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But I think it's very funny. Olivia, I don't love him. I never did.

I don't want him back. He's yours, if you want him." He was like a doll
they had shared, and now Victoria was giving it to her, and Olivia
stared at her in amazement. "That's why I never came back last summer.

.. I didn't want to .. . I couldn't .. ." And then she smiled again,
"when actually did this happen? When did .. . er .. .

things change between you, I mean? "

"After I found out you'd survived the sinking of the Lusitania, " she
said meekly. She was so happy being back with Victoria, it was like a
miracle being there with her. Even with the bandages, she was still the
same as she'd always been, there was that raw, sharp edge to her that
Charles had sensed the night before and suddenly remembered.

"I take it that was your idea of a little celebration? " Victoria
grinned, even near death, still full of mischief.

"You're disgusting, " Olivia whispered, trying not to smile at her, but
smiling anyway. She was so happy to be here, and so relieved that her
sister wasn't furious at her.

"No, you are disgusting, " Victoria continued "I give you a nice chaste
relationship with a man who hates me and wouldn't sleep with me if you
paid him to, and what do you do with him? You seduce him. You're the
one. You're the seductress in the family. You deserve to be married to
him. Personally, I can't think of a worse fate, but actually, you both
look very happy together. He's very lucky."

"So am I, " she whispered. And as Victoria looked at Olivia, her heart
filled with love for her, she thought of how fortunate she herself had
been, for a while, with Edouard and their baby.

"So what do we do now? " Victoria asked her seriously. "We have to tell
him."

"He's going to hate me, " Olivia said, looking pale, but also aware that
they had to do it.

"He'll get over it, " Victoria reassured her. "He's a decent man.

He'll have a fit for a while, but what's he going to do, leave a woman
he loves, because I'm sure he must, and two babies? Don't be stupid.

Speaking of which, " she looked sheepishly at her older sister, "I have
a confession to make."

"Yes." Olivia pretended to make the sign of the cross over her and they
both giggled. "After everything I've done, I hope it's a good one." The
two still had the most remarkable bond and understanding between them.

It was suddenly as though they'd been apart not for a year, but for only
minutes.

"I had a baby three months ago too. Not twins, thank God, but a
beautiful little boy named Olivier, " she said proudly, wishing she had
a picture to show Olivia, but she didn't. "Maybe you can guess who I
named him after." For some odd reason, although Olivia knew she should
have been shocked, it did not surprise her. It was almost as though she
knew it before Victoria told her.

"So that's why you didn't come home last summer, " Olivia said pensively
but Victoria shook her head as gently as possible.

"No, it isn't. I just didn't want to. I don't think I even knew yet that
I was pregnant. His father was a very special man." She told her about
Edouard then, all he had been to her, all she had thought of him, what
they had planned, she cried as she talked about it, she had never met
anyone like him. She told her sister everything about him, and about how
he'd been killed. She knew now that life would never again be the same
without him. And Olivia knew as she listened to her, that her sister had
found the right man, here in Chalons-sur-Marne, with all the agony of
the war happening around them.

"Where is the baby now? " She told her about leaving him with the
countess at the cottage near the chateau. But one of the nurses had come
to give her the message two days before that the countess had gone to
her sister's house because there had been more snipers.

"I want you to take him home with you. I put him on my passport.

Yours actually. You won't have any trouble traveling with him, for
obvious reasons, as long as Charles doesn't mind you traveling on your
old passport."

"I think there's a lot Charles is going to mind after we talk to him,
but some of it he'll have to live with." He didn't have to stay married
to her, since they weren't anyway, but he couldn't stop her from taking
Victoria's baby home to New York, to safety.

"What about you? " she asked her then, sure she would get better now
that they were together.

"When are you coming home? " With the man she loved gone, and after her
injury, there was no point in staying here, but Victoria only looked
wistful.

"Maybe I won't have to, Ollie, " she said sadly, and a shiver ran down
her spine. More than anything, without Edouard, she felt as though she
had no home now. Olivia would stay with Charles, and she couldn't see
herself living in her father's house in New York she'd inherited, and
even less at Henderson Manor. The only place she wanted to be was with
Edouard, and she said as much to her sister.

"Don't say things like that, " Olivia said, looking frightened and hurt,
but it was almost as though Victoria didn't want to live without Edouard
now, even for her baby.

"He left Olivier his chateau, and his house in Paris. As soon as he was
born, he contacted his lawyers and redid his will. He wanted to be sure
his wife didn't get everything, but according to French law, Olivier is
protected anyway. And he has Edouard's name. When you get home, you
should get him his own passport in his own name." She was very concerned
about the baby, but Olivia was deeply worried about her.

"Why don't you come home with us? "

"We'll see, " she said vaguely, looking restless, and Charles came to
join them a little while later.

But everything had been said by then, and Victoria was getting very
leepy. He watched her for a few minutes again, and then they left.

He thought she looked terrible, but he didn't say that to Olivia.

Instead, they went to the mess hall for coffee.

And when they went back again afterwards, she was sleeping.

It was late that afternoon when they returned to see her again.

The nurse said she had a fever and they shouldn't stay long, but she
didn't say anything about what it meant, or there being any graver
danger.

Victoria had said that she wanted to see Charles that afternoon, she
wanted to tell him herself, she thought it was only fair, and when he
came in and stood next to her, she looked very pale, but strangely
peaceful.

"Charles, we have something to tell you, " she said softly.

Olivia couldn't imagine hearing it, let alone saying it, and her heart
was pounding. But Victoria had always been braver than she had. "We did
something terrible to you a year ago. It's not her fault, " she glanced
at Olivia but didn't say her name at first. "I want you to know that I
forced her to do it. I felt I had to." An odd chill ran down his spine,
as he looked at her. There was something frighteningly familiar about
her, those eyes, the coldness there, and yet there was still a strange
kind of excitement about her.

"I don't want to hear this now, " he said, wanting to run out of the
tent like a child running away from a punishment, but Victoria held him
firm with her gaze as she lay there.

"You have to, there is no other time, " she said almost coldly.

She wanted to get this over with, for all of their sakes. It was time
now.

She knew she had to do it. "I'm not who you think I am. I'm not even who
my passport says I am, Charles." She looked at him long and hard and he
knew as she lay there. He stared at Olivia openmouthe , and then back at
his wife again, the real one, who lay injured in the hospital tent in
Chalons-sur-Marne, not the woman he had lain with for a year, and who
had given birth to his children.

"Are you telling me .. . are you saying to me .. ." He knew, but he
couldn't bear to say it.

"I'm telling you something that you already know and may not want to
hear, " she said, still strong, even at death's door. But she knew him
well, despite her disdain for him. She had sensed his instinctive
intuition when he looked at her that she was the woman he had married,
and not the woman he had come from New York with.

Olivia felt tears in her eyes as she listened to her twin continue,
however painful * was for all three of them. "I'm telling you we hated
each other, and you know it. We would have destroyed each other, if I
stayed. It was an arrangement neither of us could live up to ..

.

she loves you, you know .. . Olivia has been kind to you for a year.

I haven't been there, but I can see it in her eyes, and yours ..

.

you love her too. Charles, you never loved me, and you know it." She was
right but that only made her words sting more. If she had been whole, he
thought he would have slapped her, but now he couldn't. He could only
stare at her in horror, suddenly forced to face something he hadn't ever
allowed himself to even think o And forced by her hand to face it now,
he looked at his real wife in fury.

"How dare you tell me this now .. . how dare you .. . both of you .

.." He was raging at them, in as soft a voice as he could muster, with
hundreds of men around them. "You're not children, playing games ...
this switching you were always so proud of .. . you were my wife, you
owed me something, Victoria, more than this .. ." He was almost
speechless with outrage.

"I owed you a lot more than I gave you. All I ever would have given you
is pain. And you would never have let yourself love me. You were too
afraid .. . you were too hurt by what you'd lost, but maybe Olivia ..

. maybe she gave you what you wanted. You're not afraid of her, Charles.

If you were honest about it, you'd admit you love her. You don't love
me, you hate me." For Olivia's sake, if nothing else, she wanted him to
see that.

"I hate both of you, and I'm not going to stand here and let you tell me
what I did or didn't do, should or shouldn't have done, or who I love,
because it's convenient for you. I don't give a damn if you are sick, or
wounded, or God knows what. I think you're both sick, you play with
people like toys. Well, I'm not a toy for either of you. Do you hear me?
" he said, raising his voice finally, staring at both of them in total
rage, and then he strode out of the tent as fast as he could, fighting
back tears, unable to believe it. Olivia was crying softly by then, and
Victoria was holding her hand as tightly as she could, which wasn't
very.

"He'll get over it, Olivia .. . believe me, he doesn't hate you .

.

.

" But she was getting agitated and the nurse came to ask Olivia to
leave.

She kissed her sister's cheek gently then, and promised to come back
later. They were all too overwrought to talk any longer.

Olivia looked for Charles outside, but she couldn't find him anywhere,
and then finally, she found him pacing outside the men's barracks.

"Don't talk to me, " he said angrily as she approached, and he held a
hand out as though to stop her. "I don't even know you. You're a
stranger. I don't know any decent human being who could do a thing like
that to anyone. Not for a day, or a year, or thirteen months, and
certainly not in order to have two babies. It's obscene, you're immoral,
both of you. You're sick. You should be married to each other." He was
so enraged he was shaking.

"I'm sorry .. . I don't know what else to say .. . I did it for her at
first .. . and for you and Geoff. I didn't just want her to leave you.
It's true." She was sobbing almost beyond control as she said it.