“War is a complicated business, fräulein. It involves more than you can understand.”
Of course he would play the you’re a child card. It was what adults always resorted to when they had no logic to defend their beliefs. “This is not that complicated,” she said. “You saw what you wanted and you took it—and spat in the face of Belgium while doing so, out of revenge for having had a stronger economy than Germany until the invasion.”
“I didn’t.”
“You are one of them! A generalleutnant!”
“Margot! That is quite enough.” Maman, who at least had the right to chide her. Even if she wasn’t right. It was far from enough.
But Gottlieb sighed. “We do not all agree with every decision. But we obey, because it is how we function. It must be enough for you, little sparrow, to know that I speak reason when I can. And that I will not let anyone hurt your family.”
How was that supposed to be enough? She sucked in a breath. “It’s your move.”
“I know it is. I don’t know what move to make.”
Maman shifted in her seat, all but shouting her anxiety. “Perhaps you should rest this evening, Generalleutnant. You can play more tomorrow.”
“No. I will gather my focus.”
Silence grew as he did, seeming to expand with every second until it filled the room like a cloud. Long minutes later, he drew in a deep breath, let it out, and made a reasonable move.
Margot loosed a relieved breath of her own. “Better.”
His brief smile still wasn’t right though. “You will be hearing more news you will not like if you continue to go out. No doubt you have all heard already that anyone aiding a young man of military age in exiting Belgium will be arrested, correct?”
“Of course.” Madame Dumont answered for them all, her tremulous voice iced over with disdain for the policy.
Gottlieb sighed. “It will get worse. A new command has been issued—anyone who has information on such a young man and fails to deliver it will be arrested as well. So if, perhaps, you have a son trying to escape Belgium and you do nothing to help but nothing to stop him . . .”
Maman’s needles stilled. “And how will the army determine if a family knows such things?”
Gottlieb’s lips thinned. “That is the question, of course. Because how could a family not have any information?”
So then anyone could be arrested on that suspicion. Anyone.
Them. If anyone knew who they were, anyway. Because Lukas was of military age, and though he hadn’t fled to join the resistance or fight against Germany with weapons, he would be resisting them somehow. And so named an enemy.
Even though they had no idea where he was or what he was doing, they could be held accountable for his absence. Arrested.
Madame Dumont was again the first to reply. “How fortunate that you have no son, my dear.”
Don’t flinch, Margot willed her mother’s way. Don’t blink out of turn. Don’t drop your needles.
Maman sighed. “Who would ever have thought that could be a blessing?”
Margot set her white stone in the spot she’d chosen two seconds after Gottlieb had made his move.
He pushed away from the table. “Perhaps you are right, Fräu Dumont. Perhaps I had better rest tonight. We will continue tomorrow, Margot?”
He was out of the room before she could agree. She turned wide eyes on her mother. “What was that?”
Maman shook her head, gaze still on the empty door. “I don’t know. Perhaps . . . perhaps the Lord is working on his conscience. Perhaps he feels the burden of what his men are doing.”
The madame snorted. “Or perhaps he ate too much sausage for lunch. That always sends me running from a room.”
Margot had no idea how good laughter could feel when the proportion of fear had been so high. But now she did, and she owed the old lady for the lesson.
Nineteen
Lukas clutched his bag in his hand and followed the line of people in front of him off the train, back into the brisk October air colored with dusk. Once on solid ground, he moved out of the way and then waited, eyes scanning the crowds. There would be a horse-drawn omnibus from the Belle Vue—one met every train. But that wasn’t what his eyes sought.
He had no reason to think she’d be here—he’d sent a wire, yes, telling her what train he would be on. But he’d not asked her to meet him. She wouldn’t have, had he done so.
Barclay stopped beside him. “She’s going to be so cross. Can’t wait to see it. Is she here, do you think?”
“I doubt it.” But his gaze snagged on movement at the back of the crowd. He couldn’t make out hair color, just a hat. And the woman’s height. And a hint of the way she moved as she navigated through the crush of people. “Or perhaps so.”
Barclay chuckled. “Perfect.”
They’d hatched this plan somewhere around midnight the night before, in the middle of their second card game and with a pot of properly strong coffee made and drained—and keeping them awake. At the time, it had seemed perfectly reasonable—good, even—for Barclay to come back to Wales with him for a quick visit with his cousin.
At the moment he wasn’t sure why it had sounded like such a wonderful idea. Oh, it had made the train ride pass more quickly, to have someone with whom he could talk. But did he really want Willa’s overprotective cousin looking over his shoulder as he attempted to win her?
Barclay had claimed he would stay only a night or two. But Lukas had his doubts on that one.
Ah, well. At least he liked the man.
She stepped into a clear spot, all business as she looked around for him. He ought to move forward, but instead he held his spot a while longer, just watching her. The way she never hesitated, even though she couldn’t know exactly where he was. The way she looked over the crowd as if categorizing and filing away every bit of information about every last passenger or friend greeting them.
The way her eyes lit when she spotted him and the corners of her mouth bloomed into the beginnings of a smile.
The way that smile froze and the light flashed fury when she spotted Barclay at his side.
“Here we go.” Barclay rubbed his hands together, grinning.
She’d smiled for him. Or started to. That was something to cherish. She’d actually come to meet his train, and she’d been happy to see him. Another decade or two and she might admit to some affection for him.
They met her midway, her simmering gaze locked on her cousin. “What are you doing here?” were the first words from her mouth. “I left London to get away from you.”
Perhaps the words would have been more believable if she hadn’t leaned in to give Barclay a quick, fierce embrace and smack a kiss onto his cheek.
The man’s grin didn’t flag. “I missed you too.”
She shook her head and turned to Lukas.
The air between them felt heavy with their kiss of two nights before. Charged with his promise of staying. With her doubt that he would. Were they alone, without Barclay and the scads of people about, he would draw her close again. Taste her lips. Discover whether today she would bristle against or melt into him.
She held out her hand, wrist limp. He took it and raised it to let a kiss linger too long on her gloved knuckles.
Barclay cleared his throat with a loud ahem and put himself between them, slinging an arm around Willa’s shoulders. “Lead the way, Will. Oh, the girls send their love.”
Lukas could only see her face because she’d turned it to glare up at her cousin. “The Davieses sent me in their car. But where exactly do you think you’re going to stay? I’m not going to impose upon them for you, and anyway, I don’t think they have any extra—”
“Oh, I’ll find a room somewhere. I imagine there’s a hotel or two in this town, isn’t there?”
She blinked.
Lukas cleared his throat—without any exaggerated noises. “If you cannot find a room, Barclay, you can always take the sofa in mine. I have a suite.”
&
nbsp; “There, see? Lukas to the rescue.”
Willa rolled her eyes and leaned past her cousin to look at Lukas. “How did your trip go? Did you find your friend?”
“I did.” His fingers tightened around the handle of his bag. “He did not have solid news of them, but he promised to help me discover whatever he could.”
Her eyes sent a mixture of messages—gladness that he’d found him at all, regret that he had no more to offer. Hope that something would yet come of it.
He wished he knew her well enough to tell her more. Wished they’d known each other for years, that she were helping him in this from the start. That she were as comfortable with him as she was with this cousin of hers who could drape an arm around her. Who she could shrug off without any thought that it might hurt his feelings.
She stepped around Barclay, in front of Lukas, and took up position on his opposite side. Her hand found its usual spot against his arm, warming a cold place in the center of his chest. “Is there nothing else we can do now?”
We. Would she really help if he asked? Not that he knew what he’d ask of her. “We can pray. Just now, I think God alone can help us. I will trust that He will aid me in getting word to them, and them back to me.”
Barclay hung back half a step, crossed behind, and fell in on Willa’s other side. They were turning into a regular ballet. He leaned close to Willa, though he didn’t bother pitching his voice down. “He sounds like Peter. You realize the irony of that, I trust, Little Miss I-Don’t-Believe-in-God.”
Her fingers pressed into Lukas’s arm. “He didn’t sound like this when I met him. And it doesn’t matter if he does now, as I have no intention of running off and marrying him.”
“Ouch.” Barclay scowled, looking honestly miffed. On Lukas’s behalf or over something else? “You could at least soften the blow, Will. This bloke actually likes you for some unfathomable reason.”
“It’ll pass.” Her words were heartbreak wrapped in certainty.
Lukas’s throat was too tight to allow for more than a murmur. “It will not.”
“I’m hungry. Anybody else hungry?” Barclay increased his stride, cutting a swath through the crowd until he emerged onto the street.
Willa held Lukas back with that hand on his arm and looked up at him with those wide blue eyes. “I’m sorry—about Barclay. He can be an oaf.”
A chuckle tickled its way out. “He just wants to protect you—I understand this. And I like him. We talked for hours last night about novels.”
“Of course you did. Did he mention that Rosie just married—”
“Hollow, yes, who is really named Peter. He showed me his new collection of autographed Branok Hollow novels and told me that if you do not give me the boot by Christmas, I should spend it in Cornwall with your family.”
She came to a halt and stared up at him, mouth agape. “He did what?”
He had begun to think nothing could ever surprise Willa Forsythe—but apparently her cousin could manage it. “Do not look so excited at the prospect, mon amour, you will turn my head.”
“It just . . . It isn’t like him. That’s all.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
Rather than answer, she sighed and looked ahead to where Barclay stood at the edge of the street, gazing across it with the kind of single-minded determination that he suddenly suspected was a family trait.
Lukas followed the direction of his new friend’s gaze, but he saw nothing of particular interest across the street. A family of four hurrying into a carriage, two women standing in deep conversation, a man in a rusty-brown jacket on a bench, reading a newspaper in the dying light, and another fellow in grey with a cap pulled low against the wind, waiting for a break in traffic so he could cross.
Perhaps one of the women had caught Barclay’s eye. Who could say?
Willa tugged him forward, her lips as thin as her hope. “Come on, then. We’ll grab a bite on our way to your hotel.”
Lukas sent one more gaze over the collection of people Barclay studied. And followed with a shrug toward the Davieses’ car.
“Are you out of your mind?” Willa hissed the words under her breath—or would have hissed them had the words had any hissable S sounds. She glanced over her shoulder out of habit, though Lukas was safely up in his rooms, talking to Jules. She and Barclay were supposedly out in search of a room of his own for Barclay. Though they both knew he had no intention of spending the quid on one.
Barclay chuckled and led the way down the street as if he knew the place as well as she did. “I thought you would appreciate the chance to exchange information in person, without having to talk about dogs over the telephone.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She caught the sleeve of the wool coat she’d helped make for him and drew him toward where she’d spoken to Mr. Brown. “You weren’t supposed to introduce yourself to him at all. You certainly weren’t supposed to invite him to stay with you at Peter and Rosie’s last night. And you especially weren’t supposed to invite him to holiday with us in Cornwall at Christmas!”
“Oh come on, Will, have a heart. The bloke doesn’t know if his family’s alive or dead or prisoners—he could use a little kindness.”
The fact that she agreed didn’t stop her from bristling. “I daresay there are thousands of Belgians who can claim the same. Should we invite them all to Cornwall? I think that might stretch even Peter’s generosity to the breaking point.”
“You know what your problem is with him?” Mouth in that annoying smirk of his, Barclay leaned close. “You actually like him. And it terrifies you.”
“I do not. And it does not. Or wouldn’t, rather, if I did. Which I don’t.”
Barclay rolled his eyes and strode out of the circle of light cast by the streetlamps, to the very bench where the German had been. “At some point, Willa-Will, you’ll realize that you’re letting them win by not letting anyone close. You’re being nothing but what they made you—an abandoned child.”
How dare he—he, who knew better than anyone what it felt like to be a scared child on a mean street? She stood in front of him, too mad to sit at his side. “I let you in, didn’t I? And Pauly and Rosie. And the others, all of them. I love our family.” It wasn’t just a word, a lie, with them. They were all the same, floundering on the same sea.
“There’s no risk in loving us, though, is there? We’re safe.”
A strange thing to say about a horde of thieves. But he had a point. Not that she’d admit it to him. “Look, maybe someday, someone will be worth that risk. But not Lukas De Wilde. Never him.” He was a mark. And he was a gentleman. And he was a playboy. All the things she had no respect for, that she hadn’t even had to swear to herself she would never get involved with, because it was too unthinkable to even need such a promise.
And really, what did she need with a man anyway? She had her family. Children aplenty who crawled up in her lap and snuggled against her. Perhaps they didn’t call her Mumma, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love them like a mother should.
“Willa.” It wasn’t a chiding. It was a warning, delivered low and taut and half a second too late.
Something hard and cold and round pressed against the nape of her neck. The scent of pine drifted to her nose. Willa sucked in a breath but forced it back out. “Hello again.”
Barclay had taken to his feet and narrowed his eyes, obviously trying to make out the figure in the mounting darkness. “Let me guess—Fido.”
Mr. Brown pushed her closer to Barclay with the pressure on her neck. A gun, it must be. He was holding a gun to her head.
She missed London’s thugs. They never acted this way. With her, anyway.
“I require an update, Miss Forsythe.” He shoved her onto the bench and must have motioned Barclay to sit again too, since he sank down beside her. Just enough light reached them to glint off the metal of the pistol he held tucked against his side, where passersby weren’t likely to notice it. “And an explanation of why your colleague
has arrived with De Wilde after visiting a newspaper office in London. What are you about? I trust you do not mean to double-cross me?”
“If you trust so, you don’t need that.” Willa nodded toward the weapon. “Put it away, if you please. We’re civilized enough to have a conversation without the need for threats.”
Brown put the weapon into the pocket of his coat but didn’t draw his hand out again. No doubt it was still pointed at them. “There. Now. An explanation, Mr. Pearce, as to why the leader of London’s best gang of thieves is here in Aberystwyth.”
Willa looked to Barclay, wondering if he felt the same nausea in the pit of his stomach that she did.
“You flatter me, sir.” He leaned back against the bench and folded his arms across his chest. Half insolence. Half ease. “What is there to explain? Willa knew he was going there and let me know so I could shadow him. I decided I’d go the overt route and introduce myself, invite him home. Search his things at my leisure while Willa took care of business here.”
Brown’s face was nothing but shadows, wrought by hat and night. “So which of you has it?”
Willa swallowed, hoping Barclay would have some convenient lie to feed him. Perhaps he was hoping the same, because he said nothing.
Blast. Blighted spies—he must have cohorts in London. Did Mr. V know that? She cleared her throat. “I verified that it wasn’t in his room.”
Barclay shook his head. “The only items in his bag were the clothing he was wearing today and the sheet music for the concert coming up. He mentioned it later, that he was memorizing it.” Her brother turned to her, brows drawn. “How can he memorize the music without his violin?”
“He is a professional, Barclay. He knows how he’ll play each note without having to demonstrate it for himself.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Enough.” Brown edged closer. “The newspaper office. A Belgian resistance rag—why was he there?”
“Bloke who runs it knew his father. He thought maybe he’d had news of his family.” Barclay shrugged. “Apparently he didn’t.”
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