reporting her. “Many of your countrymen support our righteous cause.”

  “Indeed, is that so?” she replied, as coolly as she could muster. With only tea to sustain her, she’d been answering his questions for several hours. Her voice cracked slightly and she cleared her throat.

  Hitler eyed her and snapped his fingers. “Fresh tea for Fräulein Corvedale,” he ordered. “And tell Frau Shemper to lay on lunch. I’m famished,” he said with a laugh, patting his waistcoat. “You’ll join us for lunch of course, Fräulein?”

  It was an order, not a request, but she inclined her head as if she had the option to refuse. “Of course, sir. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be out of my rooms.”

  The dig, given that she was a prisoner, shot home, but Hitler simply smiled.

  “Ah, yes, well, it is good for all of us to learn our limits, ja? And then, when we are asked to surpass them, well, we are able to do so. Come, let us go to lunch.”

  He stood, and everyone in the room jumped to attention. Grace remained seated.

  Before Von Manselm could hoist her up, or do anything equally bourgeois, Hitler stepped to her side and snapped his heels together, giving the slightest of bows. “If I might have the pleasure of escorting you, Lady Corvedale?”

  Von Manselm’s shocked translation was unneeded, and Grace allowed Herr Hitler to take her hand and help her to rise. Von Manselm pulled out her chair and stepped smartly out of the way.

  Before he could offer her his arm, however, she leaned over the table and took up the brooch.

  “It’s unwise, according to the legend, to let the brooch out of my sight,” she said, refastening the chain around her neck. While she dared not touch the diary, she let the brooch, on its gold chain fall onto her blouse.

  Everyone in the room froze, either horrified by her audacity, or eager to see her punishment.

  Hitler paused a moment, and she saw a twinkle in his eye. He threw back his head and laughed.

  “Of course, it must be so.” With a smile he extended his arm, and together they made their way to the dining room for lunch.

  Dix paced the gardener’s quarters. Up three strides, back three, across one and a half strides, back the other way. The room wasn’t large enough to let off the pent up tension that rode him like an iron coat.

  He had gone out into the gardens, hoping to catch a glimpse of Grace, to find out where she was being questioned, only to be shooed away from the front of the lodge by the guards. The young man he’d met in the woods, who’d been guarding Grace’s room this morning, hustled him around the corner of the lodge as two generals stepped out onto the front lawn to smoke and talk together in low, earnest tones.

  “You don’t want to be seen here, Franz,” Wilhelm warned. “Der Führer is agin’ folk who’re beat up a little,” the boy said, with an apologetic smile. “Wouldn�
�t want you to get in trouble.”

  Dix dropped into Franz’s tones with a mocked up growl. “I be’s getting’ in trouble fer not tendin’ the grounds is what I will be,” he said.

  “Not for now you won’t.” The boy looked around to be sure no one was watching. “Here, take my smokes. Go stay warm by your fire. Stay out of sight.”

  Dix held the pack. It was full. The boy didn’t like to smoke. He made a show of it to seem the manly sort, but if there were even four cigarettes missing, Dix would be surprised.

  He brightened his tone a fraction, replying, “Thenkee, lad,” he said, eyeing the pack with pretended delight. “I’ll be doin’ that.”

  “At least for the rest of the morning, ja?” Wilhelm stood straighter. “Now be off with you,” he snapped, pushing at Dix’s shoulder as another soldier rounded the corner of the lodge. There was surprise on Wilhelm’s face and Dix wondered why.

  He looked down at the heavy leather and wool coat he wore----serviceable and old, bought from one of the German underground who didn’t support the new regime. That wasn’t it. It was something else.

  The eye patch? The scars were real, though the patch was not.

  The other soldier shot him a menacing look. That one had bully written all over him, so Dix growled a few insults about young pups and minding their betters, and slouched away to his quarters behind the converted barn.

  Kempka, Hitler’s main chauffer, had commandeered the stable master’s quarters in the garage, sending the lodge’s old driver, Johan, to stay at his sister’s in Zweiburg.

  Dix reached the safety of his rooms, slamming the door, and making sure it locked. Only then did he straighten up, and from there, he started his fruitless pacing.

  Finally, as late afternoon brought lowering clouds, he made up his mind on what to do. He resumed his coat and his limp, and trudged to the kitchen entrance.

  “Town fer supplies,” he growled, holding out a hand for Frau Krakle’s list. She’d lamented that no one would go and get her supplies. Everyone wanted to be at the lodge and catch sight of the Führer and his staff.

  Delighted, Frau Krakle waddled his way, a list and a wad of Reichsmarks into his hands. “Danke, Franz. You’re a godsend. What would we have done with Klaus breaking his legs in that terrible accident? You’re a good cousin to come take his place, despite your own injuries,” she simpered at him, but her voice was a patronizing whine.

  The woman took special pains to point out Franz’s supposed injuries and infirmities, as she pretended to be in great sympathy with him. If he truly had been the former gardener’s cousin, he wouldn’t have stayed for a moment, the way the woman treated him.

  As it was, he glared at her and stomped out to the garage. Bypassing the lounging soldiers, he started the lodge’s big car and drove to the gate. It ran better now than when Dix had dropped Klaus, his mother, and two nieces at a remote spot on the French border with enough money for bribes, and passage to America for all of them.

  Maybe by the time Dix returned from the village, there would be a signal in Grace’s window.

  Chapter VI

  By the time Grace returned to her rooms, mid afternoon, she was exhausted. All of the highest ranking Gauleiters, Hitler’s highest ranking district commanders, had been introduced to her one by one over lunch. Hitler had expounded on the glory of their Germanic pedigrees. Nowhere was Hitler’s keen interest in eugenics, in ethnic cleansing and the breeding of a new nation more evident than in his extolling of the “Clean clear pedigrees that any woman would be proud to extend.”

  What she hadn’t known was how deeply effective the man’s personal charisma could be. No matter how inured to it she thought she was, Hitler had sneaked in such plausible, honest insights, that several times she’d been lulled into agreeing with his theories.

  And the more he had talked, the more the Gauleiters, especially the very married Joseph Goebbels, had eyed her like a ripe melon or a rare beefsteak. Each had decided they would be the one Hitler selected to take her to wife.

  At least the single ones had. The married ones just wanted to bed her for Führer and Fatherland!

  Horrible thought.

  Grimacing, she flung herself onto the settee. The man, Hitler, was abominably dangerous. He could make the most horrific act sound plausible, surrounding it with facts one could easily agree to, then slipping in the unthinkable.

  “Surely you agree, Fräulein,” he had said, in the most reasonable tone. “That you would never want one of your precious children to suffer? You would never condemn a darling babe to which you’d given birth, to slavery, or to pain, would you?”

  She’d agreed, of course, that she would not want that for any child.

  “Then how is it wrong to let them gently go back to God, when they are born with terribly deformities, or are born from an unwholesome mix of bloodlines, eh?”

  Subtly and insidiously, he’d hammered away at her. Keeping her equilibrium and agreeing enough to make him happy, while remembering who and what he was, had been as exhausting as walking uphill from London to Dale Manor, on foot, alone in the dead of winter.

  “At this point, I’d willingly do that,” she muttered, wishing for tea, or perhaps a real, full bath so she could wash away the feeling of corruption that settled like a sticky coat of mud on her mind.

  She heard steps and straightened, sitting prim and upright on the edge of the settee. When Frau Shemper entered, her face was alight.

  “Oh, Fräulein! How wonderful for you!” the woman enthused. “I’m so happy!”

  Suddenly afraid, Grace rose. “About what are you happy, Frau Shemper?”

  “Oh, the gentlemen tell me you’ll be picking one of them as a husband before the week is out, yes! And if none suit, our wonderful Führer has offered to escort you to Berlin and let you choose from among his many unwed staff there.”

  Frau Shemper beamed as if this were the greatest gift that could be bestowed on womankind.

  “He is too kind,” Grace managed, through clenched teeth.

  So that was the game.

  He hoped to use the jewel to expose her to someone who would be her mate. Then marry her off and use her family, her position in English society, as leverage somehow.

  “I have the boiler heating,” Frau Shemper added, bustling once more to the wardrobe. “I’ve hung the lovely afternoon dress here, to keep the wrinkles out. General Von Manselm has asked to entertain you with a game of chess if you play.”

  “Unfortunately I don’t,” Grace lied easily. “Perhaps whist?”

  “Cards?” Frau Shemper frowned with thunderous disapproval.

  “I do not gamble, Frau Shemper,” Grace added. “Merely engage in the strategy of the game.”

  “Ah,” Frau Shemper made the noncommittal noise. “I will inform Herr General.”

  “Thank you.”

  Von Manselm. She repressed a shudder. That he had lined up first in an attempt to woo her was not a good omen. However, if this dream nonsense was real, she could take great relief in knowing it wasn’t he who was her destined mate.

  “Ja, good, good.” Frau Shemper spoke again, jerking Grace back to the moment. “And I will press this for you as well,” she said, frowning over the simple evening dress. It wasn’t impressive on the hanger, but it was when she put it on. She had packed it for show, in case her bags were searched. It would have been less plausible to not have evening wear for when she met with her mythical brandy seller. “Gauleiter Deiteriche will be escorting you down for dinner.”

  Good gad, was she to be trotted out like a brood mare every hour on the hour for a new stud?

  Evidently so, as Frau Shemper hurried to tell her that a senior general, this one from the recently renationalized Saarlands district, would like to have an hour of her time discussing music over wine after dinner, and yet another would be here to fetch her for breakfast the next morning.

  “Thank you Frau Shemper,” Grace interrupted the flow of words, pressing a hand to her temple.
“For the moment, I wish only to take you up on the offer of a bath, and perhaps I will lie down for a bit before cards.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The older woman beamed once more and led the way to the bathing room, repositioning young Wilhelm outside the door. “When you are ready, Wilhelm will escort you back to your room.”

  “Danke, Frau Shemper.”

  Once she’d locked the door, Grace hurried to the small window. The narrow casement opened onto a steep, short roof. Closing her eyes to visualize the house, she realized this must overlook the kitchens, or some of the pantries. Shooting lodges often had extensive larders for the game, which was brought in from the hunt.

  Beyond the kitchen, she saw a sizeable smokehouse and beyond that, the garages. Several men stood outside both buildings, smoking. Most had weapons slung over their shoulders.

  Grace pulled the window closed. The vantage point was too vulnerable for escape, she decided. Too many of the loitering soldiers clustered at the garages--former stables with wide, treeless paddocks next to them--with no cover between the house and the trees to screen her from their view.

  Off to the right, though, was a promising path. A walled garden, its vegetable plots now covered with straw and snow, offered considerable cover. On the far side a gate gave access to the woods. If the gate was locked, it appeared to still offer enough hand holds that she could climb it.

  Grateful for the fine boiler, which heated the water to steaming perfection, she climbed into the bath. She’d piled her thick hair up, to keep it from the wet as she soaked.

  With a sigh, knowing that time was flying by, Grace finally arose and pulled the plug on the generous claw-footed tub. Wrapping herself in a towel, she turned toward the foggy mirror, wiping it with a thick towel.

  She drew breath to shriek when the cleared glass reflected not only her face but the sooty black of Robert Dixon’s as well.

  Dix’s hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Shhhhh,” he murmured.