Beatrice brings baby Anna to her grandmother at the LaGrance ancestral home, where Max is coincidentally stationed to liaison with British soldiers. As Beatrice ingratiates herself with the British generals, she and Max rekindle their connection. Later, she sees the devastation in Ypres and takes notes for the embassy on the French war organization style. As a new bombardment starts, Max drives her away, but a shell explodes near their car. Mostly uninjured, Beatrice realizes that she could die at any moment. She and Max steal away to relative safety under a tree and cling to one another.

As Adrienne and the other Lafayette women enter Le Puy, an angry mob rushes their carriage, hurling insults. When they arrive at the local justice department, Adrienne writes a petition protesting her arrest. People have intimated that she should divorce Gilbert to protect herself, but Adrienne signs her petition as “la femme Lafayette,” as a show of commitment.

Beatrice purchases a bungalow in Paris, where she spends nights with Max. Air raids on Paris are now routine, and when Max is called back to the front, he proposes to stay with Beatrice by volunteering to help Baron LaGrange’s delegation in New York. Both he and Beatrice leave Paris together, and after their trip, Beatrice is reunited with her children and Emily, to whom she recounts Willie’s behavior at the restaurant and her love of Max. While in New York, she continues her funding work for the orphanage and introduces Max to all the important social circles. When they go to Fort Ticonderoga for a weekend, Max paints a picture of a future together where they share a house, have more children, and are happy. He tells her that he tires of hiding their relationship, but Beatrice deems divorce impossible during the war. Still, when Max returns to France, it is with hope for their future.

As the Allies approach, Nazis now occupy all of France, and it is rumored that Chavaniac will soon be repossessed by a Wehrmacht general. A visit is planned on Armistice Day, and though Marthe could leave, she chooses to stay and participates in the baroness’s plan to hide the castle’s valuables and make the estate unappealing. The Kohn children worry about their father, who hasn’t written in a long time. Marthe, who knows that Uriah is being detained, cannot bring herself to tell them the news. Instead, with Travert’s help, they come up with a plan to make a false permit to transfer Uriah to safety. On Sunday, she grabs supplies from Brioude, and Travert brings her copies of the official stamps for her to forge before leaving her at the train station. There, a young German soldier, whom Marthe judges to be no more than 14, hassles her, but she ignores him. When she is later approached by a Gestapo officer named Obersturmführer Konrad Wolff, he insists that the young soldier give her his chocolate for troubling her. He then unceremoniously decides to beat the young soldier to death. When Marthe returns to the castle, shaken, Anna proposes to stay with her, but Marthe chooses to have Travert remain with her instead. At night, she devises a new method for falsifying documents by using an old photograph of Maxime Furlaud, whom she believes might be her father.

The government officials in Le Puy decide to keep Adrienne, her daughter, and her aunt instead of sending them along to Paris, where they would die. They also plan to send Lafayette’s communications to Paris so that they can be investigated for treason. Adrienne insists on reading the letters to them before they are sent, however, and wins their favor. The three women are returned to Chavaniac, where the castle has been ransacked of food and valuables. They are now under house arrest and have lost all of their assets, so the villagers provide them with food on Christmas day. Meanwhile, the king and queen are beheaded, and Gilbert remains a captive. George Washington does not provide any help as Adrienne had hoped, and just as she is praying at the local church, thugs arrive to arrest the priest for not taking the nonjuring oath. Adrienne follows them to Brioude to plead for the priest. In November, a new warrant for Adrienne’s arrest is issued. The commissioner tries to incite the villagers to witness the arrest, but in a show of quiet solidarity for Adrienne, none of them leave their homes. In prison in Paris, Adrienne learns that her sister Louise, her mother, and her grandmother have all been arrested as well.

Uriah Kohn is freed and starts working for the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) to smuggle children out of France. Marthe agrees to collaborate and make new papers for the children, along with the false papers that she has been making for the Resistance and the maquisards. Meanwhile, Travert struggles with the knowledge of all the people he cannot save. When Marthe next sees Madame Pinton, the woman gives Marthe her blessing for her wedding to Travert and commends her bravery. The women also in Chavaniac organize a subtle celebration of Bastille Day in defiance of the Nazis. Though Travert opposes her participation, Marthe joins the women in subtly wearing the colors of the tricolor flag and marching in the streets of town. The whole town watches, and Marthe thinks it feels like hope.

Imprisoned with other aristocrats, Adrienne watches as many are called to be beheaded by the guillotine. When she is told that she is next, she begins to pray, and news arrives that Robespierre has died. Just as she rejoices, she is told that her sister, mother, and grandmother have already been beheaded. Stricken with grief and guilt, she is about to die by suicide when she remembers Gilbert’s captivity. Her love for him brings her away from the window ledge from which she had intended to jump. The wife of the new American ambassador, Mr. Monroe, then comes to find her and tells her that Mr. Morris petitioned to keep her alive. Through the efforts of her American connections, Adrienne is transferred from prison to prison and away from the guillotine, but she becomes sick and feverish. A priest comes to find her and tells her of her family’s last moments; even in the face of the guillotine, they expressed their love for her. After a year of imprisonment, Adrienne is released into the care of the American ambassador. There, she decides to send her son to George Washington so that he might remain safe while she goes to Austria to rescue Gilbert.

After 10 months in New York, Beatrice is charged with leading a labor delegation to France to help with war supplies in response to the rise of communist dissent in manufacturing plants. Soon, however, a U-boat is spotted at sea. Torpedoes from submarines are launched, and the naval guard accompanying the delegation engages the attackers. The steamer manages to make it to England, and Beatrice is welcomed by Winston Churchill at the docks. As the delegation travels through Great Britain, Beatrice advocates for workers’ reforms that do not support the Germans’ agenda. She meets the British king and queen and then moves the delegation to France to meet the exiled government of Belgium. In Verdun, she is reunited with Max and learns about the mutinies among the French military and the efforts that Philippe Pétain has made to restructure the French military and hold the line until the Americans arrive. She and Max share a night of romance, and she tells him about her real name (Minnie Ashley) and explains that she changed it to Beatrice to renounce her past as a performer and risqué cigarette card model. When Max jokes about her name being Minnie Furlaud after the war, she suggests changing it to Minerva instead.

In Paris, Beatrice works to settle as many orphaned and refugee children as she can. Eventually, she goes to confront Willie, and they talk of their children and his pride in her accomplishments. She tells him that she is committed to her relationship with Max, and they argue over their divorce. Suddenly, a call interrupts them as someone claims to have found Victor’s body. Both she and Willie go to identify him, but Willie convinces Beatrice to wait behind and not taint her memory of Victor. He returns, initially unsure, but decides that the body is not Victor’s. In a somber moment, he apologizes and recognizes that her talents have always transformed the raw possessions he gifted her into something extraordinary. He tells her that he will accept whatever decision she makes about Max. Both agree that their marriage had a good run.

Two Gestapo officers visit Chavaniac in August to inspect it, setting everyone on edge. One of them is Obersturmführer Wolff; he wants to see some of the artifacts collected at the castle, such as Lafayette’s sword. However, Anna lies and insists that the artifacts are not on the premises because of the renovations, as she worries that they’ll find Washington’s dueling pistols. The two Gestapo officers leave to meet with the baron and promptly arrest him. Distraught, the baroness decides to hide the pistols after they leave so that they cannot be used against her husband. Marthe proposes to hide them instead so that no one will suspect the baroness if she is caught. She hides them in the castle’s secret passages. Later, when no one can find out where the baron was sent, the baroness decides to take matters into her own hands and leaves the castle to try and save her husband.