Excerpt from The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Oh dear." Marianne smiled.

How many parties had they attended together? Too many to count since their days as children. And Connie was always an entertaining reporter—an interested observer of the human animal.

It was what had forged their friendship: the aptness of his perceptions, and her own appreciation for these as a person less gifted with insight.

"And Benita?" she could not resist asking. "Is she sleeping?"

"She's a good girl," Connie answered, stretching out his legs, the firelight creating comically long shadows of his shoes. His handsome face looked tired. There were circles beneath his eyes.

"Does that make it easier or harder for her to go to sleep?"

Connie shrugged. "She was exhausted."

Marianne pulled herself more upright in the chair and stared quizzically at her friend. "What does she think? About this rioting and thuggery, about what's happening in the world?"

Connie rolled his head over the back of his chair to look up at her. Even exhausted, his face was strikingly handsome: the fine, clear features that had made him beautiful as a boy had never thickened or dulled. Instead they'd become sharper, and straighter—still capable of startling her with their symmetry.

"You don't approve of Benita," he said. "I knew you wouldn't."

"That's not fair, Connie—why would you think—?"

"I know you," he said.

"What—am I not an open-minded, accepting person who is happy to see her friend in love?"

Connie narrowed his eyes. "Open-minded, yes. Accepting, no.

You are exacting."

Marianne frowned. "Well, she is young."

Connie laughed.

"Will she be a partner to you? In all you do?"

Connie sat up suddenly, and for a moment Marianne was afraid she had gone too far. But he did not storm off. He turned his chair to face her and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. "Not like you and Albrecht, no," he said. "But there are other kinds of unions. And I love her."

She was surprised by the intensity of his declaration. Was there, in his assertion, an implicit criticism of her own marriage?

"You must promise me something," Connie said.

"What is it?" Marianne frowned.

He reached forward to take her hand and a shock raced through Marianne at his touch. "If things go wrong—and they may go wrong—you must help her. She is a simple girl and she won't deserve whatever mess I might drag her into." An uncharacteristically diffident, almost boyish look passed over his face. "And you must help her raise my child."

"Your—?" Marianne began, astonished. "She is—?"

Connie nodded. "Will you promise me this?"

"Connie, of course I will, you know I will, but—"

"Is that your word?"

Marianne studied his face, as serious as she had ever seen it, and felt a chill of premonition.

"You have my word," she said softly, and felt the full gravity of her promise well up around them.

And then, in a moment that Marianne would replay in her mind again and again, not just that night but over the years, long after Connie was dead, Albrecht was dead, Germany itself was dead, and half the people at the party were either killed, destroyed by shame, or somewhere between the two, he leaned forward and, with the same intensity he had used to extract her promise, kissed her. It was a kiss that dispensed with any trappings of romance or flirtation, that leapfrogged (and here was a question that would gnaw irritatingly, irrelevantly in her mind forever) maybe even over desire, straight into the sea of love and knowledge. Here were two people who understood each other. Here were two people aligned in something greater than themselves.

Excerpted from The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. Copyright © 2017 by Jessica Shattuck. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.