The Blood of Lorraine by Barbara Pope Page B

just because a few are Rothschilds!” Giuseppe grinned. “I knew that, my boy, or, I should have known that. I just wanted to get you going. I know it’s not right.”
    That was always the most important thing for Giuseppe Falchetti. What was right. What was just. If all men were as good and generous as Clarie’s father, Martin thought as a familiar warmth flooded his body, he would not have to worry. How he loved this man!
    But all men were not like Giuseppe Falchetti. This is why Martin had to proceed with care through the thickets of prejudice and courthouse politics. Making sure that no one was listening, Martin continued in a low voice, “So I need to hold the Thomases until they come around to telling the truth, so as not to start a panic.”
    “Well, I hope it won’t be too long.” Giuseppe pounded his fist on the table again, lightly this time, and grumbled, for the sake of argument, “That’s not right either.”
    Martin leaned back and smiled as the man he considered his second father found a way to come back to the old argument that Martin should be defending workingmen instead of persecuting them. Only this time, Martin realized, as he tilted his glass and peered at the amber liquid, something was missing. Clarie, eyes sparkling, laughing, shaking her head in delight as her “two men” sparred. What a fool he’d been. Of course she would not be afraid or superstitious because he had seen a mutilated, dead baby. Of course she’d condemn a slander against the Israelites. She believed in republican ideals every bit as much as Martin. That’s why she had taken the radical step of training to be a teacher in a public girls’ high school. She had struggled, was still struggling to do something so few of her sex had done. And he had not trusted her.
    “Bernard,” Giuseppe tugged at Martin’s sleeve. “She’ll get over it. I know my girl.”
    “Of course,” Martin mumbled. She would. He would see to it. Even if she turned her back on him tonight, pretending to be asleep, they’d talk tomorrow. He’d cajole and beg and explain until she understood what a loving fool he was. They had time. A lifetime.
    Giuseppe got up and slapped Martin on the back. “Let’s go. We’ve got to get you back to my daughter.”
    They descended into the cold, clear night, linking arms in silence as they fought against the wind blowing up from the railroad station, feeling comfort in each other’s presence and in the knowledge that their night would end in something more important than words—pressing together, heart to heart, in a manly embrace.
    Yet this was not to be. For when they strolled into the hotel’s lobby, they spotted Rose, trembling, waiting for them by the counter.
    “The crisis has begun. Monsieur Stein has gone to fetch the doctor, and Madame is staying with her. You must come, both of you quickly.” For just an instant Martin could not move, his limbs rooted into the wooden planks of the hotel floor, as his mind repeated, over and over, It is too early . And then he flung the door open and ran up the hill.

9
    Tuesday–Wednesday, November 20–21
    M ARTIN GASPED FOR AIR AS he reached the entrance to his building. Leaning against the wall to catch his breath, he frantically fumbled through his coat pockets for his keys. He needn’t have bothered. Like magic, the door slowly crept open.
    “Monsieur Martin, Monsieur le juge?” a timid voice called out.
    “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently pulling the door hard from the hands of the Steins’ younger daughter, Rebecca. She huddled out of the sight of anyone who might be passing in the street, a trembling sentry in thin, red cloth slippers, a wooly blue nightcap, and a white flannel bathrobe, which she grasped with both arms across her waist.
    “Maman says everything is going to be fine.” Her dark eyes, wide with concern, and her hair, a crinkly black mass let down for bedtime, accentuated the pallor of her face. The poor girl seemed every bit