Read Online Love by the Morning Star by Laura L. Sullivan - Free Book Online Page B

Nazi lover? Perhaps he will strangle her with my faux sapphires one day. One must always look on the bright side, no? I got just enough for all the bribes and there I was, on a train at the border, absolutely penniless but with one very valuable piece of paper giving me permission to work here in England. Then—oh, Hannah, how it shames me to tell you!”
    â€œAs if anything could shame you, Traudl,” Hannah said with an impish grin. Waltraud had never shunned a dare, never followed a law if it did not please her, rarely bothered to determine the gender of a pretty lover before turning off the lights.
    â€œWait until you hear this, though. All my money was gone, and there, at the very border, a guard demanded one more bribe. ‘But I’m broke,’ I protested. He claimed a woman always has a way to pay. My dear, do you think I clawed his eyes out? Do you think I ripped off his little counterfeit family jewels so those baubles could replace the ones I sold?”
    If she had, Hannah knew she would never have made it to England. She’d be in Buchenwald. Still, she could not imagine her friend yielding to coercion what she loved to give so freely.
    â€œI did not. I reminded him that I am Jewish and it would be a crime for he, an Aryan, to, ahem, collect that particular sort of bribe from me. However—and this is the shameful part,
Liebchen
—there was in my train car a horrid personage of about sixty, an aunt or governess in charge of a gaggle of children, who had spent the entire ride lecturing her brood about the unnatural vileness of the Semitic people. You know her sort. I’m afraid I told the guard that she was of our party, a full-blooded Aryan turncoat smuggling out Jewish children, and she would be more than happy to pay our bribe.”
    â€œYou never!” Hannah gasped.
    Waltraud shrugged her shapely shoulders. “You would not believe a sixty-year-old woman could slap a strapping guard so hard he’d fall on his derrière. In the confusion I found another car with a kinder guard and went on my merry way. And la, here I am, cleaning fireplaces in blue in the morning, changing to black in the evening to fluff pillows and stalk those delicious young footmen in their dandified uniforms. There is a quite pretty chambermaid here too, with lava-colored hair and freckles like little red ants crawling all over her face, but it seems English girls have never heard of Sappho. Pity. But what are you doing here in the kitchen? I’m to find the new kitchen drudge and show her to her room. Have you seen her?”
    Hannah gave a hysterical hiccup of a laugh. “It is I!”
    â€œYou? But I thought you were the prodigal third cousin once removed, come home for the fatted calf? Was that just a story you cooked up for customs?”
    â€œIt’s true enough, for all the good it has done me. Perhaps if I’d cooked up a better story, I wouldn’t be here in the kitchen. Could you show me to my room, please? I’m very, very tired.”
    â€œTell me
everything
,” Waltraud said.
    â€œNo, please, just let me endure. I’ll be fine if I don’t have to talk about it. Talking makes me think, and thinking makes me talk more, and if I’m not careful I’ll storm up to Lord Liripip’s bedroom and kick him in his gouty leg. And I
promised
Mother and Father that I would come here and be safe, and surely they would send me away if I kicked Lord Liripip, so I must not even let a
thought
of the vast unfairness of it all creep into my mind.”
    But of course she told Waltraud everything.
    â€œI shall put sticks of strychnine trees in their fireplaces!” Waltraud swore, pounding her thigh with her fist. “I shall put pins in their pillows!”
    â€œNo, you mustn’t, or we’ll both be banished from Starkers.”
    â€œLet them banish us! We will form our own act, the angel and the devil, the lamb and the serpent. We would