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He had gone to her again the night before, surprising her in the dark stillness so absolute it reminded him of when he and Jules Verne had slipped out to L’Homme aux Trois Malices for a celebratory drink before shipping out with Captain Grant. Nemo and Verne had stood below young Caroline’s window and said their goodbyes.

This time, Nemo had given her another farewell but, oh, so much sweeter, so much more painful than that other one. He had tapped on her door, standing in the shadows in the silent streets. He’d seen her astonished expression and sudden welcome as she whisked him into her home, long after midnight.

Caroline begged him not to go off to war, promising him all her love if he stayed here in Paris. But Nemo knew he could never resist the temptation of her. Every secret meeting, every stolen kiss would grow easier, and they would grow careless. Someone would see, and disaster would follow.

And so they had made love one more time, bathed in the yellow-orange glow from a single oil lamp. They had room, and clean sheets rather than a crowded bunk on a British ship. Nemo wanted to stay in her arms forever.

But instead, he had departed before dawn, to prepare for the train.

Now, in this crowd where emotion hung as thick as a spring fog, Nemo just wanted to hold her, to smell her hair and feel her lips against his. But he could not. Not here . . . not for another year. Not until he returned from the Crimea.

Beside them, the locomotive hissed and snorted while its boilers built up steam for departure from the Paris railyards. The sulfur smell of coal smoke and thick grease lingered close to the tracks.

French volunteer soldiers kissed their sweethearts, accepted bouquets, took hair ribbons as mementos. Nemo felt pain at remembering how Caroline had given the same sort of gift to two young men anxious to set off to sea. Now, without any conception of the horrors of war, these eager soldiers crowded onto a train that would take them to eastern Europe, where they would board a ship to take them to the Black Sea. They cheered and teased each other about going off to fight for their country.

But Nemo had seen men slain by the violence of other men, and he was not so anxious to reach the battlefields.

Amidst cheering and clasped hands and tearful goodbyes, Caroline stood stiffly, keeping her promise to Nemo and not showing her feelings here, especially not in such a crowd. Instead, the two had to embrace with their eyes alone. But they communicated greater love with their soulful expressions than did any of the moonstruck couples in the train station, even without kisses or passionate words. Caroline’s simple smile spoke more eloquently to Nemo than any love letter, any vows.

“Don’t worry about me, Caroline,” he said. “I am an engineer. I will make life more tolerable for our soldiers, and I will stay far from the fighting.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Somehow, André, I cannot imagine you staying far from anything -- but you must promise me that you will return.”

“There is nothing I want more. Nothing . . . other than for time to pass more quickly. After a year, we can both be happy. I have waited all my life for you, but these last months will seem the longest.”

“André, I will count the days.” Her sigh turned into a smile. “Alas, I wore no colorful hair ribbons to give you this time.”

“No need. I have more thoughts of you than I can possibly revisit in twelve months.”

Nemo was the last man to board the car. Though her carriage driver waited impatiently, Caroline refused to move until the train was long gone. . . .

#

Nemo rode with a motley crew of soldiers on the troop train across Europe, then aboard a fast ship through the Mediterranean and the Bosporus Straits into the Black Sea, where battles raged on the Crimean peninsula.

The strategic deep channel in front of the Sevastopol naval base had been used for centuries, first by the Tatars and then the Ottoman Empire. The Russian military had sought refuge in the walled city after sweeping through the Ukraine, taking over Moldavia