Chapter 28
chapter
St. Peter’s Parish
If not for Bernardus Kroon’s build and gait, Ivy would never have recognized him.
Bernardus sat on a stool in the barn milking a cow as Uncle Arthur coached the city boy.
“Like one of your jazz men playing a trumpet.” Gerrit demonstrated with his fingers in the air.
“What do you know about milking cows?” Bernardus sent his friend a look as black as his dyed hair. In the three months since his injury, he’d grown longer hair and a mustache as part of his disguise. The ring had taken his photograph and was forging papers and ration cards for him.
“I know a lot.” Gerrit frowned in a serious manner, but with a glint in his eyes. “I saw a film once.”
Ivy laughed and nudged him with her shoulder, and Charlie and Uncle Arthur joined in the laughter.
At times like this, with Gerrit grinning down at her, surrounded by friends and family, Ivy could almost forget the war.
Almost.
A swastika armband circled Gerrit’s brown uniform sleeve. Ivy’s stomach protested the thinness of lunch. And Gerrit and Charlie were drawing and delivering maps as quickly as they could.
Yet moments of beauty were meant to be savored, and Ivy filled up at the green-blue font of Gerrit’s gaze.
Everything she’d found admirable in him from the start was true, and everything she’d found despicable was false. Thelma Galais had been right about him, and a pang of grief for her precious friend brought up a paradoxical smile. How Thelma would rejoice to see Ivy falling for Gerrit.
From what Ivy could see, he was falling for her too.
Uncle Arthur led the cow to the barn door. “Bring in the next girl, Benny.”
Using his crutch—and his anglicized name—Bernardus hauled himself up to standing. His left trouser leg hung loosely, and Aunt Opal had stuffed rags in the cavity inside his left shoe, a wooden-soled pair Uncle Arthur had bought with his own ration book.
Bernardus lost his balance and flung out one arm to right himself.
Ivy reached for him, then clamped her hands in the small of her back. He was doing well, and his stubbornness aided his recovery.
Everyone followed Uncle Arthur and Bernardus out of the barn, and whilst the men trailed into the pasture, Ivy fetched her sketch book, pencil, and a blanket from her bicycle.
The rain of the past few days had departed, and the rinsed-clean landscape called to her. Ivy spread her blanket under a tree and sat with her legs folded to one side and her green coat fanned over her legs for warmth.
Her pencil swept over the paper—the granite blocks of the barn, two cows, Uncle Arthur and Charlie, but not Bernardus or Gerrit.
Since Demyan’s death, she no longer gave her sketches to escapees. Her stomach clenched, but her art hadn’t caused his capture or execution, and she brushed away the guilt.
At least she now had more time to care for escapees, more time to draw, and more time to visit family. If only that extra time hadn’t arisen because the medical practice was ailing.
Ivy brushed away even more guilt. Thanks to Fern’s well-designed routes and Charlie’s kitchen timer and Aunt Ruby’s realistic timetables and Ivy’s dedication, she had improved in punctuality. Fern alone bore the blame for the recent decline in the practice.
Heaviness pressed on Ivy’s chest. Fern had barely spoken to Ivy in the past month, save to announce when she deposited her wages in the family bank account, as if those wages atoned for adultery.
What would become of her sister? Someday the Allies would win, and Bill would come home with Billy and Freddy, now ten years old.
Footsteps rustled through the grass, and Gerrit approached, smiling at her.
The heaviness melted away, and she smiled back. How hypocritical for Ivy to be falling in love with a man in a German uniform whilst she reprimanded Fern for doing the same. Yet there was no comparison.
Gerrit sat to her right and rested his elbows on his bent knees. “What are you drawing?”
She showed him, and his warmth radiated to her. Here, surrounded by the farm’s granite walls and hedgerows, she could lower her own walls.
“Very nice.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Can you draw me?”
Her cheeks warmed, and she added pencil strokes to the barn. If Gerrit only knew how many sketches she’d drawn of him. Then she chuckled. “I never took you to be vain.”
He returned the chuckle. “That is one thing I’ve never been accused of. No, I’m simply being selfish.”
“Selfish?” She sketched in more height to Charlie’s figure until he matched Uncle Arthur. “I would never accuse you of selfishness. Not the man who sent me reams of paper.” Charlie had finally confessed.
Silence beside her, and Gerrit fiddled with his fingers. “This request is selfish. To draw me, you’d need to look at me.”
How could she look at him? How could she bear up under the magnitude of his gaze? Yet how could she turn away so sweet a gift?
With a rush of breath and boldness, she flipped the page in her sketchbook and looked Gerrit full in the eye.
His gaze—so tender. His smile—so gentle. His expression—so affectionate.
All the breath rushed right back out of her chest. But not the boldness. Her pencil swished over the paper in her zest to capture the exquisiteness of the moment.
“Why are you not married?” he murmured, then he cringed. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
Less rude than Fern calling her a spinster at twenty-seven, and Ivy drew the curve of Gerrit’s ear. “I almost married a boy I met at Oxford. But he loved London more than he loved me, and I loved Jersey more than I loved him.”
Gerrit’s gaze drifted away to the scenery. “It’s beautiful here.”
“It was about more than the island.” Ivy guided her pencil to convey the length of Gerrit’s jaw. “All my life I’d dreamed of practicing medicine with Dad and Charlie.”
“Charlie?” A frown twisted the lips she yearned to draw, to touch.
“He wanted to be a physician too.” Her mouth turned down as well. “Before the occupation. He left school to help the family.”
“He’s young,” Gerrit said. “The war will be over soon.”
Ivy didn’t want to talk about the war. Not today. Not with Gerrit sitting so near. She gave him a teasing little smile. “You’re twenty-eight, yes? Why are you not married?”
“Ah, only fair.” A smile flicked up, and he flexed his left hand in front of her. “You know me. In the time it takes me to decide to pursue a woman, she falls in love with someone else.”
Yet his slow, deliberate, precise way of thinking made him more attractive to her, and she poured her own affection into her expression.
Gerrit’s chest expanded. “If these were normal times, I would be thinking about asking you out to dinner.”
“Would you?” The words slipped from her mouth, barely audible. “I’d say yes.”
“These aren’t normal times. You mustn’t be seen with me in public.”
“No.” Once again he showed as much care for her reputation as for her safety. What a remarkable man.
He gestured to the sketch pad. “You stopped drawing.”
The pencil had fallen into her lap. For the first time she could remember, she didn’t want to draw what she saw—although she never wanted to forget. “I—I just want to look.”
Gerrit dropped his gaze to his hand. He flexed his fingers once, fumbled for her hand, and wrapped his fingers around hers. A hesitant little smile.
Soaring, filling, fulfilling, and she squeezed his hand and leaned into his solidness.
“See?” He lifted their entwined hands. “It took me over a year to hold your hand. I’m hopeless.”
Hopelessly adorable. Then a giggle erupted. “I can’t believe I’m holding hands with a Todt.”
Gerrit wrinkled his nose. “I can’t believe you are either. I’m not sure I want to associate with a woman who’d do such a thing.”
“Gerrit!” She laughed and nudged him with her shoulder.
He grinned, broad and bright, but then his smile softened. “Thank you for doing so.”
She studied the brown wool encasing his long arms and legs. “I can’t imagine what it must feel like to wear that uniform.”
“Awful.” He squirmed his shoulders and legs. “It feels like—have you ever spilled something on yourself in the morning, and you have to spend the day damp, sticky, stained, everyone staring at you? All you can think about is changing your clothes. Well, that’s what it feels like. Only worse.”
Ivy murmured her sympathy, and she stroked his hand—the bones that had been crushed defending the weak, the muscles that drew enemy fortifications at great risk. Was it possible to fall in love with a man based on his hands?
“Everyone . . .” His voice sounded husky, and he cleared his throat. “They’re all in the barn.”
The weight of his gaze strengthened as did the pressure of his shoulder against hers, and she glanced up.
His face drew nearer, his eyes took on a smoky haze, his lips parted—and met hers.
Soaring, filling, fulfilling.
She fell completely.