A Portrait of Loyalty

by Roseanna M. White

  If he didn’t know better, he’d think someone had slipped something intoxicating into the lemonade. But no, this heady feeling had begun well before dinner. When Lily had come down the staircase, smiling at him and looking like a princess. When he’d escorted her into the church and helped her find the perfect position from which to take photos of the ceremony. When he’d stood in the back after the guests had gone and watched her pose the bride and groom and wedding party.

  For tonight, at least, she was his. And he found he liked the feeling.

  “Thank you.” She handed him the camera again, that smile she’d reserved for him on her lips.

  He took it and slid it into his pocket—the fifth time he’d done so in the hour since he offered to hold it for her. A not altogether selfless offer, as he’d been sure to tell her. The less time spent rushing to pick it up or put it down, the more time spent on the dance floor with her in his arms or her hand in his. She probably had no idea how pretty her blush was when he said such things.

  He smiled and patted the camera. “Safe until next time.”

  The orchestra closed out the current set, the moment of silence from them allowing other sounds to swell. Chatter, mostly in English, but some French reaching his ears too, no doubt thanks to the bride’s Belgian connections. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Had a storm moved in? The skies had been clear earlier. He strained to hear how long it might rumble, but the musicians launched into their next song.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  At the familiar voice, Zivon and Lily both turned to where Admiral Hall had joined them. Smiling, he gave a short bow and held out a hand to Lily. “I believe I claimed this next dance, Miss Blackwell, and photography duties shan’t get you out of it.”

  Lily laughed and tucked her hand into the admiral’s. “I wouldn’t dare try to escape it.” But she sent a warm glance over her shoulder to Zivon. A promise, that look.

  Zivon couldn’t have kept the smile from his lips had he tried. “You will find her the finest partner on the floor, Admiral.”

  “After Mrs. Hall, perhaps.” He grinned and led her away.

  Zivon watched them for a moment, though his attention shifted when Major Camden cut through the crowd and landed at his side. “Admiral steal your girl?”

  Zivon chuckled. “Momentarily, anyway. Where has yours gone?”

  “Talking to the duchess.” Camden pointed to a corner of the room, where the tall young lady Zivon had already been introduced to as a friend of Lily’s from the hospital stood talking to a blond woman with bobbed hair.

  His brows hiked up before he could check his surprise. “I was unaware that there was such high society among us tonight.”

  “She and De Wilde apparently like to talk physics and mathematics.” Camden shook his head as if bemoaning two adolescents obsessing over fashion. “And Ara has been friends with her for ages. The duchess, I mean. That’s actually how we met, at one of their dinner parties. I served with the duke in the Royal Flying Corps.” He indicated a gentleman now, who was talking to the bride’s brother.

  Zivon nodded. Given the crowd, he didn’t imagine there would be any call for him to be introduced to the couple, which suited him fine. He’d just as soon steer clear of anyone likely to have foreign contacts.

  “So I hear you’re a runner. What sort? Long distance? Sprinting?”

  An easy conversation to fall into, and one that didn’t require so much attention that he couldn’t indulge in a search now and then for Lily and Hall on the dance floor. He told Camden about his preferences, even mentioned that he and Clarke had been running together in the mornings.

  “The chap you eat lunch with most days?”

  Zivon nodded.

  Camden lifted a brow. “You know, I often pass Miss Blackwell leaving Charing Cross Hospital when I go to meet Ara for lunch. You could always come with me and invite her to join us. They being friends and all.”

  A thought that hadn’t occurred to him. But then, he hadn’t realized until this evening that Camden’s betrothed was Lily’s friend. Whitehall, he supposed, wasn’t so large a place. The web of relationships was just as tangled as the neighborhood he’d grown up in. He just hadn’t paused to realize that he was now part of this web. “That sounds pleasant. We should work out a date with the ladies before the night ends.”

  Camden said something that sounded agreeable, but Zivon’s gaze had been pulled away. Not, this time, by Lily. Rather, by the speed of a servant who darted into the room. No, two servants. One moved straight for Hall, the other for the man Camden had just identified as the duke.

  “This is not good, I think.” Panic had a very particular pattern to it—shaky movements, wide eyes, abrupt changes in direction as one sought the quickest path to one’s destination. And those two men were in full panic.

  The music came to another natural halt, and Zivon angled himself toward the window, listening to more thunder.

  But there was no rain on the glass of the French doors he’d been musing about luring Lily through. Only the reflection of the moon.

  Beside him, Camden muttered a word he didn’t know and tossed the door open. With the glass removed from between them and the night, the sounds from outside were clearer.

  Deadlier.

  Airplanes. Many of them. Distant roars. A boom from somewhere far enough away that it couldn’t rattle the glass.

  Just his soul.

  “God, help us.” Camden had stepped through the door, his head back. Eyes on the skies.

  Zivon had only to shift a bit to see what the pilot was looking at. Never in his life had he seen so many airplanes. None seemed to be on a course for them, but he knew that could change in an instant as the English gave the Germans chase. And from every direction, sirens wailed. Some in warning. Others in reaction.

  The musicians didn’t launch into another piece this time.

  Camden spun, his eyes seeking and finding someone. “Pearce! Where’s the nearest shelter?”

  Zivon turned too, in time to see a stranger nod toward the south. “Underground station not far off. We’ll get all the guests to it. Lina! You know the drill, luv. Ellie, Rosie, Retta, do your magic.”

  Zivon barely caught a glimpse of a quartet of women before they disappeared into the crowd, touching elbows here and smiling there and somehow turning the cluster of anxious people into neat and orderly queues aimed for the door. But they weren’t his concern. He strained onto his toes, wishing he were a few inches taller, looking for a flash of red-gold.

  She appeared a second later, her camera bag on her shoulder. She was still with Hall, who led her his way, both of them grim-faced.

  He caught the tail end of Hall’s mutter. “. . . don’t be ridiculous. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. You were but doing what I asked.”

  Asked? What had Hall asked of her? Something to do with a photograph, obviously. Something perhaps linked to the planes now flying overhead? Lily’s pale face made him think so.

  He hadn’t time to ask, though. Hall all but shoved Lily at him, his look fierce. “Get her to the underground now. If anything happens to her, her father will have both our heads.”

  With a swift nod, Zivon took her hand and pulled her into the queue.

  She didn’t seem very happy about it. “Arabelle said she was going to try to get to the sites that were hit already. I should go with her—help people. There will be injuries, and I have some training, after all.”

  He held tight to her fingers. “I was given a direct order from my superior. Do not try to make me disobey, Lily.” Because the thought of her out there in the thick of it, in danger—no.

  “But surely it’s safe where the planes have already struck—”

  “Nyet.” He had to swallow down the Russian. “No. There are scores of them up there. They will strike in waves. They could well hit the same areas multiple times if they’re following the river. Please.” He wove their fingers together, anchoring her there beside him. “Do not ask me to put you i
n danger. I cannot.”

  The way she met his gaze and held it made the crowd around them seem like nothing but a distant roar. At last, she nodded. “All right. To the shelter.”

  He couldn’t exactly be relieved, not given the rumble of engines overhead. But he was grateful. For the first time since that terrible day when he’d found Alyona on his doorstep, his soul whispered a prayer of gratitude rather than just a plea.

  The crowd moved with remarkable order out of the building and into the street. Sirens wailed, people shouted, but it wasn’t nearly as chaotic as Zivon had expected. Not like the mobs at home when the soviets had stormed their way to power. This was entirely different. Even so, he held Lily close to his side as the wedding guests merged into the street with theatergoers from nearby, all aimed at the same tube station. A few times he pulled her this way or that to avoid a run-in with another well-dressed Londoner but not as often as he would have expected.

  Within a few minutes, they had hurried down the steps, where most people shuffled about looking for a bench, as if they’d all done this before. Not surprising, he supposed, since London had been facing air raids since the war began. It was not something he had encountered in Russia. And, frankly, not something he had been anxious to experience here.

  “Here. Sit.” He led her farther down than the masses had gone, to where a bench still sat empty, though given the numbers surging in behind him, it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  Surprisingly, she obeyed. Her eyes looked a bit dazed again, distant. Zivon crouched down before her and held both her hands between his. “Lily. It will be all right.”

  As if to belie his promise, a boom sounded from somewhere in the distance. Just close enough to hear it, to feel the slightest tremor beneath them. Another followed on its heels.

  She shuddered and closed her eyes, shaking her head. “So many. Surely it wouldn’t have been so many if . . .”

  “If?”

  She shook her head again, folding her arms over the camera bag.

  He would have pressed, but another couple was joining them on the bench, the woman babbling about not getting to see the ending of the opera now. Of all the things to worry about. He stood and moved to stand at Lily’s side, more out of the way of the bodies still pushing in. The din was soon too great to really allow for conversation with the height difference, so he made no attempt to say anything. Just kept one of her hands in his.

  The slight tremors continued, along with the muffled booms. Based on the mutterings of their new neighbors, a raid had never gone on more than a few minutes. Many consisted only of a single bomb, perhaps as many as half a dozen. But they had far surpassed that already.

  They had been there half an hour when a new note among the voices snagged his attention. An older woman, well dressed, was pushing through the crowd, calling for an Estevan. She paused about ten paces away to ask a cluster of people if they had seen her husband, but she asked it in Greek. They all shook their heads in confusion more than in answer.

  Zivon squeezed Lily’s hand. “I should—”

  “Of course you should.” Color had returned to her cheeks, and she looked up with a muted smile. She returned the squeeze of his hand and then released it. “Go and help her.”

  With a collection of pardon-mes, he squeezed through the crowd and intercepted the woman. “Perhaps I can help you,” he said in Greek. “You are looking for your husband?”

  Pure relief washed over her face. “Oh, bless you! I know so little English, even after all these years. Estevan has always translated for me. He said he would be right behind me, but these crowds!”

  And when one couldn’t communicate with them . . . Zivon nodded and offered his arm. “Come, we will search for him together. What does he look like?”

  She described him down to the color of his waistcoat. Zivon didn’t recall seeing anyone of his look pass by, so he aimed her back toward the entrance and then past it. He spotted many of the wedding guests among the crowd, but his colleagues from the OB merely grinned and shook their heads when they heard him carrying on a conversation in Greek about the woman’s grandchildren.

  “Estevan! There you are!” With a thanks to Zivon, the matron hurried to her husband’s side.

  Zivon turned with a smile, glad that the search, at least, had a quick and happy resolution. He nearly ran headlong into another smiling man—the last one in all of London he’d hoped to see.

  “Zivon! Zivon Marin, of all the surprises!”

  Blast. Fyodor Suvorov was dressed for the opera or theater, as was the beautiful woman on his arm—Kira, he recalled absently. A former ballerina. He’d been invited to their wedding just before the war broke out. Zivon had no choice but to smile and reach to shake the hand held out to him. He answered in French, which was what Suvorov had spoken in. “Fyodor. You are in London?”

  He laughed. “We came for our honeymoon—and then were stranded here. Though there are worse places to be stuck, given that Kira has friends in England, and my cousin is here. Kira, do you recall Zivon Marin? The most brilliant linguist we had in the Foreign Ministry.”

  She smiled in the very way she’d been pictured on the poster Evgeni had once had tacked to his wall. “Of course. How good to see you again, Mr. Marin. Though I wish the circumstances were different.” She glanced around her with a concerned frown when a bigger tremor made itself felt. “Will it never stop? Ilya will be so frightened if she wakes up. And you know how Tionna fears these raids too. She’ll do little to calm her.”

  “Konstantin will surely discover something. He should be back any—ah, there he is now.”

  No. No, no, no. Zivon took a quick scan of the crowd, the escape routes, whom he could duck behind. But the people were packed too tightly in all directions but the one from which Nabokov came. There was no help for it. He’d done nothing to untangle the mess he’d made.

  And now it had caught him up.

  The ambassador was before him even now, drawing even with Fyodor. Eyes lighting in recognition. Reaching out a hand with “Filiminov, good evening!” even as his cousin said, “Are you familiar with . . . who?”

  Zivon sighed and granted himself a single moment of closed eyes. When he opened them, the confusion had already shifted to suspicion on both of their faces. There was nothing for it but to straighten his spine. Lift his chin. And say in Russian, “Forgive me. I didn’t know whom I could trust.” He executed a quick military bow to the ambassador. “Kapitan Zivon Marin of the Imperial Navy, Intelligence Division. At your service, sir.”

  14

  Lily leaned her head against the seat, grateful for the silence in the cab of the embassy car. Exhaustion had settled on her limbs as heavily as the guilt, but at least the sirens had finally ceased. The fires had been put out. If only she could silence the barrage of accusations in her mind so easily.

  This was her fault. Yes, she had been obeying Hall’s orders, but even so. Instead of convincing the Germans not to attack a superior force, they had only convinced them to send a superior force. If Londoners lay dead tonight, she was partially to blame.

  The streets had been choked with people trying to return home. And the drive, graciously offered by the Russian diplomats Zivon had introduced her to, had been interrupted with enough necessary stops that she had to think it would have been faster to walk home.

  They’d gotten out the first time the car stopped, when it became clear a bomb had struck the neighborhood through which they were driving. Or perhaps multiple bombs. The streets had been covered in glass from the windows, like a million crystals of snow. A terrible, heartbreaking beauty. Zivon had rushed to help a family push their way back into their battered home, but after making certain no one needed her help, Lily had drawn out her camera.

  To remind herself. So she’d never forget the cost of this work she’d thought was so good. So noble. So worthwhile.

  She’d gotten a few shots she couldn’t shake from her mind’s eye. One of a broken roof silhouetted against the mo
on. One of a passel of children, some awake enough to be playing and some succumbed to exhaustion on the pavement. One of Kira Suvorova embracing her toddler daughter upon gaining their thankfully spared home.

  And one of Zivon with an expression on his face she’d never seen before. He’d looked . . . haunted as he hurried to a doorstep to check on an adolescent girl who had slumped there in fatigue. She’d been well, but Zivon had seemed shaken to the core. They’d climbed back in the car after that, and neither had suggested getting out the next time the driver was forced to halt.

  They were alone in the cab now, the Suvorovs and Nabokov all safe in their respective homes. Zivon’s fingers had found hers again, and they still sat as close as they had when the diplomat’s wife was squeezed onto the seat with them.

  “This is not exactly how I envisioned the night going.” His voice was little more than a breath at her ear, slipping easily into the silent car. Quieting the thoughts pelting her heart. “I had grand plans for a moonlit promenade through the garden. Hopes that perhaps I could convince you to accept a kiss.”

  She levered her eyes open, though she could see nothing but his outline against the window. He’d wanted to kiss her? Had been planning it?

  Her fingers were keenly aware of his. Her bare arm—she had no idea where her wrap was, though she’d likely left it in the ballroom somewhere—was warm against his jacket. Those twelve inches she’d always felt between them were nowhere to be seen.

  Tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them away. They should have had that. They should have had that instead of this broken, shattered version of a night. She should have been coming home in a rapture over her first kiss instead of struggling to swim through the waves of guilt. Her voice, no louder than his, was stained with that yearning. “I may have been convinced to accept.”

  The fingers of his other hand skimmed her cheek. He’d taken off his gloves at some point. She’d scarcely worn hers all evening, as she found it difficult to operate her camera with them on, and the feel of his fingertips on her skin sent a frisson of unexpected wanting through her. That touch bade her turn her face toward his. Her breath lost to her, she obeyed.