“You worry too much, darling. Everything’s going to be fine now, I promise.”
“Julian. Julian. I can’t believe this. And… what a… Geoff planned it with you?” I shook my head, trying to calm my heartbeat, to think. “But he was behind it all, Julian! He sent me the book, had my things searched; he helped Alicia set me up…”
“But he didn’t, you know. That was Arthur all along.”
“It was Arthur? But… the cell number… and Alicia said…”
What had Alicia said?
“Arthur was hiding behind Geoff, sweetheart. Using his phone, pretending to be him. It was quite easy; they shared an office, as you’ll recall.”
“Oh please. Is that what Geoff said?”
“Think about it, sweetheart. Geoff would never willingly reveal our secret like that, sending you the book. And he’d certainly not risk Southfield itself.”
I couldn’t deny that. “But why would Arthur pretend to be Geoff?”
Julian shrugged, moving my head up and down. “To deflect my suspicion, I suppose; or perhaps he hadn’t the courage to face my reaction, if I found him out.”
“And what about Hollander? Was Arthur behind that too?”
“It’s all so evident now, isn’t it? But right up until the end, I thought we had two problems on our hands: the real threat, the man who was after Hollander and then presumably you, and then the more personal matter of poor old Arthur watching me fall in love with you. It never occurred to me that Arthur was the one hunting down information about you from Hollander. Not his sort of caper at all. And he’d never spoken to me about Amiens, after all; I simply assumed he didn’t know what had happened between us, that he mightn’t even remember you at all. So I didn’t put the two together until Geoff came to me that last morning.”
“I remember that. Just when I came home from my appointment.”
“Yes. Geoff had had his suspicions already, because of the book, and especially after Arthur’s behavior at the opera: he’d insisted on coming along to meet you, betrayed a kind of obsessive mania about it. And then the next day, after I’d rung up Arthur to ask him to witness our marriage ceremony, he’d gone straight to Geoff, half-mad already with panic, with a sense of the last pillars of his world coming down. Arthur confessed the rest of it—all he’d done to keep watch on you, to chase you away, the whole deception with Sterling Bates—and asked for Geoff’s help in stopping our marriage. By force, if necessary.”
His words shifted in my brain, forming and re-forming, refusing to assemble into this alien image of Geoff as ally, as stalwart. I pictured instead his angry face, heavy with resentment. “And you trusted Geoff’s version of events?” I said at last.
“Kate,” he said, “there are two people on this earth I trust absolutely. You, and Geoffrey Warwick.”
“In that order, I hope.”
“Jealous little minx. Yes, in that order, if you like.” He reached over with his left arm to the table and grasped my coffee cup. “Here, eat your croissant. Have some more coffee. You must be famished.”
I sipped obediently, nibbled at the pastry. “But still. To let him shoot you, after everything… my God…”
“Well, we hadn’t much choice. We let Arthur take me to Southfield, to the cemetery. I tried to explain things, to tell him I still honored Florence’s memory. To show him her grave, to make it forcibly clear that she was gone, that the old world itself was gone, that it was time to face reality and move on. Closure, I suppose, to use your modern word. But it only maddened him further. He took the gun out, threatened me. I tried to take it away, but he took off running. As you saw, I suppose.” He shook his head. “If only I’d seen you on that damned ledge…”
“I tried to yell, but the wind was blowing in my face. You never heard me.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? Every possible element was lined up against us.” He rubbed his forehead. “Geoff and I chased him as far as the old boathouse and cornered him, there with that damned gun in his hands, exactly the situation we’d hoped to avoid. But he couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t do what?”
“Couldn’t shoot me.”
“Of course he couldn’t. He…” I drained the last of my coffee and set the cup back on the table. “He cared too much.”
“So he gave the gun to Geoff and told him to do it. Took the other gun from his coat pocket and put it to Geoff’s head. Tried to shoot him afterward, too, but missed.” He shook his head. “Though it was practically point-blank, the poor bugger.”
I shut my eyes. “Those two shots. You were lying there, bleeding, hurt…”
“Darling, Geoff had to do it. We’d even discussed it beforehand, the possibility of deliberately injuring me; a sort of preemptive strike, you see, to make Arthur realize it wasn’t worth bloodshed. Geoff didn’t like the idea, but I’m jolly glad we had at least some degree of preparation when Arthur forced his hand…”
My eyes shot back open. “A Blighty one! Oh God! That’s what he meant, when you all drove away together! Only I didn’t understand it, back then.”
“The right shoulder, we’d decided, since I’d already switched to my left hand.” He waggled it helpfully before me.
“You crazy idiot. How can you plan for your own shooting?”
“Darling, what else could we do? We had to get him away from you. Had to find some way to resolve things without harming him, without bringing in anyone else, without having to keep him under private lock and key the entire rest of his miserable life. The madman in the attic.”
“And you were willing to stake your own life on that chance?”
Julian shrugged his left shoulder beneath me. “It was our last hope for the poor chap.” His arm traced along my back. “And in saving ourselves, we failed him.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Julian. He did it.” I spoke urgently. “My God, you did all you could for him, you gave him every chance. I saw his face. He wanted to die; he wanted an excuse. Don’t you dare take this on. There was never any perfect solution, Julian. Things are just messy sometimes.”
“I told Geoff to run after him, but he was worried about me, the fool…”
“Oh, Julian.” I covered my eyes, forced the tears back. “Risking yourself like that. Hurting yourself.”
“It doesn’t matter, Kate; nothing at all matters to me, next to your safety. I’d have…” He stopped, stroking my hair. “Well, you know all that. You’d already made the greater sacrifice, the bravest thing any human being could do, sending yourself back.”
“That wasn’t brave. I had no choice; I didn’t even stop to think.”
“And that wasn’t brave?”
“No. The hardest part came later. Standing at the station, letting you go.”
His hand stilled, wrapped inside my hair. “Do you see, darling”—his voice was low, dark—“do you see why I never needed the words? You’d already shown me. Told me, too, bless you, but that wasn’t necessary at all. I’d seen your love. Been awed by it, humbled by it. Wondered how I could ever hope to deserve it.”
“Julian.” I reached up, and his hand found mine, lacing our fingers together, so I could feel the unfamiliar hardness of his wedding ring pressing into my skin. “They’re such small words,” I said, “when I love you so much. So infinitely. Like I’m just made of that one pure element. How could I simply say I love you? It wasn’t enough.” I paused. “And then you always said it so much better than I could. Whenever I tried, it all came up so short.”
“I don’t know. That was a splendid effort, just now. Most effective.”
“Well, I’ll write it down. Read it back to you every day.” Every day. The words echoed beautifully in my head. I tightened my fingers through his. “I’m so sorry for all this.”
“Sorry? Sorry for what? For loving me? For following me to the ends of the earth, without a second thought?” He drew me against him. His hand traced delicately along my spine. I felt my muscles uncoil, felt the flat crushed sensation dissolve, bit by bit, into qu
iescence.
At last I felt a chuckle vibrate between us. “What?” I asked.
“I was just thinking of that night in the cottage. You can’t imagine how I felt, holding you in my arms again, after all that time. All that longing, those sleepless nights, recalling every last detail of our night in Amiens.”
I turned and nuzzled his shirt. “Well, that was your fault. Spending twelve years as a monk, for God’s sake. I mean, I was only thirteen years old or so when Hollander brought you back. I’d never have known.”
“Katherine Ashford,” Julian said, in shocked tones. He pushed me upward to face him. “Are you suggesting I should have cheated on you?”
“Well, it was a long time to go without sex. I mean, it wouldn’t technically have been cheating. I didn’t even know you existed.”
“Kate, exactly how was I supposed to let myself look at another woman, knowing you were alive in the world somewhere, waiting to be found? Break faith with you, just for sex?” He sounded deeply exasperated.
“Twelve years is a long time. And there are plenty of beautiful women dying to get into bed with you, Julian. I think I would have understood.”
“I hope you’re being facetious. One of your cheeky little remarks.”
“I wouldn’t want to think about it,” I said, fixing on his chest. “I wouldn’t want to think about you with anyone else. But… well, it would have evened the score, right?”
“That was different. You didn’t know me. You weren’t married to me.”
“You weren’t married to me, either.”
“Yes, I was. In my heart. Didn’t I place that ring back on your finger with my own hands? Seal it with my own lips?” He tilted my head back to meet his eyes. “Kate, beloved, all I wanted—those long, wretched years—was my wife back. My Kate. Nothing else would do. No one else was you. When I walked into that conference room and realized who you were…”
“After twelve years? With one little glance?”
“Well, I wasn’t absolutely certain,” he said, “but I jolly well wanted to find out. So I made my excuses, found my way to your desk. And there you were, with your hair back in that damned elastic, with the light catching the silver in those extraordinary eyes of yours, and I knew. I knew it was you.”
“I didn’t know what to think. The great Julian Laurence, hitting on me.” I laughed and rubbed my nose into his collar. The warm scent released a kaleidoscope of memories; I turned my head and looked past the curve of his arm to the wide bed with its carved headboard and its rumpled sheets. “But you know, you could have told me,” I said. “You could have warned me not to go back. That you’d already met me, and it wouldn’t work.”
“As if that would have stopped you! Kate, you thought I was dead. I thought I’d be dead already, if you’d gone back. And I knew you’d willingly sacrifice yourself for even the smallest hope of saving me, my brave darling. That you’d discover how to go back anyway, just to try, because you love me far, far more than I deserve.” He pressed a long hard kiss against my hair. “So I couldn’t afford to give you even the idea you could go back after me. Not the smallest hint. That way, even if I couldn’t save myself in the end, I could at least save you.”
“Always thinking you could handle things for me.”
“Perhaps I’ve learned my lesson, then.”
I looked back up at him. “I’m not holding my breath. Once a male chauvinist…”
“I am not a male chauvinist!” He looked shocked, and then his face softened. “Only protective of you. That I can’t help. And I won’t apologize for. You’re my life, darling. I can’t possibly do without you.” He paused a moment. “But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I ought to have told you more. I’ve made so many mistakes, sweetheart, and you’ve paid for them all, haven’t you?”
“For God’s sake, Julian. How can you say that? You’re the one who had yourself shot for me!”
“Darling, a mere winging, I promise.”
“Let me see it.”
“Later. It’s nothing.”
“Stoic freaking idiot.” I smiled and took his face between my palms and kissed him, again and again: his nose, his forehead, his eyelids, the hair at his temples, the soft unshaven scratch of his cheeks. A man’s face now: tiny lines about his eyes, skin fitting snugly about the bones. Twelve years of life, of change, and I’d missed them all. “Darling, faithful, irreplaceable idiot,” I said, into his lips. A contented noise rose from his chest; I felt his hands close around my back and rise up slowly until they cupped the ball of my head. I reached back, remembering something, and brought his left hand in front of me. “You’re wearing your ring.”
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I? I’m your lawfully married husband. At bloody last, I might add.”
I circled it with my fingers, watched the light gleam around the slim golden surface. “I’m just not used to it yet, that’s all.” I looked up at him and smiled. “It looks wonderful on you.”
“Feels a little odd, still. But I rather like it, all the same.”
“Still? How long has it been, anyway? What day is it?”
“Today? October tenth, I think. I had to spend a night or two in ruddy hospital…”
“Good grief, Julian…”
“… while Geoff sorted out poor Arthur’s affairs, and then it was down to Le Havre with Hollander before we finally found you.” He slipped out from under me and went to the pair of enormous windows along the side of the room, speaking as he walked. “We were focusing on the area where the gangway would have been, but without success. So we started moving outward in concentric circles…” He drew open the curtains, letting the bright Parisian morning tumble into the room. “There, that’s better. Bloody mausoleum. Of course we could only try in the dead of night, when we wouldn’t be much seen. We came all week. I would have kept trying forever if I had to.” He drew open the curtains on the other window and turned to face me with a broad grin on his face. “And at last, there you were, so alive and unutterably beautiful. And I have never felt more joy in my life, darling. Now come here. I want to show you something.”
I rose from the chair and went to stand before him. He reached out for me with his left arm; the right one he held rather stiffly at his side. “Don’t you have a sling or something?” I asked suspiciously.
“Yes. I’ll put it back on later.”
“No. Now. I’m not taking any chances with that shoulder. I’ll bet you still have stitches in it, don’t you?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Bossy little minx.”
I turned and watched him move across the shadowed room to the bureau. His pajamas hung perfectly beneath his white T-shirt; shamelessly I ogled the lean curve of his bottom as it shifted under the loose cotton, and when he turned back in my direction, a sigh slipped out from my very bones.
“What is it?” he asked, returning to me with the pale blue sling in his hands.
“Just admiring you. Here, let me.” I reached for the straps, putting them around his neck and buckling them securely. A smile spread across my lips.
“You’re smiling at this contraption?”
“I was just thinking. You’re going to have to exercise your ingenuity for the next few weeks. Or else remain uncharacteristically submissive.”
“Ha.” He gathered me up. “Shows how much you know of my capabilities.”
“You’re capable of one-handed push-ups?”
“I’m capable of anything, given the proper incentives.”
“Serves you right,” I said smugly, closing my eyes against the lovely sensation of his warm cotton-clad chest against my face, “being such a freaking superhero. Arranging your own shooting, for God’s sake. Don’t you ever do that again, do you hear me?”
I felt him toy with the hair at my back, felt the gentle tugs as he wrapped curls around his finger and unwound them again, just as he used to do. The commonplace gesture seemed now like the greatest luxury in the world.
“You asked me once,” he said, aft
er a while, “if I’d wait with you, wake with you, instead of rising at dawn. And I told you all about stand to.”
“I enjoyed waking up in your arms just now. Just as heavenly as I’d dreamed.”
“What about Amiens?”
“I was awake the whole night. It wasn’t the same.”
“You didn’t sleep the entire night?”
“How could I sleep?” I shrugged. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
He didn’t say anything, only tightened his left arm around me so hard I could scarcely breathe. “There’s another reason,” he said at last. “Have you any idea how lovely you look, when you sleep?” His voice slipped into a lyric cadence, as if he were reciting poetry. “The flush of your skin. The long beautiful angle of your cheekbones, just so. The way your eyes tilt up, ever so slightly, at the corners. Your hair, tumbling madly over the pillows, or else spread across my chest, dark and soft. That wide mouth of yours, pink and round, the lips just parted. All last summer, I’d wake at dawn as I always did, every sense alert, and instead of the mud walls of an officer’s dugout I’d find you, heavenly vision, lying in my arms like an angel. I couldn’t bear it. If I’d woken you, I should have wept with it.”
“That’s all right. Tears are okay.”
“Mmm.” He turned me around and pulled me back against his chest, his left arm slung about my waist. “Look out the window, darling.”
“It’s beautiful.” The view cast southeastward, across the Place de la Concorde to the Tuileries, with the bright mass of the Louvre perched at the end. We were several stories above the ground: the grand mansard rooftops, luminous in the midday sun, spread around us in a wild irregular pattern of boulevards and squares and parks. Off to the right, the Seine glittered provocatively between the buildings, and a memory drifted past me, of trudging across the Pont Neuf three years ago with Michelle and Samantha, arguing about whether we should squander our money on a cup of coffee each at a sidewalk café that afternoon. The quintessential Parisian experience, of course, but a budget buster for Let’s Go travelers like us.
“A much nicer view than the youth hostel I stayed at last time,” I said. “In the Marais somewhere, I think.”
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