A Portrait of Loyalty

by Roseanna M. White

  He was so close already, to whisper in her ear as he’d done. Just that small turn had his nose brushing her cheek, and somehow he made it feel like an intentional caress rather than an accident. Though she couldn’t see much of anything, she could sense his lips all but touching hers. Almost, nearly. But hovering there just out of reach.

  How could that moment of him not kissing her be so delicious? Something about the closeness, the near touch, the feel of his breath feathering over her lips . . . She pulled air slowly into her lungs, relishing it. Aware of his every heartbeat in the darkness. Or perhaps it was just her own. Maybe they’d synchronized.

  Then . . . then it seemed the air warmed between them, and it took her a moment to realize it was because his lips had taken the place of oxygen. They swept slowly over hers, as gently as his fingers had swept over her cheek. Stilled. Savored. And then the air was back, barely squeezing between them.

  Her breath shuddered out. She wanted to lean over, invite another perfect touch of his lips. And she might have, had the car not been slowing to a halt. She blinked into the darkness, vaguely aware that the roofline visible in the moonlight outside the window was the familiar one of Curzon Street.

  The hand on her cheek eased away with one last caress, the hand holding hers tightened around her fingers. She felt the space between them grow, returning to what was proper as the chauffeur exited the front of the car and came around to open their door. “Shall I carry your cameras?”

  Hearing his voice at a normal level made her blink. Pulled her forcibly back into the real world, the one with other people’s weddings and air raids and families slumped on sidewalks because of her.

  She handed him the bag that had been resting at her feet. “Thank you.” It was a strange exhaustion she felt, edged as it was with a relentless barrage of thoughts. She knew she’d have no rest as long as those images were burned into her mind. But maybe once she’d put them to paper, they would release her. “I think I’ll develop that last roll of film now.”

  “Lily.” Zivon chuckled as he climbed out, helping her to do the same with the hand he still held. “You have to be exhausted. You should sleep.”

  “I don’t think I can. Not yet.” And even if her mind eventually ceased tormenting her, it would then just begin replaying that perfect kiss. A far happier wakefulness, but even so.

  Zivon shook his head and led her toward her front door. “I have never met anyone quite like you, Lilian Blackwell.”

  Coming from anyone else, she might not have been sure that was a compliment. But coming from the man who’d just filled her veins with magic with a featherlight brush of his lips on hers, she decided it was the sweetest thing anyone could possibly say. “Thank you.”

  As they approached the door, it opened before them, Daddy barely giving them time to enter before he folded her into his arms. “Thank God. Blinker stopped by and told us you were safe, had taken shelter with the other guests, but even so. Reports kept pouring in of new strikes. There were over forty airplanes to reach England this time, I’m told—and nearly half made it all the way to London.”

  Her chest went tight at the numbers as Mama nudged Daddy aside enough that she could embrace Lily as well. Never had so many aircraft made it past their defenses. Lily shook her head. “Did you hear how many bombs fell?”

  “Not yet. Some failed to detonate, some did nothing but shatter glass, but many did serious damage.” Daddy looked past her, toward Zivon. He nodded at him but didn’t reach out a hand. “Thank you for seeing her safely home, Marin.”

  Zivon must have heard the strange, stiff note in Daddy’s voice as clearly as Lily did, given the way he straightened, then bowed a bit. “Of course, sir. I would do anything within my power to protect her.”

  Mama shot Daddy a look and then moved toward Zivon, hand outstretched and soon squeezing his fingers. “Of course you would. But unfortunately, there isn’t much in these situations within our control.”

  Lily’s brows drew together as she looked up at Daddy’s face. A bit of anxiety was to be expected on a night such as this, but why was he directing it all toward Zivon? “Is Ivy asleep?”

  That brought a bit of softening to her father’s face, anyway. Even the edges of a smile. “Yes. She was already in bed when the commotion began. And you know her.”

  Capable of sleeping through the apocalypse itself, they always joked. She grinned and shook her head. “I’ll have quite a story to tell her tomorrow. For now, I think I may develop the last of my film, taken at the sites we saw on our way home. I’m a bit too keyed up to sleep yet.”

  Zivon had reclaimed his hand from Mama and rested it on Lily’s bag. “May I deposit this in your darkroom for you?”

  Daddy’s mouth opened—and given the dark expression back on his face, he looked ready to refuse. But Mama spoke first. “Of course you may. Lily, show him where to put everything. And perhaps show him that lovely shot you developed yesterday, hmm? Your father and I will lock up. We sent poor Eaton to bed after Blinker assured us you were well.”

  Lily nodded and led Zivon toward her workroom, deciding that later—or even tomorrow—would be soon enough to decipher Daddy’s mood. For now, she was grateful to have even three minutes of privacy with Zivon. Even gladder when, as soon as they turned a corner, his fingers found hers.

  What a strange amalgam of emotions pulsed through her veins. The light of the first half of the evening swirling through the dark of the second. The starlight of that kiss against the endless black of night.

  But through all the wrong, this felt right. His fingers in hers. Long and strong and secure.

  “I have never seen your darkroom.” His voice was quiet as a prayer. “I look forward to it.”

  She breathed a soft laugh. “I’m afraid there won’t be all that much to show you.”

  “I shall be the judge of this. And the photographs you are so eager to develop, of what are these?”

  Would he think it strange that she’d found anything to record in that broken neighborhood? No. He would understand. “The glass on the road—so much of it, it looked like ice or snow.”

  “Yes. This I noticed.”

  “And some of the people we saw. Kira with her daughter. And . . .” She almost didn’t want to mention the other. The one that had shaken him so badly. But that was part of the reason she’d pressed the push-pin and why she wanted to develop the film now. “And that young woman on the doorstep that you helped up.”

  His fingers spasmed in hers. “You took a photograph of her?”

  “I wanted to remember—needed to remember the price of war, even here at home.” She reached for the latch of her darkroom’s door. Maybe that was why his touch fell away. Maybe.

  “Some things, Alyona, are best forgotten.”

  Her blood slowed as she pushed open the door. “Who?”

  “Pardon?” He edged into the room behind her, taking the strap of the bag from his shoulder and craning his head around to take in the space.

  Lily watched her arm reach for the bag without quite feeling herself make the move. “Who is Alyona?” Her voice sounded strange in her ears. Cracked and dry.

  “Why would you—” But he cut off the inane question with a Russian something or another. His eyes slammed shut. His hand went to his pocket in that way it always did, and he drew in a long breath. When he opened his eyes again, the stillness from their first weeks together had seized him again. “I apologize. It was the memory of that girl on the doorstep that brought it back.”

  “Brought what back?” She slid the bag to the floor, under the table.

  “The way she looked when I found her.” His face twisted. Smoothed back out. His nostrils flared, and he clasped his hands behind his back. “She was my . . .”

  Sister. Cousin. Neighbor. Any of those would be logical. Any discovery of the sort this sounded like would be traumatic.

  “She was my fiancée.”

  “Fiancée.” She ought to focus on the was. But how, when all she
could imagine was some other woman he’d never seen fit to mention?

  Some of her feeling must have saturated her voice, given Zivon’s raised hand. “It is not what you think. It was arranged marriage. Our parents—she was still child when it was agreed. I, still at university. We were betrothed for decade, but I—it was never like . . .”

  He motioned between them, something desperate edging out the stillness.

  Lily shook her head. He’d lost his articles again, which told her as much as the words themselves. Whatever relationship he had with this Alyona may not have been quite like this, but it was clearly something whose loss had fractured him. Had it been just twelve hours ago that she was wishing he’d open up and tell her more of his past? The coward in her now wished she could shy away from it. “A decade? You were engaged for a decade.”

  She had no hope of following the thoughts that rampaged through his eyes, across his face, before he slammed them down again. “Her mother was ill. She needed take care of siblings. But health had improved, so—wedding date was set. Alyona came to Moscow to prepare our house.”

  Lily pressed her palm to the tabletop. “Set for when?”

  “Twenty-second of June.”

  “Of?”

  The thoughts all went silent. “This year.”

  She pressed with all her might against the table, but the world still spun. He was supposed to be getting married in a month, to this Alyona. “What happened?”

  It seemed for a long moment that he wouldn’t answer. Perhaps he intended simply to pivot on his heel and march away rather than relive whatever it was. But no. Instead, that careful mask cracked. Another layer of the matryoshka doll parted.

  And dark, roiling hatred peeked out. “They killed her. The Bolsheviks.” He said the name as if it were the vilest of curses. “Murdered her to teach me a lesson. This is when I left.”

  She lifted a hand to her mouth, but the gasp slipped out before she could cover it. The rest of the pieces slid into place. “And they left her on your doorstep. Like that girl tonight.” And it couldn’t have been more than a few months ago. January or February. The memories would still be so fresh. A wound still bleeding—all the more so because he clearly hadn’t been grieving it in the normal way. “Oh, Zivon.”

  His hand fisted, his gaze went clouded. “They killed her, and they will bear no consequences for it, not from the law. But they will pay. I will see this war ends, and I will do everything in my power to show the world the truth of them. I will await the day that the Lord visits His vengeance upon them.”

  A chill pricked its way up her spine. The bitterness in his voice—she’d never expected to hear that coming from him. Never expected to learn that what he’d suffered had been so recent, so devastating, so consuming. She didn’t know how she was to compete with that. Even if he’d never loved this Alyona in a romantic way, the way she’d been ripped from him would guarantee that he thought of her every day. All hours. That her image would haunt him in death as it may not have done in life.

  And he’d been letting it fester, given his reactions tonight. “Have you . . . perhaps spoken to Clarke about this? Or a clergyman?”

  Rage sparked its way through the stillness in his eyes. “There is no one I could trust with this.”

  Was it a compliment, then, that he was trusting her with it now? It felt more like a burden. One she would gladly shoulder if it would help him, but how? She had no idea. She was willing but utterly ignorant. “I can’t think such pain is meant to be kept secret. How are you to heal from it?”

  The breath that escaped his mouth was half laugh, entirely scoffing. He turned, motioned to the room. “You ought to know, I suppose, about secrets.”

  The anger in his tone sent her back a step, and she bumped into her chair. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I have seen you almost daily entering the OB, Lily. It takes no genius to realize that when Hall speaks of his photography expert, he means you. You alter photos for him, da? Develop them? You do not tell people this, yet you expect me to bare my soul?”

  “She does what?”

  No. No, no, no. Mama rounded the corner, appearing behind Zivon and making Lily’s insistence that the two secrets were nothing alike freeze on her tongue.

  Her mother’s face was a portrait of outrage. “Lilian! Is this true?”

  “I . . .” She couldn’t very well deny it. But she didn’t want to admit it either. Before, whenever she imagined having this conversation with her mother, she’d planned to list all the reasons why it was necessary and helpful and good.

  Just now, with the images from the night still burned into her mind’s eye and on the film she’d yet to develop, she had no justifications.

  And Mama didn’t wait for one anyway. She spun away. No, not away, just toward Daddy, who appeared behind her. “Thomas! You knew about this, didn’t you? I’d wager it was your idea. The two of you lying to me—for how long? Months? Years?”

  Daddy’s countenance shifted too, the warmth he always showed his family frozen over. The kind eyes gone hard. She had a feeling she wasn’t seeing Daddy at all, but Captain Blackwell. “There are bigger issues at stake here than your high morals about art, Euphemia. Which we will discuss in private. Marin—I’ll show you out. Now.”

  Not so much as a hint of good manners or even goodwill colored his tone. Just cold, hard authority. Lily flinched.

  Zivon shifted closer to her rather than away, showing another emotion she’d never thought to see on his face. Panicked apology. “I am sorry. I did not realize—”

  “Marin—now.”

  Lily tried to give him a smile, but it shook around the edges as Daddy laid hold of his arm. “It’s all right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Why did the look on her father’s face go even harder? “That remains to be seen. Don’t make me warn you again, young man.”

  For one pulse, Zivon held still but for his eyes, which flashed this way and that, taking it all in. Then, in the next heartbeat, he nodded and strode through the doorway without so much as slowing down to murmur something to Mama that Lily didn’t catch.

  Daddy followed him. And the moment they vanished, she wished even angry, official Captain Blackwell back. That was somehow better than angry, quiet Mama.

  Lily’s eyes slid shut. “I’m sorry, Mama. I—”

  “How long?”

  She was twenty-three. A woman grown. Old enough to be married, to have children, to manage a household of her own. But it took only that intonation from her mother to feel ten again, caught eating pilfered sweets with Ivy when they ought to have been in bed. She sighed. “Since Blinker was appointed DID. But it’s mostly just developing photos, I rarely—”

  “Don’t!” Mama sliced a hand through the air. “Don’t make excuses. I don’t care what you do or rarely do at the OB. What I care about is the fact that you and your father have willfully deceived me!”

  Lily dropped her gaze. What answer could she really give to that?

  She looked up again, though, when Mama made a sound she wasn’t sure how to classify. Gasp? Sob? Hard to say, given that she’d turned her back on her. “I thought we were close. That you and I were . . . Clearly I was wrong.”

  “Mama—”

  It wasn’t the hand held up that stopped her words. It was the slump to her shoulders. “Go to bed, Lilian.”

  She cast a glance toward her camera bag, the film she’d hoped to develop. But she wasn’t about to argue. She nudged the bag a little more out of the way and then stepped from the room, pulling the door shut behind her. Drawing even with her mother, she reached to touch a hand to her arm.

  Mama pulled back. Folded her arms over her chest. Stared straight ahead, though there was nothing for her gaze to rest on save a bare wall.

  Lily sagged and slunk by her.

  She intercepted a grim-faced Daddy at the base of the central staircase. He looked past her, but apparently Mama hadn’t followed her out, because his glance returned quickly to her face. “
I will take care of this with your mother. You go on up to your room.”

  She nodded but didn’t move away. “Why were you behaving as you were with Mr. Marin?”

  Thunder rolled through his eyes anew. “I’ll not go into details. Suffice it to say Hall received information today that sheds a suspicious light. You’ll discontinue your association with him until further notice.”

  “What? But, Daddy—”

  “I’ll not tolerate you questioning me on this, Lilian. You will obey. Now go.”

  Given that he stalked off, she didn’t have much choice. She mounted the steps slowly, eyes stinging. How could a night that began so very well go so very wrong?

  15

  MONDAY, 20 MAY 1918

  Someone was following him.

  Zivon kept walking at his normal pace, his gaze on the Old Admiralty Building, just visible when he rounded the corner. Correction. Two someones were following him. The newer addition was so obvious it was nearly laughable—scurrying behind other pedestrians or darting into a doorway if Zivon happened to turn a bit. Obviously never considering that he could sense him, hear him, and see him in reflections.

  Irritating. Alarming, in a way. But also surely not much of a threat if he was so unskilled.

  It was the other man that had Zivon’s every nerve buzzing. That one he’d nearly missed. Nearly. But once he’d picked up on him, he had the unsettling suspicion that the fellow had been shadowing him ever since he stepped foot out of his flat.

  Had he not been so exhausted, perhaps he would have noticed the accomplished one sooner. But he’d only slept about an hour. He kept reliving the raid. The confrontation with Fyodor and Nabokov—who had ordered him to report to the embassy at eight this morning. The kiss. The look on Lily’s face when he told her about Alyona.

  The look on her father’s when he told him in no uncertain terms that his attentions were no longer welcome and he was to desist calling on her.

  That, combined with these sudden tails, painted a rather dreadful picture. He had fallen out of favor with the Admiralty. The question was why. What had happened in the last day or two to change everything?