The Butterfly and the Violin (25 page)

“How can you be so unfeeling, Margie?” Adele’s voice rose
enough that the uniformed driver took notice. He cleared his throat loudly.

“Hush, Adele.” Margie issued the light reprimand and tilted her head to the front seat. “Your mother may not be here,” she said, leaning in closer to Adele’s side, “but he is. You don’t want him carrying tales back to your parents, do you?”

Adele noticed the driver’s quick glance in the rearview mirror and once again turned her eyes out the window. “No. I suppose you’re right.”

“Look, I know you liked him. We all did,” Margie said, patting a gray gloved hand to her elbow, almost as one would do to comfort a grieving widow at a funeral. Perhaps she thought the action was being supportive. “He’s got a dashing smile—I’ll give him that. But it’s just not to be. He’s not good enough for you.”

“Not good enough?” Adele rolled her eyes. She might as well have been traveling with her mother, because Margie sounded like her carbon copy. If anything, Adele felt she was the one chasing a prize. A diamond in the rough maybe, but something special nonetheless.

“Come on, Adele. Look around you! We’re in the city,” she noted happily, then lowered her tone to a barely there but excited schoolgirl whisper. “It may not be Berlin, but Munich is just as exciting, I’m told. And we’re alone . . . It must be fate that your mother had a concert in Berlin this weekend. She’s playing her piano half a country away! Can you believe it? Let’s meet some cute officers.” Her whisper pitched an octave higher as she continued. “And after we ditch the driver up there, let’s go have the night of our lives, huh?”

Adele didn’t want to have the night of her life, that was for sure.

They’d finished playing a performance for the college. That had been magical—she always felt alive when she was playing, like she’d been transported to heaven somehow, and was lost in
the beauty of the music until she had to come back to earth at the end of the piece. But to try to go out on the town now in her painted smile and dolled-up clothes felt empty. Especially since she’d left her butterfly clip at home—this time, on purpose.

Margie flitted her lashes and unfurled her rouged bottom lip in a girlish pout.

“Please?”

Adele laughed, unable to fight off her friend’s amiable charms. She caved as she always did when her friend broke out the sulk.

“Fine. We’ll have dinner and I promise to smile the entire time.” She beamed at her friend with an exaggerated wide-toothed smile. “There. Happy?”

“And dancing?”

Adele shook her head. “Don’t press your luck.”

Margie shook her head and giggled as she looked around the busy streets. “We don’t need luck tonight, Adele. We’re on a single girl’s holiday if there ever was one.”

Whether fortuned with luck or not, Munich’s nightlife was certainly eye-opening. They had the driver drop them off at a respectable dining room that had what Margie described as “the stale look of a family restaurant.” No doubt the oblivious driver still sat reading the newspaper out front while they’d managed to sneak out the back of the establishment and scurry over to one of the bustling clubs a few streets over.

Sneaking into the
Blaue Kaskade
club hadn’t been Adele’s idea, nor did it sit well with her to risk getting caught and sent home on the next train just for a night of glitz and glamour. But her apprehension was short-lived. Always the master of persuasion, Margie used her wiles to convince the young man standing guard at the entrance to allow them to pass, but only after she’d promised him a dance once his shift was over.

“Are you really going to dance with him later?” She had to shout over the band’s riotous music. She grabbed onto Margie’s
arm and was tugged along, fearful that the swarm of people would envelop and separate them if she didn’t hold on for dear life.

Margie’s eyes danced around the room, her eyes sparkling with the lights and glamorous entertainers on the club’s small stage. “Are you kidding? I plan to be in a quiet corner with an officer long before then.”

Adele’s heart thumped in her chest. If it was staying away from the wrong kind of men they wanted, her parents had made a gross miscalculation in allowing their only daughter to parade around a strange city with the man-attracting Margie.

“Blue cascade indeed,” Margie said, noting the establishment’s name. “I see an ocean of dark uniforms all around us, moving like a sea of eligible men. Take your pick, honey.” She tugged on Adele’s sleeve to pull her closer. “Come on. Let’s go get a drink.”

Adele exhaled and followed, though she couldn’t say she really wanted to. She had a feeling she was going to be a young musician-turned-den-mother in short order. Margie had a bit of a wild streak that being apart from her own parents for a few days had evidently loosed with striking speed.

“Are you sure you want a drink?” Adele looked around, noticing the eyes of several groups of anxious young men washing over every inch of their forms. She reached up to close the top button of her jacket in response. “Can’t we just have a quiet dinner together?”

“What?” Margie half shouted over the band.

“Dinner,” Adele repeated, wishing the trombone players would take a rest so she could think for more than five seconds. “Can’t we have a quiet dinner?”

Margie scoffed. “A quiet dinner? In an exciting city far from home? You’re crazy, little Miss Sweetheart. I want to dance.”

It turned out Margie was more correct than she knew.

Adele was paraded in front of scads of young men as Margie carried her along, introducing them as musicians from Vienna.
Adele politely declined the drinks that were placed in front of them and ordered a soda water, but she watched as her friend downed tumblers of gin and hopped out to the dance floor like a desperate bird freed from a cage. She flitted around the oversized main hall of the club, moving from officer to officer, having the time of her life while Adele sat at their table and watched. After the fourth officer approached and asked her to dance, only to have to be politely rejected, Adele felt that she needed some air.

Pretending to have fun wasn’t working.

She made sure to check on Margie, who saw when she tilted her head toward the back door. Margie winked from the dance floor, giving a signal that she’d be fine until Adele returned. And with that, she made her way around the side of the room to the door in the back.

It wasn’t until she’d stepped through it that she could finally exhale. She rejoiced to have found peace outside.

There was no cloud of thick cigarette smoke to wave through, no screaming instruments or booming laughter echoing from the dance floor. The glittery flash of sequined dresses had been replaced by the dark stillness of the club’s back entrance. It was a common enough alleyway, with brick buildings on both sides and a thin strip of sky that offered a peek at the stars overhead. Water dripped from somewhere behind her, making the only sound near her.

What am I doing, Lord? I don’t even want to be here.

She took off her hat and turned it over in her hands, waving some fresh air in her face. The club had been so stuffy. She was glad to be free from it, if only for a moment.

As she turned around, a faded sign caught her notice.

Dachgarten
.

A rooftop garden in the heart of the city? There was a metal staircase, sturdy it seemed, and an arrow that pointed up to the
top of the building. Adele gladly left the club behind and without a second thought began a slow climb up the stairs.

The sign was inadequate to describe the beauty she found on the club’s roof. There was a virtual paradise, blanketed by the night sky overhead, with bloom after cascading bloom growing in abundance. Roses. Peonies. Even summer sunflowers that looked ready to explode with their own definition of yellow sunshine. She walked around the silent garden, moving between the rows of carefully tended blooms, drinking in their sweet fragrance and offer of unexpected solace. She noticed a leaded glass greenhouse at the far end, it too looking enchanted and twinkling in the streaming moonlight.

She breathed out a prayer of thanks. Though she was trespassing on a private sanctuary, it was still a tranquil moment. If she’d been gifted with any measure of peace in the midst of her uncertain life, she’d accept it, gratefully. Between her parents’ fervent wish that she marry well, the space that had been growing between her and Vladimir, and the overwhelming nightmare of war . . . she just wasn’t sure which way was up anymore.

“Adele.”

She whirled around at the whisper of her name, sure she’d find that some eager young officer had followed her up the stairs. Her fists were instinctively balled up in front of her, ready for a fight. But before she had time to feel threatened by the presence of a stranger in the quiet garden, the voice connected with the image of a man standing before her.

She squinted in the moonlight, shocked when she recognized his face.

“Vladimir?”

He approached with quiet steps and picked up the hat she’d dropped.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing here?” It was all she could manage to say.

He offered the hat to her.

“It’s not safe to walk about a strange city on your own.”

It wasn’t until he’d taken the several steps forward that she was close enough to read the expression illuminated by the moonlight on his face. Was he . . .
angry
? Forget the fact that she’d have been delighted to see no one else in the rooftop garden, the look on his face was rather murderous.

“But what are you doing in Germany?” She asked the obvious question a scant second before the next accusatory words tumbled out her lips. “How did you find me?”

“You don’t have any idea what could have happened up here? You’re alone, Adele. Alone and stupid, I might add. You’ve got to be smarter than this.” He issued the reproach easily and reached out with a hand that clamped like a vise around her elbow.

“I asked you a question.”

“You’re traveling on behalf of the orchestra. It wasn’t that difficult to find out where the group was going after your performance.”

“You followed me.”

“Adele, your parents may not want their daughter to be seen with a merchant’s son, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean they’d rather see her traipsing around Munich with that trollop friend of yours in there.”

She yanked her elbow out of his grip.

“I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”

So he thought to usher her back across the roof like a disobedient schoolgirl? If that was his intention, Vladimir Nicolai’s arrogance had grown in spades since the last time they’d seen each other. She had no intention of going quietly.

“You’re going back to your hotel.”

“Oh, am I? And how do you propose to make me go?” Adele stood against him, toe-to-toe, though he was quite a bit taller and more intimidating when he wanted to be. Surprise, surprise. But
he’d never met the real Adele Von Bron. She wasn’t easily frightened, especially when she was upset.

He shrugged and reached for her. “I’ll carry you if I have to.”

She slapped his hands back.

“What is the matter with you? You haven’t spoken to me in weeks.” She chucked the hat back at him, uncaring that the lovely white felt would be soiled when it rebounded and fell to the ground. “And now you show up here in Munich, shocking me out of my shoes and then issuing orders that I am supposed to follow? How dare you!”

He raised his voice too, frustration mounting. “Adele, have you forgotten? I’m not allowed to talk to you. The nice visit I received from your father after I walked you home from the dance hall assured that well enough. I’m only staying away on the general’s orders. You can’t fault me for honoring his wishes.”

“But you met me in the garden before each performance after that night,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Except for recently. Tell me why I waited for more than an hour before each performance this month and you never showed.” She looked down at the ground, vulnerability suddenly washing over her as she stared at a pile of potting soil at their feet. “You left me there alone, Vladimir. I think I deserve to know why.”

She chanced a look up at him then, meeting the stony resolve of his eyes.

He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I know you don’t understand—” When his hand reached out to touch her arm, she recoiled sharply.

In the car ride around the city, she’d imagined every officer Margie pointed out to have Vladimir’s face. At the time she’d felt only wonder and sadness that he’d not reached out to see her in weeks. But now? That emotion turned to anger.

How dare he drop out of her life with such indifference!

“Adele, I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am, but I just can’t see you right now.”

“You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.” She tapped her spectator heel on the paved rooftop floor, waiting for an answer. “Checking up on me, hmm? You don’t want to see me but you don’t want me to be in the company of anyone else either, is that it? Well, you needn’t bother with the protective act. There are plenty of young men down there who asked me to dance.”

“I know,” he whispered then, the words hinged on a half-hidden smile. “I saw them.”

Adele didn’t understand a single thing he was saying. So he’d been there the whole time, watching her?

Vladimir bent down to pick up her hat a second time. This time he brushed it off with his sleeve and, taking a few precautionary steps up to her, gently angled the hat on her head. He tipped the brim of the fedora just down to her right brow before taking a step back again.

“You saw me in the club?”

“Yes. And I saw the officers. I wanted to punch every single one of them, just like that night at the dance hall.”

She felt the anger ease from her shoulders and melt down her arms.

“Vladimir.” She shook her head and continued looking back in his eyes. “I don’t understand. I know my parents won’t allow us to see each other, but I would have waited.” She stopped, afraid she’d get weepy before him. “I waited before each performance and you never came. You can’t have it both ways.”