“Come,” Michel said. He laced his fingers through hers, and together they hurried out of the cave and made their way aboveground.

The sky was clear, the moon half full, casting just enough light over the rolling hills that Céline could see the skeletal outlines of the naked, resting vines in the darkness. “What’s happening?” she whispered. “Where are we going?”

“Trust me,” he said. In silence, he led her into the vineyards, where they made their way along a neat row, their footsteps crunching on the cold earth and fallen leaves in the darkness. Surely they were being too conspicuous, their footfalls too loud, their movements too obvious, but she believed in Michel, and so she followed.

A moment later, they reached the road, and at first, Céline couldn’t understand why they’d come. There was no one here, and it would be crazy for someone to be driving around at night doing anything illegal; noise on the empty roads could be heard from miles away. Simply standing there seemed foolhardy; what if a German truck rumbled by and a soldier spotted them? “Michel?” she began tentatively.

But then, from the shadows near the curve of the road just fifty yards away, two men dressed all in black emerged in silence, both of them pulling some sort of cart. “You’re late,” one of them growled in the darkness. “And this is the help you bring? She’s a woman!”

“She’s strong and capable,” Michel said firmly.

“And you trust her?”

“With my life,” Michel said, his voice soft.

Céline could barely make out the man who had spoken; he wore the darkness like a cloak, and only the whites of his eyes glinted in the half moonlight.

“Well, I suppose you’d have to,” the man said at last, “since if she gets you caught, they won’t hesitate to shoot you in the head.” He snorted, a sound that was somewhere between amusement and annoyance, but he beckoned to the man with him, and together they pulled their cart toward Michel and Céline, both of them grunting with the effort. The second man was slightly smaller and thinner, and as he drew closer, Céline saw something that looked like kindness in his eyes. He nodded to her, and she nodded back.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said the larger man to Michel, utterly ignoring Céline, and then both men slipped back into the shadows and were gone.

“Come, we mustn’t delay,” Michel said, moving forward and grabbing one of the cart’s two arms. “Just do your best. I’ll handle as much of the weight as I can, but I’ll need your help to make sure we don’t tip it on the uneven ground. The shipment’s larger than I expected it to be.”

Céline hesitated as she looked at the cart, the wooden kind that mules pulled across farmland. The bed was full of something heavy, concealed beneath a layer of straw. “Guns?”

“And explosives.” He gestured to the second arm of the cart, and Céline bent to slide under it, propping it on her shoulder. Michel grunted, and Céline felt the cart jerk forward. She joined him in pulling, and they began to wheel the cart across the dark vineyard, back toward the entrance to the cellars.

“But where do the weapons come from?” she asked several silent minutes later as she struggled to catch her breath. They were nearly halfway home.

“I don’t ask. The British, maybe? The Dutch? Hell, maybe America or Canada. All I know is that the bend in the road is the perfect place for drops to happen. From here, the arms can be stored in our cellars until our contacts can come pick them up.”

She stumbled on an exposed root, nearly overturning the cart, but Michel reached out to catch her before she hit the ground, and she quickly regained her balance. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said. He grunted as they heaved the cart over an uneven patch of ground. “This is too much for you. I should have figured out how to do this myself.”

“No, Michel, please. I want to be a part of this.”

“But why, my love? Why not let me keep you safe?”

Céline looked up at the tiny pinpricks of light overhead and wondered if somewhere out there, her father was seeing the same sky. What about the people working for Resistance networks all over France? Or the soldiers in trenches all across the Continent, trying to beat back the Nazis? Out here in the star-dusted darkness, she was tiny and insignificant, a mere speck of light on the earth. But doing this made her feel, at least for a moment, that she was more than that, as if the decisions she was making might play a role in changing the world. “Because,” she said at last, “I want to be part of something bigger, Michel.”

“You are. We all are, those of us who work in the shadows,” Michel said. The main house was in sight now, and Céline imagined Inès inside, fast asleep and oblivious to the danger outside her door. “We are soldiers in an army that the Germans will never see coming,” he added. “We are the ones who will win back France.”

Céline could feel tears burning her eyes as she turned her attention from the stars to the man beside her, the one who had changed her life in ways he couldn’t yet understand. “We are the ones,” she said softly, “who will reclaim the future.”

? ? ?

Madame Gaudin arrived sometime after midnight, a cloak drawn tight around her. She was built like an ox, but there was something feminine about her yet the same. Her voice was sweet, her mannerisms rough, and as always, Céline was fascinated by all the contrasts that seemed to exist within the same woman. Then again, Céline knew better than anyone that people had multiple sides. Who would have thought, even six months earlier, that she could have betrayed her husband, loved a man who belonged to someone else, and fought for France, all while pretending to be the same industrious, proper wife she’d always been?