The Butterfly and the Violin

The Butterfly and the Violin Read Online Free PDF

Book: The Butterfly and the Violin Read Online Free PDF
Author: Kristy Cambron
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, Contemporary, Ebook, Christian
to her stomach. Even now, she could look back at Vladimir’seyes and see that he was struggling with the same reality. They had to go. They had to perform. They had to sit and play and then mingle amongst some of the same men who may have pulled the trigger on her innocent friends the night before.
    “I’ll go.” Vladimir brushed a hand across her cheek. “I will go if only to keep a watchful eye over you. Because all of this is my fault, you know.”
    “How could what happened last night be your fault?”
    “Not last night, Adele. I should never have allowed your stubbornness to overtake my better judgment. You never should have been involved from the beginning. And if I can help it, you never will be again.”
    She chose to ignore the fact that he’d called her stubborn.
    “Who is going to help you, then?” Adele challenged him, wishing her hands didn’t hurt so—they’d have fit nicely on her hips at the moment. “Someone has to help you get Sophie out.”
    “You cannot. I won’t let you.”
    “You can’t stop me,” Adele countered. “I was responsible for Sophie last night. Her mother—my friend Elsa—she trusted us. I can’t forget that trust just because she’s gone. How can you think I could go on without seeing her daughter out of this godforsaken place? Sophie is the last survivor of her family. We must help her.”
    “I didn’t say I refused to help her.”
    “She’s only a child.”
    “And she is also a Jew.” Vladimir’s face revealed nothing but a stony resolve in response to her pushing. “For that, they’d kill you for even knowing she is alive, even with your family’s connections. They wouldn’t think twice about sending you to one of the camps or, God help us, doing something worse to you. I can’t let you go any further with me in this.”
    “Where is she?”
    Vladimir sighed and shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
    “So you expect me to go to that ball tonight, to wear somepretty dress and a smile and act like last night didn’t happen? Whether I play or not, you know me well enough to know I cannot stand by and do nothing.”
    Adele could not believe he would try to shut her out now.
    “Look at your hands, Adele. This was bad enough.” Vladimir kissed one of the bandages and braced an arm under her elbow as if to help her stand. “We had a close call last night and I won’t let that happen again.”
    “You can’t protect me from everything,” she insisted, swinging her legs over the side of the cot so she could stand up to him on her own. “This is my life. I can do with it what I choose.”
    “You’re correct. I can’t protect you from everything, but I can protect you from this. This is within my control.” Vladimir turned toward the doorway of the kitchen, their voices having alerted the doctor’s wife to come and check on them. He addressed her with a weary sigh. “My apologies, ma’am. We were just leaving.”
    “That’s it? We’re supposed to go back to our old life like nothing’s happened?”
    Adele had wanted to hug the life out of him when he’d walked through the door. Now she wanted to wring his neck. How dare he presume to shut her out! Didn’t he understand that she had more than a passing attachment to him? Didn’t he know that she wanted to do something meaningful with her life, and with him?
    “You said you would play tonight, Adele, and I believe you will. You’re far too stubborn to let them ever get the best of you.” Vladimir tilted his head down in a formal nod to her. “But as for the rest of it? That was the first and last time I allow you to be put in harm’s way.”
    She folded her arms around her middle, feeling a void that had opened up between them.
    “You need a coat,” he said before stepping from the kitchen.He returned but a few seconds later with a long wool coat in a deep claret. “Here,” he whispered, and slipped it over her shoulders.
    Adele looked at the pearl buttons that lined the front of
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