The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

  It was the thing that killed Mab every night. When she grieved Lucy, she grieved for the woman her daughter would never become—the young girl taking her exams, the coltish student heading off to university—but at least she had known the six-year-old Lucy of November 1942 to her very bones. So much of Francis had still been an unmapped continent, a man she was only beginning to truly know.

  And he didn’t know me, she thought, or he wouldn’t have loved me the way he did. He would have realized I was a social-climbing tart who would marry a good man like him as a ticket up the ladder. He would have realized he deserved better than me.

  “I don’t have one single photograph of the two of us together.” Mab stared into her glass. “Not one. We couldn’t get a camera on our wedding day, it was short notice, and after that we were too busy cramming in time together to pose for a flash. An entire marriage gone, without one picture to commemorate it.”

  She looked up at the journalist’s grave face. “There’s something titillating for your story,” she said, mocking. “Francis Gray’s drunken Shoreditch widow, slopping gin all over you in a pub. I don’t care if you print it. I don’t care what you say about me—”

  “I’m a journalist, not a monster,” said Ian Graham.

  “—but I do care what you say about Francis. Do justice to him. He was a good poet and a great man.” She finished her gin in a gulp.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” the journalist asked, his voice quiet.

  Mab turned sharply, nearly sliding off her stool. He caught her hand, steadying her, and Mab’s skin prickled. Oh, God, how she missed Francis’s hands. His fingers through hers, his palm on her waist. So much of her numbness had burned away in sick bay—at night, she now lay awake holding herself in her own arms, trying to pretend they were Francis’s arms, longing to be held again.

  Stay with me, she started to say. The impulse went through her in a bolt of desperation: take this man she didn’t know up to some rented room and let him do anything he wanted, as long as she could keep her eyes shut and pretend he was Francis.

  Then she shoved that away, so sick with shame she almost vomited.

  Ian Graham got a glass of water and lemon from the barman and pushed it toward her. “Drink that down.” He waited while she drank, then rose. “I have what I need. May I take you to catch your train, Mrs. Gray?”

  “I’m meeting a friend—we’re returning to Bucks together.”

  He hesitated, clearly not wanting to leave her alone, but Mab put out her hand. “Goodbye, Mr. Graham. I look forward to reading your piece.”

  He tipped his hat and departed. She wondered where he’d be sent next, what blood-laced beach or bombed-out town he’d report on, then she ordered another gin and thought only about Francis and Lucy.

  Three drinks later, she was staggering. She nearly missed the doctor’s office when she went back to find it, and Beth almost had to carry her home.

  Chapter 54

  Letter from Osla to her Café de Paris Good Samaritan

  I wonder why I keep writing you in such a void. Posting all these letters (five now? Six?) into limbo, or at least to your landlady . . . it feels a bit like sealing a message in a bottle and hurling it out to sea: you never know who will read it, or if anyone will. Maybe it’s better if no one ever does, the way I’ve talked my soul out.

  Happy Christmas, Mr. Cornwell, wherever you are. —Ozma of Oz

  Osla was in a good mood for once when she sauntered through the ivy-hung doors of Claridge’s. The last decrypt she’d translated on shift before running to catch her train was a radio message to a German destroyer off Norway: “Please inform Oberleutnant W. Breisbach that his wife has been delivered of a son.”

  Congratulations, Oberleutnant, Osla thought, smiling. I hope you survive to see your son grow up. Surely at Christmastime it was allowable to wish an enemy well as a fellow human being. Osla wanted Lieutenant Breisbach to raise his son in a world where that son wouldn’t have to join the Hitler Youth, and assuredly that wasn’t too much to hope for. It was the cusp of 1944—surely now they could hope for the beginning of the end.

  “I understand felicitations are in order, Miss Kendall,” the porter Mr. Gibbs greeted her. “I heard your mother’s happy news.”

  Stepfather number four, what a rum thought. “Is she home tonight?”

  “I’m afraid not. The Windsor pantomime—”

  Osla sighed. “I don’t suppose you could rustle me up a suitable escort for her wedding next month, could you, Mr. Gibbs?” Once upon a time, Osla would have brought Mab. Mab would have been a capital friend for a chichi London wedding, analyzing every dress, making fun of every horrendous hat . . . but for an entire year now, she’d barely caught sight of Mab except across the canteen. Osla’s smile slipped as the memory rose of another wedding: Mab and Francis in this very hotel, looking so happy they stopped people in their tracks.

  I miss my friend.

  “Prince Philip will not be escorting you, Miss Kendall?”

  “I don’t think so.” Philip had given up writing some time ago, after all . . . Trying to recover her holiday cheer, Osla bid Mr. Gibbs good night and swanned upstairs. If Mamma wasn’t here, at least Osla could stay the night in her suite and work up the next BB. Ever since Coventry, she’d been having trouble keeping BB’s tone light. The jokes still came, but they came with more bite. Still, maybe that was all right; humor could cut at the same time as it made people laugh. Maybe Osla Kendall would take a puck at becoming the next great satirist, once the war was over.

  Oh, who was she fooling? If you were a man and you wrote funny pieces about daily life, they called it satire. If you were a woman and you wrote funny pieces about daily life, they called it fluff.

  Scowling now, Osla came out of the elevator, rounded the corner—and crashed straight into Philip.

  “Oh! Um—”

  “Sorry—Os, is that—”

  They stopped. My God, it’s been so long, Osla thought, trying not to stare and also trying not to laugh. Philip loomed impossibly tall and tanned, more like a Viking than ever . . . but he was also in a bathrobe and slippers, and no Viking ever looked at ease caught out in a bathrobe and slippers. He stuck his hands in his pockets, clearly mortified. “You look well, princess.”

  “I didn’t know the Wallace was back.”

  “Yes, well . . . I’d be at the Mountbattens’, but they’ve a houseful of Christmas guests.”

  They stared at each other some more. Philip didn’t look entirely welcoming; his expression was closed off in a way Osla remembered from the few times she’d seen him angry. You’re right to be angry, she thought. I ditched you—for very good reasons, but you don’t know that. She couldn’t say it, so she started chattering.

  “I’ve only popped in tonight, to surprise my mother. Of course she’s not home—and to think I passed up an outing to the cinema with the Glassborow twins, too. I always wanted a twin sister but given all the tandem giggling from those girls, I probably wouldn’t have heard a word of the film.” Osla ran out of breath. “How are you?”

  “Getting over a touch of ’flu.” Now that she looked closer, she saw his face was flushed under his tan, and his forehead had a sheen of sweat. “I was poking my head out for some handkerchiefs the bellboy left me.”

  Philip scooped the packet off the threshold, and Osla saw him sway. “Steady on, sailor.” She put her hands to his shoulders, righting him, and his arms came reflexively around her waist. They both paused in the act of moving toward each other, and she could all but see him thinking, I don’t want to get you sick. Osla didn’t care. She pulled his head down to hers and they were kissing, pressed against the door. His mouth was hard and angry, but his hands at her back were soft, as if he couldn’t stop from melting against her. He was warm with fever. “You are ill,” she said, breaking the kiss.

  “Not too ill to notice how good you smell.” It seemed to come out involuntarily, and he scowled, pulling back. Osla did too, realizing w
here they were. No hotel in London would allow a young woman upstairs with a young man unless they’d presented a marriage certificate . . . but here they were, with a room at his back and no eyes to see.

  “I’m supposed to be attending the royal pantomime at Windsor tonight,” he muttered. “Aladdin—the princesses are acting.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Osla put a hand to his forehead. “Get inside.” She pushed the door open, following on his heels. A modest room by Claridge’s standards; nothing like her mother’s suite. Philip’s kit bag lay in a corner; the bed was mussed as if he’d been tossing and turning. “In bed,” Osla ordered, kicking off her shoes. “I’m going to look after you.”

  “YOU’RE A LOUSY nurse, princess.”

  “You’re a terrible patient, sailor. Put that thermometer under your tongue—”

  “You’re enjoying this,” he accused, looking ready to bite it in half.

  “Too bally right.” Osla hopped onto the foot of the bed, pulling his feet into her lap. He had long bony toes, and she thought she could get quite inordinately foolish about them.

  “It’s just a chill—”

  “You’re one of those fellows who say it’s just a sprain when the bone is poking through the skin, aren’t you?”

  He looked offended. “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  Philip stared at the ceiling, thermometer pointing skyward. “I never had anyone look after me when I was sick before. Not really . . .”

  “Other than servants, you mean, or boarding-school nurses with cold-fish hands?” Osla paused. “I never have, either.”

  She bounded off to get him a glass of water. I’m enjoying this. Maybe it was the domesticity of it all, so ordinary and yet so strange. In her experience, getting involved with any man meant going places: driving, dancing, the cinema. The plain, everyday ordinariness of walking around barefoot in Philip’s room, making herself at home . . .

  “Down,” she ordered, pushing him flat again as he tried to sit up.

  “Bully,” he said, spitting out the thermometer.

  “Too right, darling, and it’s working—your temperature’s down. You haven’t been very good, but I suppose we can crack the fizz.” She’d had him order a bottle of champagne along with chicken broth. Fizz was good for invalids; everyone knew that. “You’ve been in town a few days?” she asked, popping the cork.

  He regarded her steadily. “Are you going to ask why I didn’t ring you?”

  She topped up two tea mugs. “. . . I know why you didn’t ring me.”

  An awkward silence.

  He struggled up on one elbow. “Did you meet someone, Os? Is that why you stopped writing?”

  “No, I did not meet someone. Don’t talk such slush.”

  “Then why’d you go off me?”

  I was protecting you.

  “I thought maybe you were backing off,” he said eventually. “Letting things cool down. Can’t say I liked it, but that would probably be the best thing.”

  “Why?” Osla looked at him, but he only shrugged. “I wasn’t backing off . . . it’s been a terrible year, Philip. I saw my best friend’s husband and little sister die in front of me in a bombing. She blames me, in part”—Osla still blamed herself, for letting go of Lucy’s hand—“so I lost her, too. And then every day at work I’d type up war reports, and the details could be horrifying.” There, not too many lies in that mix. A few things omitted, like her fruitless, months-long hunt for files that were missing and then not missing. A thief or informant who might or might not have been real . . . Osla still wasn’t sure. All she could do was keep her eyes open; so far nothing else seemed to have disappeared.

  “Anyway,” she finished, “I’ve been in such a blue funk, and I didn’t want to write if I couldn’t think of anything cheerful to say, and the longer the silence stretched, the harder it was to reach out.” Osla touched his hand. “Forgive me?”

  “I’ve had a bad year, too.” Quietly.

  Osla hesitated. Keep your distance. It’s better for him that way. But she couldn’t walk away from Philip like this, not feverish and alone in an impersonal hotel room at Christmastime. Besides, since she’d made the decision to back away from Philip, she’d seen Mab lose Francis—seen her rage and grieve that they hadn’t had more time, more love, more everything . . .

  Osla stretched across the bed opposite Philip, twining her stockinged feet with his bony ones. “Tell me.”

  It came slowly, in terse fits and starts as they sipped their fizz. Across the Atlantic and back with a convoy; dive-bombed by Stukas all through the Mediterranean when the Wallace was posted to assist in the invasion of Sicily. “There was one night in July,” Philip said. “The moon lit everything up bright as day. We were leaving a wake that glowed like the Yellow Brick Road. The ship had already been hit, everyone knew they were coming back to put us down for good. We had to come up with something quick—I don’t know why the captain listened to my idea, but he did. We banged a big raft together out of crates and timber, heaped debris on it, slung a smoke float at each end, and cast it off—then steamed as fast as we could in the other direction and cut the Wallace dead, engines, lights, and all. All of us sitting there in the dark, hoping the Krauts would assume we’d gone down and that raft of debris and smoke was all that was left . . .”

  “I’ll guess that they swallowed it,” Osla said when he fell silent. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “They swallowed it, all right. We heard bombers screaming overhead, hitting the wreckage to send it to the bottom. Those bastards, strafing what they thought were sailors clinging to debris . . .”

  “But they weren’t. It sounds to me like you saved your sailors, Lieutenant.”

  Another shrug. “I swear I aged five years that night, Os.”

  “Five years . . .” Osla turned over and he snugged her up into his chest, tugging the coverlet up over them both. “Wasn’t it only five years ago we met?”

  “Four.”

  “That’s all?”

  “End of ’39, at the bar downstairs. You in your boiler suit. You looked like Winston Churchill, but adorable.”

  “My God. I was an absolute infant.”

  “I was, too. I thought war was going to be such a lark.”

  They lay quiet, feet entangled, curled up close in the dim room. To Osla, drifting off to sleep, it felt like home again.

  AT SOME POINT in the night she woke. Philip’s warm chest wasn’t against her back; instead she felt something soft and fluffy. “Why did you wedge a pillow between us?” she yawned.

  “I didn’t have a sword,” he mumbled, half-asleep.

  “What?”

  “A sword . . . it’s an old story. A knight puts a sword in the bed if he has to sleep beside his lady. So she knows he won’t cross over it.”

  “What if she wants him to?”

  No answer.

  Osla slid out of bed and began unhooking her gray wool dress. They hadn’t drawn the blackout curtains; moonlight threw a little silvery light into the dark room. She could see Philip sit up in bed—he must have got feverish in his sleep, because he’d tossed off his shirt and blankets and had the sheet drawn up around his raised knees. It was the first time she’d seen him without a shirt, and dear God, was it a sight.

  “Os,” he said drowsily as she peeled off her stockings, “I’d better go sleep on the sofa.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, sailor. You’ve still got a touch of fever.”

  “I’m not made of marble, you know.” He waved a hand at her satin slip. “There’s only so much a pillow can do . . .”

  “Well, I’m not sleeping in a wool dress, and I’m not sleeping on that blithering sofa either.” She climbed back into bed on his side, hearing her own heart hammer.

  “You’re a devil,” he said through the dark, reaching for her. His skin was still hot with fever and Osla caught the flame, losing her breath, making him lose his as they tossed and rolled in the crisp she
ets. “Hang on to me,” he said at one point, hands and lips sliding along the edge of her slip, and did something Osla didn’t have a name for, something she didn’t know people did, only it left her wrung limp and breathless, hanging off his broad shoulders like she was about to fall off a cliff. She could feel Philip’s smile against her skin. “You’re finally communicating, princess.”

  “Communication should go both ways, it seems to me,” she managed to gasp, and figured out a few ways to do so, letting his hands and his strangled curses guide her along. They came to a stop, clinging and breathing hard, pressed full-length, forehead rocking against forehead. A gentleman never pushed things past a certain point with a girl unless there was some kind of understanding that things would soon be made permanent. Before, whenever they’d reached that point, Philip had never pushed further . . . but they’d never had an opportunity to be alone like this, either. To do whatever they wanted. This time, Osla sensed, she could push past his protests. He was light-headed enough tonight to be reckless—if she was ruthless enough to push till he forgot himself.

  But he wouldn’t have pushed if she were the one laid low with fever and forgetting herself.

  “Os,” Philip said, sounding strangled. “Better put that pillow back.”

  Osla let her head drop, banging her forehead gently against his shoulder. “I hate doing the honorable thing.”

  “Oh, so do I,” he growled. They managed to rearrange themselves, limbs aligned back more or less where they should be, pillow wedged virtuously between, Osla’s head on his shoulder. “We could do this any time we wanted, you know,” Osla said into the dark. “Nothing’s stopping us from being—more.”

  It was the nearest she’d come to saying it, or even hinting it. Stop calling me princess, because I’m not one—but I could be. If you wanted.

  But he’d already slid back into dreamland.