Isabelle returns to Occupied France after successfully escorting airmen into Spain. After MI9 debriefings in San Sebastian, she rides a train back to Paris with money sewn into her handbag—one hundred forty thousand francs to fund safe houses—and a formal role as MI9’s primary contact, now called the Nightingale. Near curfew, she passes her old apartment but avoids her father for safety, returning instead to her current shabby lodging. At her door she senses someone watching and softly calls out for Gatan, confronting his months of shadowing her, but he remains hidden and silent.

In Carriveau, early February 1942 brings brutal cold and deep scarcity. Sick and weakened, Vianne struggles to keep Sophie fed as ration cards fail and fuel runs out. With Captain Beck gone for weeks, she sells the last of her family valuables to survive, finally taking her mother’s pearls from a hidden cache beneath the barn, accepting the loss of heritage as the price of food.

Three weeks later, Vianne’s illness worsens; after church she collapses in the snow outside Le Jardin. Sophie calls for Captain Beck, newly returned, and Beck carries Vianne inside and summons Rachel de Champlain. Rachel forces Vianne to confront that Sophie needs her alive, while Beck bluntly observes that Vianne has been giving all food to Sophie. When Vianne wakes a day later to a roaring fire and a tray of cafe9 au lait, cheese, ham, and bread, Beck orders her to eat, and Vianne gives in to hunger and relief despite her shame.

In early March 1942, as Allied bombing and constant aircraft make Paris tense, Isabelle bicycles through fog and rain to cross the demarcation line using forged Juliette papers. Carrying hidden cash and false identity documents for a nearby airman, she reaches Brantf4me in the Free Zone and enters an abandoned mill safe house by a cellar door and secret passage. Inside, she finds two downed airmen—Captain Ed Perkins, an American, and Ian Trufford, a Welshman—and rigorously questions them until satisfied they are genuine.

Isabelle feeds the men a meager supper and steels them for what comes next, correcting Perkins’s talk of hills— to mountains,— and promising they will not die under her watch even as he fears the many ways the escape can fail. By late May in Carriveau, Nazi enforcement hardens and arrests multiply through accusations and collaboration. Rachel reveals a new statute: Jews must sew and wear yellow stars labeled JUIF, purchased with ration cards, under threat of severe punishment. Terrified for Sarah, Rachel admits Beck knows she is Jewish; Vianne can offer no true comfort. Rachel explains the stars to Sarah, and Sophie offers to wear one too, but Rachel gently refuses, leaving Sarah to accept the humiliation with a heartbreaking Oui.—