Nurse Denler appeared at his side, her lonely dimple in place. She spread a napkin over his chest. “I know that look. But we cannot accept defeat so soon, Lieutenant Elton. You’ll not regain your strength by eating so little.” She pried the spoon from his fingers and sat in the wooden chair positioned between the cots, angling it toward him. “Besides, from what I hear, your sister will be coming soon to visit you. You’ll want to be finished and cleaned up by then, won’t you? Best to let me help.”
Of course Dot was coming. He hadn’t really paused to think about that yet—that Charing Cross meant London, the very neighborhood where she lived and now worked. Of course she’d come. Likely every day, while he was here.
She’d see him weak and in pain and no doubt want to know how he’d come by his injury.
He had no intentions of telling her. Let her assume he’d ended up in one of the many battles raging on the Continent.
Jaeger’s face filled his vision. Contorted with rage, closer than it had ever been in reality, obliterating all else in the room.
Across the aisle, the duchess shattered the illusion as she shouted something in a language that sounded a bit like French, a bit like Italian, but wasn’t fully either, to his ear. And the men laughed.
Nurse Denler did, too, low and warm. “Another reason she serves here, I think. To give the men stories to tell when they go back to the field, or home. Tales of the duchess who fed them, served them, and then yelled at them in Monegasque.”
It would make a good story. But Drake wasn’t sure to whom he’d tell it. “Back to the field” would mean Spain and Abuelo’s house—but if he remembered correctly the words Thoroton had spoken while Drake was being put on the train, his grandfather hadn’t been informed of his injury. Rather, Charles the Bold had sent a telegram in Drake’s name, saying he’d decided to extend the little trip he’d been on and was debating spending the winter in London with Dot.
Abuelo would frown—why would he choose to winter in England rather than the temperance of Spain?—but he wouldn’t think it out of character.
And when could he reasonably expect to go back to Spain, anyway? That same muddled recollection of his superior had contained some instruction about enjoying Christmas with his sister, hadn’t it?
Christmas. That was a month and a half away. So much would have happened in that time—the wolfram would have been loaded on Erri Barro, and the frigate would have set out to sea. He’d wanted to be there, one of the team on the English ship sent to intercept it. Thoroton had told him he could be. That he could see it through, from discovery to confiscation.
No chance of that now.
“Finished?” Nurse Denler frowned at the bowl—still over half full. “Would you like the bread and butter?”
Solid food should sound good, shouldn’t it? But the thought of it just made him hurt. “No. Thanks.”
“All right.” She stood and lifted the tray from over his legs. “Try to rest until your sister comes. Do you want to lie back down?”
Move again? Only to want to return to this position so he could actually see Dot when she got here? He risked a shake of his head—a minuscule one.
Given the increased noise in the ward as men were roused for their dinners, he didn’t really expect to rest. But he must have dozed for a minute here and there, because it seemed like only a moment before he heard his sister’s familiar voice saying his name and felt her familiar fingers on the top of his hand.
He blinked awake, glad it wasn’t with a jerk this time. Saw Dot with her curls pinned back in their usual chignon, her smile obviously trying to strike a note between bravery and normality, the blue-grey eyes they shared suspiciously shiny.
Then his gaze tracked just past her, to a second figure hovering by his bed. He might have thought it another nurse, except instead of white, he saw blue. A blue dress under a belted blue coat. And above that, hair of dark chocolate pinned in a plain bun, a slender nose in a slender face, and those dark eyes that had haunted him for the last month.
Blast it all. Why today? When he was dressed in a soup-stained pajama shirt and couldn’t move without the risk of crying like a baby?
The ever-helpful Nurse Denler arrived with another chair, and Margot De Wilde sat.
Drake tore his eyes from her and looked back to his sister. “Hello.”
Dot sighed and wove their fingers together. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.” He couldn’t think of a time he’d been worse, as a matter of fact, but he’d embrace the British stiff upper lip just now.
Dot, of course, saw through him. He could tell by the way she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. But instead of calling him on it, she turned a bit to include her friend. “This is Margot De Wilde, my friend from the office. Did you get my letters? If so, you know who she is.”
“I did.” His smile was no doubt far from suave and handsome, but the introduction gave him an excuse to look at her again, anyway. “I thought you didn’t have a name. Your parents forgot to give you one, if I recall.” It took a ridiculous amount of energy to deliver the sentence.
But he was rewarded with a snap of amusement in her eyes and the slightest hint of a smile in the corner of her lips.
Dot’s brows arched upward. “Have I missed something?”
“We met the day you had your interview.” Drake reclaimed his hand from her so he could plant it against the mattress and try to ease himself up another inch. It didn’t feel right being below the level of their eyes. But he couldn’t accomplish the move on his own, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask for help. He cleared his throat. “Sort of. She wouldn’t tell me her name.”
Miss De Wilde folded her arms over her chest, her smile growing another fraction. “You didn’t ask what my name is, Lieutenant. You asked if I had one. And then if I weren’t going to tell you.”
Dot laughed, which turned a few male heads their way. Drake sent a scowl at his neighbors. Until he knew what kinds of blokes they were, they weren’t going to get away with ogling his sister.
“Oh heavens! I wish I’d heard it. I wouldn’t have been half so nervous if I’d had a good laugh before going in there.” Dot shook her head and leaned back in her hard wooden chair. “She’s very literal,” she said in a stage whisper, shielding her mouth from Miss De Wilde’s view.
Miss De Wilde let her smile bloom heart-stoppingly full. “What is the point of language if we don’t use it with precision? When others fail in this, then it’s instructional to point it out with exaggeration.”
Drake kept his gaze on her. “It was a lesson, was it? I had just assumed it was custom in Antarctica not to name one’s children. After all, your parents must have been penguins.”
Her lips settled back down into neutral. “Nonsense. They were albatrosses.”
Drake would have liked to laugh, if it wouldn’t have been agony.
Dot had no such compunction and released another chuckle. “Antarctica?”
“Where she claimed her accent was from.”
“And I imagine she said it with a straight face.” Dot grinned. “I could never.”
“No,” Drake agreed. “You were always miserable at lying.”
“Lying is easy.” Miss De Wilde leaned back in her chair too and folded her hands in her lap. “Especially when one doesn’t actually mean to be believed.”
Blast, those eyes. They exuded challenge and questions with every second. And here he was fighting just to stay upright. It wasn’t fair. And he knew well it wouldn’t be long before exhaustion and pain won out.
But in the meantime . . . “And when one does mean to be believed?”
Her gaze met his, bold and unflinching. “Then it’s a simple matter of mathematics.”
He let his brows ask the obvious question.
She acknowledged it with a tilt of her head. “The correct ratio of truth to falsehood, combined with the proper rate of respiration, blinking, and the angle of one’s spine. Ratios, rates, and angles—m
athematics.”
He could see why Blinker Hall called her my dear. She was clearly a girl cut from the same cloth as their director. He looked back to Dot. “Perhaps you’d better tell me how your new position is going before I begin to wonder if we ought to believe a thing this young lady has ever told you.”
Dot sent him a look. “I’d rather hoped you would tell me what happened.” She motioned to his stomach.
Blast. He’d not had time to come up with a proper cover story. But hopefully his wince would suffice for now. “Perhaps when the pain and medicine have allowed me to sort through it all myself?”
His sister sighed. But she relented and began to tell him about how she’d finally begun to settle in and feel a proper part of “Blinker’s Beauty Chorus,” as the secretaries were apparently called. “And Margot and I have such fun on our daily walks and meals!”
Fun didn’t seem like a word Margot would use very often—at least, not one she would have defined in the way most people did. But then, Dot was a bit of an odd duck herself, so perhaps their definitions matched.
He wished he could have enjoyed the telling more, could have done more than smile when the tale called for laughter. But the longer she talked, the more aware he became of the pain shooting from his midsection down his legs and up into his neck. He had to move, to lie back down. Even a slight shift might help. But when he tried it, his attempt ended in a wince he couldn’t hide.
Dot’s fingers landed on his again. “Oh, look at me. Rambling on and tiring you out. We’ve already been warned we mustn’t stay more than a quarter hour, and no doubt we’ve been here that long. Sit still, Drake.” She pressed harder on his hand. “Don’t injure yourself. Let me fetch a nurse to help you.”
“You needn’t go yet.” Once they left, it would just be the pain again. He’d rather suffer this position a little longer, with their company.
“Nonsense. You’re exhausted.” She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. “But don’t worry, we’ll be back tomorrow. And every day, after work.”
We? He darted a glance at Margot De Wilde and her dark eyes. She made no correction, but then, she wouldn’t, would she? Not now. She just wouldn’t come back if she didn’t want to.
Dot was already on her feet, chasing after an as-yet-nameless nurse who was passing by the door. “Nurse! Excuse me!”
Drake dug his fingers in again in the effort to keep his face clear of pain for Margot De Wilde’s sake.
She shifted, and for a moment he thought she’d get up and chase after Dot. But no. She slid over to Dot’s chair and leaned down. Actually leaned down, closer to him, until the scent of lemons met his nose.
Then she said, “You’re an idiot, Drake Elton.”
He was too tired to so much as lift his head from the pillow it had fallen back against. “Am I?” She could well be on to something. Surely only an idiot would be more concerned with how he appeared to a veritable stranger than with his actual condition.
“You told the admiral that your sister is emotionally fragile.”
His eyes had drooped, but he forced them fully open now. “I don’t believe I ever used those exact words.”
“They were the ones he used with me, and I daresay they got at the heart of whatever your exact words were. And if you think that about her, you’re an idiot.”
Her eyes positively burned. Her cheeks had a pretty flush to them. But somehow he had a feeling that if he said so, she’d slap him. And he wasn’t exactly in prime condition for such a response. So he settled for a tight-lipped smile that she probably interpreted as condescending. “I appreciate that you feel the need to champion her. But I’ve known my sister a fair bit longer than you have.”
“I think she doesn’t need a champion. Going out every day when it’s so difficult—that is bravery, Lieutenant. That is strength.” Now she stood. No emotion clouded her face—she probably kept it off with ratios and proportions and rates and angles—but those eyes still snapped beautifully. “You of all people should know that.” Pushing the chairs back to make room, she stalked into the aisle and out the door.
Drake let his eyes slide closed and tried not to smile.
A moment later, Dot’s step sounded, along with a second set. And Dot’s voice hissed in his ear. “What did you say to her? She was upset.”
She could tell, beyond all that careful control? They must be friends. Drake peeled his eyes open. “Didn’t say anything.” Much.
She scowled at him. “Be kind to her, Drake—her mother just died on Wednesday, very unexpectedly.”
“What?” He jerked, winced, hissed with the pain, and made no objection when Nurse Anonymous elbowed Dot aside to help him lie down. Why hadn’t she said something sooner? Or why hadn’t he been able to tell that something so massive had just struck? Or, better still, why had Margot De Wilde even come here today, so soon after such tragedy? As the nurse settled him, he ground out between his teeth, “I wasn’t unkind. I wouldn’t be. She’s your friend.”
But she wasn’t like Ada, that was for sure. Margot De Wilde wasn’t the sort of friend he’d be kind to but avoid whenever he could. No, Margot De Wilde was a different sort of friend altogether.
Dot huffed and came around to the other side of his cot. “All right. I won’t badger you.” She leaned down, kissed his cheek once more. “Rest well and get well. Do you understand me? I’ll tolerate nothing less than a full recovery.”
Her words were so strong, so brave—like Margot claimed she was—but he saw the shadows in her eyes. The ones that said You can’t die too. And if Margot didn’t see those . . . maybe she was the idiot.
Perhaps he’d tell her so sometime. And see what her ratios did for her then.
11
Emptiness surrounded her. Somehow it wove through the usual chatter of the room, snuck in behind the thunk of the pneumatic tubes, edged out the scratching of pens and pencils, the clicks and clacks and dings of the typewriters. So much busyness.
But empty. Margot squeezed her eyes shut, but that only amplified the problem. Her desk wasn’t empty. The room wasn’t empty. The building wasn’t empty. But that part of her own mind where it never had been before . . . that was all silent, echoing darkness.
Like a grave. She blinked her eyes open again and just stared at the half-blank page before her. Instead of the neat columns of numbers and decrypted words she’d written down, she saw that gaping black hole into which they’d lowered Maman last week.
“Her heart,” Lukas had said last night. That’s what the doctor had decided it must have been. He’d never detected any problems with it before, but the cold she’d caught, the fever she was probably running, could have exacerbated an unknown condition.
But that couldn’t be, and she’d said as much to her brother. “That’s how Papa died.” Why she had to remind him of this, she didn’t know. Shouldn’t he have seen the obvious when the doctor said such nonsense? “It’s highly unlikely that Maman would have died of the same condition. Do you know what the chance of that is?”
Her brother had sighed, his face going hard. “Is the chance zero?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Then it does not matter, does it? Even if there is only a five percent chance, then that means it happens occasionally. And it did. It happened now. For whatever reason, however unlikely, they are both gone, and from the same malady.”
“No.” She’d said it last night over dinner. She thought it again now over her stalled work. Perhaps it had made sense that Papa’s heart had failed him—he was not in prime physical condition. She could recognize that now. Hours at a desk had taken their toll, and he wasn’t exactly trim. But Maman was different. Maman was nearly militant about taking her exercise. Maman never overindulged—and seldom indulged at all these days—on sweets. Maman’s heart ought to have been in perfect condition.
There was something else. Some other cause. There had to be. She didn’t know what, but she couldn’t shake the idea that somewhere in her mind
lay the answer. That it wasn’t random at all, it was purposeful. Someone was to blame.
She stared, and she listened. She waited for God to speak, one way or another, through the numbers in her head. Beautiful proofs for a Yes, pursue this. Unsolvable equations for a No, this will get you nowhere.
He always spoke. Always. And she listened, because God was smarter than she was—the only being about whom she could say that with certainty. She didn’t always understand His ways, but she’d learned to trust them. Learned that when harmonious figures sang through her mind, she ought to act.
But there was nothing. Nothing. No yes or no. No stay or go.
God had gone silent.
She curled her fingers into her palm. Drew in a breath. Picked up her pencil. She didn’t need those numbers to do this work; she needed only time and half a brain. Finish this, then think of the other.
The last word finally found its place on the page a moment before Dot appeared at her elbow. “Ready?”
“Mm.” She stood and went a bit mechanically about her duties—tidy her desk, drop the handwritten decrypt into a basket for a secretary to type up, toss the original coded message into the bin to be filed with every other message they intercepted. Then she was shrugging into her coat and cinching the belt around her waist.
Visiting the hospital again wasn’t exactly something she wanted to do. She didn’t mind visiting with Lieutenant Elton—despite idiocy over his sister, he was a pleasant-enough chap to have a conversation with—but the hospital itself . . . it had been worse than she’d thought it would be. Harder on her. But she couldn’t let that rule her.
Dot had proven herself a true friend last week. Margot would do the same.
Besides, going home to her empty flat wasn’t exactly appealing.
“Are you going to Mr. Herschell’s dinner party on Saturday?” Dot asked as they stepped out into the chilly air.
Margot glanced at her with what she hoped was a quelling look. “Why would I do that?”
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